Chuck Logan - Homefront

Gator stared at her, mouth open. What the hell?

Cassie just continued talking, like she was gossiping over coffee. “There’s cops showing up from all over. Madge said, Ginny said, Broker was some king cop in the Cities or something. They’re bringing a helicopter, these special trained search dogs from Duluth…”

Gator gripped her arm, lowered his head, and marched her toward the door. “You gotta go.”

“Why? You been trying to get me out here ever since you got out of prison,” she said, her smile jerky.

“Where’s Jimmy?” Gator said in a dull voice.

“Showing Teddy how to wash his favorite Canadian Labrie garbage truck at the garage. Where I was, and you never showed up like you said you would. To give me something. So here I am. Drove through a lot of crap to get here, too. Now what do I have to do, sing for my supper or what?” She ran her index finger down from his throat to his sternum.

Gator swatted the hand away. “I mean it, Cassie.”

“So do I,” she said, undeterred.

That’s when the kid screeched in the bathroom: “Get your hands off me.” Stuff banging around, a struggle.

Gator sagged. Seeing Cassie react to the voice, obviously a child’s voice, he sagged more. Wasn’t falling apart. It was completely apart. Didn’t matter now. None of it. Just let it happen…

“What the hell you got going on here?” Cassie said, suddenly frantically alert. “Christ, Gator, you can’t have a kid around this shit you got out here.” Her eyes flared. “Remember Marci…” He didn’t answer, made no attempt to stop her. She pushed past him, strode down the hall, and yanked open the bathroom door.

She saw a woman standing in front of the sink with her hands cupped on a little girl’s mouth, trying to hold her steady. Seeing Cassie enter, the woman reacted in a dazed spasm. Releasing her hold, stepping back. The girl had wild red hair, matted with burrs. Her green parka was filthy, snow pants ripped, and her face all red with scratches, bruises, and dried blood. The little Broker girl she’d met last Saturday morning in town, at Big Lake Threads, with her mother.

“It’s all right, I’m Teddy’s mom,” Cassie said to Kit. Then she turned her eyes on the woman. Epiphany was not exactly in her vocabulary, but she was seized with a revelatory fury. There were things more powerful than the need to peddle her ass for a hit of meth. Than playing sick old games with her brother. “Who the fuck are you ?” Cassie screamed at the woman, her voice exploding in the small dingy room.

Kit’s mouth fell open, imprisoned in the close charged air, looked back and forth at their angry faces, their hair, their physiques. Then she looked up, away from the berserk tension in their eyes, and saw a corpulent gray leopard spider in a web in the corner next to the door. The spider uncoiled and flexed its legs.

Like a disturbed ghost.

Sheryl, having her own freaky prescient moment, yelled, “Gator, what’s going on?”

Gator heard the incensed voices echo down the hall, through the kitchen to where he sagged against the peeling wallpaper next to the front door. Almost dreamy with the profound simplicity of it, seeing how they were all connected, this continuous piece of yarn. One loose end, and it all came unraveled.

“What’s going on is, he’s a control weirdo, that’s what,” Cassie shouted at Sheryl Mott. “And who’s subbing in for who, I got no idea.” Then she shoved Sheryl with both hands, hard, knocking her back so her calves caught on the rim of the bathtub and she fell backward, flailing her arms, pulling the shower curtain with her. Cassie gripped Kit firmly by the arm and walked her from the room. “Honey. You’re coming with me. We’re getting out of here.”

Gator slowly shook his head. His rage was total, and his voice was so small. “No, you ain’t,” he almost whispered as, from the corner of his eye, he saw her striding down the hall, through the kitchen, escorting-that was exactly the word-escorting the kid, arm draped protectively over her shoulder like a mother hen.

“No, you ain’t,” he repeated softly, pushing though the terrible inertia, off the wall, placing one arm out, planting his hand on the far wall, blocking their path.

Kit watched it and listened to it, trembling. Confused at how the air kept getting thicker with all the scary, invisible adult bad stuff. She heard cursing in back of her, where the other woman was climbing out of the bathtub.

“You’re in the way,” Cassie said to Gator.

“Can’t let you go. Just can’t,” Gator said in an almost helpless voice.

“Watch me,” Cassie said, eyes flashing with disgust. “You stay here with your stand-in whore.” They scurried past, out the door.

Gator shook his head. Years of work. Perfect plan. Perfect location. Belize. Boat engines. Never gonna see the fucking ocean. With tremendous effort, he pushed off the wall, started after them, Sheryl coming up now, grimacing, rubbing a bruised knot on her temple. Eyes like jelly. Shock maybe. Yapping, “What’s going on? Who is she?”

“C’mon,” he said, going out the door, onto the porch. Cassie and the kid were about ten yards out, ghostly in the blowing snow, starting to run toward the Jeep Cherokee Jimmy the moron bought her when he won the Moose lottery. Jeep was running, lights on. Why not. Everything else was in plain goddamn sight.

“I’m telling you, Cassie, you better stop,” Gator shouted coming down the steps, bringing the Luger out, flicking off the safety.

“Run,” Cassie shouted urgently to Kit, pushing her forward, shielding her with her body. “Around to the driver’s side, I’ll let you in.”

The Luger drifted up. Gator, dreamy-eyed in the blowing snow, found Cassie’s back, below her blowing black hair. Another Bodine. And then there was one. He squeezed the trigger. Kit screamed when Teddy Klumpe’s mom pitched forward without making a sound, arms twisted, clutching behind at her back, bounced off the grill of the Jeep, twirled once in the headlight beams and fell face forward into the snow.

Gator shifted to the smaller target, but she was darting through the headlights, and with the snow, he briefly lost her. She reappeared, racing toward the barn. He fired again, but it was too far now, the light uncertain. Saw her duck into the narrow black vertical shadow of the ajar door to the left of the garage.

He turned and pounded Sheryl on the arm. Sheryl, practically useless now, had her hands up one on each side of her face. All freaked out and motor mouth, “Jesus, Gator, Jesus; when is this going to fuckin’ stop ?”

“Soon’s we nail that little bitch. Now listen. You go in where she did, push her on through. I’ll be around back, by the pens. Catch her when she runs out. Go.” He shoved Sheryl toward the partially open sliding door. Took off running around the barn.

Kit wiggled through the door and ran on pure instinct, just a pounding heart and lungs wrapped around a bottle rocket of fright. Her boots skidded in the dark, collided with something hard, steel, some machine. She sprawled on the floor. Crawling, feeling with her right hand along a series of wooden panels. Ripe rotten grainy smells. She heard somebody take a sobbing breath as they squeezed through the door behind her. The bad woman who had put her in the trunk. Coming after her.

Kit scrambled to the end of the wooden thing and huddled, hiding behind it. She could hear the woman, feeling around in the dark, by the door. Kit swung her head. Eyes bulging, runaway heart; she saw that the back end of the enclosure was open to the storm. This empty floor dusted with white. And in the middle of it she saw a tiny familiar black silhouette arch up against the flickering snow.