Snake hasn’t said anything. He’s calmly watching his minion turn on him, and probably gauging whether anything she’s said could be used against him if he somehow survives this night.
“That tape won’t help you,” Wilma says breathlessly. “I know that much law. But I can help you. I can testify, like Will Devine was gonna do. But you have to protect me, okay? You gotta put me somewhere he can’t reach.”
“There’s nowhere I can’t reach,” Snake says softly. “You know that, baby girl.”
Wilma shivers at this sound of what must be a pet name between them. Lincoln and I share another glance. I know what he’s thinking: Right now she’s dying to confess, but let her get out of this shack and lawyer up, and we’ll never get another word out of her—
Wilma’s truncated scream brings both our gazes back to her, but too late.
True to his namesake, Snake has pulled a knife from somewhere and he has the blade to her throat, with most of his body concealed behind hers.
“All right, now,” he says, getting his legs under him and lifting Wilma to her feet.
The guy’s survival instincts are breathtaking. Even before Wilma finished speaking, Snake realized that she had taken on value to us—and in that instant she became his ticket out of here.
As Snake moves laterally toward the door, Alois’s eyes flick from Lincoln to me and back again, alert for any chance to make a move to help his father.
“You’re not going out that door,” Lincoln says to Snake. “I’ll shoot right through her to kill you.”
“No, you won’t,” Snake says, edging sideways. “The mayor’s not gonna let you. He wants this dried-up hag on the witness stand, saying what she just said. He’ll do everything he can to keep telling himself that his old man’s innocent. But now you know the truth.”
“Don’t kill her,” I tell Lincoln. “And don’t listen to that bastard. He’s poison.”
“I’m the only truth teller in here,” Snake says, nearly to the door now. In one sinuous motion, the old man shifts the knife into the hand of the arm locked around her throat, while his free hand searches blindly for the doorknob.
“Don’t let him take me!” Wilma screeches. “Now that I said what I did, he’ll kill me for sure!”
As my eyes dart from Snake’s hand to the knob, Alois lunges off the sofa onto his dead comrade, grabbing for the pistol that the dead man never reached.
“Shoot him!” Lincoln shouts, but I can’t bring myself to do it while the kid is vainly scrabbling beneath his friend’s corpse.
Fixing my aim on Alois’s back, I yell for Alois to stop, but he doesn’t.
Lincoln’s pistol bucks with a deafening blast, and a bullet punches into the corpse only inches from Alois’s head.
“Goddamn it!” Lincoln bellows, and a split-second shift of focus tells me Snake and Wilma have vanished through the door.
Lincoln fires two rounds after them, then charges outside, leaving me to deal with Alois, who has finally got his hands on the butt of his friend’s pistol.
“Don’t do it!” I scream, but he doesn’t listen.
As the long-barreled revolver appears from beneath the corpse, I shoot Alois Engel high in the back. The impact drives him into the body beneath him, but after a couple of seconds, he thrusts himself up once more and tries to lift the gun. His eyes slowly track around to me, and the gun follows—
I close my eyes and fire again, this time into the center of his chest, where I know his heart is pumping violently. My second bullet slams him to the floor and keeps him there, while a pool of blood spreads quickly from beneath him.
With a curse of fury and guilt, I turn, grab my rifle, and crash through the door after Lincoln.
Chapter 77
Outside, I see Lincoln walking slowly after Snake, who has one arm tight under Wilma’s chin while his other holds the long-bladed knife to her throat, beneath his forearm. Snake has nearly reached a pickup truck parked about twenty feet from the house.
“Help me!” Wilma cries. “Don’t let him take me!”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Lincoln says, keeping pace with Snake.
“I’m here!” I shout.
“Get around to the side of him!” Lincoln orders. “Flank him. Don’t let him in the truck.”
“Easy now,” Snake says, his voice surprisingly steady. He sounds like he’s trying to calm a spooked horse.
“Is the blond kid dead?” Lincoln asks me.
“Yeah.”
Snake winces, but he doesn’t utter a word in anger or regret. “Cage just killed my son,” he says in the tone of a man laying casino chips on a green baize cloth. “He already killed my nephew. Let my son be enough.”
“It ain’t the same,” Lincoln says, cutting his eyes at me. “Get around him!”
As I try to do that, a low rumble reaches my ears. In five seconds the sound doubles in volume.
“You hear that?” I ask sharply.
“Motorcycles,” Lincoln says. “Goddamn it.”
Triumph dances in Snake’s eyes. “You boys are in the shit now. Things turn quick, don’t they? You better haul ass.”
Lincoln’s going to kill them both—
The rumble has become a thundering bellow, reverberating off the abandoned buildings on Rodney’s main street. Headlight beams spear the darkness a hundred yards behind us, growing brighter by the second.
“We’ve got to go!” I yell, darting to the truck, which looks like an old International Harvester.
“You can’t leave me!” Wilma cries. “He’ll kill me for sure.”
“Those bikers don’t know which house it is,” Lincoln says.
If I open the door to the truck, its interior light will go on, pinpointing our location. From the passenger side, I squint into the dark and see there’s no key in the ignition.
“Snake’s got the keys!” I call to Lincoln. “Or one of those kids.”
“Not for long.”
“No!” Wilma screams. “Don’t shoot!”
Lincoln has taken two steps forward and steadied his aim.
“Don’t do it!” I shout. “A gunshot will bring those bikers right to us!”
I’m moving toward Lincoln when Wilma Deen snaps. She drives her elbow into Snake’s ribs, but not hard enough, because his knife rakes over her throat and a rush of black blood runs down into her blouse. Wilma’s hands fly to her throat. She staggers a couple of steps, then holds her bloody hands in front of her face and shrieks like a madwoman.
Deprived of his human shield, Snake turns to flee into the dark, but Lincoln closes the distance in three seconds. At the limit of my sight, Lincoln swats Snake’s knife hand away, grips him by the throat, lifts him off his feet, and slams him against a poplar tree. Snake’s feet kick wildly, like those of a man being hanged, and the eyes that always looked either cool or crazy bulge as though they’ll burst from their sockets. Without knowing how or why, I find myself yanking on Lincoln’s arm, trying to tear it free from Snake’s neck.
“Quit!” Lincoln bellows. “This has to happen!”