Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

Cynthia laid a hand on my shoulder. “Just be careful, okay? Promise me that? Don’t do anything stupid?”

“You’re a bit late with that advice.”

I wanted desperately to make some kind of joke, to not make this a scene where the soldier is heading off into battle. I gave her a quick kiss. Too long a one, I thought, would give the impression I wasn’t coming back.

I was coming back.

Cynthia grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. I opened the door of the pickup, hauled myself in, and got settled behind the wheel.

“You remember what I told you seven years ago?” Vince asked.

“Huh?”

“When you and I set off in this very same truck, me helping you figure out what happened to your wife’s family? The night I ended up getting a fucking bullet in my gut?”

“You said don’t fiddle with the radio. Don’t touch the stations, or you’d fucking kill me.”

Vince nodded agreeably.

“Nothing’s changed,” he said.

“They want to do the handoff in the cemetery,” Vince said once we were on the road. “You know the one, on the way out to the mall?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that a bit clichéd?”

Vince gave me a look. “Is that your concern? That they’re not being original enough?”

“Look, I’m going to take one last shot at this. Call the cops.”

“No.”

I brought my voice down. I didn’t want to be arguing with him. I just wanted to make my case. “You’ve already as much as admitted to me your future’s kind of bleak at the moment. If these people who kidnapped Jane don’t kill you, the people whose money you’re using to save her will want to when they come to collect. So we’re not talking about saving your ass here. We’re only worried about Jane. The cops have a better shot at getting her back alive than you do.”

“They’d fuck it up,” he said.

“They’ve got helicopters and tracking devices. They know how to tap into everybody’s surveillance cameras. They can have all kinds of cops in ordinary cars following these people. You’re just one guy. With me, you’re about one and a half guys. If you called them right now, they could get someone in place near the cemetery. They could watch what went down. They’d be like backup.”

“We’ve got backup,” Vince said.

I took my eyes off the road a second to look at him. “What?”

“Right here,” he said, opening the glove compartment. I saw what looked like the butt of a gun in there. He wrapped his hand around it and took it out.

“You know what this is?” he asked.

“Oh, great. Yeah, that’s a Mixmaster.”

“Do you know what kind of gun it is, smart-ass?”

“No.”

“It’s a Glock 30.”

“Well,” I said. “So that’s the plan. That’s always been the plan. You’re going to shoot everybody.”

“No. At least, not at the beginning.” He leaned across the seat so the gun was no more than two feet from me. “You got any idea how to use one of these things?”

“Jesus, Vince.”

“Do you?”

“You pull on that thing there.” I pointed to the trigger.

He grasped the gun in his right hand, then with his left slid back the top. “That’s how you tell if there’s a round in the chamber. And this is how you remove the magazine, not that that matters.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Just shut up and listen. There’s no safety, you understand? Once you put your finger on the trigger, the safety is off, and once you squeeze, the goddamn thing goes off. If you can figure out how to use this one, you can figure out any one of them. It’s not brain surgery.”

“You’re giving that to me?”

“No.”

“If you’ve got a second one in there, I don’t want it.”

“I don’t,” Vince said. He held the gun on the top of his right leg.

“You’re going to walk into this meeting with a gun.”

“I am. I’ll have it tucked into my belt where they can see it.”

“They may not like that,” I offered.

“I ’spect they won’t.”

“If there’s more than one of them, they’ll just take it off you.”

“That’s what I’d do if I was them,” Vince said.

“You’re not Bruce Willis in Die Hard . You haven’t got another one taped to the back of your head.”

“I know.”

“And you haven’t got a gun for me. I’m not going to be hiding behind some tombstone covering your ass.”

“I know that,” Vince said.

“So you’re going to walk into this meeting knowing you haven’t emptied out all your houses yet, not knowing whether you’ve got what they want or not, and you’re going to let them take that gun off you?”

“I’m counting on it,” he said.

I kept my foot on the gas. I was starting to think Vince was the one Cynthia should have told not to do anything stupid.

“Vince, I swear, if—”

“You trust me?” he asked.

I laughed. “Seriously? You co-opt our cleaning lady, hide money in our house, won’t tell us what really happened to Stuart, and you’ve got the nerve to ask if I trust you?”

Vince went quiet briefly.

Then he said, “Like I told your kid, Stuart was killed in the house. By someone other than Grace. I had my guys text her today with Stuart’s phone, so you’d think he was still alive and back off. But you didn’t.”

“What did you do with him, Vince?”

Another pause, then, “After Grace phoned Jane, Jane phoned me, filled me in. Me and Gordie and Bert swooped in, found the kid. Took a bullet right about here.” He touched his left cheek, close to his nose. “Died quick, I’d guess. Wrapped the kid up in plastic, put him in the trunk. Cleaned the place up best we could, intending to go back, do an even better job, fix the window, which is still wide-open. House probably full of goddamn squirrels and God knows what else by now. We checked the attic, to see if the money and whatever was still there, and it wasn’t.”

Again, I asked, “What did you do with him?”

Vince looked my way. “We fed him to the hogs.”

That left me speechless.

Vince filled the void. “He’ll never be found.” There was sadness in his voice.

I managed to find some words. “And Eldon?”

“I killed him.”

For a second time within ten seconds I had nothing to say.

“He took the news badly,” Vince said. “I mean, who wouldn’t? I understood that. I expected that. But he started accusing me of doing it. Said he was going to the cops. He was out of his head.”

Long pause. Made me think I’d suggested for the last time going to the police.

“You said the future for me was bleak. You’re right. These assholes who left their stash with me, if it ends up I can’t get it all back, well, they’ll get over it. I don’t really give a shit about that. But Eldon” — he shook his head — “that was the end of the road for me, I think. I don’t know if I knew it at the time, but I do now. I’m done. I’ll get Jane back, and then, what happens happens.”

I still had nothing to say.

“You laughed when I asked if you trusted me. So I’m laying it all out there. That’s what’s going on — that’s what I did. You don’t have to like it. But it’s the truth. So when I tell you I’m going into this meet with a plan, I want you to trust me on that. So do you?”

My mouth was dry. “Yes,” I said.

“I know what you think of me. I know you think you’re better than me, and maybe you’re right. You think I’m this unfeeling piece of shit, that I got no heart, and you might be right about that, too. You want the truth? I wish I was a better man.” He paused. “Like you. But I’m not. This is what I am. I can’t pretend to be anything else. But it doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit. I do. About Jane. Pull in here.”