Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(39)

There was a small television bolted to the wall and the cups in the bathroom were made of thin plastic. Even the art on the walls—faded prints of cowboys and geysers spouting in Yellowstone Park—were screwed to the paneling so they couldn’t be easily removed.

Viktór heard his brother swipe a keycard in the outside lock. A rush of cold air came into the room with him, along with grit blowing in from the dirt parking lot.

László entered holding up a bulging white paper bag as if offering a gift. He had to use the weight of his big butt to close the door against the wind.

“Where have you been?” Viktór asked angrily in Hungarian. “I woke up and you were gone. And you took the car so I couldn’t go anywhere.”

“Have you looked outside?” László said with a sheepish grin. “There’s no place to go. This town is completely closed. Hardly anything is open today.”

“Then where did you go?”

“English,” László said. “Remember that we must speak in English in case someone overhears us.”

Viktór snorted and crossed his arms across his chest. He glared at his brother.

“The only place open was a McDonald’s,” László said as he handed the bag to Viktór. “I got you two McMuffins and two hash browns. Those are fried potato wedges.”

“I know what they are,” Viktór said. He angrily opened the bag and grabbed a breakfast sandwich. It did smell good. He ate half of it wolfishly before he narrowed his eyes and inspected what the sandwich consisted of. It was an English muffin with an oval of processed egg and a thin slice of ham.

“No beef?” Viktór moaned. He was still upset that they had arrived so late the night before that the diner with chicken-fried steak in Gillette he had located on his phone had been closed.

“They don’t put beef on those things.”

“Why not?”

“It wasn’t an option.”



* * *



—

Viktór sat at the wobbly little table in the room and ate sullenly. He liked the hash brown wedges, but he didn’t want to give László the satisfaction of knowing it.

László sat on the side of the bed with his big hands hanging down between his thighs watching Viktór eat. He’d mentioned that he’d eaten in the car on the way to the motel.

As far as Viktór was concerned, things were going from bad to worse since they’d arrived in Wyoming. First, the old man in the woods played stubborn and wouldn’t help them, even when László threatened him. That led to his brother going medieval on the man with such ferocity that Viktór was helpless to stop it. Only when it was too late into the process did the old man admit what he’d done with the item they were seeking. Viktór couldn’t help but think it all could have been accomplished without the horror that had occurred.

But then there was the old lady who, rather than cower or scream before Viktór like an old lady should, went straight for her rifle. He hadn’t expected that reaction and he’d had no choice but to defend himself. Her last seconds on earth, when she was on the floor looking up at him with hate in her eyes and the point of the hay hook embedded in her head, would stay with him for the rest of his life. That image had burned into his mind and he’d awakened several times during the night with it in front of him. He could see her now.

And for what? A bag of romance novels.

Then he’d finally, finally drifted back to sleep, only to wake up and find that his brother had left him in a motel room in a town he didn’t know. László had taken the shotgun and their rental car and he hadn’t even left a spare keycard.

The breakfast sandwiches László had brought him had done little to make up for what he’d been put through.

László had insisted that they not stay the night anywhere around Saddlestring or Twelve Sleep County where they could be seen, so they’d driven over an hour to the east on Interstate 90. Similar to the trip north, there were very few cars on the road except tankers and big trucks. As they drove, the landscape changed completely. Gone were the mountains and trees. The land flattened and the only lights were from oil rigs in the distance. László took the first exit into a town called Gillette. From what Viktór could tell, it was an energy town where everyone drove pickup trucks.

But the only place he’d been thus far was in a beat-up room in a place called the Tumble-On-Inn.

László said, “Today is an American holiday. I didn’t know anything about it until I saw signs on buildings that said ‘Closed for Thanksgiving.’ I was going to buy ammunition for the guns, but every store is closed.”

“We need ammunition,” Viktór said. The only cartridges he had for the rifle were the five .30-30 rounds that had come with it, and they looked old. László needed twelve-gauge shotgun shells.

“Where did you go for hours?” Viktór asked.

“I couldn’t sleep, either. You kept thrashing around and yelling. So I got up and drove back and found the librarian’s house. We didn’t go far enough down that road last night.”

László left it there, but it was obvious to Viktór that his brother had more to say.