Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

He turned away from the window. “You just don’t get it, do you? This is personal with him-he can’t stand that I beat him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to go out there and take him on?”

“It’s personal for me, too,” replied Max. “Remember what I told you when we were planning Lyssy’s birthday party? Revenge is the priority. First Corder, now Pender and Cogan, it’s like they’re lining up for me. I really would be an ungrateful bastard if I didn’t at least try to take advantage.” He double-checked both guns-the reloaded revolver had a bullet in each of the six chambers, while the black pistol had one round up the spout and another thirteen in the clip-then turned back to Lily.

“From here on in, job one for you is keeping your body between his gun and my body. Meanwhile, anything you can do to convince him that you’re Lily and I’m Lyssy would be extremely helpful.”

“Anything else, oh lord and master?”

He gave her a sharp glance, decided to let it pass. “Just follow my lead.”

After several long minutes, during which they’d discovered that their cell phones were useless this deep in the woods, Pender and Irene abandoned the partial protection provided by the mule for the solid cover of Irene’s Infiniti. From here, they watched the lopsided moon, a few days short of full, rising above the hills behind the cabin, turning the sky to the east a shimmering gray and casting a pallid silvery light over the canyon. Below them to their left, a ghostly mist drifted lazily behind the willows lining the south bank of the creek; above them to their right they could just make out the pale scar of a dirt road zigzagging up the canyon wall.

The cabin door opened again, throwing an elongated trapezoid of yellow light across the covered wooden porch. “Here we go,” whispered Pender. He rose from a squat to a high crouch, holding the gun two-handed, fingers interlaced, using the roof of the Infiniti as a platform to steady his aim. A short, spidery figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted dramatically in the streaming light like the alien emerging from the mother ship at the end of Close Encounters -if the alien had had two heads and eight limbs.

Pender eased his finger off the trigger. So much for the quick and dirty solution-he had never been much of a sharpshooter. FBI agents had to be range-qualified, of course, but even when he was young, Aim for the middle and hope for the best had always been Pender’s motto.

“Who’s out there?” Max shouted from the porch.

Lily winced. “Not in my ear, bro,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

“It’s Agent Pender.”

“And Dr. Cogan,” called the psychiatrist-from where Max stood, he couldn’t see Pender glaring at her.

“Oh, good. Dr. Cogan, it’s Lyssy. Lyssy and Lily. We want to come down and talk things over, but I’m scared your friend there is just going to shoot me the first chance he gets-could you get him to maybe just point his gun away a little?”

Max’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the moonlight; looking over the girl’s shoulder, he could see Pender bracing the gun against the roof of the car, twenty yards away.

“Lyssy!” he called. “I give you my word I won’t fire first.”

“You bet he won’t,” Max whispered to Lily. “Not while I have you for a shield.”

“Well that cheers the shit outta me,” Lily murmured as she started down the steps.

“Okay, that’s far enough,” Pender called, when the other two had crossed the clearing to within ten feet of the Infiniti, Lily trudging along in the lead with the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up, Maxwell limping behind her, wearing an old canvas knapsack containing their money and a few supplies. They were standing not far from where Fano had died; behind them, his blood was a dark stain in the moonlight.

“Hi, Dr. Cogan,” said Max, in Lyssy’s ever-hopeful voice. “We’re sorry we put those sleeping pills in your juice, but we couldn’t think of any other way to get a head start.”

The voice, the timid stance, what she could see of his expression as he half-crouched behind Lily, all seemed to Irene to support his claim to be Lyssy. “No harm done,” she told him, then turned to Lily. “Are you all right, dear?”

The girl nodded curtly, but it was Pender she was staring at, as though she were trying to telepath him a message. He thought he knew what it was, too. “Lyssy, I need to see both your hands. You can stay there if you’d like-just show me your hands.”

“If you want to know do I have a gun, the answer is yes. But I’ll ditch mine if you’ll ditch yours.”

“You first.”

Half obscured by his human shield, Maxwell shrugged. “Dr. Al always said I was a trusting soul,” he said, holding up the.38 with which he’d killed MacAlister, then clicking on the safety before tossing it away. “Your turn.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that,” said Pender. That was a lesson every cop was taught in the cradle: No matter how bad it is, there’s no situation that can’t be made worse by surrendering your weapon.

“But-but you lied !”

The childish disappointment and disbelief in Maxwell’s voice, the air of naivete, went a long way toward convincing Pender that this might be Lyssy after all. He did not, however, lower his own gun or let down his guard. “Sorry I had to mislead you, son. Now put your hands in the air for me. Lily honey, you come on over here.”

But before she could move, Maxwell snaked his left arm around her throat, drew MacAlister’s automatic from the waistband of his jeans with his right hand, and pressed the muzzle against her right temple. “Drop your gun, or I blow her head off.”

“Go ahead,” Pender told him calmly. “You’ll be dead before she hits the ground.”

Being in the dark place is like being deaf, dumb, blind, paralyzed, and buried alive. Nothing here. Nothing but yourself and your thoughts. Crazy-making. Unbearable to contemplate. To think too closely about it is to risk becoming an endless scream resounding through the void.

Far easier to give yourself up to the darkness…

(but what about Lily?)

To surrender rather than risk the flames…

(but what about Lily?)

Because Max is so much stronger…

(but is he?)

And if you only let go…

(don’t let go!)

If you give yourself to the darkness…

(again)

You’ll never even hear her screaming…

“I do believe we’ve reached another stalemate, Agent Pender.” Max had dropped Lyssy’s simper; it was a relief to him to think that he’d never have to employ it again.

“Let the girl go and we can settle it the way we did the last time,” said Pender, referring to the shoot-out in the barn at Scorned Ridge three years ago.

“I don’t think so.” When he was amused, Max’s eyebrows tended to peak devilishly, like Jack Nicholson’s. “I seem to be running out of legs.”

“Then leave the girl behind-I give you my word I’ll let you walk.”

“I believe we’ve already established what your word is worth, Agent Pender. Oh, wait-I see where the problem lies! You think I’m abducting the young lady.” He eased his crook-armed hold on the girl’s neck, chucked her cheek affectionately, and swung the muzzle of his gun from her to Pender. “Tell them who you are, darlin’.”

She coughed a few times, pulled down the hood of her sweatshirt and tugged the neck away from her throat, working her jaw and rolling her head like Rodney Dangerfield on speed. “They’re so fucking smart, let them figure it out.”