Bronco unlocked the side door of the house and went in, closing the door behind him. He walked down the hall to the guest bedroom and opened the door. The girl was glaring defiantly straight at him, and he could see where tears had streamed from her bloodshot eyes.
“Upset you earlier, did I? Sorry about that. I brought you something to make up for it,” and he held up a paper bag. “You’re probably hungry and thirsty. I’ll give you a bite, and then we can continue our little chat. You remember what I said last time I took the tape off?”
She nodded at him. She looked beaten. Good time to talk.
He pulled the tape off her mouth—as carefully as he did the first time, almost tenderly. He gave her a drink and she gulped it down thirstily. He fed her a granola bar and she chewed it dutifully but did not seem particularly hungry.
“Okay, let’s get down to business now, Blue,” he started.
She gave a halfhearted glare.
“Yes, I know your name now, obviously. Wasn’t hard to find. I know quite a bit about your friends and family, too. The internet is a wonderful thing, don’t you think?”
Glare.
“What I couldn’t find on the internet, though, is why the hell you decided to stick your little nose into my business. I don’t get it. I haven’t done anything to you or your friends or family, but here you come uninvited into my life and screw things up. Now can you explain that to me?” He tried to put a little bit of authority in his voice. “Well?”
She looked down. The glare was gone. “I’m sorry,” was all she said.
“Well, I accept your apology, but you haven’t answered the question. Why did you stick your nose in my business?” He put a little more spice into his inquisition this time.
She whispered, “You sell drugs.”
“Yes, I do sell drugs,” he replied, “And so does the corner drug store and so does your doctor. And food companies put drugs in foods, and there are drugs in cigarettes. Do you take videos of people who sell those?”
“Your drugs are illegal, and they ruin lives,” she replied with a little more energy in her voice.
Now he was getting somewhere. “People ruin their own lives, little girl, and they will find ways to do it whether it is legal or not. Now, do you take drugs?”
“Of course not!” she said with a little more fire.
“There you go! Good job! Neither do I, except these fine legal cigarettes, unfortunately. They kill more people than guns do. Freedom of choice, I say. Don’t you think freedom of choice is a good thing?” He could see she was starting to get angry. Good.
“Little kids shouldn’t be allowed to get drugs! Jack gave me a joint! I’m only fourteen!” She was getting worked up now.
“Why shouldn’t kids have freedom of choice? You seem to have chosen to come down at midnight and spy on me. You seem to have chosen to ‘borrow’ an expensive night vision camera. Did you really take a joint from Jack? You could have refused it. So you get to have freedom of choice, but other kids don’t? Sounds like you’re a bit of a hypocrite there, kid.” Bronco could see the emotions playing on her face. “Look, I don’t go out of my way to sell to kids. I don’t advertise on TV on children’s shows like all those crap cereal companies that have turned half the kids into diabetics. I run a quiet business and only grown-ups contact me. In fact, I have no idea how you found out about me. Remember, you were the one busting into my business. Not the other way around, right? Right?”
She looked down again. “Yes,” she said in a cowed voice.
“I didn’t go out and find you and say ‘Hey kid, you want some smack?’ did I?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Okay, so you should be angry at the person that told you that I sold drugs. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess, right?”
“Nobody told me,” she said quietly.
“Jack didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“Well, how in hell did you find out about me then?” Bronco was almost at the crux now.
She was quiet for almost a full minute. Bronco was patient, but finally said “Well?”
“I overheard someone at the park. They didn’t know I was listening. I think they were a customer of yours.”
“There now,” said Bronco “A little honesty feels good, doesn’t it? So it was all your freedom of choice to take that information and do what you wanted with it, and you decided to play little detective and snoop around at night. Man, don’t your foster parents have any discipline? They let you roam around all you want, like a little wild animal? Even at night? It seems to me it’s their fault that you and I are in this pickle.”
“They had nothing to do with it!” Blue said angrily. “I didn’t tell anyone! They are good foster parents. I would have got in more trouble than you know if anyone found out!”
Ah, and there we have it, thought Bronco. This was truth. She hadn’t told anyone. He relaxed. “Okay, calm down, calm down. I wasn’t saying anything bad about your foster parents. But it just seems strange to me then—you would take all this risk, all on your own, just to try and do what? Catch me, and turn me into the police? Are you kidding? You’re just a kid. Be happy, grow up, forget this.” He was relieved. He could just leave her there, alive, and call in a tip in a day or two. That meant he could get out of town right now.
“Your drugs KILL people and DESTROY families!” she shouted angrily.
The suddenness of the loud outburst triggered something in him. He smacked her. It was instinctive. She was too loud, someone could have heard.
“Don’t you shout like that again!” he said to her in a fierce whisper. He grabbed her chin, looked hard into her eyes and said very slowly, “Do you remember what I said I would do if you shouted for help?”
She nodded. A little blood was trickling out of her nose, and her right cheek was bright red.
“Look, little detective, people die all the time for all kinds of stupid reasons. Kids fall down stairs, they pull boiling water off the stove, they run into the street, they fall out of trees! And some stick their noses into business that is way over their head!”
Now Bronco was getting worked up. This little kid hadn’t seen anything like what he had seen. She had no clue as to what his life had been like. Visions of his own childhood and his brother’s death, and of his own revenge played back through his mind in a familiar flash of history. He just stared at her. “At least people who die of drugs do it of their own choice.”
The girl gasped. She stared at him, her eyes wide in shock. “Your father killed your brother!” She gasped again.
Bronco was dumbstruck. What had she just said? How could she know that? What just happened? “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, who are you? What are you?” He stood up and backed away. She had actually read his mind! There was no doubt about it. That would explain everything, how she knew about him and when his drug deal was. She had lied to him. “How could you know that? What the hell else do you know, you little demon?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He ripped off another long piece of tape and wrapped it hard over her mouth. He didn’t care if it was uncomfortable now. He was not dealing with a human, he was dealing with a devil. She might know everything. He had to get out of that room, now.
“You make a single peep now, and I will come in here and break your neck! Have you got that? Have you got that?” he pointed his finger violently at her. He was shaking.
She stared at him frantically and nodded.
He got out of the room and shut the door and stood in the hallway to get his breath. Okay, change of plan. He was not going to leave right now. He was going to hunker down and wait until nightfall. Not a problem. Just not his first choice. But this girl, if she really was a girl and not some sort of witch, had really left him no choice.
Blue sat stunned in the sudden silence. Her cheek was throbbing where Bronco had struck her and one nostril was screeching from her panting through the coagulating blood. She was still reeling from the combined emotion of her anger and Bronco’s violent reaction. Her eyes stared through the wall and off into infinity, and her mind replayed what just happened hoping, please-God-please hoping, that it would be different the second time through. It wasn’t. She had seen what she had seen and said what she had said.
What she had seen was something unbelievable, something she couldn’t quite get a handle on. She had seen someone else’s thoughts. Not just sounds, but actual visions. It was like having a vivid dream, but a dream while she was wide awake instead of half asleep. Bronco’s words and thoughts had projected intense flashbacks of his own life in her head! She had seen Bronco’s father push his brother down the stairs. She had seen Bronco suffocating his father. And before she realized she was repeating these visions out loud, it was too late. She had doomed herself. She had doomed everyone.