Thick as Thieves

44

There are footsteps, and the beams of light tremble and diminish, and the garage door scrapes down. The sound of rain is muted, the breeze vanishes, and the darkness is complete.

Bessemer sobs. “Is this part of it? Leaving us in the dark.”

“It’s a blackout, and let’s hope it lasts.”

“I don’t even know where we are.”

“There’s a shed next to the greenhouse, with garden equipment in it. I’m pretty sure this is it.”

Bessemer sobs again. “What the hell did you get me into?”

“Now’s not the time, Howie. Now we get the hell out of Dodge. Can you walk?”

“Walk? I don’t know if I can stand. My face hurts like a son of a bitch; I think they broke my nose. Besides, where am I supposed to walk?”

“I’m leaving, and you’d better come along.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not going anywhere-you think I want to get in deeper?”

“It doesn’t get deeper than this,” Carr says, and he stands and shuffles slowly forward, navigating from memory. Around the slant bench, the water jugs, the light stands, toward the tractor. His shin smacks into something smooth and metal.

“What are you doing?” Bessemer says.

Carr turns around and stretches his arms back. “I hope I’m turning on a light,” he says. He runs nearly numb fingers across a landscape of plastic textures-pebbled, cross-hatched, tacky, and smooth-until he finds the ridges of the tractor’s little steering wheel. Then he reaches down and scrabbles over knobs and switches until he touches a key. Carr turns it, and the tractor’s headlights come on-sickly beams that barely cross the room. To Carr, they are flares in a mineshaft.

Bessemer’s voice is a frightened hiss. “They’ll see!”

“The only windows are in back, Howie-those narrow slits near the ceiling. No one will see.”

Carr follows the light to a workbench on the wall. He peers at the tabletop, then turns around and strains his arms back until his fingers catch the garden shears. “Stand up,” he tells Bessemer.

“Why?”

“Because that way there’s less chance I’ll slash your wrists.”

“ What?”

“And for chrissakes stand still.”

It takes two tries, back-to-back with the shears, and though Carr doesn’t slash Bessemer’s wrists, he does slice through his trousers and a chunk of his belt.

“Now cut mine,” Carr says.

Bessemer cuts the plastic in one clean pass, and Carr massages his wrists and cold hands. “Now what?” Bessemer says.

“Now sit down again, and put your hands behind your back.” Carr carries his own chair to the back of the room and places it beneath one of the narrow windows. He goes to the workbench, retrieves a pry bar from a hook on the wall, and stands on his chair.

“What are you doing?” Bessemer says. “We can’t get out that way.”

“No?”

“Maybe you can fit through, but I can’t. Are you going to leave me here?”

Carr reaches up and slips the pry bar between the cinder-block wall and the window’s aluminum frame. He grunts with effort and then there’s a sound of rending metal and breaking glass, and he looks down at Bessemer. “Better sound the alarm, Howie.”

And Bessemer does. Loudly. Loud enough to be heard over the lashing rain.

The metal door rolls up and two flashlight beams catch Bessemer in mid-yell. “The bastard, the son of a bitch -he left me here. That fucking prick went out the window and left me here!”

The lights dart and circle and find Carr’s chair, and the broken glass and mangled window frame on the floor. Rain is blowing through the rectangular gap.

“Shit,” the taller crew cut says. He draws his Glock and crosses to the window. His partner draws his gun too, but stays in the doorway, and Carr takes him first-the pry bar to the crotch, to the kidney, to the back of the head. There’s an explosive bellow and the taller crew cut turns, is frozen for an instant, and brings his gun up.

And Carr is on him at a run. He clamps both hands on the Glock, forces it down, and drives his shoulder into the crew cut’s chest. The crew cut goes back against the wall and the gun goes off and Carr snaps his head down hard on the bridge of the crew cut’s nose. There’s a crack and the crew cut’s grip loosens. Carr tears the Glock free as the crew cut hits him with the flashlight. It catches him on the shoulder and bounces hard against his ear, and Carr hammers the crew cut again and again on the side of his head until he goes over.

Carr is breathing hard as he strips the guards of flashlights, guns, radios, cash. He goes to the corner and runs a light over their wrecked bags. He picks through the pile and retrieves their wallets and passports.

Bessemer is still sitting, gripping the seat of his chair. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers. “Are… are they dead?”

Carr rubs the side of his head and stands in the open doorway. “Not yet,” he says, “though Rink might change that. We better get a move on; someone probably heard that shot.”

Outside they are drenched in an instant, and their flashlight beams are swallowed whole.

“Christ!” Bessemer says, struggling to keep up. “Is this even a path?”

“It’ll take us to the boathouse,” Carr says, “assuming we can stay on it.”

“What do we do there?”

“Get in a boat.”

“In this? Are you crazy?”

“I don’t like it, but I don’t like cutting across the property either, much less making it over the fence. I don’t know how many men Rink has here, but it won’t be long before they’re all out looking for us. They’re not going to look for us out there.”

The wind gusts and twists, shoving them sideways, shoving them forward, shoving them back. Palm fronds snap past them and sand scours their faces. The ocean is a flailing, howling thing, much too close in the dark.

“The money,” Bessemer shouts, though he is right at Carr’s back. “I thought nothing was going to happen until we were in Florida.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Carr says, and he pulls his mind away from a thousand questions about who did what, and when they did it, and where they are right now. There’s a squawk on the radio, and Carr stops and holds it to his ear.

“Dammit,” he says. “Someone’s calling the guys at the toolshed.”

“What do we do?”

“Go faster.”

But they’re not fast enough. They’re not halfway to the boathouse when a ribbon of light appears behind them. “They’ve got power in the guesthouse,” Carr says, and he looks up through the whipping trees. “And in the main house too.”

“And there,” Bessemer says, pointing. There are lights at the boathouse, and more lights moving down the path.

Carr looks back. “They’re coming from the greenhouse too,” he says. He grabs Bessemer’s collar and hauls him off the path, through bushes and branches, onto wet sand. The surf is white and frenzied before them, streaming across the beach and past the line of palm trees. The bay is boiling ink.

Carr drops the guns and radio to the sand. “Take off your shoes,” he shouts.

Somehow Bessemer’s face finds new terror. “What?”

“You a strong swimmer?”

“ What?”

“It’s a simple choice: stay here and die, or take our chances out there.”

“There is no chance out there.”

“We’ll head west, around the jetty. There should be some protection in the bay, but we need to stay clear of the rocks.”

“We… we could hide.”

“They’re going to search every inch of this property until they find us, Howie, and when they do, they’re going to torture us and kill us. So now’s the time.”

Carr wades in and the cold is like a fist clenched around his lungs. He loses his breath and nearly loses his footing, and in two steps he’s up to his neck. “Now, Howie.”

Bessemer looks around wildly and sees lights approaching. His chest heaves as he kicks off his shoes, and he’s fighting for breath when he calls to Carr. “Wait up!”