Gun Lake (40 page)

For a few minutes they drove through the woods in silence. Kurt kept his body and his eyes facing Lonnie. He thought of Craig’s gun accidentally going off and knew it could happen again, that Lonnie could drive over something big and accidentally fire off a round into Kurt’s leg. At least the gun wasn’t pointed at his face. Not now, anyway

“How’d you find us?”

“I have my ways,” Lonnie said.

“Did you have to get beat up to find us?”

“Some people ask for trouble. Some idiots in a local dive didn’t know who they were messin’ with.”

“Looks like you really gave it to them,” Kurt said in full sarcasm.

“Why don’t you shut your face.”

“What’s the point anyway?”

“The point? Of killing you? Let’s just call it satisfaction.”

“I assume you’ll do the same with Sean and the others.”

“Just Sean. Wes, Craig, Oz—I don’t care about them.”

Kurt looked at Lonnie and noticed the wild look about him. His hair looked unkempt, his eyes glassy and twitchy. He licked his dry lips too many times.

“Though, I have to say, that pretty little girl you’ve been talking to—I might have to check her out.”

Kurt opened his mouth just slightly, about to say something, then holding back. But Lonnie had seen him react. He laughed.

“That’s right. I’ve been watching you. You been enjoying life, huh?”

Kurt restrained the curses surging through his head, the anger building up in him.

“Yeah, I’ve been having some thoughts, you know,” Lonnie said with a smirk. “Bad thoughts. Wanna know some of them?”

Lonnie began to share some of these vile thoughts, and Kurt interrupted him, wanting to shut him up.

“Wanna know what Sean said?”

“What?” Lonnie asked, not following his train of thought.

“When he took you out. To deal with you. He said you begged for your life.”

Lonnie cursed. “No way.”

“Oh, yeah. He said you cried like a little girl.”

Lonnie cursed again, kept his eyes on the road, then chuckled.

“You’re making that up. Trying to mess with my head.”

“That’s what he told all of us,” Kurt said.

Lonnie looked over at him, his black eye a bit swollen, the grin revealing a broken, yellowish tooth.

“Doesn’t matter what lies Sean told you.”

“You’re not going to find him.”

“Is this the ‘distract the driver while I figure out a way from being shot’ conversation? It ain’t gonna happen. Look at this gun. Look at it.”

Lonnie lifted the three-fifty-seven magnum and pointed it toward Kurt’s face.

“Sad, ain’t it? This is going to be the last thing you see before you meet your Maker.”

Lonnie looked his way, then for a quick second shifted his glance onto the road ahead. Kurt’s clenched fist hammered Lonnie’s arm. The gun roared, shattering the windshield in front of them. A thousand pellets of safety glass dropped around them as Lonnie struggled to control the car and the gun. Kurt leaned in closer, threw his weight against the smaller man, and began to pound Lonnie’s face with his fist. Lonnie struggled, tried to free his gun hand. Kurt rammed his hand against Lonnie’s already bruised face. He pounded the black eye and heard Lonnie’s bellow. The car, meanwhile, with the blasted windshield and glass all around them, slowed down and curved toward the ditch on the left-hand side of the road.

Kurt punched Lonnie’s face a couple more times and then reached for the magnum. They struggled, but Kurt managed to pry it away from Lonnie’s grasp. He backed up in the seat,
pressed himself against the passenger door, and turned the gun on Lonnie. He sat up and put his legs between the two of them.

“Get out or I swear I’ll use this!” he shouted.

His eyes burned, and he wiped his left hand against his face. His fingers revealed blood. Some of the glass must have cut his face.

“Get out!” he shouted again.

Lonnie, woozy and breathing heavily, found the door handle and clambered out of the truck. Kurt followed through the same door, wrestling with his impulses. He could feel the anger racing through his body and wanted to let it out on Lonnie. He wanted to take the butt of this gun and whip the other man to unconsciousness—or worse.

For a few moments, Kurt thought he was actually going to do it. He was ready to pop off a couple rounds and end this miserable man’s life. This life that nobody would miss, a life that had filled others with nothing but pain. Nobody would care if Lonnie Jones was no longer around. Kurt would be doing the world a favor.

He held the gun and pointed it at Lonnie’s head and saw the desperate, defeated face looking back at him, ready to accept his fate, ready to meet his Maker.

Meet his Maker
.

Kurt’s breathing slowed, and he collected his thoughts and knew this was stupid and wrong. He couldn’t just shoot Lonnie, regardless of whether or not Lonnie deserved it. He lowered the gun and thought for a second.

He needed Sean. Sean would know what to do with this. Sean could handle this.

“Take off your belt,” he told Lonnie.

“Why?”

“I’m going to tie your hands.”

“Huh?”

“I swear, you do anything, I’ll use this. Give me an excuse and I will.”

Lonnie laughed and cursed and called him a name. “If you were going to use it, you already would’ve.”

“There’s a difference between the two of us. Put your hands behind your back.”

Kurt told him to put his belt around his hands. After Lonnie did this, Kurt tightened it up while still holding the gun in his other hand.

“You really believe that, don’t you? That there’s a difference between us?”

“I know it,” Kurt said.

“There’s really isn’t, you know. There’s no difference at all. You and I come from the same DNA. The same makeup. There’s no changing us.”

“Shut up,” Kurt said, telling him to get in the back of the truck.

He wiped away the glass on the driver’s seat, turned the keys, and put the truck in reverse. He was in a hurry to get the truck back on the road. Nobody could see them like this. He needed to drive back to the cabin and leave Lonnie there.

And then Sean could handle the rest.

THE FORTY-FIVE LAY on the table.

Loaded. Waiting. Pulsing.

Paul stared at it and couldn’t believe what he was thinking.

He thought of Bow, the bullmastiff from his childhood.

He thought of Grace, who had taught him to look forward, taught him to help, if not to hope for salvation.

He picked up the forty-five. It felt heavy in his hand. Heavy, but not too heavy. Not too heavy to squeeze the trigger. Once. Twice. However many times it took.

His son had come back from the dead, vowing to kill him, bent on revenge for things that Paul had done and things that Paul had failed to do. And Paul knew that Sean would keep his
vow. Paul didn’t know his son well, but knew enough—enough to know that he was in trouble. Others were in trouble too. Unless Paul acted quickly.

Paul looked at the handgun.

He didn’t want the cops involved. He hated them almost as much as he despised what his son was doing to him and to others.

But do you hate him? Can you hate a son you once loved and wanted?

He didn’t know and didn’t want to know. All he knew was that the wheel had turned again. It was a calm, warm afternoon on Gun Lake, and Paul Hedges was holding a forty-five and contemplating shooting his one and only son.

And then what? Would there be another bullet with his name on it?

Perhaps.

It didn’t matter anyway. He was old and had lived his life, and for every grace, for every Grace in his life, there had been a hundred other failures—including the ones Sean resented so bitterly. Paul had no illusions that he was innocent of Sean’s charges. He expected to die soaking in a bath of regrets.

No hope. No looking back with satisfaction. No sigh of relief.

But before he left the world, could he perhaps give the world a little of what it needed? A little justice, a little atonement, if not a little grace?

He had given the world a son who had robbed and killed and brutalized innocent people. A son who was out of control and increasingly dangerous. A son who would be the death of him. One way or the other, Paul knew, Sean Norton would be the death of him.

The question was, could Paul act now and help the wheel along a little?

He stood up, determined.

It has to be done
, he told himself.
And I’m the one who has to do it
.

You couldn’t even kill a dog
.

That pain still stuck like a burr in his memory—that his daddy had been the one to shoot his dog. Paul had been responsible
for Bow. He had loved the dog, even when Bow turned on him. He should’ve been the one to do what had to be done.

Was he stronger now? Could he actually go through with this?

He cursed to himself and said a resolute yes. He stuck the gun in his belt and slipped his shirt over it.

He would take care of this here and now and it would end and then Paul would face the consequences. The people who were being victimized would be free and alive, and they could go on. And maybe, just maybe, Paul could redeem the mistake of giving life to Sean and then leaving him, letting him turn into the man he had become.

Like father, like son
.

If that was the case, then the father would win out.

He thought of something his own father used to tell him, half joking: “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.”

That was exactly what Paul was about to do.

“YOU STILL DON’T KNOW why you’re in Michigan, do you?”

Kurt told Lonnie to shut up. He just laughed defiantly.

“Sean still hasn’t told you, huh?”

“I said shut your face.”

“You don’t know about his father, then?”

Kurt looked over at Lonnie as rain began to spatter through the shattered windshield. “What?”

“Don’t want me to shut my face now, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I did a little investigating after dear buddy Sean tried to off me in the train yard.” Lonnie used a creative curse with Sean’s name. “Yeah, you know, he had us scoping out
his father’s
home in Illinois. That’s why we went there. His father used to live in Texas.
Moved from there to the suburbs of Illinois. All of this, the whole thing, was following his father. He has a different name. Paul Hedges. Sean took his mother’s maiden name.”

Kurt continued driving, listening, his mind beyond surprise or anger, just soaking in the information and wondering what to do with it.

“Wanna know why you guys came up here to Gun Lake? It wasn’t to get away. I don’t think good ol’ Sean is as smart as the magazines and media give him credit for. Staying up here hasn’t been about keeping out of sight. It’s been about vengeance. Or something like that.”

“Are you saying Sean’s father is up here?”

“Paul Hedges. He’s got himself a nice little place up here. Probably decided to come up here the moment he heard Sean and the rest of us broke out of Stag.”

Kurt cursed.

“Yeah, sucks, huh? So don’t go off making me the villain.”

“Sean didn’t try to kill me.”

“Give him time. He’ll do it eventually.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Lonnie laughed. “Whole thing’s blown up in your face, huh? Betrayal’s an ugly thing.”

“So are you.”

Again Lonnie just laughed. Kurt didn’t say another word to him. They were almost back to the cabin. He would discover the truth.

As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter anyway. It might have mattered a couple of days ago. But not now.

One way or the other, something bad was bound to happen. Craig shooting himself. Lonnie coming back like this. Sean stalking his old man. One way or another, they would have imploded like they were doing.

It doesn’t matter
.

He had finished the letter. Nothing else mattered now.

Including his own life.

OSSIE AND SEAN had been discussing where Kurt might have gone and if he had taken off when the truck with the shot-out windshield drove up to the cabin. Kurt got out first, aiming a large handgun at Lonnie’s head.

“Get out,” Kurt ordered him after opening the door.

Lonnie had his hands tied behind his back and slid out of the car. He wore a smug grin that he shined at Sean.

“We thought you’d taken off,” Sean said to Kurt.

“Just taking a little ride with an old friend.”

“Just had to come back for more, huh?” Sean asked.

Lonnie nodded, walked close to Sean, then spit in his face.

Kurt grabbed Lonnie’s hands and jerked him back, hard enough to send him to the ground. Sean wiped the spit off his face and stared spitefully at the younger man.

“He was going to take me out and shoot me,” Kurt told Ossie, who had come to stand next to them.

“What’d you do?”

“Fought back.”

“Good for you,” Sean said, standing over Lonnie. “Why would you want to come back?”

“Why don’t you tell them what’s going on?”

Sean looked down at Lonnie as if prepared to kick him in the face, then asked what Lonnie was talking about.

“You know,” Lonnie said. “Someone with the name Paul Hedges. Ring a bell?”

“Is that what this has been?” Kurt asked Sean.

“Don’t listen to him.”

Lonnie cursed. He still sat on the dirt, shaking his head, mouthing obscenities.

“Sean—”

“What?”

“Is it true? About your father?”

“So? What’s it matter?”

“What are you guys talking about?” Ossie asked.

“Stay out of this.”

Sean could tell that something in Kurt looked different. His voice was frantic, and he sounded out of breath. He was racing—his mind and his heart. Revving. Flying high.

“What’d you do with him?” Kurt asked.

“Nothing.”

“What are you
going
to do with him?”

“Kill him,” Sean said without any hesitation.

“And the boy that saw us and his mom. What happens to them?”

“I’ll handle them.”

“Sean—”

Sean looked up, stared into the barrel of the big handgun Kurt had suddenly aimed at him.