Crazy for You (27 page)

“You shouldn’t have been in that tournament in the first place,” I said, picking up the squabble right where we’d left off. “It was a needless risk! What if someone had seen you?”

“My helmet hid my face!” he roared. “I was using the men’s john when this guy I know from my hockey team spotted me, said they were desperate for a sub, and asked me to come in. It sounded like fun, so I said sure.”

“Your helmet came off!”

“Whose fault was that?”

“Yours, for being there in the first place. A million people must have seen you. The game was being shown on local cable. The cops could be on their way right now.”

“Let ’em come.” Labeck flung his paint gun down on the bed so hard it bounced and lodged against the wall. A squirrel’s nest fell out of the rafters. “I’m done hiding. I’m turning myself in. Jail’s got to be better than this.” He snatched the sleeping bag off the cot and started rolling it up.

“So this is some brainless macho-male-jockstrap thing?”

Ignoring me, he picked up his gym bag and glanced around the room, checking to make sure he hadn’t left anything. The light from the flickering kerosene lamp lit his angry, set face. He turned toward the door.

I lunged in front of it, spreading out my arms. “I won’t let you give yourself up.”

He snorted. “Mazie, will you please move out of the way?”

Okay, it was stupid. Trying to block a guy Labeck’s size was like a housefly
trying to block a descending flyswatter by using mental telepathy. Hastily, I scanned the room for something to disable the big dope long enough for him to come to his senses. Nothing. Well, then, I’d just have to rely on brute force.

He tried to step around me. “Ben,” I growled, raising myself on tiptoe so I could look him straight in the eye. “Don’t make me take you down.”

That’s when the door crashed open, slamming me back against the wall. Two men charged into the room. I recognized Gozzy from the parking lot, a hulk with a craggy forehead, cheeks purpled from inflamed sores, and a fleshy, wet mouth like a carp. He was wearing a snowmobile suit and a fleece-lined leather cap with dangling flaps like sheep ears. A coil of nylon rope was looped around one shoulder, and he held a shotgun that looked capable of halting a charging grizzly.

The other man was Alex Petrov. He was holding a semiautomatic handgun, and he looked jumpy enough to shoot. He wore a heavy knee-length overcoat and a ragg wool cap worked with a reindeer design. The lamplight gleamed in his pale eyes, and his skimpy lips were clamped in a hard line.

Gozzy giggled, his voice surprisingly high-pitched for a man his size. “Too bad for you, Labeck—but when these here dudes come lookin’ for you, they paid me a lot more’n you did.”

He had a twitchy rapid blink, the hallmark of the meth freak. His gaze focused on me. He licked his red lips with a slobbery tongue. “I’m gonna do stuff to Little Miss Whup-Ass here that’ll make her eyes roll.”

“No,” Petrov said sharply. “You’ll do what you’re told.” He pointed his gun at Labeck. “Get on the bed.”

When Labeck didn’t move, Petrov yanked me back against his chest, clamping his gun arm around my waist. With his other hand he fished something out of his pocket and laid it against my cheek. It was icy cold and sharp-edged. A surgical tool, I thought—maybe a scalpel. “Lie down.”

Labeck sat down on the bed.

“All the way.” Petrov carved a thin line down the side of my neck. I gasped in pain. It felt like the world’s worst paper cut. “Or her eye will be next.”

Labeck quickly obeyed, arranging himself on the bed.

“Gozchika, get the cylinders,” Petrov snapped.

Gozzy looked puzzled. “Them gas things, you mean?”

Petrov’s tone took on a gritted-teeth quality. “Yes, the
gas things
. Hurry up.”

Gozzy slammed out. Petrov moved the gun down to his side but he kept the scalpel against my cheekbone, never taking his eyes off Labeck, who stared back coolly, his hand flopping as if by accident toward the wall.

Gozzy came back inside. His hands were so big he could haul two butane gas cylinders—each about the size of a fire extinguisher—in one hand, while holding his shotgun in the other. He bent and set the cylinders on the floor with a grunt.

My stomach went into spasms. I guessed what they planned to do. Truss Labeck and me to the bed, then fire at the butane cylinders from the doorway. The highly flammable butane would erupt in a giant fireball, burn down the cabin, and fry Labeck and me to a mass of blackened carbon.

“Tie him,” Petrov told Gozzy, jerking his head toward Labeck.

Once they’d tied Labeck down, we were both lost. We needed a diversion, fast.

Hey, wanna see my tits? Nah. Having to fumble through three layers of clothing would destroy the element of surprise. Did I have something in my pockets to use as a weapon? A butcher knife, a cattle prod, a magic wand that had somehow fallen out of the sky? My scrabbling fingers touched crumpled Kleenex … crumpled Kleenex … half a candy bar … a glow stick from the tourney … paper clips … and a packet of red paint pellets the size of penny gumballs in a flimsy cellophane wrapper. Clawing open the wrapper with one hand, I flung the pellets to the floor, where they bounced and bipped like popping corn. Gozzy’s eyes spun as though he were watching Sonic Pinball, and Petrov took the razor off my face for a single unlucky second.

In that instant, Labeck pulled the paint gun out from behind the bed, brought up the barrel, and shot Petrov in the eye.

Never, ever, aim for someone’s face. This rule is drilled into paintballers from their toddler days. A pellet to the eye can blind, maim, or kill.

Fortunately, Labeck’s sport was hockey. He was used to a higher level of violence.

Petrov staggered backward, hands clamped to face, squealing in pain. Gozzy,
slow to comprehend what was happening, was a count behind the astoundingly swift Labeck, who flung himself off the bed, seized a gas cylinder, and swung it at Gozzy’s shotgun.

The shotgun boomed. Labeck and I dived out the door just as the first butane tank exploded. Hand in hand, we fled along the path toward the parking lot. I risked a look behind. The cabin was engulfed in flames. Two figures were silhouetted in the doorway, shouldering each other aside in their rush to escape the fire. We were safe; we had a big lead on them; we were nearly to the parking lot.

A man stepped out of the shadows of a tree just ahead, blocking the path.

I squinted, trying to see through the falling snow. It was Jared Kennison.

“Jared!” I called. “Petrov’s here. He’s—”

Kennison brought something up to his shoulder. I stared stupidly at him.

Labeck yanked me aside a second before the bullet would have hit me.

“Rifle,” he hissed in my ear, as the gun’s report echoed.

We veered off through the snow-shrouded undergrowth, keeping low to the ground, halting at last in the cover of a stand of snow-blanketed cedars. “He’s not going to waste time shooting in the dark,” Labeck said, pitching his voice low. “He’ll wait until we break cover. Where’s your car?”

“In the parking lot, near the exit.” My head was still reeling as I tried to take in the fact that
Jared Kennison
was shooting at us. He must have been in the silver car with Petrov. They’d locked on to me outside the coffee shop, and tagged me all the way to the lake. Now my stupidity might cost Labeck and me our lives.

“We’re going to make a run for your car,” Labeck said. “Have your keys ready.”

It took me a panic-stricken second to find the keys, buried deep in my jeans pocket.

We crept through the woods, and it was like paintball all over again, except this time the hit would be a spine-shattering bullet, not a blotch of food coloring and gelatin.

The scrub pines ended and we emerged in the parking lot. It was empty except for a pickup truck, the silver car, and in the far corner, an Escort-sized lump of snow I assumed was Pig.

We ran for the car. Suddenly Labeck went down. The rifle clap rang out a
millisecond later. It took my befuddled brain another second to register the fact that Labeck had been shot.

Chapter Thirty-one

Objects in mirror may be creepier than they appear.

—Maguire’s Maxims

Labeck was up instantly, dragging me along. More thunderous claps, and now bullets were spraying into the parking lot gravel, creating small, snowy geysers. Luckily, I hadn’t locked the car. We tumbled in and I was jabbing the ignition, punching it into
drive
, and goosing the gas before our doors even swung shut. Labeck reached across and switched on the wipers. A bullet drilled through the rear window, buzzed past my ear with a
fft
like a cricket fart, and cracked the front windshield. Another shot spiderwebbed the driver’s side mirror. I still couldn’t believe that the guy who’d made me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches last night was now trying to kill us.

Pig galumphed over a row of concrete parking abutments, bucketed in and out of a ditch, and skidded as we hit the highway pavement.

“Left, left, left!” Labeck yelled frantically, adding his own strength to the wheel as we slewed into a hard ninety-degree turn, the rear tires shimmying before finally clawing in. It was as though Pig sensed the danger, because for the first time in its life, Pig flew! Tree branches raked its sides and ruts shook its frame, but Pig rocketed along as though its tires were fiery wings. Something must have jarred loose when the bullets hit, because the car’s heater suddenly thumped into action, pouring out delicious, hot, dusty air that made me sneeze.

“Where are we?” I asked, desperately scanning the landscape for a house, a farm, a place where we could pull in and get help. But there were no signs of civilization—only trees, trees, and more trees, crowding right up to the edge of the road. We must be in the state forest.

“Just keep driving,” Labeck said, leaning over and clicking my seat belt into place. “This road’s got to go someplace.”

“He shot you,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling. Astonishingly, my
hands were steady on the wheel, although my insides were a mass of quivering, icy worms. “We need to get you to a hospital.” The dashboard shed enough light to reveal the blood blossoming on Ben’s thigh. In my mind’s eye I could see a hospital emergency room, all bright lights and efficient doctors, one of those lovely modern cubicles where they’d pump Labeck full of painkillers and stuff tubes up his nose. “Use your phone—call 911!”

Ben patted frantically through his pockets. “Must have lost it in the woods.”

“Mine’s in my purse.”

He hooked my purse out of the backseat and rooted around. “Can’t find it.”

My heart sank. If my phone was also missing we were in big trouble. “How bad is your leg?” I asked

“I don’t know.” His voice was tight. “The bullet went right through. I don’t think any bones are broken.”

“We’ve got to stop the bleeding. Use that scarf in the backseat—it’s in the shopping bag.” It was the gray scarf I’d bought for him, the one he’d refused to wear.

He snagged it, squinting at the price tag. “You paid twenty bucks for this thing?”

“For God’s sake, Ben! Wrap it around your leg as tight as you can. I’ll do it.” I lightened up on the gas and started looking for a place to pull over.

“No—don’t stop! Turn on your fog lights.”

I cut down the headlights so the snow wouldn’t throw our own glare back and kept my foot on the gas, driving way too fast for the slick conditions. The road coiled and looped like a sackful of snakes, but eventually, I figured, it had to hook up with a highway.

Then I caught the glint of headlights in my rearview mirror. It was
them
! Who else would be out on a night like this? Had they spotted us? I pressed down on the gas pedal until we were going dangerously fast.

The road spooled endlessly on, the trees thinning as the road climbed until it was winding along the spine of a high, narrow ridge. On a clear day the view would have been spectacular, but now it just gave the wind free rein to buffet the car. Pig began to falter, its tires struggling to find traction on the slippery slopes. Even with the wipers going full blast, the snow was so thick that visibility was limited to a few yards.

Labeck turned around and looked over his shoulder. “Moving up on us.”

The vehicle behind us was coming up with alarming speed. Soon it was close enough for me to make it out in the rearview mirror—it was the pickup truck I’d seen earlier in the parking lot. It appeared to have been patched together out of spare parts from an auto junkyard, but its weight gave it better traction than Pig, and its larger engine lent it more power. It was gaining on us by the second.

We crested a crag and pounded down the other side. Seconds later, the pickup bounced over the top and came roaring up behind. Now, when I risked a panic-stricken glance in the mirror, I saw three heads silhouetted in the truck’s front seat. Petrov and Gozzy must have recovered sufficiently from their charbroiling to join the pursuit. Gozzy was driving, which probably meant the bucket of bolts belonged to him. The road twisted and we lost them for a moment. I stepped on the gas.

“You’re doing great,” Labeck said.

Fate always punishes compliments. The truck roared up behind us, closing the gap. Suddenly it surged forward and rammed us, its snout crumpling our trunk, smashing out our rear window, and whiplashing our bodies. Shrieking in panic, I somehow managed to wrestle the car back onto the road.

Pig still had game. I slammed the gas to the floor and the pickup receded behind us. Frigid air swirled in through the shattered window, whipping my hair into my eyes. We swung up a ridge and discovered that the road sloped downhill from here, emerging a couple of miles farther along onto a two-lane highway. A string of pinprick lights like fireflies were strung out behind a sluggishly moving beast with flashing orange lights. A snowplow! Cars, cellphones, salvation!

Our pursuers must have realized this, too, because they came barreling up behind. The truck slammed us again, and the impact was so brutal my teeth bit into my tongue. Labeck flung out an arm to protect me, but it was too late; all effort was now too late. Pig smashed through a guardrail and soared off the road, flying for a few exhilarating, bladder-bursting seconds before bouncing to the ground, battering through brush, and tobogganing down a steep, wooded slope.