I let Benedict go get his machine and I went home. Starting that rig was no easy matter in the best of times, so I didn’t figure he’d get anything done in this weather.
I’d started pulling off all my gear when I heard crackling over the CB radio that made me change my mind.
Clifford said he’d seen the woman go into Thomas’s house across the lake. She was safe and warm in there without the boy, and he was itching to go and drop in on her if Benedict wasn’t headed over, just to show her one or two things a man could do with a girl.
I told him not to wait for me, he could go and do as he liked, and in any case Benedict was too busy fiddling with his machine to bother the two of them.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind giving that bitch something to remember too.
I told Clifford that I’d meet him and that he should do whatever he wanted before I got there. He hadn’t had his way with a woman in ages. That’s a rare sight around these parts, a woman who wants sex—although Clifford’s not in the habit of asking them in the first place. A man’s got his needs, pure and simple.
I figured that, with him, Bess would get a good fifteen minutes she’d never forget. She’d been asking for it, what with her skirts and those shorts that didn’t do anything to cover her up. And all Benedict cared about was finding his son, not some girl who’d lost him. Time to teach him a little something.
I grabbed my rifle and went out the back door in case Benedict saw. I cut through the brush behind the house. The visibility was nothing like the past few hours: it was still snowing—gusting hard, too—but none of that damn wind that could lay a body out flat.
If the kid was dead—I figured as much by now—someone’d be paying for it. That’s what old Magnus always taught his sons. The bill always comes due, and when it does, one way or another, you pay up.