Thunder and Rain Read online

  Deer in the headlights.

  A large frame handgun like the 1911—the GI’s .45—has several impressive features, the most eye-catching is the inside diameter of the barrel—it’s bigger around than many folks’ pinky finger. And you get a pretty good view of it when the fire-breathing end is aimed at you.

  His eyes crossed and he started stammering. I cut him short.

  I waved the muzzle slightly left to right. “Not a word out of you.”

  He nodded.

  I turned to the woman. “You okay to move?”

  She turned on her side and spat again, dark red. “Yes.”

  “You ready?”

  She pulled on her panties and wet clothes and then climbed out the door. I was about to hop down and then remembered. I looked down at her. “Did he offer to pay you?” She crossed her arms, looked away and nodded. “How much?”

  He piped in, “I ain’t paying noth—”

  I steadied the muzzle six inches from his face. “I’ll let you know when it’s your turn. This ain’t it.”

  She didn’t bother to wipe the rain draining off her face. “Fifty.”

  He screamed again. “That lying whore… she said ‘twenty.’ ”

  His wallet was chained to his pants. I ripped it off the chain and opened it to find it empty. Not a dollar in sight.

  He laughed. I shook my head. Figures. She turned, said something beneath her breath, and began walking off. I turned to him. “Out.”

  “What?”

  “Now.”

  “But I ain’t—”

  “That’s your problem.”

  When he climbed over the seat, his pants fell on the floor. I pushed him out of the cab where he tumbled into a puddle on the asphalt. He stood up, cussing.

  I grabbed the keys off the console, locked the door, and slammed it shut. He stood wearing a T-shirt, two wet socks, and his birthday suit. The two trucks facing us had heard the commotion and clicked on their headlights. Fenway Park wasn’t as well lit during game time. Laughter rose all around us. One of them blew a horn.

  I holstered only to watch her turn, walk back to him, and stand in front of him. He laughed. “Just what do you think—” He got the word “think” out of his mouth about the time her boot landed squarely in his groin. His heels lifted four inches off the ground and his voice rose about that many octaves. He crumpled and fell to writhe in a puddle. She turned and began walking to the restaurant. I turned to follow her and he screamed, “What about my keys?”

  I threw them into the retention pond just opposite the truck. He lay in the puddle, moaning, hands holding his tenders.

  The woman began walking toward the lights of the truck stop—cold, wet, and no closer to the money she needed. I stared at my truck, and followed her at a slow walk.

  Behind me, I heard the sound of a man vomiting.

  She walked the length of ten trailers in the direction of her car. I was about to take a deep breath, I even raised my finger to get her attention and ask her if I could talk with her a second—seems like she and I ought to have some closing conversation—when a man dressed in all black with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head, walked out from behind a truck, grabbed her by the hair and threw her up against the side of a tractor trailer. Her head hit the trailer, her glasses clattered on the asphalt. Rag-doll limp, she slid into the mud. He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and, with fast, strong strides, disappeared between two parked trailers.

  The whole thing took less than two seconds and went a long way to explaining why she was constantly looking over her shoulder.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I don’t know how he found them. It’s not too tough to put out some sort of alert on a stolen vehicle, especially one that keeps breaking down, but even that was hit and miss. No guarantee. Despite some unknowns, I was absolutely certain about a few things: He had been waiting, which meant he had a plan, he was physically strong, he was experienced, he had in fact found them, which reminded me of the proverbial needle in a haystack and, once he did, he wasted no time. Lastly, I had a pretty good feeling she didn’t want to go with him and he knew that, which would explain why he didn’t waste time talking about it.

  I skirted around one trailer, sprinted the distance of six more and paralleled his shadow along two more. He walked to the fence and slipped behind eight other trailers en route to the corner of the fence and a parked van. Flat-black paint, dark window tint, even dark wheels and tires. The thing disappeared in the shadows. He pulled open the back door and dropped the woman into the back. When he did, the screaming voice of a frantic, gagged, and coughing girl rose up beneath her.

  A brachial stun is taught by most martial arts and self-defense schools. It’s performed by striking someone on the side of the neck, just below the ear. Doing so blocks—in theory—the electrical impulses traveling from the brain to the rest of the body. One being the ability to stand up. If performed correctly, it can completely immobilize a very large or strong threat for a few seconds. Maybe several if you’re lucky. If performed incorrectly, you run the risk of making them mad.

  He shut the door and I stunned him. He collapsed like the Scarecrow. I rolled him to his stomach, quickly untied his boot laces, folded his legs behind him so his heels touched his butt, pulled his rather muscular arms across the lower part of his back, fed the laces beneath his belt and tied the ends around his hands. Given the size of his arms, that only gave me a few seconds. I opened the door and found the woman unconscious and the girl wide-eyed and hysterical. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for him, the door of the van was lined with industrial-strength zip ties. The kinds tactical units use on crowds when they don’t have enough handcuffs to go around. Held in a can mounted to the door just above a sign that read, HIGH S PEED—LOW DRAG. Some law enforcement folks have been known to carry them inside the crown of their hat for such a purpose. Not even the Hulk can break them.

  I zip-tied his hands, his feet and then zip-tied those together. In Texas, we call that hog-tied.

  Because wolves hunt in packs, and more than half of all assailants have a partner, I wasn’t sure if this guy was flying solo or traveling with help so I dragged him off to the side next to the fence, knelt down and got quiet. Listening. Muffled cries rose from the rear of the van. When I didn’t hear footsteps, or shots fired, I appeared at the rear of the van, held my finger to my lips, cut the girl’s ties and pulled the gag off her mouth. I scooped up the unconscious woman and whispered to the little girl, “Can you walk?”

  She nodded.

  “Follow me.”

  I carried the woman back through the spent diesel fumes to my truck and laid her across the backseat. She was regaining consciousness when I sat her up. The girl climbed in next to her. I touched the cut above the woman’s left eye.

  She recoiled.

  I reached down along my ankle and pulled out a Smith & Wesson model 327 from an ankle holster. It’s an eight-shot revolver chambered in .357. I load it with Barnes triple shock. While not a .45, you don’t want to get hit with it. When you do, it feels like you’re being lit on fire. Keeping the muzzle pointed away from us, I handed it to her. I placed the grip flat inside her palm and stretched her trigger finger straight along the frame and away from the trigger. I didn’t want to get shot giving someone my own gun. “If anyone other than me opens that door, point that at them and pull this trigger until it stops going ‘boom.’ Can you do that?” She wrapped her left hand around her right and nodded. I pushed the door closed and said, “Be right back.”

  I don’t know if she trusted me but I was pretty sure she didn’t trust the other guy. I returned and found him trying to wiggle his way around the van. I put a boot in his rib cage and drove the air out of his lungs. He coughed and cussed. I knelt and pressed the muzzle of my 1911 against his temple. Unlike a lot of folks in that same predicament, he didn’t go crazy. Didn’t scream. Didn’t writhe uselessly. He was cool. Collected. Measured. That told me a lot.

 
I studied the shadows. If he had help, it was slow in coming. He was studying what he could out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t seen, and couldn’t see, my face but he was taking a mental picture of everything else. He was good. He also liked being in control—which he wasn’t.

  And that he didn’t like.

  I straddled him and drove my elbow down onto his neck, pressing his face into the mud. He shook his head and spoke around the mud. “Don’t know you. Don’t really care. I do know that I’ll hunt you. Find you. Rid you of whatever and whoever you love.” He laughed again. His anger was growing and he was losing his self-control. I reached in his back pocket and slid out his wallet. A bifold. On one side I found his driver’s license. On the other, his badge. Told you he had experience. I slipped it in my shirt pocket.

  He had yet to see my face and I didn’t really want him to see me drive away so I sunk my arm under his chin and dragged him into the corner of the fence where the grass was tall. He knew what was coming. I locked my right hand on my left bicep and applied pressure to the back of his head with my left hand. He grew frantic. He knew he didn’t have long. In martial arts circles, this hold is called a “rear naked choke.” It’s painless, quite effective, and the problem with it is not that law enforcement folks use it but rather that they don’t use it enough. He, evidently, had used it. Through gritted teeth, he managed a smile. He was thick, all muscle. I’d not want to face him on even terms. He spoke through gritted teeth. “You are now… my life’s mission.”

  I clamped down on both sides of his neck with my bicep and forearm and continued to push forward with my left hand. It only takes a few seconds. Just before he went to sleep, I whispered, “Be careful what you wish for.”

  He slumped forward and I laid him in the grass. He’d recover. I walked a different route to the truck and approached slowly—from the front so she could see me through the windshield. I made eye contact with the woman holding my gun, opened the door slowly, and gently took the pistol from her hand. I grabbed a dirty T-shirt and an old towel off the passenger’s side floorboard, and draped them over my front and rear license tags. I didn’t know if this truck stop had video monitors or not but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  The girl was shaking uncontrollably and the woman wasn’t altogether conscious. I put it in drive, turned off all lights, and began pulling out of the truck stop.

  The girl pressed her nose and palms to the glass and screamed, “Wait!” She was trained on the station wagon. “Turbo!”

  The woman held out a hand. Stop sign. “Wait, please.”

  I stopped and stared in the rearview.

  She opened the door and the kid ran back through the puddles to the car. She reached in the back and returned with a cage filled with what smelled like old cedar shavings. She set it on the backseat behind her mother, then ran back for her blanket, her notebook, a small black backpack, which her mother held on to and set in her lap, and a thick paperback. As she opened the back door I could see the pages were dirty, the corners were curled, and both the front and back cover were missing.

  She hopped in and we drove out, through the lights and onto the highway.

  A quick glance in the rearview. The woman was looking at me out of the corner of her eye. The look on her face told me she didn’t trust me any more than the guy behind us. Her face above her left eye was cut and needed stitches, her glasses were gone, her nose was dripping blood, her left eye was black, her bottom lip swollen, and she was still spitting blood.

  We drove in silence. After fifteen minutes with no headlights coming up fast behind us, I turned off onto a smaller state highway, then again onto a country road. When the pavement ended, and the road turned to dirt, I pulled over, cut the lights and sat with the truck running. I turned around and scratched my head. “Are you okay to talk?”

  Her wall had returned. “What do you want me to say?”

  Her accent was rich. Thick. Syrupy. Mixed with a little attitude and sprinkled with spunk. Reminded me of Jo Dee Messina singing “Heads Carolina, Tails California.” I shrugged. “How about a name?”

  “I’m Virginia. This is my daughter, Emma.” I doubted it, but if I were her I wouldn’t trust me, either.

  The girl looked up at her.

  “And, what are you two doing out here tonight?”

  A quick look in the rearview. “Running from him.”

  “And he is?”

  “Was… a guy we lived with.”

  “Until what?”

  “Until I decided I didn’t like him anymore.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Cordele, Georgia.”

  Thought so. “Why’s he chasing you?”

  She looked away. “ ’Cause he… didn’t want us to leave.”

  There’s always more to a story than what surfaces on the first go ’round. Even the second and third. The best scenario for me would be to get them some place safe, get back on my way, and never ask her for her real name.

  I tapped my chin, considering my options. “You got any family?”

  “Sister in New Orleans.”

  “Will she take you in?”

  She paused, nodded.

  “When was the last time you talked to her?”

  “Couple months ago.”

  “Why so long?”

  She pursed her lips. “Phone’s disconnected.”

  That should have been my first clue. “You know where she lives?”

  She nodded.

  I pushed her. “As in… you can point me to the exact address?”

  Another nod. The rain was coming down again. I spoke to myself as much as to her. “I hate New Orleans.”

  She pressed gingerly on one side of her mouth, talking as much to herself as to me. “I hate a lot of things.”

  I did the math. Almost four hundred miles. About a six-and-a-half-hour drive. “Would it help if I drove you to your sister’s?”

  Her head tilted to one side. One eyebrow raised. “You’d do that.”

  It was a question embedded in a statement. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “How else are you going to get there?”

  She stiffened. “I got no money. Can’t afford to pay you.”

  “I figured.”

  “Well, you don’t have to sound so smug about it.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that after everything tonight, that you… probably didn’t have much of anything. That’s all.”

  “My sister can’t pay you, either.”

  “I’m not looking for money.”

  Her eyes darted away. “Are you wanting the same deal I gave that truck driver?” It was an offer embedded in a question.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Her eyes narrowed, forcing a wrinkle between. “You gay?”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I picked up on the fact that when she got wound up, her accent got wound, too. It took a second after she quit speaking for the words to settle in their rightful place of meaning.

  I laughed. “We’re going to need a longer highway for that conversation.” Her shoulders relaxed and a crack in her wall developed. I looked at her—the whole of her. She was dead tired. “How long have you been awake?”

  She spoke without looking. “Couple of days.”

  “How many is a couple?”

  She thought. “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “I slept some last… Friday.”

  I thought about her car at the truck stop. “Do you have Triple A?”

  She frowned. Her head tilted. “Do I look like I have Triple A?”

  “What about your car?”

  “Not mine.”

  “Whose is it?”

  She shrugged. “No idea. I stole it.”

  “From?”

  She rolled her eyes. More of the story she didn’t want to tell. “An old woman lived behind… where we were staying. She’s in a home. They were letting her cats sle
ep in it.”

  “Well…” I glanced at my watch, thought about home, and dropped the stick into drive. “Come on… let’s get you two to New Orleans.”

  I pulled back onto the highway. Her head turned on a swivel as she checked all the signs. A few minutes passed. She grew more jumpy. Her eyes squinted as she tried to read the passing road signs. “Are you really driving us to New Orleans?”

  I figured we didn’t need any more sarcasm. “Yes.”

  She sat up a little. “You’re not dropping us”—she tried to read another sign that disappeared into the blackness on the side of the road—“the first place you come to?”

  “No.” She sat back, confused and deflated. “Why don’t you get some sleep. When you wake up, we’ll stop and get something to eat.”

  She closed her eyes. “I already told you… I don’t have any money.”

  “I can afford McDonald’s for three.”

  For the first time, she noticed the bluebonnets I’d picked. Lying on the front seat wrapped in plastic. “You going somewhere?”

  I shook my head once. “Been there.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  She fell quiet. Maybe even dozed. After a few minutes, she jerked slightly and lifted her head. I spoke softly. Tilted my hat back. “It’s okay. You’re safe. Still headed to New Orleans.” She put her head back down and took a deep breath. Drunk with sleep, she turned to check on her sleeping daughter, then stared out through the windshield at the wreckage that had become her life. “I don’t have real good judgment when it comes to men.” I didn’t say anything. She spoke without looking. “Are you a good man?”

  “My son thinks so.”

  She stared at the Polaroid taped next to the gas gauge. “That him?”

  I nodded.

  Minutes passed. She spoke, “That driver tonight… the truck… that was the first time I’d—”

  “Lady, I’m not judging you.”

  “That’d make you different than most men I’ve met.”