The Border Part Seven (6 page)

“Please let me go,” Bob whimpered. “I’ll do anything.”

Smiling, Luke adjusted his grip on the gun and prepared to fire.

“Stop!” a voice shouted in the distance.

Luke turned and saw two figures racing across the dirt, with a car parked over by the road. “Oh hell,” he muttered, as he realized that he recognized the closest of the figures. “No, this is ridiculous…”

“Stop!” Beth shouted again, reaching them quickly and dropping to her knees, pushing the gun away from Bob’s head. “Don’t shoot him! Please don’t shoot him!”

“Mrs. Hague, I told you -”

“Don’t shoot him,” she said again, with tears in her eyes as she reached out and put a hand on Luke’s right hand, forcing the gun toward the dirt. “It’s off, I’m calling it off, it was all a terrible mistake!”

“You can’t just turn up like this,” Luke replied, turning as Ben edged closer. Raising the gun, he aimed straight at Ben’s face. “Who the hell are -”

“No!” Beth shouted, lunging at Luke and knocking him down. The gun fired once, hitting the wall of the abandoned gas station and ricocheting off one of the old gas pumps, but Beth quickly reached down and bit Luke’s wrist, forcing him to let go of the weapon with a yelp of pain. Scrambling for a moment, Beth pushed the gun aside and then rolled away.

“Well this is a hell of a mess,” Ben muttered, reaching down and taking the gun.

“That’s mine!” Luke shouted, trying to grab the gun.

Ben took a step back and aimed the weapon at his face. “Is it?” he asked with a smile. “Is it really? Well, then I guess you’ll just have to try to take it off me, won’t you?”

“Oh God,” Bob whimpered, starting to crawl away. “Oh dear God, somebody save me.”

“We already saved you,” Beth told him, before spotting Candy’s collapsed form nearby. “Who the hell is that?”

“I think we have a problem here,” Ben said, still aiming the gun at Luke. “Fortunately, I’m a great believer in the power of talking to defuse difficult situations. Words are so much better than bullets, don’t you think?”

“I have a job to do,” Luke replied, clearly watching the gun and waiting for a moment to strike.

“Not anymore,” Ben continued. “You get to keep the money, but you also get to walk away from here without having to actually kill your target, is that understood? No-one here will ever tell anyone what happened, I’ll make sure of that, but in return you need to get the hell out of town and stay away. Do we have a deal, or is this going to have to get more complicated?”

“Crazy, unprofessional idiots,” Luke muttered.

“Do we have a deal?” Ben asked again, stepping closer with the gun still raised. “My brother died last night and I’m not in the mood to see more death, but if anyone here has to take a hit, my friend, it’s gonna be you.”

“You don’t have the balls,” Luke replied.

“Don’t I?” Ben paused. “You think I couldn’t blow your head off and then dig a grave out here? I don’t mean a shallow grave, the kind that might get discovered pretty quickly, I mean a full-on six-footer that no-one’s ever gonna find. Look into my eyes and try to work out what kind of man I am, because I can assure you, dealing with your bloodied corpse would be, at best, a minor inconvenience. On a day like this, it might even be a welcome distraction. So look into my eyes and work out what you see, and then base your decision on what you think you’ve learned.”

Luke opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out.

“You’re a killer,” Ben added. “Men like us, we recognize one another.”

Luke paused, before finally nodding. “Okay,” he said, his tone having become a little more reserved, “I’ll go.” He turned to Beth. “But I’m keeping the money!”

“Just leave,” she stammered. “Please, just get out of here and never come back.”

Getting to his feet, Luke began to dust himself down. “This is what you get,” he muttered, “when you work for cheap. Crazies. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted anyone from this place. I swear to God, if I hadn’t been trying to get myself established, I’d have turned the job down cold.” He held his hand out toward Ben. “My gun, if you don’t mind.”

Ben shook his head.

“It’s
my
gun,” Luke pointed out.

“I’m sure you have others.”

Sighing, Luke looked down at Bob. “You’re lucky, my friend,” he explained. “Another five seconds, and you would have been dead. Your brains would have been sprayed across the ground.”

Trembling with fear, Bob turned to Beth.

“Get out of here,” Ben said, gesturing toward Luke’s car. “There’s nothing left for you to do in Bowley, and I’d strongly suggest that you keep away for the foreseeable future. You’re going to drive away, and I’m going to drive with you until the next town, just to make sure that you’re gone, and then you’ll drop me off at a bus stop and I’ll let you go once I’m sure you won’t show up again. I’m sure you understand that I need to keep my family safe. Plus, after everything has happened over the past twenty-four hours, I could really use a chance to let off some steam.”

“I don’t need a chaperone,” Luke replied.

“Just let him leave,” Beth said. “Ben, please…”

“I know guys like this,” Ben continued. “There’s just a spark of indignation in him, some kind of misplaced sense of honor, and I don’t want him thinking he can come back and punish us for humiliating him. We’re doing this my way. Beth, take Bob back to town, take his lady friend too and make sure she’ll keep her mouth shut at the hospital. I don’t care how you do it, but she’s the weak link and she needs shutting up. Make her lie.”

“She will,” Bob stammered, “I swear, I’ll -”

“Shut up!” Ben shouted, turning to him with the gun raised. “Bob, I’m telling you, you’re the most annoying son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met in my life. If I had to randomly shoot one person here right now, it would most definitely be you.”

“It’d be
him
, surely,” Bob replied, pointing toward Luke. “Wouldn’t it?”

Ben shook his head.

“Jesus,” Bob muttered, looking down at the ground. “I thought we were family, Ben.”

“Get in your car,” Ben continued, aiming the gun back at Luke. “Like I said, we’re going one town over before I let you head off on your way.”

“This is humiliating,” Luke muttered, making his way to his car. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Not really,” Ben replied, “and I don’t care. Just get in the car and drive.”

“What did you do?” Bob asked, turning to Beth. “What the hell is all of this?”

“I…” She paused, before turning and heading over to Candy. Crouching next to her, she took a look at her bloodied ankle before rolling her onto her back. “Can you hear me?” she asked after a moment. “I’m a nurse, we’re going to get you to hospital and make sure you’re just fine.” She smiled as she saw a flicker of movement from Candy’s eyes. “It’s gonna hurt when we move you,” she explained, “but there’s really nothing I can do about that right now, I’m sorry.” Reaching under her, she adjusted her grip and then finally began to lift Candy up.

“Am I…” Candy whispered. “Am I dying?”

“Definitely not. You’re going to have a decent scar, though.”

“That’s cool, I -” She winced with pain. “I don’t mind a scar if it’s got a fun story behind it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bob said, hurrying over to them as Beth began to carry Candy to the car, “what the hell are we going to do?”

“We’re going to get her to the hospital,” Beth replied. “You’re going to drive.”

“But what do we tell them?” Bob asked. “She’s been shot, for God’s sake!”

“We’ll make something up. We’ll come up with a lie!”

Bob stopped and watched for a moment as his wife carried Candy toward the car. “Did you really hire a hit-man to kill me?” he called after her.

“Not now, Bob. I need you to drive the car!”

“But…” He paused, before turning and watching as the other car drove away, with Ben and Luke inside. Finally, sighing, he ran after Beth.

***

“So how far are we going?” Luke asked, keeping his eyes on the road as they made their way far from Bowley. “How far’s the next town?”

“Not far,” Ben replied, looking straight ahead with the gun resting on his lap.

“But when do we -”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

Luke paused, before glancing briefly at the gun.

“And don’t do that,” Ben added.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t look at the gun. It makes me nervous.”

“That stupid bitch hired me to -”

“That stupid bitch is my sister,” Ben said firmly, interrupting her. “You might want to think about your language in this situation.”

“I could get her in a lot of trouble, you know,” Luke continued. “She tried to have her husband murdered, she could get a lot of jail time for that.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Of course it’s not. I won’t
actually
tell anyone, but I
could
!” He paused for a moment, as they passed another car headed in the opposite direction. “I think the best thing for all of us will be to put this behind us,” he continued. “I have a business to build up, and I need to get some clients who aren’t completely…” He tried to think of the right word.

“Careful,” Ben said after a moment.

“You’ve got to admit, your sister’s kind of flaky.”

“You might be right about that.”

“How did you find us, anyway?”

“I figured you’d take him not too far out of town, and there’s a main road running to the north so I thought you’d head south, to get as far away from civilization as possible. Then we just started driving and relied on pure luck.”

“Jesus,” Luke replied. “You sound like someone who’s done this sort of thing before.”

“Not quite,” Ben muttered.

“So when you -”

“Stop a moment,” Ben added. “I need to pee.”

“Seriously?”

“I need to pee,” he said again, aiming the gun at Luke. “Stop the goddamn car.”

Sighing, Ben pulled over at the side of the empty road. There were no buildings in sight for miles around, and even the town of Bowley had disappeared far behind them.

“Give me the keys,” Ben said, opening the door on his side.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not getting out for a pee and leaving you sitting here with the goddamn keys. Do you think I’m
that
stupid?”

“Fine.” Luke switched off the engine and handed the keys to him. “I can look after the gun for you, though,” he added with a faint smile.

“You’re hilarious,” Ben replied, stepping out and leaving the door open as he took a few steps away from the car. Pausing, he looked around as a light breeze blew across the plain. “When I was a kid,” he continued after a moment, “I used to come out here all the time, just to get away from the rest of the world. My brother, he was this really annoying, holier-than-thou little…” He paused, and for a moment he caught himself remembering the old days with Jack. “I spent hours and hours trying to avoid him, day after day, and now, all I want is thirty seconds to tell him what I really thought about him. Not some fake, over-the-top garbage about truly loving him as a brother… I mean, I did love him, I still do, but there was also a lot about him that annoyed me. And when he died, he most likely still thought that I was the one holding the knife.”

He looked down at the gun.

“Do you have a brother, Luke?” he asked after a moment.

He waited.

No reply.

Turning, he saw that Luke was simply watching him from the driver’s seat.

“You know what?” Ben said after a moment. “I was about to tell you all about Jack, but there’s no point. It’d just be a load of self-serving garbage.”

He stood in silence for a moment.

“Are you…” Luke paused. “So are you gonna pee or not?”

Ben stared at him, before raising the gun. “I was lying. I don’t need to pee.”

“She’s going to be fine,” Beth explained as she took a seat next to Bob in the hospital corridor. “The bullet didn’t do much damage, it really only grazed her, so even the scar is looking touch-and-go. She’s also an extremely good liar, although I guess that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you. She said someone tried to mug her, and she ran, and…” She paused. “If I hadn’t been there myself, I’d totally believe her. The lie she told was certainly more believable than the truth.”

Looking down at his hands, Bob couldn’t even meet his wife’s gaze.

“It’s nice of her,” Beth continued. “To lie for me on Christmas Day, I mean. To lie for us. Especially when it’s kind of slightly my fault she got shot.” She opened her mouth to say more, before falling silent as a sense of shock began to claw its way through her chest. “Oh God,” she whispered finally, closing her eyes and bowing her head, trying to find some way to reset her thoughts.

They sat in silence for a moment.

“Kind of?” Bob said eventually, his voice trembling with shock. “Slightly?” He waited for a reply. “Is that really all you’ve got to say for yourself?”

“It just happened that way.”

“Did you -” He turned to her. “Please, Beth, tell me it’s not true. This has to be a dream, or some kind of misunderstanding. Tell me you didn’t actually hire someone to…”

She paused, before nodding. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“I don’t know!” he hissed, exasperated. “I just found out that my own wife tried to have me killed, I’m kind of struggling to process everything right now!”

“Because life would be so much easier if you weren’t here.”

He stared at her, clearly aghast at the words he’d just heard.

“Do you think I don’t know what you were doing?” she asked. “All those times you worked late, all those times you popped out for five minutes and didn’t come home until a couple of hours later. All those times you kept your phone real close, even when you went to the bathroom. Jesus, Bob, I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what you’ve been doing.”

Silence fell again.

“Having an affair,” he said finally, “is a little different to hiring an assassin. In the grand scheme of things, I mean. There’s a slight moral imbalance there.”

“I know.”

“I mean, they both hint at character flaws. I’m not saying I’m completely innocent here, but… Hiring someone to kill me? Seriously?”

“It just sort of happened step by step,” she replied. “It’s much easier to cross a moral line when you inch closer slowly, making lots of little decisions instead of one big one. Somehow, I just ended up at this point.” She paused. “Are you going to go to the police and have me arrested?”

“I…” He paused. “No. No, I’m not going to do that. For Lucy’s sake.”

“I don’t want her to know about any of this.”

“Neither do I.”

“So now we’re back to square one,” she continued, glancing along the corridor. “I’m not even going to ask you not to see that woman again. Hell, I doubt she’ll want anything to do with either of us again, but even so, you’d just go looking for someone else.”

She waited for a reply.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” she asked. “You
would
look for someone else, wouldn’t you?”

Again, she waited.

“You…” He paused. “You tried to have me killed.”

“Not really. I teased myself with the idea, but when I realized it might actually happen, I came to stop it.”

“Forgive me if that doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”

“Well,” she continued, leaning back in her chair, “it’s Christmas, and I suppose we should act happy for Lucy’s sake. Everything else, we can deal with in a few days’ time.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. “I was almost executed, Candy was actually shot! That was a real-life gangland thug you hired! Jesus Christ, Beth, do you have any idea what you’ve done? How can I even turn my back on you for a second? How do I know you won’t try to strangle me or stab me or…” His voice trailed off for a moment, before he leaned forward with his head in his hands. “Oh God, this is insane. I never thought you were this kind of person.”

“Me neither,” she replied, staring at the noticeboard on the opposite wall. “I guess maybe it runs in the family.”

***

Stopping at the kitchen drawer, Ben took a moment to wrap the gun in a towel before heading to the sink and starting to wash his hands. After a few seconds, he turned the lever on the side of the faucet and felt the water heating up, but he kept his hands in the stream even though his skin was starting to burn. Finally, unable to stand the pain for a moment longer, he pulled his hands back and examined them closely.

No blood.

“Hey.”

Turning, he saw Jane standing in the doorway. Her face was pale and her eyes were red-raw, and she had a slightly vacant expression, as if just walking and talking was a huge effort.

“I…” Ben paused. “Um, how are the kids?”

“Oliver’s crying. Stuart seems to be getting angry, I’m not sure what to do about that. I guess they’re both in shock. Your mother’s talking to them.” She made her way over to the breakfast bar and looked at the towel on the counter, almost as if she instinctively knew that there was a gun inside. “Where did you and Beth rush off to?”

“Do you really want to know?”

She nodded.

“We…” He paused again. “We had to go and stop the hit-man Beth had hired, before he executed Bob out by the old Sumper gas station. We got there just in time.”

“That’s good,” Jane replied, as if the news didn’t shock her at all.

“And then…”

“And then what?”

“And then I took the hit-man further out of town.”

She stared at him. “I see,” she said finally.

“And -”

“I get it,” she added.

He paused. “Thank you.”

“You did what you had to do in order to protect your family,” she continued. “You knew Beth wouldn’t have been safe.”

“The guy would have come back for her,” he replied. “I know how these things work, he couldn’t risk having people know who he was. He’d have come back and killed her, and Bob and that other girl, and me too. In the circumstances -”

“One life instead of four,” she said, interrupting him. “That seems like a fair trade.”

“It wasn’t quite so easy.”

“But you still managed to do it?”

He paused, before nodding.

“Well,” she continued, “I hope you dealt with everything properly. I really don’t want to have to deal with some hit-man’s corpse showing up.”

“Of course not, but…” He watched her for a moment. “You’re okay with this?”

She shrugged.

“Jane, listen -”

“I just don’t want to have to think about it,” she continued. “I don’t see any kind of threat to anyone, and like I said, you did what you had to do in order to protect your family. Right now, I completely understand that impulse.”

“I’m not done yet.”

“I guessed.”

“I have to…” He paused, before looking over at the towel with the gun inside. “I have to go and do something I should have done a long time ago.”

She nodded.

“I’ll make it as neat as possible,” he continued, “but -”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No way.”

“You can’t stop me,” she told him. “I’m an officer of the law, remember? The Border has to be closed down, it has to be ripped out from the heart of this town and destroyed. We’ve let it fester long enough.”

“We should have done this years ago.”

“We should.”

“Jack would still be alive.”

She nodded.

“So would a lot of people,” he added.

“We can’t change the past,” she replied, “we can only change the future.”

“Are you going to get Alex involved?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure? He might -”

“This is so far beyond Alex’s ability to understand,” she continued, “that I don’t think he’d have a chance. You and I know about that place, Ben. We’re the ones who should do something about it.”

“Well, I’ve got a gun now,” he pointed out.

“I’ve got a gun too, and access to a couple more.”

“So what do we do?” he asked. “Go in shooting, guns ablaze, and keep on firing until the Border has been cleared out?”

“I’ve heard of worse plans.”

“Do you have a map of the place?”

She shook her head. “Do you?”

“I know the first two levels pretty well. Beyond that, no.”

“We’ll figure it out.” She paused, before heading to the door. “I’ll get those guns.”

“When are we going?” he asked.

“Tonight.”

“And then this’ll be over, right?”

She turned to him. “I’m not going to let the Border last any longer. The things that happen down there, they ripple up into the town. Even the people who don’t know about it, they feel it in their souls. Our children…” She paused. “It’s too late for us, Ben. Whatever’s driving the Border, it got into our souls long ago and froze, and the cracks are too wide to be repaired. But Stuart and Oliver, and Lucy… There’s still time for them. They don’t have to grow up with that place under their feet. Think about it, Stuart and Oliver would probably end up becoming customers and Lucy… Well, I don’t even want to think about that. No-one else is going to stop it, so we have to.”

He paused, shocked by the change in her tone, before finally nodding.

“So you’re with me?” she asked.

“I’m with you.”

“Meet me in the town square at ten tonight,” she continued. “It’s Christmas, hopefully the place won’t be quite so full, we’ll manage to get through it a little more easily. Either way, we’re going to finish the job.”

He nodded again.

“So get some sleep,” she added, leaving the room. “Or rest. Whatever.”

Left alone, Ben paused before turning to look at the towel. He’d always known this day would come, but now it had arrived and he felt torn. There was still a chance to run, to go back to Paula and pretend that Bowley didn’t even exist, to go away and this time to stay away forever. At the same time, he knew he had to finish what he’d started all those years ago when he’d defended himself against Garland Packer. Opening the towel, he took hold of the gun and began to figure out where he could get extra ammunition on Christmas Day.