Jubilee's Journey (Wyattsville #2)(10)

Hurt turned off Rosemont and walked along Washington Street. There were plenty of stores but none of them open. He reached into his pocket and wrapped his hand around the gun. He could feel the energy coming from it. It had power, and with it he had power. The butt of the gun could smash a window to smithereens. He considered the thought, then pushed it away. If the store had alarms they’d be all over him before he could get back to the bus. No good. He turned east, walked three blocks, and took a left onto Main Street.





Hurt glanced at his watch again. Two hours. He had to find something soon. He looked down the long street. At the far end he saw a Wonder Bread delivery truck pulling away from the front of what looked to be a small grocery store.

Perfect. No people. He’d grab what he came for and leave no witnesses. Before anyone knew what happened, he’d be back on the bus headed for Miami.

Hurt began walking toward the store.





Paul took the small bag he’d been carrying and sat it on the bench alongside Jubilee. “I want you to stay here. I’m probably gonna be gone a while, but don’t worry. I’ll be back soon as I can.”

“Why can’t I come with you?”

“Jubie,” he said with a laugh. “Men don’t bring their baby sister when they’re asking for a job.”

Giving him a look that argued the point, she griped, “I ain’t no baby!”

“I know you’re not. But right now I need you to be a really big girl—a really big girl who can stay here and keep an eye on our things.”

“You’re trying to trick me.”

“Not at all,” Paul said, holding up his right hand. “That grocery store’s willing to pay thirty dollars a week. If I get a good job like that, we won’t need to find Mama’s sister. We’ll have enough money to get ourselves a nice room to live in and good food to eat.”

Finally Jubilee agreed.

Before he turned and crossed the street, Paul shook a warning finger. “Now don’t leave this bench, no matter what. And don’t talk to strangers.”

“Everybody in this town’s a stranger,” Jubilee grumbled resentfully.

“In time they won’t be,” Paul answered and turned toward the street.





The bread truck blocked Hurt’s view of Paul crossing the street. And the girl, small as she was, sitting on a bench partly hidden by an oak tree, was beyond the scope of where he’d fixed his vision.

He moved down the street with long strides. No cars out front: good. No passersby: good. Hurt had to make sure there were no witnesses. Witnesses only meant trouble. He’d gone soft in the jewelry store heist when Eloise Mercer had whimpered and cried, and what did he get in return? She pointed an accusing finger at him, and he spent an extra five years in prison.

“No more,” he mumbled. “No more.”

Paul was standing in front of the counter asking Sidney Klaussner about the job when the store door opened.



Sidney Klaussner was fifty-eight years old but sharp as a tack. He was also damned and determined that nobody was ever gonna rob his store again. A year earlier three thugs who had jumped off a freight train came in waving a gun and walked off with more than four hundred dollars. For a good six months Sidney berated himself for letting them get away with it; then he went out and bought a Browning 16 gauge shotgun. It was an automatic that could fire off five shots faster than a rabbit could run across the yard.





Whenever the store door swung open, Sidney always looked up and nodded a hello. It was his way of greeting people. When Hurt walked through the door, Sid saw him reach into his jacket pocket and pull the gun out. Before Hurt closed the gap between them Sidney pulled the rifle from beneath the counter, and without taking time to aim he began firing.

Hurt was faster. His bullet tore through Sidney’s chest like a cannon ball.

Sidney squeezed off two shots as he fell. The first one hit Paul in the head. The second one went wild and lodged itself in the ceiling.

Hurt stepped over Paul and banged open the cash register. He grabbed all the bills, then turned and walked out of the store like a man who’d just stopped in for a pack of cigarettes.

He never noticed Martha Tillinger. Without her hearing aid she’d been unaware of what was happening until she heard the bang of gunfire and that’s when she squatted down behind the cereal boxes.

Martha, afraid for her life, stayed behind those cereal boxes for nearly twenty minutes before she found the courage to venture out. When she finally tiptoed out and saw the bodies in the floor, she screamed so loud that Mario Gomez heard her two doors down. He came running from the barber shop, and that’s when they finally called the police.

By time the patrol car pulled up in front of Klaussner’s Grocery, Hurt McAdams was five blocks from the bus station.





Angry Faces



The Klaussner’s Grocery Store robbery occurred at 8:06 on the first Wednesday of March. By 8:30 there were two ambulances and five patrol cars sitting crosswise on Main Street. Cars were rerouted to Washington, but those on foot could cut through the park and come out on Main. Within twenty minutes there were nearly fifty people who had come from out of nowhere crowded in front of the store.