Becoming Quinn

29

Durrie pulled the rifle off his shoulder, and aimed it at the car. Even from eighty feet away, he could clearly hear the shouted question, and immediately knew it was Larson. Unfortunately, Oliver and the woman blocked the entire back half of the car from Durrie’s view. He needed to reposition.

“Where is he?” Larson shouted.

“I don’t know,” Oliver said.

“Bullshit. You were with him. Where is he?”

The woman, all but forgotten now, was glancing at the car, probably thinking she could make a run for it.

Durrie slipped several feet back into the woods, then started running parallel to the road, hoping he could get to a better spot and end things now before the woman took action.

“I don’t know where he is,” Oliver said again, then paused. “You’re the one he said was coming after him, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Larson asked.

“He told me last night someone was coming for him. He seemed…annoyed.”

Durrie moved back to the edge, using a cluster of saplings as cover. Oliver had moved several steps closer to the car. Durrie checked the woman, and watched as she eyed the car again, then the woods.

Don’t do it, he thought. He wasn’t overly concerned with the woman as an individual, but the loss of any civilian life always made things difficult.

“Why would he tell you that?” Larson asked.

“I think he was trying to scare me,” Oliver said, stepping closer again.

Durrie raised the rifle and trained the scope on the car. He could now see a small mirror hovering inside the back of the vehicle. Larson was obviously using it to see what was going on while staying out of sight.

“But when I woke up this morning, the door to my cell was open,” Oliver went on.

“Woke up where?”

“In a cabin. Down the road you were turning on.”

The woman took a small, tentative step away from the vehicle.

Dammit, Durrie thought.

Oliver seemed to notice it, too. As he spoke again, he took another couple steps closer, angling, this time, toward the woman. “When I went upstairs, the place was empty. My guess is he’s not coming back.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Oliver shrugged. “Okay. Feel free to go check. You’re already headed in the right direction.”

The woman took another, larger step.

Stop!

“Maybe I will,” Larson said. “Maybe I’ll have you drive me.”

“I’m not headed that way.”

If Durrie wasn’t sold on the kid before, he was now. Oliver came off as a regular guy, average in so many ways, but he was far from that. And the balls on him…

Of course, Durrie would never tell him that.

“I don’t care which way you’re headed,” Larson said. “If I want you to drive me, you will.”

Durrie could put a couple bullets through the door. He might hit Larson, but if he didn’t, things could go very bad very quickly.

The woman started leaning into another step.

“Don’t do it, Mrs. West. Another step and that bullet I promised earlier will be on its way.”

“Please,” she said. “Please. I’ve done exactly what you’ve wanted. Just let me go.”

Durrie stared at her for a moment.

“Please,” she repeated.

“Please,” the woman repeated.

Jake knew he had to do something. He knew it was the dark-haired man — the guy Durrie called Larson — in the back seat of the car. He had used the woman as cover to bring him here. She wasn’t part of this. She didn’t deserve to get hurt.

Almost before he realized he was doing it, Jake jerked to the left, and moved quickly between the woman and the car. “Run!” he shouted at her.

“Not very smart,” Larson said.

Jake looked back at the car. “I’ll take you wherever you need to go. You don’t need her.”

Larson said nothing for a moment, then, “Durrie was wrong. You wouldn’t have fit in this world.”

Jake’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“He didn’t tell you he was planning on recruiting you? Interesting. Maybe he got smart and changed his mind.”

“Recruit me?”

“Probably would have never even considered it if he’d known about your weakness for civilians.”

Jake said nothing, his mind still processing the idea that Durrie had been trying to hire him.

“Me?” Larson said. “I’m smarter than that. A rookie cop, still full of ideals? I knew it was something I could exploit.”

The hairs on the back of Jake’s neck began to tingle, not from what Larson said, but from a sense he wasn’t standing there alone.

“It was so nice of you to come down here and make it easy for us,” Larson said.

Just as Jake started to turn to look behind him, he heard the crack of a gun.

Bad move, Durrie thought as Oliver jumped between the woman and the car.

“Run!” Oliver told her.

The woman took a few steps, but as soon as Larson started talking again, she stopped.

The look of hopelessness that had been etched on her face disappeared. It was replaced by the hardened eyes and disdainful smile of a professional. She turned toward Jake, her back now to Durrie’s position.

Silently, she reached around and unzipped a secret pocket on the waistband of her billowing skirt. From inside she withdrew a Beretta Bobcat — a.22 caliber, palm-sized pistol. Not great for distance work, but more than enough firepower when held to the back of someone’s head.

She took two silent steps toward Jake, listened to the conversation for a moment, then started to raise her weapon.

Durrie pulled the rifle’s trigger.

The force of the bullet hitting the back of her head thrust her forward a few feet before dropping her to the ground.

“Down!” Durrie yelled, as he put three quick shots into the side of the car.

At the sound of the shot, Jake whipped around. He was just in time to see the woman collapse to the ground barely a foot away from him.

“Down!” a voice shouted from the trees. It sounded like Durrie.

Immediately three more shots rang out, whacking into the car.

Jake dropped to the ground.

He heard a car door open, then footsteps running on pavement.

Two more shots flew through the air, then Durrie was suddenly crouching at his side.

“You need to help me get her off the street.”

“You…shot her,” Jake said.

“Yes,” Durrie said. “I did.” He grabbed Jake’s chin and turned him toward the woman. “Look.”

Jake did. She was face down in a puddle of blood. There was a hole where the bullet had entered the back of her head. He didn’t want to think about what it looked like where it came out.

“The hand,” Durrie said.

Jake moved his gaze to her hands. The left one was empty, but in her right was a small pistol.

“She was about to do to you what I did to her,” Durrie told him.

“That’s…not possible,” Jake said. “She…she was—”

“Working with Larson,” Durrie finished. “Now help me. We can’t leave her here for someone else to find.” He grabbed the woman’s arms. “Get her feet. But stay low. He’s still out there.”

Numb, Jake did as he was told, and half a minute later they’d stowed the body ten feet deep in the woods.

Durrie then pulled off the long rifle that was on his shoulder and moved over to the car. Pointing at what was left of the woman in the street, he said, “Dig a hole and dump the big chunks in, then use some dirt to cover up the blood.”

“What am I supposed to carry them with?” Jake asked.

“You’ve got hands, don’t you?”

Jake tried not to think about what he was doing as he picked up the pieces of the woman that were no longer attached to her, then carried them back to the trees and buried them. As he covered the blood per instructions, Durrie started to roll the sedan the rest of the way off the road.

“I’m done,” Jake announced, after he dropped the last handful of dirt onto the spot where the puddle had been.

Durrie glanced back, and nodded. “Good. Now help me with this,” he said, indicating the car. “We need to get it far enough down the dirt road so no one passing by will see it.”

Once they finished, it was almost as if nothing had happened. Even a cop could have driven by and he would have seen nothing that would have made him stop.

Jake glanced back at the woods where the woman’s body lay. “I thought for sure she was just trying to get away. I believed her. What…what do we do now?”

Durrie looked into the forest west of their position. “Either he finds us, or we find him. What would you rather?”

Jake’s first thought was to get in the car and drive away as fast as they could. But something held him back from voicing it, something that said even if he was able to get away today, Larson would still come after him tomorrow, or the next day, or the one after that.

He gave Durrie’s question more serious consideration. “Let him find us,” he finally said.

Durrie glanced at him, a curious look on his face. “Why?”

“He wants to kill us, so he’ll be looking for us anyway. Let him do the work. We can be ready for him.”

“Where did you learn that?”

Jake shook his head. “Nowhere. It’s just logical, right?”

Durrie responded with a grunt and a nod. Then he said, “We’ll go back down the dirt road a bit. I spotted a small clearing not far from that ridge you climbed up. We can use that.”

The mention of the ridge caused Jake to ask, “Why did you follow me?”

Durrie frowned, then slung the rifle back over his shoulder. “Don’t make me regret it.”

Without another word, he jogged into the woods.

For half a second, Jake thought again about getting into the car. He could get away not just from Larson now, but Durrie, too. He could bring the authorities back here. He could show them the woman, and where he’d buried the remainder of her face. But the thought passed as quickly as it came. He was staying, and he knew it.

He didn’t dwell on the reason why. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

So he headed after the man who had been holding him prisoner, the man who had just saved his life.