Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

“Cyris followed you, right?”

“Must have,” Jo replies.

“Where’s his car?”

“Maybe he parked further away so he could sneak up.”

Makes perfect sense. A guy like Cyris isn’t going to drive right up to the cabin.

“Just like you did,” I say.

She flashes me her first genuine smile since I tied her up and kidnapped her. “Exactly.”

I gun the engine, put the duffel bag in my lap, and start my three-point turn. It takes me around six or seven points to do it. We head back up the track and come across Cyris’s car. It’s blocking the road and there’s no way around it. Only it’s not his car, it’s Jo’s car. Jo gasps when she sees it. It makes her realize that Cyris has been to her house.

“If he’d followed you to my place,” she says, “wouldn’t he have just come inside?”

“I imagine so.”

“Which means he didn’t follow you there, did he?”

“No.”

“Which means he found my address at your house, figured out the connection, and came looking for me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“So if you hadn’t come around. .”

“But I did. That’s all that matters.”

“You saved my life,” she says.

“No. All I did was put it in danger by not going to the police when I could have.”

“If you’d gone to the police, they wouldn’t have sent somebody to protect me.”

“I know. You realize I’ll probably end up in jail,” I tell her.

“Let’s hope not.”

I try to imagine Cyris’s state of mind when he saw me being arrested. Was he happy or pissed off? I don’t know. I don’t even know if Cyris has a state of mind. What I do know is his plans were altered. With nothing else to do he followed.

“What if he’s in there?” I ask, nodding toward her car.

“He won’t be in there. If he’d made it back he would have come to the cabin.”

I separate her keys from mine, so mine stays in the ignition and the car stays running. “I guess,” I tell her. I open my door. “Lock up behind me. And if there’s any problems, get the hell out of here.”

“Charlie?”

I lean down and look back in. “Yeah?”

“Don’t forget what we discussed earlier.”

“The police. Right. We’ll go right there. I promise. I’ll just move it and be right back.”

The rain starts to soak me, but I don’t care. I pause and look back to make sure she’s locking her doors. She is. The headlights blind me, leaving colored flashes streaking across my vision. I rub my eyes with my fingers, trying to arrange the colors back into some type of sensible order. There’s a key in the ignition. Not her key, but some kind of generic key that isn’t really a key, but looks more like the handle of a screwdriver.

I twist it. It works. I turn the lights on, shining them at Jo. Hers are shining right back. I turn my heater on high, aiming the air at my feet and face. I try to get into reverse gear, but my hand is wet and it slips off. I wipe it across the passenger seat, then try again. This time it works. I twist around to look out the back window.

At the same time Cyris pops the backseat down and crawls out of the trunk.

Money makes the world go round. It makes it, yeah, it makes it, yes it does, but revenge is why he’s out here, not money-he knows because he checked the note in his pocket. Somehow he thought it was about the money, and in thinking that it has become that, because now he can use Feldman and his wife to earn some quick cash. And he loves cash. He loves it about the same as he loves revenge.

His head hurts, the world spins quicker than he can, and his stomach throbs. The duct tape pulls at the skin and he wonders if he’s infected, yeah, infected, and he needs to take the medication, but the medication is. . The medication is somewhere, but it only helps to numb the pain. It doesn’t heal the wound, it doesn’t cure him or make last Monday go away. He wants revenge, revenge and money, and it’s hard to know which he wants more.

“Start driving,” he says, and pushes the gun toward Charlie.

His head seems to be clearing. Not much, but enough to know this isn’t all about killing people. He knows he’s capable of speech, capable of command, knows that with the shotgun he has the power to get exactly what he wants.

“I said start driving, asshole.”

He hid in the back of the car like a bug, out of sight, with the shotgun, and boy, what a good plan, a great plan, and he’s so pleased with himself he’s smiling and starting to laugh, but he must hold back the laughter, must cling to the excitement, but not let it take him over.

Charlie starts to nod and he wonders what sort of mess he would make inside the car if he were to start shooting people. People? There’s only Charlie. Anyway, the shotgun won’t shoot anything in its current condition. It’s empty.

Something digs into the side of his hip. He adjusts his position and digs his fingers into his pocket. Bracelets? Metal ones. With a chain running between them. And blood all over them. A key is sitting in one of the locks. A key that was in his satchel that he’d left on the passenger seat.

He thinks about the money. He wonders what a suitcase full of money would look like if he were to shoot a hole in the middle of it. Would it turn into confetti? Would it turn into loose change? A suitcase of money. Just think. . just think how it would feel to run his fingers through all those loose bills. .

And then he remembers! Money. He has a suitcase full of money at home! No, no he doesn’t, but he does have a suitcase full of money owing to him. Or maybe a briefcase. All of this was for money. Money is the reason he got stabbed, it’s the reason he wants revenge. In his mind he can picture part of the note he wrote to himself and he remembers that killing Feldman is about revenge, but picking up the money he’s owed is for the job he did the other night. Things may have gotten fucked up along the way, but he still got that woman killed, so really he doesn’t need Charlie at all.

Charlie is reversing now and he finds a spot where he can turn the car around.

“Don’t try anything,” Cyris says, and Charlie shakes his head. Does that mean he doesn’t understand? Or that he disagrees? Or that he won’t try anything?

When they reach the highway he tells Charlie to put his foot to the pedal.

“What’s the hurry?”

“You’ll learn soon enough,” he says, glancing into the mirror and seeing that the bitch is close behind them. “We’ll all learn soon enough.”

What’s a night without two homicidal maniacs? A boring night, that’s what. So right now I am, as they say, pretty fucking far from bored.

I don’t remember Cyris sounding this crazy, but that could be because we didn’t talk much when we first met. The only thing I can think to do is crash the car into something solid in the hope Jo can get away, but that plan has a huge drawback-she will come to help. Cyris might still be alive and I might not. Who will protect her then?

Who’s protected her so far?

Hopefully she’s already figured out something was wrong. The plan was for me to move the car, not keep driving it.

“What do you want?” I strain to keep my voice controlled.

“Shut up and drive.”

The wipers roam across the windshield, smearing the rain from side to side. I shut up and drive. No point in arguing. I try to think of a way I can signal Jo-Morse code with the brake lights or something.

“The box, what’s in the box? You saw the box? It was a present. I hope you liked it.”

“How’s the stomach?” I ask.