Chapter Thirteen
Levi
I grab Dallas by the shoulders and hold her tight against me, one hand reaching around to cover her mouth and stifle her horrific screams. Panicking will not help. Panicking is dangerous. Panicking is deadly. Even though I feel like bellowing my rage to the skies along with her, it’s the wrong thing to do.
“Dallas, don’t…stay calm and look around…keep your wits about you.” She struggles against my grip for a moment, but her screams subside. I spin her around to face me. “We’ll find him. An animal wouldn’t have dragged the whole basket away. And we didn’t hear him cry. Someone’s taken him. Someone knows we’re here and has been watching us.”
“How could we have heard anything, you brute! Whose idea was it to start fucking up against a tree?” She tries to slap my face and pound on my chest, but I grab her by the wrists. “I should never have put the basket down!”
“Shhh, you’re not hearing now, either. Be quiet. I said, Someone. Is. Watching. Us. Now, let’s look around, quickly. They couldn’t have gone far. Maybe Mason will cry out.” I grab my shirt from the woodpile and drag it on, cold beads of sweat running down my back. We split directions and search through the edge of the trees surrounding the cabin, desperate for any sounds of our child’s voice, any sign of footprints, broken branches, torn fabric, anything, but come up empty. How could this happen? We heard no vehicle engine. Whoever it is has approached us on foot. I fight to keep my mind rational and functioning, even as my heart feels like it’s been ripped from my chest and my stomach lodged somewhere near my feet.
I brought them here to protect them. I thought I could keep them safe. How wrong I was. I’m responsible for this, all of it. They would have been better off if I’d never laid eyes on them. I know in my soul somehow this all has to do with me, and what I’ve done. It’s up to me to fix it.
I may need a weapon, and my dad’s rifle is inside the cabin above the fireplace. I pick up the axe as I circle behind the building where I’d left it against the tree. It will serve until I can get my hands on the gun. Dallas meets me near the porch, her face tracked with tears, her eyes wide in terror.
“Nothing,” she rasps, holding her chest.
Something’s not right. Flu my ass; she’s going to develop pneumonia out here. My fault, again. A stab of unholy regret rips through me. I should have stayed out of their lives altogether.
“I’m going to get my rifle,” I say. “Then we’ll take the truck and check down the road. If we don’t see anything, we’ll go to the ranger station for help.”
She nods as tears start afresh, a crippling cough doubling her over.
“Come inside,” I say, reaching for her hand. She takes it, and I help her up onto the porch. The door squeaks on its hinges as I rip it open. The hairs on my neck stand on end the instant I step over the threshold.
“There’s the loving couple,” a voice speaks from over by the fireplace. “You all finished with your forest nuptials?” I shield Dallas with my body as my head snaps in that direction. “That’s some very bad parenting. Leaving a poor li’l babe all on his own. Why, a coyote or a bear could a got him just like that.”
He’s standing there in front of the mantel, the rifle from the wall above it in his hands. Aimed straight at us. Mason is in the basket at the man’s feet, squirming and fussing. It’s him. The guy from the market.
Dallas sucks in a terrified breath. “You…” she snarls.
“Well, hello again to you too, pretty mama,” he replies, a crooked grin splitting his ugly, weathered features. “You should have come with me the first time. Avoided all this unpleasantness.”
“What do you want? Why are you following us?” Dallas cries.
“Oh now, don’t get those pretty panties in a knot. I got a good look at them, you know, while you two was getting it on behind the woodshed, so to speak. I had half a mind to make it a threesome, but then I wouldn’t have been able to protect junior here. Like you should a been doing.”
Anger and outrage burn in my gut at his words. “Answer the question,” I growl. “Why are you following us? What the fuck do you want?”
“Oh, stand down, Mr. He-man. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. A stroke of luck, really. And it’s not you I’m upset with, pretty mama. You were just doing your job, and you did it right fine.”
“What are you talking about?” Dallas asks, gripping my arm so hard my fingers are going numb. They still curl around the axe handle, but fucking fat lot of good an axe is going to do in this situation. He’s got our baby, and my own gun pointed at my head. Even Davey fucking Crockett couldn’t throw an axe fast enough to beat a bullet.
“You were cool as a cucumber during that robbery,” he says, clucking his tongue as if in admiration. “They must train you tellers real good. You just handed over the cash like a good li’l soldier. Got down on the floor, no questions, no arguments. The whole job went off smooth as silk.”
“I don’t remember you,” Dallas says. “You weren’t the man demanding the money.”
“That’s true. I was covering the entrance. I’m a good li’l soldier too, you see. Unless I’m not treated fairly. Then I take matters into my own hands. Like I am now.”
So, he was involved in the robbery. I look the man up and down, but time and circumstance have faded my memory. Then my eyes come to rest on the thing fixed at his belt. Furry and matted, it looks like the remains of a coyote’s tail. Son of a bitch. He’s had a part in killing those animals, too. Hatred explodes inside me like a Fourth of July rocket. All my rage, for everything bad that’s happened in my life, is now focused on this individual. He’s touched everything that’s sacred…my family, and my wilderness home. He’s going down. If it’s the last thing I ever do on this Earth.
“So, Mr. He-Man,” the man says. “You better drop that axe before I blow it out of your hand. Then you’re gonna hand me over that big old bag of cash you withdrew from the bank that day. I saw you take it. I know you got it stashed here somewhere.”
I let go of the axe handle but shake my head. “There’s no cash. I gave it away to charity. It’s not here, so you’re wasting your time. Give me my son, and get the fuck out of here. If you touch so much as one hair on his head, I will fucking kill you.”
“Kill me? Oh, yeah, I know you’d try. You’ve done it before. You think you can get away with murder and the money, too? Well, it’s not gonna go down that way. You see, I saw my pal Rudge go after you in the parking lot. Greedy son of a bitch. Pulling the heist wasn’t enough for him. Kinda his own fault he got himself popped. We could a all been on that plane to Mexico, living off the fruits of our labor, but no. He had to get greedy.”
“Like you said, it’s his own fault. What’s that got to do with you, or my family?”
“Yeah, he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, old Rudge, but he was my best friend. Shit, I loved that guy. You could have saved all of us the trouble by just giving him the bag. Instead, you played hero. I heard the shot and ran toward it. The others kept going. I saw you take off in that black truck, but didn’t quite get the plate number.” The man gives a menacing chuckle. “Not like I could have gone after you. I was in the middle of a bank robbery, after all.”
“So why didn’t you just leave? With your other lowlife goons and the bank’s money? Save your own sorry ass?”
“Well now, there’s the problem. I didn’t know the others as well as I knew Rudge. Turns out they weren’t so loyal. When he and I didn’t turn up at the pickup point for the getaway car, they just moved on. Blew town. All I got for my efforts was a double cross and a dead friend. So, you can imagine I’ve been a little miffed since then. I spotted your truck every so often, followed you into the mountains, but just never knew exactly where you’d holed up.”
He turns his focus on Dallas. I feel her physically shrink behind me, trembling like a leaf and her fingernails digging into me like claws. I can only stare down the barrel of that rifle. I have to disarm the bastard somehow. Get Dallas and the baby out of here.
“But that’s where lady luck intervened. I saw you, pretty mama. At the farmer’s market. I remembered you. Hard to forget a face as pretty as yours. You were so all alone, you and the kid. Thought you might want a li’l manly company, but no. Too good for the likes of me, huh?” He laughs cruelly. “Then guess who showed up?” He gestures toward me with the gun. “Hard to recognize you, seeing as you kinda let yourself go the way you have. But I put two and two together. I knew you and she had something going. Like this li’l dude, for one,” he says, tilting his head downward. “I figured if I snatched them, you’d come running, and you did. Not quite the way I expected, but come you did.”
Suddenly, Mason starts to wail like a siren, and the man points the rifle toward the basket. My heart leaps into my throat, and a curtain of red rage passes over my eyes.
“Now look, I got no wish to harm a kidlet,” he carries on. “But you, that’s a different matter. I’m gonna give you exactly what you gave my friend. A bullet in the chest. Right after you hand over all that cash you got. Don’t lie to me now. I know you have it.”
“I don’t have it. What would I need it for, up here? I told you, I gave it away. Just turn around, leave us in peace, and go your merry way. Who am I gonna tell about you, huh? Look around. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“People talk. They always do. Now, I’m just about out of patience with you, He-man,” he says, his voice rising. “And I do plan to go my way, so you better hurry up and give me that money. Unless you love money more than you love junior here? Or pretty mama about pissing her pink panties right now behind you?” He brandishes the rifle in her direction.
Mason’s cries nearly drown out the man’s words as well as his mother’s sobbing. I don’t give a fuck that he wants to kill me, but his threats toward my woman and child, the only things in the world that matter to me anymore, make me feel like I’m already dead.
“Leave them out of this,” I say, the cold, calm voice coming from my mouth sounding foreign even to me. “I’ll give you the money. Just let them go, let them go outside, her and the baby. Then we’ll settle this.”