A Kiss Before I Die (7 page)

“Are you nuts? You ran into the bridge!”

Limping, laughing, she didn’t care he had a gun in his hand. The truck would be warm.

“You ran into it!”

She smiled, she couldn’t help it; he was so beautiful and so unintentionally funny.

“I sure did.”

“What the hell is
wrong
with you? You crazy woman!
You idiot
!”

“Why didn’t you wait?”

He let his arm fall, bringing the weapon to his side.

“I thought you were going to park it!”

She limped closer.

“I said I was going to hit it.”

“No you didn’t!”

It was good to argue, good to talk.

“I said I was going to
hit
the abutment.”

“I thought you meant you were going to run it off the road!”

“You were wrong,” she said, walking to the passenger door.

He raised his gun, pointed it to her.

“Give me your shooter.”

Her shoulders sagged.

“Are you kidding?”

He held up his left hand, palm open.

“Whatever,” she said and opened the door and got in.

He was flummoxed. He opened his door and before he sat down saw she had placed her gun on his seat. He put it in the waist of his pants, attempted to sit, which wasn’t practical, and then placed it on the dashboard. He got in the truck and looked at the gun and then to her. He placed it in the door compartment.

“Comfortable?”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Nice language.”

He turned onto the road below the freeway and they traveled west, toward her home in Vernon Castle. Sam realized it would be dark by the time they got there.

She looked at her foot, her ankle, which was swelling, and uttered
her
favorite expletive.

“For god’s sakes…”

“What?”

“I think I broke my foot.”

Tyler said nothing.

“Thank you for coming back.”

He didn’t respond.

She was emphatic.

“Really.”

He nodded.

“I came back for dad.”

His eyes were red and glazed and she understood. She imagined she looked like this when the FBI men came to her door to tell her of her parent’s deaths.

“Okay…”

After a few seconds he said, “You say ‘okay’ a lot.”

“I know.”

The car rattled.

“At least you didn’t say okay.”

They were like a couple on a long trip, arguing whether or not to ask for directions.

“You were gone for a while. I thought you’d abandoned me. What happened?”

She looked at his profile.

“I rolled onto the freeway with a semi on my ass. Plus I needed to think.”

“Okay…”

“I realized that even if I don’t know you, you were on his computer, so he knows you in a way.”

For a few moments, there was only the frozen land of open white fields and the sound of tires.

“What happened to your truck?”

“There isn’t another off ramp for maybe six, seven miles and I thought if you were hurt and…I couldn’t just leave you there, okay? I was scared but I knew it wasn’t right. I cut across the median, tore up the front a little.”

“So you believe me?”

“I think you’re a lying sack of shit and I’m only here because I don’t let people down, especially girls, and maybe it’s not smart but that is what I thought.”

“Okay,” she said.

Then, reluctantly it seemed to her, he said one more thing.

“I had a change of heart.”

She shared two words.

“Thank you.”

“But just we’re clear about this, if you did kill my dad I want to be the one to kill you.”

Sam inhaled and exhaled.

“Fair enough.”

They arrived just after the man in the red Ford with the massive tires reversed his truck behind the house in a vain attempt to hide. There were the tire tracks in fresh snow:  you could’ve seen them from space.

Sam hadn’t alerted Tyler to the address, but she guessed he knew that by the way she peered past him into the darkness.

But she didn’t catch the way he was looking at the house.

“I don’t believe it,” the boy said.

“What’s that?"

“This is where we bought this.”

Now she was flummoxed.

“This? This truck?”

“You look like your mother. I remember her more than your dad.” He looked at her. “She was beautiful.”

“They were each handsome.”

“Where are they? Your parents?”

“Murdered. At that
Safeway
shooting last November.”

The vehicle continued down the empty road.

“You shitting me?”

“No,” she said. “I am not.”

He understood.

“I’m afraid I’ve mislead you, Tyler. You have to leave. Drive a mile up the road and let me out.”

He stared into the dark, headlights the only source of light as the house faded from view.

“I can’t leave you out here.”

“Sure you can. It happens all the time. People quarrel and are abandoned. I’ll need my gun.”

They were going maybe thirty miles an hour, slower than the speed limit, as fast as conditions allowed.

“I’m not leaving dad.”

“Please, listen…”

He extinguished the lights and put the car in neutral.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want the man in the red truck to know we’re slowing. I hit the brakes out here, in all this snow, and it’ll light up the country like a meteor.”

Samantha thought this was clever.

“How would you know something like that?”

“I used to know a girl that lives out here.”

The truck rolled to a stop. Snow swirled around them.

“We need a better plan than to have you walk up on that place and say – what were you going to do?”

“Ring the bell. Trick or treat.”

He laughed.

“Jesus, you
are
crazy.”

“I can make it. I need my gun.”

Her knight in the shining Bronco was undeterred.

“I don’t like or trust Wilcox.”

“I liked him for about two hours.”

He shifted into Drive and they rolled forward for another half-mile. 

“The first part of what you said. That makes sense. But I’ve got to ring the doorbell.”

“You can’t,” she said.

She could see he was thinking, making estimates, rolling over scenarios just as she was.

“He didn’t see us,” she said. “He couldn’t have. He was rolling.”

“I agree, but you’re hurt and you’re not thinking like I am. You’re all jittery and cold, lady. What’s your name again? Moore?”

“Moretti. Samantha.”

He quickly shifted to the familiar, to a name only her parents and intimate friends used.

“Sammy, you ever go hunting?”

She hadn’t.

“And you didn’t kill my dad, but your parents; they were in that mess last year?”

“Yes.”

“To both questions?”

“Yes, to both.”

She didn’t mind the interrogation. He was thinking. She wanted his advice. But what he said next startled her.

“So you’ve never killed anything?”

She felt like she’d been punched.

“No.”

“Not even a rabbit?”

She spoke truthfully.

“No.”

“But you
think
you’re going to limp and crawl a mile or so in this god awful shit and shoot a human? Put a bullet in his head or gut and maybe kill said human. That about right?”

“Yes.”

The truck picked up and the lights came on.

“You’ve got balls, Sammy. But you haven’t thought it out much so I’m going to help you.”

She was thinking this boy might shoot her, that she would be shot by the man in the red Ford, and that her last kiss before she died was from a man that wanted her dead.

“Where am I going wrong?”

“You’re making false assumptions and mistakes left and right. I mean, I don’t know how you got this far what with stealing and crashing a cop car – showing up at my place with that bullshit story. You’re assuming there’s
one
guy in that house. We don’t know how
many
people are in it or
if
there’s another car there, tucked away. Besides, if you’re smart, when you go hunting you go with someone so if you get hurt he can help you or get help. And you sure as shit can’t hobble in there with that peashooter – you need a real gun.”

The car came to a halt in the road, shifting into idle one more time.

“It’s dark,” she said. “We’re in no rush. Let them settle in, do what they want. They’re expecting
me
but not
us
, so we have the element of surprise. Let’s breathe for a minute, think this out…”

“
Exactly
. Get what you want. Anything you want. Just leave me the big one, the AK.”

She peered into the darkness and saw the outline of a dozen rifles and handguns.

“That’s a lot of firepower…”

“I didn’t know which one I was going to kill you with after you took me to dad.”

Her mouth was dry. The last thing she’d drank, if you could call it a drink, was a mouthful of vodka.

“What’d you decide?”

“While we were driving, and when I ran from you, I tried calling mom like fifty times. She didn’t answer. She always answers, never lets you go to voicemail. She hates voicemail.” He paused. The next words were a painful whisper. “Do you think she’s okay?”

Sam let out another long breath before she answered.

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

The boy nodded.

“Okay. So here’s what.
I’m
going to knock on the door, tell whoever answers it that I’m bo-f’ing-peep and then I’m sending ‘em all to hell…”

“Now who’s not thinking clearly?”

“Sammy, I’m captain of the debate team, two years running, state semi’s this year, and I can out talk any redneck that comes within fifty miles of me.”

“Which high school?”

He scoffed.

“I swear to god, how
did
you get this far?
Junior
, Syracuse University, class of twenty-fourteen.”

She shrugged, feeling oddly embarrassed.

Shaking his head, he reached into the console and waved a package of beef jerky.

“Hungry?”

She was almost faint.

“Starving.”

“So am I. Eat this. Let’s get our game face on. I’m not going in there hungry and needing to take a leak. I’ll go first. There’s jug of water behind your seat. Fill your belly.”

The door opened, the dome briefly lit, and she saw the jug.

The boy who was not a boy, whose father was dead and whose mother might be dead, stood in the middle of the dark road, enveloped in bitter cold and facing sideways in a snowstorm pissed like a racehorse.

She came from the woods, relieved, and found him sitting on the tailgate of the Bronco, pushing his feet into an old pair of boots. He’d put on a camouflage hunting jacket, pants, and matching hat.

The engine idled. The sun was gone. There were no other cars on the road.

“Always this quiet out here?”

“Yeah,” she said. “This is the boonies of the boonies.”

“No kidding. I thought I lived in the sticks. Here,” he gave her a black jacket, thicker than the one she wore. “This, too.” A black cotton, hunting cap, a roll down hat, thick.

“Thanks…”

She changed swiftly.

The water and the jerky, the warmth of the clothes, which smelled of tobacco and a sort of musk, all of it made her feel better, had her thinking clearer. She secured the hat over her ears.

“What’s the biggest thing you’ve killed?”

“Deer,” he said.

“What kind of gun?”

“No gun. Bow and arrow.”

“You’re kidding…”

“Check it out. This is awesome.”

He dug around and found arrows and a bow, the lot of it in two black cases. He unsheathed and unpacked it all and it on the tailgate.

“I even have these packets I made for flaming arrows. Kerosene, cotton, hay.”

He held up a plastic bag.

“Shit smells awful.”

He put an arrow into the device and pulled its bow as if to fire.

“He soars through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze…and then,
thwack
! He’s a dead fucking duck.”

“You’re taking
that
?”

“Don’t see why not.”

She went to the rear passenger door and found two .45’s and matching clips.

“What’s with these?”

He was playing with the bow, tweaking it, as if he was tuning a violin.

“Plain old protection.”

She nodded.

“You don’t mind?”

“No, help yourself.”

She checked them: safeties on, clips, clean.

“You really weren’t going to kill me were you?”

“Nah, I figured I’d wound you at worst.”

He turned the bow and arrow on her.

“Make you bleed a little.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Why don’t you leave me?” she asked. “Seriously.”

“I already said. You’re taking me to dad and I’m not going to leave you out here hobbling around like that guy in
The Shining
.”

“Okay. So let’s be clear on what we’re doing.”

“Fire away…”

“Number one, you’re not walking through the front door. That’s my job. You’re the rear guard, the outside protection. I want you to go to the barn.”

She’d come to him now.

The tailgate was up, the rear window closed. 

He was dressed in his hunting gear, bow and quill slung over his shoulder, the AK in his hands.

“Okay. I appreciate that,” he said.

“He’s in the far right corner. I put a tarp over him.”

“That’s, uh, generous.”

“Listen, you’re not killing anyone. I’m not. We want these idiots alive. We’re looking to
wound
them, okay?”

Tyler gave her a mocking laugh.

“You thought
I
thought that.
Jesus
, Sammy, I want to graduate next year. A little scuff up with a murderer is one thing a good bar story, but killing another human, that’s another world I’m not joining you in.”

“I didn’t kill your father. Wilcox did.”

“Prove it.”

“The gun he used was in his possession. He gave it to me earlier, a trick, so now my prints are on it. The detective I stole the badge from knows this. By now, they have that gun and are running with the belief I killed your father. But what they don’t know is I found your dads wallet and phone in the glove compartment of Wilcox’s truck.”

“In Wilcox’s truck? My dad’s shit is in Wilcox’s truck?”

“I put both under the driver’s seat,
in
the seat. The phone’s been disabled.”

Tyler looked away from her.

“You’re saying that’s proof.”

“I’m saying it’s what happened.”

He turned his attention to her.

“It’s thin ice.”

“It’s what happened.”

“It’s not believable.”

“Then why are their men at my house?”

“
Because you’re a murderer
.”

“
And why aren’t they the police
?”

He stopped talking.

“Why aren’t
the police
swarming that house right now? You’d think there would be – what? A dozen or more
police
there,
right now
, warrants in hand, wrecking the place. They’re not. They’re not because the men that
are
there are
venture capitalists
. They’re after a thirty million dollar fortune my godparents willed me. The lawyer Wilcox manages the estate and it’s a good bet that he has been treating it as a piggy bank.”

“So they killed
my
dad for
your
money. That’s still no sense.”

“Wilcox said it was a mistake. Your father was in my house and Wilcox thought it was me.”

“
Ha! Right
!”

“He said as much. Your father came into my house, broke into it to find me.”

“Why?”

“To warn me. To save my life.”

“
Jesus
, Sammy…”

He stepped away but she caught his sleeve.

“
Listen
! Three days ago, I didn’t know
any
of you people.
I don’t need this
. I have a house and my parent’s inheritance and I can live without you, any man, or other person. But your father, Tyler,
your
father figured out what was going on. Your mother was preparing to leave him for Wilcox. So your father came to warn me and to stop Wilcox. That’s when Wilcox murdered your father, thinking it was
me
. It was an accident,
manslaughter
, because Wilcox
intended
to murder
me
.”

She extended her arm and pointed.

“The man in the red Ford? Wilcox sent him to snatch me off the street. I fought him, hurt him, so when that didn’t work, he decided it would be easier to have me arrested, to stall me.”

He examined her face, as she spoke, watched her eyes, her lips, and listened to her voice and inflection.

“Tyler, I have dyslexia, I have trouble
reading
. I need
another
lawyer to verify the will and
that’s what frightened Wilcox
. It took him almost three months for us to meet. First, he wanted to give me time to grieve, then he wanted to give me time to think,
and
all he was doing was cooking the books, before I even got close to the accounts. My only escape is to take Wilcox alive. We already have one key – the laptop. It has the contract, records, all of the other things that will prove what your father understood. Don’t you see it, Tyler?”

He nodded.

“All of them…alive.”

“All of them.”

“Wilcox?”

“Him, yes, above all, him.”

He spit.

“Let’s do this.”

They got in the Bronco.

She drove.

“Drop me at the edge of the property,” Tyler said. “I’ll snake over to the barn, check what you said and we’ll go from there. What’s your angle?”

“I’m going to walk in as if I owned the place.”

“Give me ten minutes?”

“Sounds right.”

She stopped a quarter mile from the house.

He looked at her.

“You know, if we get out of this alive…”

“Oh, for god’s sakes…”

“…I don’t ever want to see or hear from you again.”