part0020

JACK didn’t think, he just reacted. As the nest in the fireplace was quickly consumed by flames, he picked up a shotgun and ran for the door set into a partition wall he had built several years ago. Beyond it was a small room with bunk beds on both of the side walls and not much else. This was where the four robbers had slept as they laid low for a few days after each robbery. Slamming the door behind him, Jack gave little thought to Lee, who was laid on the floor in the main room of the cabin, unconscious.

Lee came around and reared up, to somehow find his feet despite the wound to his leg. Swinging his uninjured arm ineffectually at the insects that were attacking him, he cried out in pain against the long stingers that were injecting venom into his face, neck, arms and hands. Jack had gone, probably through to the bedroom, abandoning him to his fate. The wasps coated his face and head; a rippling living mask, to sting him repeatedly and even enter his mouth as he screamed, to sting his tongue, the inside of his cheeks and his upper palate. Blindly spinning around like a human top, Lee attempted unsuccessfully to spit out the wasps, but could not expel them and began to choke. Collapsing back down to the floor, he found it almost impossible to breathe as the soft tissue of his throat and tongue swelled up to block his airway. Lee was suffering from anaphylactic shock, became unconsciousness, and died within minutes.

Jack looked out from the gun port in the bedroom and caught a blur of movement as a figure descended a ladder and vanished from sight. There was no time to raise the barrel of his shotgun to the opening and attempt to shoot the man that had now become his nemesis.

“You guys OK in there?” Logan said from where he was hunkered down at the corner of the cabin.

“We’re just fine, Palmer,” Jack shouted back.

“I just heard a lot of screaming? Did those pesky wasps start in on your buddy?”

“They were no big deal. I threw an oil lamp on the nest and it burned up in seconds; just wood shavings with bug spit holding it together.”

Logan smiled but said nothing.

“What about the deal, Palmer?”

“The numbers don’t add up. Two hundred thousand isn’t enough. You robbed at least four banks, and it’s reported that you probably lifted at least a million bucks in all. I think half of that would be enough for me to turn a blind eye and let you ride off into the sunset in my Chevy, after leaving my backpack on the ground outside the cabin.”

“That’s a lie. Bankers exaggerate, and if you believe a word that they or the fucking media say, then you’re stupid. We got under six hundred grand in total. Two hundred would be a three-way split between you and us.”

“I’ll give it more thought,” Logan said. “Maybe find a spot in the shade and get back to you in due course. Will is going to walk down the trail later with a flask of coffee and some sandwiches for me. I’m thinking that you probably need another twenty-four hours to realize that I’m not going to go away, and that the only way you’ll walk or drive away from this is by playing by my rules.”

Jack didn’t reply. He would wait it out and then up his offer to three hundred K. He was positive that Palmer would accept it. The impasse was no big deal. He had food, water, booze, cigarettes and shelter; everything he needed. A lack of patience was his only problem. He wanted to be on his way, hopefully with all the money, and after shooting the big guy that was giving him grief.

Logan kept low, made his way around to the rear of the cabin, put two rounds through the slit next to the door and then headed back up the trail to Katy’s house.

“I don’t know,” Will said. “Everything seems to have gone to sh… to have gone wrong. Logan says that when this is over with, he’ll take me to my grandparents in Tucson.”

“The police will want to talk to you. They’ll find you and probably believe that you were involved in the robberies.”

“But I wasn’t. I had no idea what Jack and the others had done. All I’ll be able to do is tell them what I know and hope that they accept it as being the truth.”

Katy believed him, but did not think that the police would. They would want to implicate him, because their suspicious minds would not accept that he was totally unaware of his stepfather’s actions.

“Hopefully you were at school or with people that will be able to give you a cast-iron alibi for when most of the bank robberies took place.”

Will shrugged. He had no idea where he had been when the first three crimes had been committed, but knowing that he was innocent was enough, or was it? He would be happy to take a lie detector test, because the first he had known about Jack’s and the other men’s crimes had been when the trunk of the Ford Explorer had been opened and he had seen the shotguns, masks and money.

Logan gave the situation a great deal of thought as he strolled along the tree-lined trail. He decided that he would visit the cabin at regular intervals for another twenty-four hours, to let Mitchell and Roche know that they were still pinned down, and then he would create a diversion, reclaim his vehicle and drive away. All his talk about a deal had been bullshit. He had harbored no intention of taking a penny of the stolen bank money. He would ask Katy to forget that she had ever seen him or Will, give her a couple hundred bucks as payment for bed and board, drive up to the highway and, a few miles along it, stop and make an anonymous call to the police and tell them where the two surviving bank robbers were holed up, before setting off for the boy’s grandparents place in Tucson. Or maybe not. When the police took the two bank robbers down, dead or alive, and identified them, then they would discover, sooner or later, that Mitchell had been living with his stepson in Phoenix. It wouldn’t take them long to check out any friends or relatives of Will’s and turn up at his grandparents’ door. It was a problem. There was no way that he was going to stay with the boy, to drag him around the country with him like a pet dog. He needed to be on his ownsome most of the time, traveling light, and with no particular place to go, as the words of the old Chuck Berry song went.

He rapped on the back door, and the old lady opened it and said, “I take it you relocated the wasps?”

“Yeah, I dumped them down the chimney of your neighbor’s cabin. Although if I’m to believe what Mitchell told me, he threw a lit oil lamp on the nest and burned it up in the fireplace.”

“It’ll have got their attention. Some of those little bastards will have flown out and probably attacked them.”

“I heard a few screams, so think that Roche was stung a few times. Mitchell was in the other room, so obviously left his wounded buddy, to protect his own ass from the wasps.”

“What do you actually want out of this, Joe?”

“Not a lot. I’ve decided to get my vehicle and personal belongings back, and then phone the police when we’ve quit the area.”

“And what is going to happen with Will?”

“I’m not sure, Katy. It’ll all work out. Where is he?”

“Out. He said that he needed some space to think things over. Are you ready for a cup of coffee?”

“Always. What has Will had to say to you?”

“He talked about his mother and of how he’d been devastated when she did a bunk out of the blue without saying a word to him. He’s still smarting inside and hasn’t got much in the way of self-esteem.”

By the time Logan had finished his coffee, Will was back.

“You OK?” Logan said.

“I guess so. I walked up to the highway and watched a few cars and trucks pass by and wondered whether I should just hitch a ride.”

Logan said nothing. Just waited for the boy to say whatever was on his mind in his own good time.

“I decided against it, so came back.”

Logan just nodded. There was nothing to say. He knew that Will had a lot on his mind and didn’t know what lay ahead of him in life. Sometimes you needed to just wing it and let time take care of events. It always did, one way or another.

“Did you talk to Jack?” Will said.

“Yeah, after I poked that wasps’ nest down the chimney. He still thinks I want to deal with him.”

“I thought you did.”

“I’ve given it some thought. Tomorrow I’ll get my Chevy back and we can head north and call the police. They can handle your stepdad and Roche.”

“I’d be on the run forever if I came with you.”

“We’ll sort something out. The alternative is for you to stay here with Katy ‘til the police arrive, and tell them the truth of what happened, and that you had nothing to do with the robberies. Perhaps Mitchell will confirm that, if he doesn’t go for broke and end up shot dead.”