Лори Касс: Booking The Crook

It was now or never.

I shoved the chair away from me, spinning the seat so that it would make as much noise as possible. I was still on my knees, trying to stay out of his line of sight. This was the first tricky part. I needed a few seconds, just a few seconds was all, but wasn’t sure I’d get them. If Stewart kept turning around, he’d see me. If he had the gun handy, it was all over. If, if, if . . .

Stewart’s head snapped around. “What the—” His gaze fastened on the chair. It zoomed toward the passenger’s seat, thumped against it, and toppled to the floor.

I was already moving, but Eddie was faster.

“MRR!!” He jumped on top of the passenger’s seat headrest and faced Stewart. “MRR!!” He spat and hissed and growled.

“Shut up,” Stewart said. “Why do people have cats anyway? Dogs are the only pets people should have. Cats are useless, all they do is— urk!! ”

I tightened the bungee cord I’d slid around his neck. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said breathlessly, hauling hard. “I’d say he was quite useful in distracting you while I snuck up from behind.”

“You . . . can’t . . . do . . . this,” Stewart gasped.

“Pretty sure you’re wrong about that. Oh, look, your face is turning a lovely shade of red. Do you think it’ll turn blue soon? How about I take your gun and then I’ll think about not choking you to death.”

“It’s . . . in the . . . SUV.”

I tsk ’d at him. “Try again,” I said, pulling a teensy bit harder, which made me feel queasy.

“Pocket,” he said in a . . . well, in a choked voice. “Right pocket.”

I put both ends of the bungee cord in one hand and reached for the gun with the other. “Oh, my favorite, a Beretta. Is that the PX4 Compact? How handy that you have the same kind of gun I always use on the gun range. Now we’ll—”

Stewart jabbed out with his elbow and knocked the gun out of my hand.

I dropped the bungee cord and lunged for the gun. Stewart was doing the same thing, but I was ahead of him, reaching. He grabbed my ankle and hauled me backward. “No little girl is going to get the best of me,” he snarled, and elbowed me in the ribs so hard that I cried out in pain.

“MRR!!!”

“ Oww! Get off me, cat!!”

Stewart’s grip on my ankle released and I scrabbled the last few feet for the gun. When I had it in my hands, I kept moving away from Stewart, farther out of his reach, but I needn’t have gone to the effort, because when I turned around, Stewart was still wiping the blood out of his eyes, proof that Mom was right when she’d told me that scalp wounds bleed a lot.

Eddie, for his part, was already sitting on the console licking his front paws.

“Here.” I tossed Stewart the roll of fishing line I’d picked up from the floor, very pleased that we’d started lending ice fishing equipment that winter. “Tie your ankles together.”

“I will not.” He rubbed his sleeve over his face and started to get to his feet. “Because you’re not going to use that gun. Even if you know how to use it, you wouldn’t be able to shoot a human being. The pain you’d inflict? The mess you’d make?” He shook his head. “Just don’t see it happening.”

The gun’s barrel wavered as I thought about it. Maybe he was right. But then I thought about what he’d done to Rowan. What he’d done to Neil and Collier and Anya. What he’d tried to do to me. What he almost certainly would have done to Eddie.

I clicked off the safety and pointed the gun at his chest. “Are you willing to take that chance?” My voice was calm. Measured. Confident. “Sit down and tie your ankles.”

For the merest fraction of a second, he hesitated. And then he did what I’d told him to do.

Ten minutes later, I’d bound his hands together, taken his phone and car keys out of his coat pockets, and was starting his SUV with Eddie at my side. It didn’t take much to get out of the ditch and then we were up and away.

At the top of the next hill, I called 911 and did my best to tell them where I was and what had happened. As soon as the dispatcher said deputies were on their way, I thanked her and said I needed to call someone else.

“Please stay on the line, ma’am,” she said. “I’d like to make sure you’re okay until the deputies arrive.”

“Thanks, but I have to go.” I ended the call, started the next, and reached out to pet Eddie, his purrs filling my ears and heart.

“Minnie?” Rafe asked. “Where are you? I thought we were meeting at six. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “We’re fine.” And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I began to cry.

Chapter 20

My aunt looked at me across the kitchen table, which was practically groaning under the weight of the food she’d piled onto it. Scrambled eggs, bacon, and waffles. Hash browns, sausage, and biscuits. And then there was the sourdough toast and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The four of us sitting at the table hadn’t a chance of eating it all, but I was going to do my best to do justice to my aunt’s post-traumatic cooking. “So would you have done it?” she asked. “Shot him, I mean?”

The evening before, Rafe, Aunt Frances, and Otto had gathered together in the boardinghouse living room while I’d huddled on the hearth in front of a roaring fire with my hands around a mug of hot chocolate and Eddie on my lap. I’d stayed awake long enough to outline what had happened on Lolly Road, but now it was morning, the same group was gathered, and my aunt wanted details. So, being the kind and generous niece that I was, I did my best to oblige.

“I’m not sure.” Anticipating the expression she was about to assemble her face into, I kept going before she wasted all that energy. “If he was going to hurt Eddie, absolutely. If he was going to hurt me . . . probably. But I might have kept wondering if he’d really do it, might have kept thinking about a different way out. So . . . I just don’t know.”

Just at that moment, the jar of orange marmalade called to me, so I busied myself with toast and knife as the trio exchanged looks.

“You’re nuts,” my loving aunt said.

I kept slathering on the marmalade. Eddie, who I’d left on my bed, snoring, wandered into the kitchen and flopped on the floor next to me. I angled my foot to touch him and felt his breaths going in and out.

Rafe was next. “You could have,” he said confidently. “In some part of that quick-moving brain, you would have figured out there wasn’t any other option and done it.”

The marmalade was getting thick, but I kept laying it on.

Otto stirred. “There’s no point second-guessing. Minnie did an outstanding job in a difficult and frightening situation.”

“Mrr!”

“And it goes without saying,” Otto continued, almost without a break, “that we’re grateful she had Eddie with her yesterday. Without his critical assistance, she might not be here this morning.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said, apparently mollified.

Aunt Frances handed around a bowl of scrambled eggs. “But what I don’t understand is the why. Why did Stewart kill Rowan?”

Last night I’d been too tired to explain. Had actually fallen asleep while describing how the responding sheriff’s deputies had found Stewart, with hands and ankles still bound, hunting for a hidden spare set of bookmobile keys so he could start the engine. He was getting cold, he’d said.

My sympathies had not been with him, and I was very glad that two different law enforcement vehicles had arrived because I would not have been happy to share a backseat with the man who’d tried to kill me.

Once we arrived at the sheriff’s office, the story eventually came out. It had taken a while, but the combined questioning of Hal and Ash and Sheriff Richardson, with perhaps a bit of pressure from the glowering presence of myself and Eddie (in his carrier), got results.