Cowboy Sing Me Home (36 page)

            He’d had more than one
nightmare about Broeker in the past week, and he’d wondered if he would be able
to keep his cool, if and when the time came to face the man again.  But now
that the moment was at hand, all Luke felt was a healthy level of adrenalin,
enough to keep him cautious and all his senses on high alert, but not so much
that he felt like he might blow the situation.  He looked forward to a
confrontation, in fact.  He wanted vindication for himself, and for all the
people this group had fleeced.

            He moved quietly down the
hill, avoiding rocks and bushes that were no more than darker smudges on a dark
landscape.  His foot slid in mud and he went down on his injured leg, and he
bit his tongue as dull pain shot through him.  He breathed deeply and braced
himself, listening intently for a sign that he’d been heard.  After hearing
nothing, he rose and crept on down the hill.

            The cramp of pain was a
reminder of who and what he was probably up against, and he took another deep
breath to remind himself to keep his head. 

            Dusty stood in the dark
trailer, hands shaking as she pushed buttons on the unfamiliar phone.

            “Come on, memory, which
one’s the memory?”  The phone beeped in her hand, giving her options that were
no good to her now.  Finally she pushed a button on the side and saw the word
‘office.’  She pushed it again and ‘mom and dad’ came up.  She pushed it a few
more times before she came to ‘Toby.’  She pushed ‘send’ and gripped her waist
with one hand while she waited interminably for the call to go through.

            Corinne finally answered.

            “He’s not here,” she said
when Dusty explained the situation.  “He’s gone out to his mom’s, about five
miles to the north.”

            “What?”  That meant he was
at least seven miles away from them now.

            “It’s okay, I’ll call him
right now.  He can be there in a matter of minutes.”

            “Tell him to hurry.”

            Dusty ended the call and
paced the small living area of her trailer.  Seven miles was a long way, when
Luke’s life might depend on his help.  A lot could happen in the time it took
Toby to drive seven miles.

            She sat on the sofa and shot
right up again.  She lifted the curtain and strained to see what, if anything,
was happening.  She called Luke every name she could think of, then gave up on
obeying orders and opened the front door.

            The night was deadly
silent.  All she could hear was the rasp of her own breath, the thud of her own
heartbeat.

            She closed the door again
and gripped her hands together in front of her, reminding herself that Luke had
been through training, he knew what he was doing.  He could handle himself.

            “Screw this,” she said, and
ran back to her bedroom.  With a heave she lifted the platform under her bed. 
Beneath was a storage area, and she had another, smaller handgun there.  She
hadn’t used it in years, and wasn’t even sure if she had ammunition for it, but
she grabbed the case and pulled it out.  Her breath coming faster now – now
that she’d made up her mind that she was going, she couldn’t get down there
fast enough – she slammed the bed back down and threw the case onto it.  She
unsnapped the latch and withdrew the gun.  There were bullets underneath, and
she loaded the gun with shaking fingers.

            She felt, suddenly, as if it
had taken her hours to complete this simple task.  Luke was probably already
there, already facing all three men, maybe even more than three, all alone.

            She closed her eyes and said
a quick prayer.  “Please.”  It was all she could think of, so she said it
again, feeling it fervently to the depth of her.  “Please.”

The back door to the Hammond
place stood ajar.  Luke stepped into the open doorway to listen.  He still
heard the voices, but they weren’t any louder or more alarmed than they’d been
before, that he could tell.  He took another step into the dark laundry room,
and looked into the kitchen beyond.  Enough light came through the window over
the sink for him to see into the dining room and part of the living room.  Both
were dark and empty, but he could see enough to take in the mayhem that had
been wreaked here earlier…bookshelves emptied onto the floor, sofa cushions
tossed aside, and ceramic figurines dashed to the ground.  A small clown
figurine lay in the doorway, painted glossy colors, with its head stepped on
and ground into dust in the carpet. 

            Julie was not going to be
happy when she got back from Ruidoso, Luke thought.

He could see that a light
was on down the hallway, probably from either one of the boys’ rooms or from
Nate and Julie’s bedroom.

            “It has to be here
somewhere.  I know that kid had it.  I should have chased him down that day.”

            Luke recognized Wayne’s
voice.  He wasn’t sure whom he was talking to, until he heard the rasped-voice
answer.  “You’ve got five more minutes to find it, or else we’re leaving
without it. I’m not going to stand here all night while you dig through a bunch
of action figures.”

            Luke tiptoed down the
hallway toward the light.  He strained his ears to listen for Kenny, but he
would probably not be talking even if he were there.  Quickly he checked the
other bedroom and bathroom that also fed off the hallway, but they were empty.

            He stopped just outside the
circle of light that fell from the open bedroom door and breathed shallowly. 
He was grateful that he felt only a sense of calm determination, sure that, no
matter what else transpired in the next few minutes, Broeker was not going to
escape again. 

            “There’s no point in
everything I’ve done in the past two years if we leave this house without that
drive.”

            Wayne walked into Luke’ s
line of sight then, ripping out desk drawers on the desk where Dusty had sat
just two days before, talking to Jimmy Wayne and Billy Dale.  He pawed through
the stuff inside, spilling out papers and cards.  Wayne’s eye was black, and he
had a nasty looking cut and bruise on his left cheek.  Evidently things were
getting a little tense between the little band of outlaws.

            “So we’ll give them a
drive.  We’ll demand the money up front, hand them a drive, and be gone before
they realize it.”

            “Do you really think they’re
stupid enough to fall for that?  Besides, if we don’t give them the program,
they’ll never be able to beat IND to the punch.”

            “That’s not my problem. 
You’re the one hell-bent on beating IND.  I don’t give a rat’s butt who wins
this little contest, all I care about is the money.  We’d have it and be
basking in the sun in the Caribbean right now if you hadn’t let your ego get in
the way.”

            “It isn’t ego, it’s
justice,” Wayne said as he upended another drawer.  “I built that company.  I
worked for that jackass when he couldn’t get anyone else to even take his
calls.  And now that the company is huge, he wants to shut me out.  If I had
just gone on my own from the beginning, it would be my face on the cover of
Forbes, not his.”  He slid the stack of comic books and colored pictures to the
floor, then ran his hands through his hair.  “Damn it!”

            “Chill out.  We’ll just take
them a blank drive and be done with it.”

            Wayne whirled around.  “No! 
I am not leaving here without that drive.”

            “Then you’re not leaving
here alive.  Because I’m not going to hang around the scene of the crime like
some kind of ego driven amateur, waiting for the law to catch up to us.”

            Wayne froze, then he slowly
lifted his hands in the air.  “Wait a minute, now.  Wait a minute.  You can’t –
you can’t do this.”  He backed against the desk, his hands shaking in the air.

            “Sure I can.  They’ve been
dealing through me the whole time, haven’t they?  They won’t be a bit surprised
when I come alone.”

            “They made it very clear
that I must be the one to make the final delivery. 
Very
clear.  They’ll
know something is up when you show up without me.”

            Luke stepped closer to the
door, his gun drawn.  He could see Broeker now, see the barrel of the .357 he
held on Wayne, and see the careless way he shrugged at Wayne’s reasoning.

            “I’ve told them all along
what a gutless wuss you are.  They won’t have a hard time believing you freaked
out and refused to come out from under your bed.”

            “It won’t do you any good,”
Luke said as he stepped into the doorway. 

            Both men whirled to face
him.

“The FBI has the drive, and
they’re tracking down whoever the buyer was supposed to be.  So even if you
make it to your drop-off site, you’re probably going to be delivering to either
an undercover agent or an informant wearing a wire.”  Luke shrugged and
smiled.  “Looks like a real good time to surrender to me.”

            Broeker shifted the gun away
from Wayne and onto Luke.  “
Man
, am I glad to see you.  I heard I shot
you in the
leg
.  I’ve felt like such an idiot ever since.  I really
meant for you to die.”  He smiled.  “Now I get a chance to make it right.”

            Wayne eased to the left,
further away from them both, and Luke let him.  He didn’t have a gun, or else
he would have used it to defend himself against Broeker.  And if he was
thinking about running, he wouldn’t get far, not since Toby would be here any
second.

             “Drop the gun, Broeker,”
Luke said, his voice and hands steady.

            “No can do, sorry.  I’m
afraid I never have been the ‘drop the gun’ type.” 

            “You have absolutely no
chance of making it out of this county.  The sheriff is on his way, so even if
you make it through me, he’s ready for you.  And even if you make it through
him, you have nowhere to go.  You have nothing to sell.  And you have a lot of
people looking for you.  You’re in a no-win situation.”  Luke talked calmly and
slowly, knowing that the longer he talked, the better his chances of keeping
the situation on an even keel and resolving it peacefully.

            Still, when he heard a foot
crunching onto the figurines in the room behind him, he breathed a silent
breath of relief.  Toby was here, and two against two was a much fairer fight.

            “Glad you finally made it,”
Luke said, his eyes still on the gun.  “See, Broeker, you may be able to make
it through me, but you can’t make it through him, too.”

            Broeker laughed.  “I’ve been
on the road for a while, but I can still tell a woman when I see one.”

            Luke whipped his head around
to see Dusty standing behind him, clutching another gun.  She stepped up beside
him.

“Dusty, no!” 

            Broeker laughed, and Luke
turned back in time to see him shift the gun to her.

            Luke threw himself at Dusty,
and they crashed into the wall behind her.  He wrapped his right arm around her
and began to turn, to put her safely behind him.

            Broeker took one step
forward and kicked Luke in the right leg.

            Pain bloomed, hot and red,
behind Luke’s eyes, then everything went black for a moment. He doubled over as
his breath left him.  He heard Dusty scream his name, and he tightened his grip
on her.

            But the pain left him weak,
and he felt her slip from his grasp.

            He straightened, his gun
tight in his hand, and realized that she hadn’t pulled away from him; she’d
been pulled.  Broeker now had her back against him, his gun to her jaw.

            The room fell so eerily
quiet that Luke could hear the refrigerator hum in the kitchen.  His continued
to aim the gun at Broeker, but they both knew he would never be able to pull
the trigger, now.

            “Now then,” Broeker said
with obvious satisfaction. “Put your little gun on the desk there.”

            Luke looked at Dusty, and
his heart broke at the terror he saw in her eyes.  Her hands shook as she did
as she was told.

            “I’m sorry,” she whispered
to Luke.

            “It’s okay,” he said.  He
tried to smile, to assure her somehow that he was not going to let anything
happen to her.  “Everything’s going to be okay.”      

            “Yeah.  Everything’s going
to work out real good.”  Broeker picked up Dusty’s gun and stuck it in the back
of his waistband.

            Wayne had stood by silently,
watching the interplay between the other three, his hands still in the air. 
When he saw that Luke had lost control of the situation and Broeker’s attention
was on Dusty, he turned and scrambled for the nearest window.

            In one smooth movement,
Broeker turned and shot Wayne in the stomach.  He had the gun back to Dusty’s
jaw before Wayne hit the floor.