In Laymon's Terms

Looking back now, years later, I can’t even say for sure if I thanked Dick at the time for what he said that morning. I think I did. I hope I did. But just in case: “Thanks, Dick. I appreciate it. And I hope you still think I’m OK.”

Norman Partridge

O ONE ANSWERED his knock, so Keyes kicked in the door.

He’d healed up pretty good over the last four months, but a couple ounces of buckshot were still buried deep in his left leg, so it took three tries to do the job. When he finally hit the sweet spot the door sprang fast, same way a rattrap does when it slams shut on a rodent’s skull.

Keyes sucked a quick breath, gathering his courage. The door smacked the inside wall and swung back in his direction with a stuttering creak. He stopped the door with his open palm, and it shut up, and he stepped over the threshold and into the silence. It was dark in Murdock’s cabin, but not dark enough, because Keyes had gotten used to the dark in the last four months. And that was why he had no trouble spotting Murdock over there in the corner, even though the old man wasn’t moving.

Murdock couldn’t move. Not if he knew what was good for him. He was lashed to a chair. Someone had used heavy-test fishing line to do the job. That line was fastened to dozens of fishhooks, and those hooks were set in Murdock’s skin—in his eyebrows and upper lip, in his throat and in his thighs and in the joints of his fingers—and Keyes immediately recognized the cruel cunning involved in the process. Right now Murdock was a living, breathing definition of misery. One twitch and the old man would flip a couple hundred dictionary pages, straight to another word favored by brutal men who’d inflict any amount of pain to get what they wanted: agony.

Keyes’ gut churned at the sight. He pulled a knife and flicked it open as he crossed the room, and the old man took one look at him coming and gasped. Murdock paid for that gasp because the simple action set off a half-dozen fishhooks, and he jerked in his chair like a fat salmon taking the bait, and a pathetic little whine rose from deep inside him.

“Take it easy, Murdock,” Keyes said. “I’m not here for revenge. I’m only here for—”

And that was when Keyes heard the sound that Murdock must have heard a couple seconds before, the sound that had made the old man suck wind like a scared kid: footsteps on the gravel drive that led to Murdock’s place, coming soft and easy at first—just a slow percussion riding the middle-of-nowhere silence that blanketed the redwood forest—and then getting louder, faster, as the intruder spotted the open cabin door.

Whoever it was didn’t like the look of that. Outside, gravel crunched like broken molars under heavy boots as the stranger broke into a run. Keyes knew he couldn’t waste a second. He whirled toward the cabin door just a little too fast, and his bum knee jolted him. By the time he was halfway across the room his palms were slick with sweat.

He gripped the knife tightly, cursing himself for leaving his .45 in the Jeep. Outside, footsteps mashed over gravel. Favoring his bad knee, Keyes neared the open door. Behind him, Murdock whined again. Keyes glanced at the old man for just a second, and—

Three bullets chewed holes in the cabin door, and Keyes dodged for cover.

The door slammed the wall and swung back, once again, with a stuttering creak.

This time, Keyes didn’t hear it.

This time, he was already gone.

And that was something Keyes had been good at just lately. Getting gone, that is. He’d spent the last four months that way, burrowed deep in a dark little rat-hole, hiding from everyone he knew while he healed up.

Everyone except Danni. She was the only one he trusted anymore. After all, Danni had stood by him through thick and thin. The armored car holdup was no different. When the whole deal turned into a blood-spattered nightmare, she didn’t cash in her chips and walk away from the game. She played her hand, and she played it the way fate had dealt it.

A state highway cop with a shotgun surprised them in the middle of the job, and Keyes had hesitated a second too long before using his gun. It turned out to be a very precious second, because the cop left Keyes with a tattered hole in his belly and a chewed-up leg peppered with buckshot.

Before Keyes even hit the ground, Murdock and Morales had burned rubber out of there. But Danni stuck, the same way she always did, and she didn’t waste any time. Before the lawman knew what hit him he was just a long red smear on a two-lane county road, and Keyes wasn’t in much better shape because he was bleeding all over the tuck-and-roll upholstery in the back of Danni’s Chevy, and Danni’s foot had buried the gas pedal in the floorboard, and the white line down the middle of the road was a blur.