Katrin paced the small motel room, unable to relax. She’d called the front desk and was relieved to discover that it must have been shift change — a woman answered, not the sullen man who’d checked them in. She tried to ignore the irrational fear that the man had known who she was and had taken off to go tell her father she was here.
She explained she’d had a minor injury that had resulted in some blood on her clothing but didn’t have a chance of clothes. The desk worker had invited her to come up and look through the lost and found items that had been there two weeks or more. With her jacket tied around her waist to hide the worst of the blood, she went up and searched. There, she found a light blue sundress that looked like it would more or less fit. She thanked the woman, who was appraising her curiously, and went back to the room to change.
Then she paced some more.
Maybe it was strange that she wanted to be out there where the action was instead of cooped up in here. Maybe she should have been more concerned about her life and the life of her unborn child. But she truly hated the thought of letting Pistol face this danger alone.
She was a different woman than she’d been when this whole crazy mess had started. She didn’t wait in the shadows to be told what to do. She wasn’t interested in living in Daddy’s pocket, as Pistol had put it. She’d experienced tragedy and grief, and she’d survived it. Now she wanted to help Pistol overcome his past, wanted to fight the obstacles that faced both of them. Together. Just as they’d faced that frightening wedding day — neither sure how the other felt; neither able to trust the other. She recalled the first time he’d offered to help her cook — how much better things had felt when she’d started workingwith him, rather than avoiding him. The night they’d first made love, their bodies learning one another, Katrin’s fear dissolving as she’d realized this man wanted to make her happy.
They had so much left to face as a family. As the parents of this life that was taking form inside her. Why not start now?
There’d been a day long ago when Katrin had gone to one of her mother’s baseball games. The Crushers had lost after a tense, tied ninth inning, due to a bad play by one of Jess’s teammates.
“Aren’t you mad at Lauren?” Katrin had asked afterward. “She lost you the game.”
“No,” her mother had replied with a small, private smile. “A loss belongs to all of us. Just like a win belongs to all of us. No individual player wins or loses the game.”
Katrin hadn’t been sure at the time that she bought that, but as she’d grown older, she’d begun to see.
And now, she understood so clearly.
She stopped pacing, suddenly calm, collected. Certain that she knew what had to happen next.
Our lives are intertwined now. A victory belongs to both of us. So does a loss.
She slipped her room key in her pocket and headed for the door.
So let’s make sure it’s a victory.
###
Pistol dismounted in a cul-de-sac. He vaguely recognized the street from his smoking hot afternoon with Peggy-Patty a couple of years back. He walked quickly past her house, then slowed as he approached the next home, several yards away.
Leonard Smith’s house didn’t particularly look like the home of a criminal mastermind. Or the house of a man who’s gotten rich off the drug trade. It was one story, stucco, almost quaint. He tried to imagine the nights Katrin had spent here, waiting anxiously for her wedding day. Had she tried to get out of it? Begged her father? Packed a bag and fantasized about running away?
He remembered the tenderness in her eyes as she’d told him she loved him. How crazy was it that she could have gone from a virtual stranger to someone he couldn’t live without?
He made his way around the side of the house, holding the semi-automatic close to his body. The front windows all had their blinds down. A movement in that backyard caught his eye. Pressing against the house, he crept around until he could peer around the stucco wall and into the backyard.
The yard was privacy hedged with an array of desert-faring shrubs. There were hardly any neighbors anyway — the nearest was an adjacent lot a few hundred yards away. Occupants would have had a hard time seeing anything going on here.
This house had been selected for privacy. To keep its occupants in, and others out.
And yet … Katrin had made friends with Peggy-Patty after only a day in town. She hadn’t let privacy landscaping stop her, hadn’t let her father’s words of warning that the world was a cold, dark place, keep her from making friends. Her bright spirit shone through any attempt to keep her imprisoned. He felt a pang of tenderness as he pictured her.
Hold on, Katrin. This is almost over.
He crept around the corner, searching for the source of the motion he’d seen moments ago. He finally spotted the action, around the other side of the deck, by the attached garage.
Ford, Kong, Viking, Jackson, and Rhino were all tied to the deck chairs and gagged with strips of cloth. They looked like they’d been beaten to within an inch of their lives. Pistol’s gut clenched, and rage blazed through him at the sight of Ford’s bloody clothes, Kong’s swollen, purple eye socket.
This wasdefinitely bait. How purely stupid was it to leave the hostages outside, apparently unsupervised? The only reason Smith would have done that was because he was putting them on display for Pistol. But the fact that these five were alive filled Pistol with a massive gratitude.
He wanted to go right to them. Free them and gun down anyone who tried to get in his way. But that was probably the kind of recklessness Kong had always cautioned against. He needed to find out who was in the house.
He crept around to the front. A couple of goons were sitting out on the porch, in the fucking rocking chairs, with assault rifles.
Only in Texas could you sit on your front porch with AK-47s and attract zero attention. All right, these two were gonna have to go. But taking them out meant announcing his presence, and he wasn’t sure whether that was wise.
Here’s the thing about recklessness. Sometimes it’s the only option. Make a big enough racket, and maybe they won’t know it’s just li’l ol’ you. Maybe they’ll think Judgement Day is actually here.
He grabbed a grenade from his pocket.
Here goes nothing.
He pulled the pin, threw it onto the porch, and scrambled backward. It took a few seconds, but then the guards started shouting and clamoring, yelling at each other tokick it away, kick it away…
Pistol decided to put them out of their misery and shot them both just before the grenade went off.
Mm. Felt good to have a gun again.
The explosion wasn’t enough to bring the house down, or anything, but it blew out the front windows and made some impressive noise. And judging by the shouts from inside, had created a considerable amount of chaos. Footsteps thundered, crunching over glass. Someone threw open the front door. Pistol took them out. “Sorry about that,” he said mock-politely to the dead goon, stepping onto the porch.
Then he stepped over the pile of corpses, and walked inside.