Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(87)

Ethan Allen’s heart catapulted from its rightful spot and began spinning like a whirligig; he wobbled back and forth for a moment then fell backward onto the floor.

As it turned out, he had simply fainted dead away when the sound of the explosion rocketed through his head. When he came to Olivia was fanning her hand in front of his face and calling out his name. “Are you alright, Ethan?” she asked, but he was unsure of how to answer.

After a few moments, it started to come back. He remembered shooting Scooter Cobb, he’d been scared, so scared he thought he’d die, but he’d pulled the trigger anyway. He sat up to make sure of what he’d done. Sure enough, there was Scooter Cobb, sprawled out across the foyer, with biggest part of his chest blown away. A stream of tears began rolling down Ethan’s face; “I did it, Grandma,” he said proudly. “This time I wasn’t no coward. I didn’t run off and hide. I saved your life, didn’t I Grandma?”

Olivia saw a look of pride in the boy’s eyes, he was reaching out for her love and giving more than she ever dreamed possible; the shell had cracked open and he was trusting her with what he’d held inside. “Yes, Ethan,” she answered, “you surely did save my life,” then she tearfully hugged him to her chest.

When the sound of the shots echoed through the building, a fair number of the neighbors had been roused. Fred McGinty was frantically pounding on the door. “What’s going on in there?” he shouted.

“Shush,” Olivia hissed in Ethan Allen’s ear, “don’t you say a word.” She knew such a thing could be viewed as murder; even when the man was mean as Scooter Cobb, even if he deserved whatever he got. The circumstances didn’t matter; they had a dead body on their hands—a dead body with a blown-apart hole in the middle of his chest. A man the size of Scooter Cobb wasn’t something that could be swept under the rug or slid down the incinerator.

“Go away, Fred,” Olivia called back. “We’re okay.”

Clara pushed past Fred and began her own fist-pounding. “You open up this door Olivia Doyle!” she screamed, “Open it this minute!”

“Go home, Clara,” Olivia answered.

“Don’t you tell me go home; I heard gunshots! You’d better open this door!”

“Please,” Olivia begged, “don’t get involved. There’s been an accident, but Ethan’s not hurt, both of us are alright.”

“Accident?” Clara screamed and took to rattling the door so furiously that Olivia worried it might pop loose from its hinges.

“If you want to help,” Olivia shouted, “go home and call for the police!”

Clara, who claimed that under no circumstances was she leaving, sent Fred to place the call and stayed where she was, pressing her ear to the door. “I’m listening to what’s going on in there,” she called out, which caused Olivia to start speaking in a whisper.

“Ethan,” she whispered, “you’ve got to do exactly as I say, and you’ve got to do it without one word of disagreement.” She pulled the boy close enough to hear the hum of his heartbeat and said, “We’ve got to keep what happened here a secret. A secret, that is just between the two of us.”

“But, Grandma…” Ethan gave a sigh of disappointment.

“Believe me, sweetheart, I’m real proud of you. You saved my life and you are, without a doubt, the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

“So why can’t we tell nobody?”

“Because, if the police suspect you shot Scooter Cobb it could lead to a whole mess of trouble. Even if you didn’t get sent to jail, you’d have a black mark against you, and that could last your whole life long.”

“I don’t care about no black marks.”

“Not now maybe, but someday you will. I’m old, I’ve already done most everything I’m gonna do, so I’ve got less to risk. Besides, the police might say you shot Scooter Cobb because of what he did to your daddy; and they could consider that murder!”

Ethan sat there wide-eyed, taking in every word she spoke.

“Me,” she said, “well now, I had no grudge against the man, so I can claim it was self defense. I’ll say he tried to break into my apartment, and I had to shoot him—there it is, plain and simple!”

Ethan had to admit it did seem a better plan, “But,” he sighed, “nobody’s gonna know I saved your life.”

“You know,” she answered, “You know and I know; that’s what really matters.”

The boy gave her a smile that stretched the full width of his face.

Three times Olivia went over the way it would be told; she tried to think through any loose ends, tried to make sure there wasn’t some detail that would jump out the minute she started explaining what happened. Once that was done, she wiped the browning clean, took it in her hands and held it to her shoulder in position for shooting and fingered both triggers. She pressed her fingers firm against the butt then the barrel and as she was doing so, she asked, “Where’d you get this thing?”

“The storage bin in the basement,” Ethan answered.

“Seth Porter’s storage bin?”

He nodded.

“This is his gun?”

He nodded again.

“I told you not to go pilfering that stuff,” Olivia said, even though inside her heart she was thankful the boy had taken the gun which saved both their lives.