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Every weapon ringing Tim’s cabin property was locked and loaded as the SWAT team got the word that a black, Chevy Lumina was about a mile away.
“This is it, everybody get ready. I don’t want this girl hurt. Whatever it takes to put Sheldon down, we do it,” the state police commander said for a final time.
Tim was so into the feeling of Bree’s hand working its way toward his zipper that he didn’t notice the sunlight glinting off the field glasses of a state trooper posted behind a line of bushes.
Bree spotted the trooper with her teenage eyes and smiled a teenager’s smile as her fingers found their middle-aged target.
Tim, even though he had not seen anything, slowed the Lumina down. He was having one of his feelings. It was a Tim moment that he had learned to trust. He throttled down the car and Bree too, peeling her hand off his almost creamed jeans finger by finger.
“What the fuck is going on?” Tim said half to himself and half to Bree. “Something is wrong here. Something’s fucked up. I can feel it.”
“Nothing’s wrong baby. Everything is good. Come on. I want to get to the cabin.”
Tim shoved her across the bench seat of the old Lumina, cracking her head against the door frame, feeling bad about it, glancing to his right, reaching out to her, and then he saw it.
More correctly, Tim saw them.
St. Isidore police officers.
“Cops. There are cops out there,” Tim shouted and shoved Bree back against the passenger door when she bounced his way, stabbed the brake to the floor board, and dropped the Lumina into reverse, punched the accelerator with his foot, creating a cloud of dirt and gravel flying into the air, covering the Swinging Izzy Barney Fifes.
Looking in the mirror, he saw the TV trucks behind them. Looking to the left, Tim saw more cops.
He was positive there would be a road block ahead or worse waiting for them, but still Tim floored it, sending another angry cloud of dirt and gravel back at the TV trucks.
Tim knew this was his finish line.
Coming sooner than I thought.
But it is the finish line.
Time to fight.
Nothing left to lose.
Tim was as ugly as Tim could get.
“This is it baby,” Tim said. “They aren’t going to take us. It’s you and me to the end and this is the end. It’s our blaze of glory.”
“Fuck that shit,” said Bree, grabbing for the door handle and yanking it as hard as she could with her wrists still tied.
It was locked.
Fuck.
Chevy engineers made the Lumina into a childproof vehicle. Nobody could open a window or a door if the driver didn’t want it to happen.
And, Tim didn’t.
“Don’t jump. I know a way out,” Tim shouted, as the speedometer hit fifty-five on the dirt road leading to his cabin.
Tim’s new plan as to swing hard right. St. Isidore cops didn’t bother him much. He had dealt with them before.
“Hell, they’re my buddies. Should be able to blast right by them. They’ll move aside. If not, well, this friendship shit only goes so far,” he screamed.
Bree disagreed. She had her own plan, developed on the fly.
Bree chose life.
It was a decision she might have been wrestling with all four of her teenage years. But now the decision was made. Bree chose life, the life that would be hers if the police would only aim straight.
Tim turned to the right. Bree caught the wheel and pushed it back to the left.
Bree wasn’t stronger than Tim. Yet, she had the advantage of leverage, pushing up on the wheel, putting her shoulders and back into the effort.
Bree only weighed ninety-eight pounds on the worst days of a bad month, but she put it all into her grip on the wheel.
Tim, however, had two advantages Bree couldn’t beat. The gas pedal and the brake pedal.
He took his foot off one and slammed it down on the other.
The Lumina’s brakes locked up on the dirt and gravel, throwing Bree against the dashboard, breaking her grip on the steering wheel.
As the Lumina spun to the right, Tim grabbed Paul’s gun off the seat beside him, opened his door and jumped. Bree fell to the floor, arms over her head and face. The car slammed into a tree wrapping the front of the vehicle around her.
“Shoot them, Tim. Shoot them. Kill the cops,” Bree yelled, blood dripping from her mouth and nose.
Tim hit the ground, rolled, stood up and the instant a red light dotted on his forehead, the idea light went on inside his head.
This bitch!
Tim knew. He didn’t have to look into Bree’s eyes to know the truth. In a flash, Tim had it figured out.
She set me up! This bitch!
Tim had one bullet left in his gun. He could have fired at the cops but now Tim was glad he had not.
Discretion was the better part of valor.
Tim had never understood that before.
Now he did.
She wanted me to go through all my rounds.
This bitch.
It has been said that Hell hath no fury like that of a scorned woman.
Hell had never met Tim.
But Hell would, and soon.
Bree was huddled inside the crumpled Lumina. Her head was a perfect target. She was this season’s deer in the rifle scope for Tim. Bree fever? Were any feelings left for this girl who brought his internet dreams off the small screen and into his bedroom.
Fat chance.
Tim pulled the hammer on the revolver back, took a bead between Bree’s beautiful eyes and failed to feel the red dot on his forehead.
Her eyes were the last thing Tim saw before a flash of white light.
He rose to the tips of his toes, felt the glowing warmth of his next world, and fell over in this world.