Ridley Pearson - Killer Summer

“NOW!” Kevin shouted.

The shotgun misfired.

Kevin dove back into the hallway, scrambled to his feet, and ran like hell for the garage. He saw a flash of orange light on the walls that signaled the sherry igniting in the fireplace.

The shotgun fired a second time. He heard wood peppered right behind him. Some of the shot rolled past his feet, tiny balls no bigger than BBs.

Salvo narrowly missed being set on fire when the fireplace erupted. He jumped out of the way as flames spit out of the hearth. The rug caught fire at his feet, and he discharged the shotgun wildly in the direction of the kitchen. But then the fire died out as quickly as it had exploded.

Salvo reacted a split second too late to a noise coming from behind him, and as he turned around he saw the study door open- Impossible! -and a coffee table coming at him at full speed. In an instant he understood that the tapping sound had been the cowboy pulling out the door’s hinge pins.

Salvo hoisted his shotgun while backing away from the table coming at him. He fell over an ottoman and the shotgun discharged a second time. Dropping it, he then was able to deflect the table to the right and toward the fire, and he rolled that same direction.

Whoosh!

A wrought-iron fire poker missed Salvo’s head by inches. He sprang to his feet and grabbed a nearby lamp.

Another swing of the poker demolished the lamp and broke the index and middle fingers of his right hand. He screamed, jumping back out of the way of a third blow. Retreat was his only option.

He turned. A wet mist struck his face, rendering him blind and in even more pain. Screaming again, he fell to his knees. He wiped his face with his sleeve but it was no use.

He heard the cocking of the shotgun.

“You so much as twitch and I’m taking the side of your face off,” said the cowboy in a low rumbled twang.

“My eyes!” Salvo wailed. “Help me!”

“What was that stuff?” the cowboy asked.

“How the hell would I know?” Salvo shouted. “Fuckin’ help me!”

“Toilet-bowl cleaner,” said a second voice.

It was the kid. But Salvo couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything.

“Hands out,” said the cowboy to Salvo, “flat on the floor.”

Salvo sagged forward.

“Get a wet towel,” the cowboy said to Kevin. “There’s some rope in the shop… not the climbing rope. Bring it here-”

A few minutes later, Salvo was gagged and tied on the study floor. The cowboy tied the last knot and led Kevin into the living room. He extended his hand, and Kevin took it.

“Kevin,” he supplied.

“John,” said the cowboy. “Your friend?”

“Gone,” Kevin said. He yanked back the tarp in the shed only to find her missing.

“I know the season, son.”

“Her name is Summer. We were on the plane together. It’s complicated.”

“Gone where?”

“Dunno. Just gone. It’s her jet… her father’s. She was supposed to wait here for me.”

“Mistake number one: don’t ever expect a woman to do what you think she’s going to do. Mistake number two: don’t ever tell her what to do because that’s a surefire way of making sure she doesn’t.”

“You’re making jokes? She’s out there… They could have her.”

“If they had her, then who lit that fire? Ever shot a rifle, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Follow me.”

Five minutes later, Kevin and John were armed with the shotgun and the rifle, respectively. John got them flashlights, two-way radios, and a large handgun for the small of his back.

“Pulling the door like that… You could have gotten yourself killed,” Kevin said.

They had gone out a back window of the lodge and up the rocks, a route John knew from repairing the roof. They had a bird’s-eye view of the dying fire and the flickering orange woods beyond. They tucked in behind a stone chimney that Kevin immediately recognized as an elevated, well-fortified, defensible position, something that obviously hadn’t just occurred to John on the spur of the moment.

“You ever play poker, son?” John asked.

“No, sir, not so it counts.”

“When they showed up, they were unarmed. If there was any time to produce a weapon, it was then, and they didn’t. So by the time that one was in the living room and I heard him cock the shotgun, I figured it had to be my twelve-gauge pump. And I knew something he didn’t: because we’d had some guests up to the ranch not two weeks ago with three kids under nine, none of them three rifles was loaded. I’d emptied ’em all myself. We keep the ammo in the study, so I had it in there with me. They had the big guns, leaving the two pellet pushers: the over-under twenty and the twelve-gauge pump. Both were loaded with bird shot. Did that myself. We had a murder of crows waking up guests at five in the morning with their damn squawking. Flying garbage men, is what they are. Been using the bird shot to discourage them… Not that I’d shoot a crow, because that’s illegal.”

“But bird shot-”

“Would sting a bit but wasn’t going to kill me.”

“But if it didn’t turn out to be your shotgun?”

“But it was. That’s where gambling comes in, son. Chance is nothing but a balance of risk to reward.”

In the silence that followed, they both heard voices filtering faintly through the trees.

“That’s coming from down below,” John whispered.

“The jet.”

“They wouldn’t be shouting at each other, not unless they’re short a few cells.”

“Summer.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going-”

But John had him by the arm. His grip was like a vise.

“Number one: this is my ranch, in a manner of speaking. So let’s get straight right off the bat that I’m calling the shots. Number two: I served my country, served it well, so experience is on our side. I promise you, the only war these guys have seen is in movies. Number three: they got my sat phone and busted up my radio.”

“They busted up more than that,” Kevin said. “They took most of a wing off that little Cessna down there.”

Hearing that, John seemed all the more mad.

“They’re guarding the jet, which is smart,” he said. “But I’ll bet good money that they haven’t thought much about the Cessna’s radios. Mind you, they will before long, but so far they haven’t had the luxury of time, something we owe your girlfriend a debt of gratitude for.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Kevin blurted it out, his patience running thin. “Do you always have to talk so much?”

The cowboy surprised him with a grin. “I go long stretches out here all by my lonesome, kid.”

“How ’bout we do something like find Summer.”

“You gotta learn to strike a balance between your pecker and your brain, boy. Number one: we don’t know they’ve got the girl. Number two: I know this ranch well. Come daylight, I’m going to find her. At the moment, we got one of ’em tied up and two of ’em on the loose. They took two of the rifles, but they’re not loaded. They heard that shotgun go off, you can count on that. They know their boy up here has got problems. I’ve got a loaded thirty-aught with a night scope and you’ve got a twelve-gauge pump with seven shells holding twelve thirty caliber balls each and another seven in your pockets. That’s enough round ball to stop a bear in its tracks. Those boys are outgunned and on unfamiliar ground, and I imagine the silence is killing them. At some point, they’ve got to come to us, they’ve got to find out what happened. That’s just human curiosity. The best weapon we’ve got right now is patience. We put our curiosity on hold. So do exactly as I say, and it’ll all work out. Start improvising and you put me, the girl, and yourself at risk. Got that?”