Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

She laughed bitterly and wiped streams of tears away from her cheeks.

“You’re not making me happy now,” she sobbed.

“No, I know. But it’s only a little bit of pain and it’ll all be over. You’ll have to be brave. You’ll have to be smart. You can’t overact. You can’t make them suspicious.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked in a monotone.

“Come back with me and tell Sonia you’re having your period. And then tell your da that you’ll need the car. Tell them in a couple of hours, a long time after you’ve talked to me, so they don’t even associate the idea with me.”

She stood.

“It’s too much. All of this. It’s too much. My head hurts,”

she said.

“No. You’re doing great. You’re doing so well, Kit. So well,”

I said.

She stepped backwards over the fallen tree, away from me.

“I need time to think,” she said.

“Take all the time you need.”

I leaned over to hold her hand. She flinched and backed farther away.

“Don’t touch me,” she seethed.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I fucking need time to think about all this, for Christ’s sake. Why did you have to tell me today? This was supposed to be the greatest day of my life. This is the thing I’ve been looking forward to for years, when I would do it, with the right man. And now this is the fucking worst day of my life. My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

“Take your time, Kit, take your time. I’ll sit here.”

Kit nodded and stormed off into the trees without looking back. I waited a minute, then five minutes. I sat down on the big fallen tree trunk. Would she come round? I didn’t know.

It was my only play. I had no regrets. I had to do it.

I lay down on the mossy bark and waited; waiting still as the wind picked up and it grew colder and I watched the cirrus clouds and cerulean sky give way to the first black line of the storm front that was marching ominously south from Canada.

A twig snapped farther down the trail in the direction of the pond. And of course I knew what it meant. Goddamnit. It meant I was going to die.

The birds were quiet.

I pulled up my trousers, tightened my belt, and got into a crouch.

Another twig snapped in the same place.

Now I was certain of it.

She’d told them what I’d told her. And they were coming to kill me. The twig snapping was the person Touched had sent to circle around me and lie in wait ahead of me on the path leading to the pond. They would come from behind.Maybe they’d even goose me out, like beaters after pheasants- they’d barrel down from the house with their guns drawn, screaming profanities and yelling blue murder, I’d run for the trail, and there he’d be, pointing a big hand cannon at my face. Jackie, more than likely, since he was the nimblest on his feet.

Gerry and Touched from the back. Jackie ahead.

No Kit, though. Touched would make Kit stay at the cabin with Sonia. There would be no arguing this one.

I listened but the woods were quiet.

It didn’t matter. I was certain.

Yeah, Jack up front, the big lads at my back, probably coming ninety degrees apart from the northwest and northeast.

I slid off the branch, crawled into the leaves of the forest floor, and scanned the trees.

Waited.

Nothing.

Of course, that crack could have been a deer standing on a sapling, a squirrel doing a suicide leap from a tree, a dry branch expanding with the heat of the day.

But it wasn’t.

It was goddamn Jackie or I’m a Dutchman.

I shrugged off my leather jacket, which Kit had draped over my shoulders, stripping to the dirty matte black T-shirt underneath. I slithered away from a log and towards the trail, mucking myself up as much as possible. Any camouflage would do. Even half-assed last-minute stuff.

Kit, oh God, Kit. You’ve signed my death warrant. It was hard. You had to choose between me and duty and you picked the noble cause over me.

Still, you don’t kill Michael Forsythe that easy.

And I had several things in my favor. The forest was dark, I was on to their game, and they were a hodgepodge bunch of hoods. An inexperienced one, an obese one, and an overconfident crazy one. Whereas I was a Grade A survivor. The bad penny that always turns up. The cockroach that will not die.The man who took down the empire of Darkey White and cleaned the clock of his goons and lackeys.

I slid through the leaves and the dirt, down an incline.

Keep your head down and don’t look up. Slide, don’t crawl. I slithered over roots and through a bramble bush and a mulchy pile of rotting leaves.

Gunning for you, Jack.

The weak link.

The woods were as still as woods get and the silence was an alarm. They were close and closing. If it had been night, I could have hid and waited them out, but it was day and I had to move. Follow the slope downhill to the path to the pond.

Oh, Kit.

Put you in the God’s-eye view. What do you hope will happen? They capture me? Or I get away?

I slid over a rock and down a gravel embankment that was steeper than it looked. There’d been a fire or flood or tree fall because the earth was frictionless and scoured of bushes and roots. I slipped faster and faster and finally fell, tumbling over my feet until I reached the bottom of the slope at a small clearing.

I’d made a lot of noise. I tensed.

But they hadn’t seen me.

I got to a crouch and listened for them. Again, nothing. I was now about a hundred feet from where I’d started, from where Kit said that I’d be. I was cuffed and alone and there were three of them with guns, but I might just…

If I kept going in the same direction eventually I’d come to a road. Maybe flag a car. Of course, if they lost me, they’d have to clear out of the cabin. Flee to some other bolt-hole Gerry had stashed away. They’d be in disarray. They’d know that they were fugitives, that Gerry couldn’t return to his cozy life and his big beach house. Would they kill the general’s son and then go? Would they take him with them? Would the dissent be strong enough for Gerry to decide that the game was over? Would he surrender?

I had to put the pressure on. I had to get away.

Not just for me, but for that eejit Peter, too, and for her.

For all of them, come to that. Touched was as much a danger to them as he was to me.

He was a real dead-ender. He’d bring them all down in flames. He’d make them drink the Kool-Aid.

A white shirt in the trees fifty feet to my left. Gerry, carrying a massive double-barreled shotgun, wading through the woods, breathing hard, as determined as a big bear. He hadn’t seen me. He wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve.

I slid backwards into the undergrowth.

Checked the sun, got my bearings.

The pond was about a hundred yards behind me. But the path that skirted the bank was not thickly forested. Still, if I could get there, I’d leg it. Sprint to the far shore and then just go like mad to the top of the next hill. Keep going over it, into the next valley and then east to a road or a farmhouse or anywhere.

I was almost at the pond path, but where was Jack?

He should be right here.

I moved slower.

Got ready.

The air freshened and a wind blew thick with moisture. It was going to rain at any minute. That would help me too.

Another downslope. Face first, eating dirt and all the bases.

Static from a walkie-talkie.

“Any sign of him?” Touched’s nervous voice asked.

“Nope,” Jackie said, a few feet from me on the top of a rise.

“Not yet.”

I stole a peek over a thornbush. There he was. Radio in left hand, pistol in right, back to me, head bent down out of the wind.