Running on Empty (19 page)

As it turned out, what he’d felt wasn’t excitement—it was his cellphone vibrating, alerting him to an incoming text. From Jillian. He nearly laughed when he saw each word typed fully instead of in the shorthand he was used to seeing, complete with capital letters and punctuation:
Ethan, please come home. You don’t know everything
.

Well, if her message was supposed to soften him up, give him the warm fuzzies, that walking clothes rack was even dumber than he thought. He jabbed the Delete key with his finger and watched the words vanish.

It was true, though. He
didn’t
know everything. Like what would happen in the next few minutes. He could feel gooseflesh form on his neck, and it wasn’t all due to the frigid wind gusting off the harbour three blocks away. But what had Hornsby told him?
Win-win, kid
. Even if he got caught, nothing was going to happen to him. And there’d be the added bonus of seeing the look on his old man’s face.
Wouldn’t play well for the voters, would it?
he thought. Well, maybe his father should have
asked
Ethan before accepting that nomination. Would it have killed him?

Despite Ethan’s sudden nervousness, he knew Hornsby had taken care of everything. He’d planned it all out to the letter and had no doubt taken care of the alarm by now. And hadn’t he done this kind of thing many times before? Ethan focused on the infusion of cash his bank account was going to get from
Mr. Anwar, the asshole who was probably in the middle of selling The Chow Down and putting Lil, Ike, and Rake out of work, along with Jeannie, the other part-timer he’d never met. Not that Ethan gave a shit about Ike, but he’d come to think a lot of Lil, who’d been so good to him. Good to everybody, really. And not just good
to
them but good
for
them. She made everyone who came through the diner’s doors—even that goddamn two-chinned Clarence—feel that they were welcome, that she was truly glad to see them, that their being alive and well and present actually mattered to her.
People got a whole lot to tell you if you take the time to listen
, she’d told him.
And you don’t just hear it in what they say
. When The Chow Down closed, where would her regulars go? Where would Boots McLaughlin go?

Ethan felt a wave of regret at the thought of the little man now. He suddenly wished the lies he’d told Allie had been true, wished he’d actually handed him that money and watched the guy’s face light up. And Lil’s, too, because she would’ve been so happy for Boots. Not fake-happy, but honest-to-God, in-your-face, over-the-moon happy.
For
him.

Moving along the empty sidewalk through pools of darkness, Ethan stepped over a branch a gust had likely brought down and found himself thinking about what Pete had said to him on the phone.
All you think about is yourself. You’re so wrapped up in what you want, what you think you
need,
that you don’t give a damn about anyone else
.

And that wasn’t all.
You do whatever you want. But, hey, that’s pretty much your motto anyway, isn’t it? To hell with anybody else
.

Ethan had been pissed at Pete’s comment, but as he walked past Anwar’s Convenience now, he slowed his pace, wondering about the last time he’d done anything for somebody else without feeling obligated to or without getting something out of it himself. Even when he’d sprung for that dinner at Carruthers, he’d done it because he’d felt like such an ass for forgetting his
and Allie’s anniversary. Not because he loved her, which he did, but because he’d been too busy thinking of himself to remember their anniversary in the first place.

He thought of all those times he’d criticized his old man for putting himself and his work above everything else. And all those times Ethan had prided himself on being nothing like him. He was wrong. Even the photo on his fake driver’s licence said otherwise.

Approaching Hornsby’s car, parked several doors beyond Anwar’s Convenience, Ethan thought about the actions that had brought him to this point right now. And not just the lying and the stealing he’d done but what he
hadn’t
done, too. Like spend time with Allie. He hadn’t even called her to find out why she’d been absent from school the past two days. What was worse, though, was that he hadn’t even told her yet how he really felt about her, that he loved her more than anything. Three simple words, but he’d been too busy with other stuff. Screwing up his life.
I’ll change
, he thought.
I’ll just do this one thing and it’ll be over. After tonight, everything will be fine. I’ll make sure of it
.

Coming abreast of Hornsby’s car, he saw through the windshield the tattooed man he’d originally thought was in his thirties but now knew was much older. Hornsby leaned over and shoved the passenger door open. “You took your goddamn sweet time!” he snarled. “We only got a small window to do this, now get in!”

Ethan slid inside and shut the door. On the Echo’s scratched console, draped around the gearshift, was a pair of wire cutters. Hornsby reached under his seat and brought out a cloth bag. Opening it, he pulled out a black toque with holes for eyes and a mouth, and he tossed it into Ethan’s lap. Then he pulled out something else.

“Christ!” breathed Ethan. His heart began to hammer.

“She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” said Hornsby, stroking the gun. “I call her Perse.”

Ethan blinked. “Purse?”

“For Persuader.”

For a brief, ridiculous moment, Ethan thought about a line from a comedy he and Pete had watched once, something about people who gave names to objects and body parts. Wished he could laugh now like he’d laughed then. “Is it loaded?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“You’d be surprised how little it matters,” Hornsby replied. “Just so you know, though,” he said, patting a bulge in his jacket, “
this
one is.”

As if underlining the moment, Ethan’s cellphone burbled, signalling another text.

“Jesus!” snarled Hornsby. “Turn that thing off!”

Ethan looked at the cell’s screen. The text was from his father:
whr r u? call! please! cant find—

Hornsby tore the phone from his hands. “We don’t got all night!” he said, tossing it into the back seat. Then he pressed the Persuader into Ethan’s hand. “Here, take it,” he said.

The gun was heavier than it looked. And ice cold, like Hornsby’s eyes. Ethan’s heart slammed against the wall of his chest as though trying to get out. Because that’s what Ethan was doing now, too—looking for a way out. How the hell did he get here? He was about to commit a robbery—a goddamn
armed
robbery—masterminded by a guy he’d twice been warned to steer clear of. And why? He could blame it on a hundred things, of course, but it all boiled down to one: a twenty-buck bet that he couldn’t get from Seth’s place to Cathedral Estates in ten minutes. Christ! “L-look,” Ethan stammered, laying the gun beside the wire cutters. “I can’t do this.”

Hornsby stared at him for a moment and then, impossibly, he smiled, the expression reptilian in the glow from the car’s instrument panel. “Nerves, kid. Everybody gets cold feet the first time.”

The first time
. If Ethan could have been convinced even two heartbeats earlier to go through with this thing, it only took hearing those three words—and their implication that this wouldn’t be the
only
time—to reaffirm he’d been about to make the biggest mistake of his life. “No, it isn’t nerves,” he told Hornsby. “I can’t do this. I won’t.”

Hornsby glowered at him. “You
owe
me.”

“How do
I
owe
you?
”

“You think I
won
all that money in the casino? The money I gave you in the Park ‘n’ Pay?”

“I
saw
you win it.”

“You saw me
play
. I won a few hands, sure, but you were standin’ too far away to see what I cashed in. Why d’you think I had to split fifty-fifty instead of sixty-forty? I topped up your winnings with my own dough.”

“Why?”

Hornsby snickered. “You really that stupid, kid?”

No, Ethan
wasn’t
that stupid. Not anymore. He’d just connected the last pair of dots, the ones that explained why a small-time thief like Hornsby drove a rusted Toyota Echo with a gouge down the driver’s side. It wasn’t because of any
Waste not, want not
lifestyle choice. It was because there was no such thing as beating the odds. When it came to gambling, the only winners were the ones who owned the house. The rest were just suckers. And Ethan had been the biggest sucker of them all, exactly what a low-life like Link Hornsby had been looking for. He’d even been warned.
Them that lie down with dogs get up with fleas
. Well, fleas or not, Ethan Palmer was getting up right now. He reached for the handle and opened the door.

“You
ain’t
walkin’ out on me,” Hornsby seethed.

Ethan tossed the toque aside and climbed out. He heard the driver’s door swing open, its rusty hinges complaining before it slammed shut. Footsteps. And then Hornsby was in his face.

“You
owe
me,” the man repeated. “You’re
mine
, asshole.”

“I’ll pay you back,” said Ethan, stepping away.

Hornsby’s laugh was harsh, guttural. “Yeah, like you’re gonna pay back your old man? And your sister? And who knows
how
many others? I don’t take IOUs, you little pissant.”

“You’ll have to,” Ethan said, turning and heading in the direction of the bus stop a block away. He wanted to see Allie.
Needed
to see her. Nothing was going to stop him.

“Look, you miserable piece of shit,” hissed Hornsby, who’d come up behind him so quickly that Ethan jumped. “You’re doin’ this whether you want to or not.”

Ethan felt something hard press into the small of his back as a hand grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. He felt his legs turn to water, and his heart, which had slammed into his chest wall only moments earlier, seemed to stutter. He had to force out his next words: “D-don’t shoot.”

In the shadows between the street lights, a gun jammed into his back, Ethan heard Hornsby rasp in his ear, “That’s up to you, dickhead. We had a plan and we’re stickin’ to it. Now suck it up and let’s get this over with.”

Ethan’s mouth had become the Mojave. “I can’t,” he croaked. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

He felt the barrel of the gun prod deeper into his flesh, felt the hair on the back of his neck leap to attention, felt his heart abandon its stutter and pummel his rib cage as the voice in his ear growled, “You chose the wrong time to grow a pair, asshole.
Nobody
backs out on Link Hornsby, you got that?
Nobody
.”

Ethan heard a sound in the darkness, and some part of him realized his mouth had made it. A pleading sound. The sound your brain manufactures when it realizes it’s probably the last sound your mouth will ever make.

Then there was another sound and Hornsby grunted thickly, staggering backward.

“You leave my brother
alone!
”

Despite the shadows, and despite how quickly the next events unfolded, they would be forever etched into Ethan’s memory. He turned to see Raye holding a tree branch that she’d just slammed into the back of Hornsby’s head. Or tried to. Because of her height, the unwieldiness of the branch, and—probably most of all—her poor eyesight, she’d missed and glanced his shoulder.

Hornsby whirled to face his attacker. “What the—”

This time the branch hit him squarely in the temple and Hornsby roared, nearly dropping to his knees as Raye struck him yet again.

“Raye!” Ethan shouted. “Get out of here!”

“Not without you!” She raised the branch one more time, shouting at the stranger in front of her. “You leave my brother alone or—”

Afterwards, Ethan would think about the sound the gun made when it fired. It was nothing like he’d heard in all those movies. Not the crack you might expect. Loud, sure, but without the hard edge. Like a mirror breaking inside a mattress.

He would also think about the look on Raye’s face when it happened. Astonishment? Maybe, but more than that. Something like outrage.

And then she fell.

At some point, Hornsby must have run to his car and squealed off. All Ethan could see was Raye crumpled on the sidewalk. Oddly, his mind replayed the video of that deer leaping into the coffee shop, and some part of him now understood what the creature had felt, the sheer terror of slamming into something you didn’t see coming and feeling everything crash down around you. He screamed his sister’s name, gathered her into his arms, and staggered to his feet. Stumbling under his burden, he almost went down, and he sobbed as he struggled not to drop her. He felt like someone had scooped his guts out, but he forced the
hollow shell of his body forward, praying that Anwar’s claim—
We have everything you need
—was really true.

The clerk, a young man with a goatee and a safety pin through one eyebrow, was standing wide-eyed in the entrance as Ethan approached. He held the door open so Ethan could carry Raye inside.

“Call 911!” Ethan yelled, laying her gently on the tile floor. “She’s been shot!” A red flower bloomed through her coat in the centre of her abdomen.

The young man picked up the phone, then looked helplessly at Ethan. “There’s no dial tone. It’s dead.”

Ethan remembered the wire cutters and moaned. “Use your cell!”

The young man winced. “I don’t have one.”

“Here! Take mine!” One arm still around Raye, Ethan reached into his jacket. And then cursed as he remembered Hornsby flinging it into the back seat. “I don’t have it! You have to get to a phone!”

The young man looked at the cash register behind him. Beside it on the counter lay an open magazine and half a candy bar.

“For Christ’s sake,
go get help!
” Each utterance an exclamation. For an odd, brief moment, Ethan wondered if he’d ever be able to speak again without screaming. He hugged Raye to him, put his hand on her belly to keep her life from pouring out, and wept.