THIRTY THREE

As dusk eased into night, Huntoon sipped more Jim Beam and focused his binoculars on the home Ellie Stuart entered an hour ago. The house alarm sign was old. Easy system to disarm. Nothing to worry about.

What did worry him was the big middle-aged guy that went inside. Six-four, two-forty with weightlifter muscles! He’d helped an elderly woman inside the house like maybe she was his mom, then he stayed. His Suburban was still parked out front.

Huntoon decided to wait until the big guy left. Leaning back in his seat, Huntoon sipped more Beam and slid a movie, Navy SEALS Deep 6, into his portable Blue-Ray player. He loved the flick. Watched it maybe twenty times already. And for good reasons. It had the Big Ts – Terrorists, Testosterone and Tits. What more could a movie offer? It should have won an Oscar.

A Domino’s delivery car pulled into the drive. The driver took a pizza to the door, the big guy paid and took the pizza inside.

If the big guy didn’t leave soon, he’d have to whack him too. In fact, whacking the big guy might be a smart idea. Make it look more like a breaking and entering that went bad. Not just a hit on Ellie Stuart.

Huntoon shoved a full clip into his Glock.

He sipped more Jim Beam and looked back at the film as the SEALS greased the Iraqis and escaped with the chicks wearing Band-Aid sized bikinis.

He thought back to when he was whacking Iraqis. His Special Forces days. Great days. Except the day the asshole army unfairly and dishonorably discharged him just because he waxed three towel-heads near Baghdad. Suspicious towelheads, all puffed up like they were wearing explosive vests and looking nervous. He wasn’t waiting to find out. So he sent them all to Allah. War is war. Collateral shit happens. Any fool knows that – except the butt-covering army officer brass who never came within twenty miles of anything more explosive than a firecracker.

His spineless Captain didn’t support him either. Nobody ever had his back. Not even his cokehead parents and slutty wife.

Back in the states, he wrote dishonorable discharge on sixteen job applications and got back sixteen Rejected notes. He grew so angry he planned to blow up an Army recruiting office in Lexington – but two days before, a guy gave him five grand for an easy hit. That job turned into a string of even bigger jobs over the next few years. Like Ellie Stuart.

Huntoon yawned as he looked back at the Navy SEALS flick. It had been a long day. He sipped more Beam, yawned again, felt a little sleepy, decided to rest his eyes a bit.

When I hear the big guy’s Suburban drive off, I’ll go in and take care of business …

Huntoon’s left cheek felt warm … then hot. He peeled open an eye to blinding sunshine.

The dashboard clock said – 8:28 – in the fucking morning!

He bolted upright in his seat. The big guy’s Suburban was gone! Was Ellie’s bike gone? He checked. Still there.

But she had a 9 a.m. class.

She took a taxi. Or walked to school.

I fucking missed her!

Then he saw her. Standing at the window, looking out. She wore an easy-to-spot red U of L sweatshirt. She opened the front door and walked toward her bike. Huntoon drained the air from his lungs.

Game over!

This time, she wouldn’t dodge him like she did two days ago.

Unless she had eyes in the back of her head.

Ellie worried about riding her bike to school. Quinn had insisted she take a taxi and she tried to, but the dispatcher said they couldn’t pick her up before class. A class she had to make on time. A big chunk of her semester grade was riding on today’s test.

She had to leave now. She looked out at the cars parked in front. The usual neighborhood cars, except three she never saw before.

Was someone inside one waiting for her? The tinted windows made it impossible to know.

She had to assume someone was waiting for her. Which meant she had to mislead them. But how? If she just pedaled off on a different route, they’d simply follow.

But what if they don’t see me pedal off?

She had an idea. She stepped outside, walked around the side of the house, bent down beside her bike and jiggled the chain pretending something was wrong with it. Shaking her head, she rolled the bike into the garage, grabbed some tools and fiddled with the chain and sprocket. Then she pulled down the garage door and peeked through its tiny window. Again, she saw no movement inside the three cars.

Quickly, she opened the back door of the garage, rolled her bike out into the narrow alley and pedaled off fast toward campus, taking a completely new route.

She looked back. No one followed her.

Huntoon Harris wondered why she was taking so long in the garage. Probably couldn’t fix the bike. Good. She’ll have to walk. Make my job easier. But she better hurry, or she’ll be late for class.

He was still pissed that he missed her with his hunting rifle from the forest. And now, the boss said it still had to look like a car accident.

What’s taking her so damn long? And why’d she close the garage door and shut out the daylight?

Huntoon thought of something. Does her garage have a back door? Is there an alley back there? Quickly, he drove the Nissan pickup around the corner, and cursing, raced down the alley and stopped at her garage.

Back door!

He jumped out, squinted through the door window.

The bitch is gone! FUCK!

He jumped back in the pickup, raced to the end of the alley, looked both ways. No sign of her. He drove ahead, looked down another alley. Nothing. At the next alley, he glimpsed a red sweatshirt about four blocks away. It was her, pedaling hard down an alley to get to the university. He checked his map and saw the street the alley emptied out onto … the only street she could take to enter campus.

He’d be waiting for her.

Looking at her back.

Minutes later, he parked on the quiet, tree-lined street, knowing she’d be along any minute. His plan was simple: hit her hard from behind, roll over her like a speed bump a few times, break her neck and as many bones as possible. Excessive? Yeah. But excessive meant dead.

She deserved dead.

The cool morning breeze felt good as Ellie pedaled her slightly damaged, but trusty old Schwinn down the street lined with thick shade trees. Every few seconds, she checked the vehicles.

So far all seemed normal.

She passed rows of small family homes and smiled. She was no longer a family of one. She had a family. She knew her natural mother, and very possibly her father. And knowing them gave her a wonderful sense of belonging, of having roots, of feeling a calm inner peace she’d ever known before.

But even if the DNA test proves I’m not Leland Radford’s daughter, I’ll go back to The Pines and chat with Irene for hours about my mom. Then I’ll visit Loretta Mae at the House of Grace and learn even more.

As she pedaled along, Ellie checked behind her. All looked safe. And she was almost to school.

A hundred feet ahead, she saw a garbage can had tipped over onto the street. A Doberman Pinscher yanked something from it and ran off. As she started to steer around the can, she checked her bike’s rearview mirror.

A pickup was moving up behind her. Fast …

Too fast on this narrow street!

Suddenly, the pickup raced right at her.

No!

She jumped her bike over the curb and sped toward some trees.

But the pickup sped up. It closed fast. She had no chance. It hit her rear tire, knocking her and her bike several feet into the air.

She landed in a tall hedge and felt sharp branches rake her face and arms as she fell down through them.

The pickup backed up – turned and drove at her again!

She crawled behind an oak tree just in time – forcing the big vehicle to skid to a stop a few feet away.

Then, for some reason, she saw water flooding the pickup’s windshield. She followed the stream of water back to a hose held by an elderly woman who was shaking her fist at the driver.

“Asshole! What the hell you doin’?” the red-faced woman screamed.

The driver stared at the old woman, then at Ellie, then backed up and sped off. As he drove by, Ellie saw sunshine glint off a gold loop holding his ponytail.

“You okay, hon?” the old woman asked.

“I think so, ma’am. Just couple scratches.” Warm blood trickled down her cheek.

“That bastard tried to hit you!”

“Yes, ma’am, he did! Did you happen to see his license?”

“No, hon. The hedge blocked my view.”

Ellie took a deep breath, flicked leaves and dirt from her sweatshirt and looked down at her Schwinn.

It looked like spaghetti.