Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

He had to catch up.

He had to catch up fast.

Finally Josiah had a purpose, understood it, and knew how to carry it out. He felt like a man who’d long been searching in the dark and finally realized he’d been carrying a matchbook in his pocket the whole time.

His detour to this place, one that had taken him far from the hotel and his ultimate goal, had been puzzling but necessary for reasons he couldn’t entirely comprehend. Now, after seeing Shaw, he understood it well-Shaw and Campbell were linked, a part of one another in a way that differed from Josiah and Campbell’s bond. Shaw had returned Campbell’s spirit to this place, and, somehow, he understood that. Understood the significance. Campbell needed him to be left to tell the tale; nobody else was capable of giving true credit where credit would be due. Eric Shaw was the exception. In the question of Campbell Bradford’s legacy, Eric Shaw was critical.

They moved swiftly up the trail, with Josiah dragging the woman along and keeping the gun pointed forward, toward Danny. The loyalest of friends he’d been for years, and yet Josiah had looked into his eyes and seen the deceit that lurked there and knew well that Danny Hastings was an ally no longer.

That was fine. Josiah was not alone on this day and in this struggle. Campbell rode with him, and the valley knew no fiercer ally. They’d finish this piece of work together, all opposition be damned.

They reached the trailhead and pushed through the fields and back toward his truck. Now that they were out of the trees he could look across the farmland and to the road, and he saw that the flashing emergency lights that had been there when they arrived were gone. Called elsewhere to some other crisis. He reckoned wherever they’d headed, it was the wrong damn direction.

The truck was where he’d left it, covered with dents and scratches but still ready to run. All he needed out of it was one last drive, a handful of miles.

“Here is where we part,” he told Danny as they passed the overturned Porsche. “You’ll hear the rest of the story soon enough, I expect.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not something I have the time or desire to clarify.” He shoved the woman toward the back of his truck, but for the first time she began resisting, twisting against his grasp. Her hands were still bound but her legs were not, and she kicked at his knee. He slapped her hard, wrenched her arm, and slammed her up against the side of the truck. Her sudden show of fight told him that the bed of the truck might not be the place for her. He’d put her in the cab instead, keep her close.

He found the roll of duct tape in the bed of the truck and held her while he wrapped some around her lower legs. Then he dragged her around to the passenger side, paying no mind to Danny, and jerked the door open. She was still struggling, thrashing around so much that she caught his face with the back of her head and he tasted blood in his mouth. He grabbed her by the neck and shoved her forward, slamming his knee into her ass as he did it, and got her inside. He’d just shut the door when Danny said, “No more, Josiah.”

Josiah turned back to look at him and saw the knife in his hand.

It was a folding knife, with a blade no more than four inches long, one of those that had a little metal nub so you could flick it open fast with your thumb and fancy yourself a badass. Josiah looked down at it and laughed out loud.

“You going to cut me?”

“Going to do what needs to be done. You can decide what that’ll be.”

Josiah laughed again and lifted the gun and wrapped his finger around the trigger.

“Knife at a gunfight,” he said. “If that doesn’t describe your entire pathetic life, I don’t know what does, Danny boy.”

“Whatever you’re fixing to do, you’ll do it without her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Danny, I squeeze this trigger, I end your life. What don’t you understand about that? This bitch hasn’t a thing to do with you.”

“It ain’t right, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Well, aren’t you a noble bastard.”

“What her husband told you back there, it was the truth,” Danny said. “This ain’t you anymore. I don’t understand what’s going on, but you aren’t yourself, Josiah. Not even close.”

“What did I tell you about using that name?”

“That’s what I mean-it’s Campbell’s ghost has got in your head, just like he said. You been talking so damn strange, talking about Campbell like he’s sitting at your side. The man’s dead, Josiah, and I don’t know what in the hell has gotten into you, but that man is dead.”

“Right there’s a mistake that’s been made for far too long,” Josiah said. “Ain’t nothing dead about Campbell.”

Danny had shuffled a little closer. There wasn’t but five feet separating them now. Josiah was enjoying this little exchange, amused by Danny’s attempted show of heroism, but he didn’t have time to waste.

“Stand down and step aside,” he said. “Me and the missus have to be getting on.”

“She’s not going with you.”

“Danny…”

“I’m telling you as a friend, Josiah, best friend you ever had in your life, that you’ve lost your damn mind.”

“That may be,” Josiah said, “but I’ll tell you something: I’m not going to ride into the fire alone. That bitch is coming with me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re leaving. Go on and get in your car.”

Danny paused for a long time, and then he looked at the woman in the truck and pushed his fat pink tongue out of his mouth and wet his lips.

“Anybody going to take this ride with you, it ought to be me.”

“You’d take her place?”

Danny nodded.

“And I’m the crazy one? She ain’t nothing to you, boy.”

“And she ain’t to you neither.”

Josiah felt unsteady again, his mind shifting on him as it had been all day, and that angered him. He didn’t have time for it, knew exactly what he had to do and had been on his way to do it until Danny’s fat freckled ass slowed him down with this bullshit.

“Get in your car,” he said again, emphatically this time.

“All right,” Danny said, “but she’s getting in with me.”

He held Josiah’s eyes for a moment, like he was searching for the bluff in them, and then he wet his lips a second time and stepped toward the woman and Josiah squeezed the trigger.

It had been a long time since he’d fired the shotgun, and he’d forgotten the sheer force of it. It bucked in his arms and sent a tremor through his chest and cut Danny Hastings damn near in half.

Eric Shaw’s wife let out a low, anguished wail under the tape and pushed herself down to the floor of the truck, squeezing against the dashboard as if she expected him to put another round into the window. Josiah ignored her completely, staring at what he’d done. Danny had been at such close range that the damage was catastrophic. There was blood on the truck and on Josiah’s shirt and on his face, hot and wet as tears against his skin.

He wiped at his face with a shirtsleeve and stared down at the corpse.

Best friend you ever had in your life…

Something trembled inside him, a weakening of the resolve that had filled him on the way up the trail, and he swallowed hard and ground his teeth together as Danny’s blood ran through the grass and formed pools at Josiah’s feet.

He hadn’t wanted to do this. Danny had forced his hand, yes, but he hadn’t wanted to shoot. Not at him. Anybody else but not him.

“Damn you,” Josiah said and dropped to one knee, staring at Danny’s left side, where his torso had almost been freed from his legs. Would have been different if he’d had a handgun; he could have put a bullet into his leg or something and just backed his ass off without killing him. That shotgun had no such option; fired this close, it didn’t just kill, it destroyed.