Mean Streak(106)

Room one ten was three doors down from the end on the first floor. She raised her fist, paused, and looked over her shoulder toward the corner around which Hayes had disappeared. He’d made himself a cruelly insulting stranger this morning, which, she realized now, had been his way of coping with the inevitable good-bye.

Heartbreak wasn’t simply a byword.

Steeling herself, she rapped on the motel room door with her knuckles.

From within, a sleepy voice called, “Yes?”

“Agent Connell, it’s Emory Charbonneau.”

She heard the thud of his feet hitting the floor. He parted the curtains only wide enough to peek out and see her, then there was the rattle of a chain lock and the scrape of a metal bolt, and the federal agent, eyes puffy and hair standing on end, yanked open the door. He was wearing plaid boxers, a white T-shirt, and black socks.

“What the hell?” He swept the parking lot behind her with a searching gaze. “Where’d you come from?”

“He dropped me here.”

“Bannock?”

When she nodded, he pushed past her and charged outside, running several yards deep into the parking lot, looking frantically about. He headed for the nearest corner of the building.

“Not that way.”

He did an about-face. “Then which way?”

She pointed. “He’s driving a green car. Older. I memorized the license plate number.”

He patted his sides, searching for his phone, before realizing he wasn’t even dressed. “Shit! How long ago?”

“Just now.”

As he jogged back, he flapped his hands, motioning her into the room. She turned, stepped through the open door, and came up against Hayes, who stood there as solid as an I beam. He lifted her bodily and set her aside.

“Hayes, no!”

But Jack Connell wasn’t warned in time. When he crossed the threshold, there was nothing between him and Hayes’s fist, which connected solidly with the agent’s jaw.

“That’s for pestering my sister.”

Propelled by the slug, Connell would have reeled backward through the open doorway, but Hayes grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt, jerked him inside, and hurled him toward the bed. As the agent clambered to regain his balance, his shinbone landed against the metal bed frame. His leg gave out from under him and he went down.

Emory made wild grabs at Hayes’s coat sleeve in an attempt to restrain him, but he shook her off. He closed the door and bolted it, then bore down on the other man. Connell scrambled to his feet before Hayes reached him. He stuck out his hands at arm’s length, palms toward Hayes.

“You want to add assault on a federal officer to everything else?”

The words halted Hayes. He stood, his chest a bellows, glowering down at the agent.

Fearful and furious at the same time, Emory struck Hayes’s arm with her fist. “Why did you come back? Why didn’t you just keep going?”

“Is he armed?” Connell asked.

“Yes!”

Hayes said, “Be a man, Connell, and ask me yourself.” He raised his coat and shirt, exposing his waistband and the pistol tucked into it.

Connell said, “Carrying a concealed weapon. Attacking a federal agent, breaking and entering, assault and battery. What am I overlooking?” His gaze cut from Hayes to Emory. “Kidnapping?”

“He didn’t kidnap me.”

“You’re positive about that?” Connell asked, as though uncertain if she was lying or simply being terribly naive.

“Well, he didn’t kidnap me last night,” she declared. “I went with him of my own accord.”

“And helped him set me up this morning.”

“Wrong again, *,” Hayes said. “I tricked her into setting you up.”

Connell looked to her for verification. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He convinced me that he was delivering me to you and then making himself scarce. His words.”

“Because he doesn’t have the guts to say what he’s really doing. He’s running,” Connell said. “Running from what he did in Westboro.”

Upon hearing the name of the community that had won infamy in an afternoon, Emory gasped. “Westboro?”

Hayes looked at her sharply, his face a mask, his eyes cold.

Appalled, she backed away from him. “Westboro was your shooting?”

All along, her mind had refused to accept that he was connected to any mass shooting. She had certainly never attached him to Westboro, not even when Virginia had been referenced. She looked from him to Connell to various spots in the room, as she collected the scattered facts she remembered about the act of wanton violence. She stopped on Connell, silently imploring him to deny it.

But his eyes were on Hayes, watching him closely. “An angry and bitter young man walked into his place of employment with an automatic rifle and plenty of ammunition. He took up a position that gave him good cover, and calmly and methodically began picking people off.”

The images he evoked caused Emory to shudder. She, like most everyone in the nation, had watched the live television coverage as the horrifying drama unfolded. People running for their lives. Bodies lying in pools of blood. Anxious loved ones awaiting word on who had died and who had miraculously been spared, then, in the aftermath, grieving and celebrating in equal measure as names of the casualties were released.