Pay Dirt

THIRTY-THREE

He’d been in the implement shed. She had just shut the bike away, and was turning to cross the yard, when he’d pressed the gun into the base of her spine and said, ‘Turn around slowly.’

She smelt cop. He wasn’t dressed like one, and he wasn’t acting like one, but she smelt cop all the same. It was the suspicion, worn like a layer of skin, the contempt, the swagger of the heavy limbs. He had clever eyes in the whitest skin she’d ever seen on anyone and the sort of cop expression she knew well-permanent bleakness and cynicism. The eyes seemed to sum her up and toss her out.

When he’d spoken again it was to ask where Wyatt was.

‘Who?’

Dumb. He’d flashed the gun across her cheek, cutting the skin open. He didn’t ask it again, just looked at her. ‘You’re expecting him,’ he said flatly. ‘We’ll wait in the house. Move.’

She turned and they walked across the yard. She felt the gun brush her spine.

When they reached the house he prodded her. ‘In the kitchen.’

So he knew the layout. She heard his footsteps on the verandah behind her and then he was crowding her as they went through the door.

At the centre of the room she turned to face him. ‘Do you work for Jorge? Steelgard? Did you warn the van?’

His expression changed for the first time, showing puzzlement. ‘What are you talking about?’

She stared at him. ‘You hijacked our job, right?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is Wyatt coming or not?’

They had stared at each other then. She remembered noticing odd details, things that had nothing to do with who he was or what he was doing there. The shoes, first. They were brand new desert boots, looking soft and brushed, with pale crepe rubber soles. Then the clothes. He was wearing the sort of things a farmer would wear, except they lacked the patina of age and use. They looked creased and new. In fact, there was still a pin in the shirt collar.

He spoke again. ‘Something went wrong?’

There didn’t seem to be any harm in answering. ‘The van didn’t show.’

‘Snyder, Wyatt, the other man-where are they?’

She stiffened at that. How did he know so much? She felt the bad feelings swamping her again: the job going wrong, Wyatt shooting Snyder, the sense that this was real and nothing else in her life, no matter how rotten, had been real.

‘Tobin went home,’ she said. ‘Snyder’s dead.’

He looked disgusted. ‘How did that happen?’

‘Wyatt shot him.’

The man nodded gloomily. Keeping the gun trained on her, he backed up to the window and looked out.

‘I’ll ask again-you’re waiting for Wyatt?’

She risked a lie. ‘No. The job went wrong and we split up and got out of there. Wyatt’s gone.’

‘Bullshit,’ the man said flatly. He knocked her head back with the butt of his gun. Her jaws closed with a click, her front teeth nipping her tongue. She tasted blood. The pain made her head swim.

Then he pushed her to the floor and she sat with her back to the wall. She didn’t look up at the man after that. There was a cruel irony in all this. The badness she’d felt washing around her after Wyatt shot Snyder had evaporated a minute after she’d ridden off on the bike. It didn’t make the shooting any better but she’d begun to feel guilty about abandoning Wyatt. She’d turned the bike around and ridden to the farm to help him. She should have kept running.

At that moment the man said viciously, ‘Jesus Christ. A helicopter.’

He was standing at the window. Leah stood up and joined him. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then the helicopter changed direction and she recognised the familiar shape. It was a small helicopter, still some distance away. It changed direction again. She was puzzled about that until she realised it was sweeping the valley in a grid pattern.

‘We’re getting out,’ the man said.

‘How?’

He jerked his head toward the back of the house. ‘I’ve got a car.’

‘You don’t need me.’

The man looked her full in the face and grinned. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘you’re taking me home to wait for Wyatt.’