Aurora(56)

No. Thom, that smug, entitled asshole, had sent Aubrey a bag of cash to have during the blackout, and he’d sent Paddy McDaniel here to keep an eye on it.

But now the big Mick was asleep, Rusty was wide awake and sober, and this shit was about to get handled.

Rusty moved silently down the hallway between the kitchen and front door. It seemed to take forever. Finally, he reached the other end of the living room, the one nearest the front door. He moved slowly, coming around the pillar to where he could see into the room. From this side, he’d be looking over the big guy’s head from behind him, and it was just a matter of stealing in, grabbing the bag, and getting the hell out of there.

Except the couch was empty now.

The blanket had been tossed to the side, the pillow had a big melon-size dent in it, and the fucking guy was gone.

Rusty stopped, staring for a moment, trying to wrap his head around it, and then heard the click of the gun behind him.

He tried to gasp, but no air came out of his chest. He felt the hard nub of the M&P Scandium, Brady’s spare gun, pressing into the base of his skull.

How the hell did he do that? The guy was ten feet tall and a thousand pounds—how did he manage to get up, slip into the kitchen, and sneak up behind Rusty without being heard? What kind of scumbag does that to a person?

“Raise your arms slowly,” Brady said in a quiet voice.

Damn, it was worse than Rusty had even thought, the guy sounded awake. Like, not only was he not surprised; he wasn’t even asleep. Rusty had been screwed from the moment he walked into the house; he just hadn’t known it. He did as he was told, raising his arms ’til his hands were even with his shoulders. He looked down and could see the guy’s feet behind him. Fucker even had his shoes on.

“Slide your feet forward on the floor, left foot first,” Brady whispered.

“Where are we going?” Rusty asked, a bit louder.

“Outside. For a chat. Do not make a sound.”

Rusty froze, trying to think.

“Move,” Brady said, lifting the barrel of the gun from the back of Rusty’s head and tapping it down on the crown of his skull, hard enough to hurt.

Rusty whimpered and moved. He had no plan whatsoever. All the cards were face-up now, and he was looking at garbage, a 2-7 off suit. He’d lost, again, cleaned out, no shot at all. He did as he was told.

When they reached the front door, Brady told him, in that same soft, commanding voice, to unlock and open it. Rusty did. Brady told him to open the screen no more than two feet. Rusty did. Together, they stepped outside, Rusty still with his hands up, staring straight ahead, mindlessly following orders. A beaten dog, once again.

As they stepped outside, he heard the front door close behind them with a click, then the same for the screen. The gun barrel tapped him on the top of his skull again and he winced.

“Could you please fucking stop that?” he said, but he kept moving, no choice but to follow orders at this point. How could he possibly have gone as far as he did with a ridiculously simplistic plan like this? So he was broke, so what? So he owed money and Zielinski might yank one of his teeth, who gives a shit? He had other teeth. Why in Christ’s name did he risk everything like this?

“Stop on the grass,” Brady said.

Rusty did.

“OK,” the big guy told him. “Now we are going to discuss how you will never, ever return to this house. Take a step away from me and turn around, slowly.”

It was when Rusty started to take an obedient step forward that he saw the lights flash at the corner. It was a sedan, barreling down the cross street at at least sixty miles per hour, with the strobing red lights of a police car just behind it. The fleeing car banged hard on a pothole in the middle of the intersection, scraping and sending sparks flying in all directions.

The next part happened so quickly it was hard for Rusty to remember later, much as he tried. All he knew was that in the moment of the distraction he was stepping away from Brady, hands raised, turning around to face whatever music needed to be faced, and the next second his right hand was stopping at his belt, his fingers closing around the black steel hilt of the fixed-blade Buck GCK hunting knife that hung there, and then he was turning to his left, his hand moving upward, fast.

And then there was the awful slurping sound of the blade finding home in the big guy’s abdomen, just beneath his belt line, and the soft, surprised gasp that came from Brady’s mouth. His breath, which still smelled faintly of peanut butter, caught Rusty full in the face, and the big man’s weight dropped forward. Rusty’s reflexes commanded that he catch the guy before he hit the ground, and he did, Brady’s full two hundred and some pounds collapsing onto him.

As the fleeing car and the pursuing police vehicle disappeared into the night, intent on one another, Brady and Rusty stood there in the yard for a moment, Brady’s mouth opening and closing soundlessly. His eyes swam and then focused on Rusty, confused.

“Terence?” he asked. Then he went into shock.

Rusty’s scalp tingled and he felt out of his own body; he could see himself standing there in his ex-wife’s front yard, holding up the bleeding body of a guy he’d just stabbed in the gut. He was going to spend the rest of his life in jail.

But then he calmed and forced himself to think. This wasn’t over. He hadn’t lost. All he needed was for a lifetime of bad luck to turn miraculously at that exact moment, for the gambler’s concept of “being due” to prove itself true right when it was needed most.