Eye of the Wolf (21 page)

“Yeah, we got an option, all right. You're my option.”

“Sit down, Frankie,” she said again.

“You and me, we're gettin' outta here.”

“Frankie.” She drew out the man's name, reaching for the next words. “Don't make things any worse than they are. I can talk to Burton, tell him you're ready to turn yourself in, and maybe he'll agree to overlook what happened at the house . . .”

“You gone psycho or somethin'? Well, ain't that just great. All I need's a psycho lawyer. You and me, Vicky, you're drivin' me out of here.”

“How far do you think we'll get, Frankie? Every cop in the area is looking for you right now. It won't take them long to trace you here and figure out that you took my Jeep.”

“Wrong on all the above. Them dumb cops are gonna find my pickup in back of a motel up on the highway, and it's gonna take 'em awhile to figure out which piece of crap I hot-wired to get outta there. Even if they get real smart and figure I got you with me, they're not gonna be shooting at no vehicle that you're inside. Besides, by the time they know what happened, you and me are gonna be in a real safe hiding place. You're my stay-out-of-prison pass. Get my drift?”

“You don't want to do that, Frankie. You'd be making a huge mistake.”

“They're not sending me to prison, I tol' you before.” The gun was waving back and forth, like a pendulum. Vicky tried to pull her eyes away.

“You didn't listen to me,” Frankie went on. “You tol' me to go find another lawyer, when you should've been talking to the detective and telling him how I'm innocent so he'd get off my back. I figure you're to
blame for everything that's come down, so you're gonna keep me out of prison.”

“Let me call your mother.” A new tack. God, let it work. “She's worried sick.”

The man dropped his hands and took a step inside the office. “You ain't so high and mighty now, are you? Not like you was in the bar a couple days ago.” He let out a low guffaw. “She loves you, and God knows why,” he said, switching into a falsetto voice. Then he threw his head toward the outer office. “We're gettin' outta here now,” he said, pointing the gun at her face. “Let's go.”

VICKY STOOD UP
slowly, not taking her eyes from the black pistol that Frankie Montana was waving in her direction. The man was crazy. His eyes burned like coals in his skull; sweat glistened on his face. He was high on something. Alcohol? Drugs? Probably both. The slightest twitch of nerves and the gun would go off.

Vicky kept her gaze on the black metal gun moving back and forth. “Put the gun away, Frankie,” she said again, struggling to keep her voice steady. The calm courtroom voice, the one she reserved for the hostile witness who wouldn't give up anything until, worn down by calmness and persistence, he might reluctantly let go of whatever he had been clinging to.

“I said we're gettin' outta here, you and me.”

Vicky didn't move for a moment, and then she started to pull on her coat still draped across her shoulders.

“Hold it!” The gun protruded into the room, the muzzle gaping like an endless black tunnel.

“I was just getting on my coat,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the weapon.

“Real slow.” Now Frankie waved the gun up and down. “Don't try any funny stuff or I swear, I swear I'll pull the fucking trigger.”

Vicky stuffed one arm into the sleeve. Slow motion, pulling up the collar—how familiar it felt, the soft, comforting wool. “Can I get my handbag? It's on the floor.”

Frankie seemed to consider this, the brown brow wrinkling with arguments playing out inside his head. He nodded finally, then motioned her forward with the gun. “Get a move on.”

Vicky reached down and picked up the black leather bag. “I'm going with you, Frankie,” she said, locking eyes with the man. A crazy, drugged murderer. God, God, God. “So put the gun down. Those things can go off. I don't think you want that to happen.”

Frankie didn't move for so long that she feared it was exactly what he wanted to happen. Finally, he lowered the gun. His arm hung at his side, the gun brushing his pant leg, pointing to the floor. “You try anything . . .”

“I know, I know.” Vicky walked around the desk, across the office, and through the doorway, moving past the man who took a half-step back. She felt him lurch after her as she crossed the corridor and turned toward the elevator, the raspy sound of his breathing close behind.

“Take the stairs.” A sharp object poked through her coat into the small of her back, nudging her in the direction of the stairway. She went weak-kneed with the realization that he was poking the gun into her.

She dragged one hand along the corridor wall to steady herself and tried to hurry ahead. Frankie Montana stayed with her, the gun burning into her back. Their boots pounded on the stairs, an out-of-sync rhythm, and rising from below was a metallic clinking noise. Through the rails, Vicky caught the glimpse of dark hair above a tan overcoat
leaning into one of the doors on the first floor. The dentist who'd been in yesterday evening was letting himself into his office. She grabbed hold of the top rail and hurled herself down the remaining stairs. Now she could see that standing about two feet farther down the corridor was a heavyset man bundled in a dark coat with a scarf hanging down the front.

A moment. She needed only a moment.

“Working this morning?” she called.

The dentist turned the key in the lock, pushed the door open a couple of inches, and glanced along the corridor toward where the stairs spilled into the entry at the same time that the man standing next to him also threw a pained, impatient look her way. In that moment, in the look she tried to hurl back at them both, she hoped they would see . . .

God, let them see!

“Toothaches never respect weekends, I'm afraid,” the dentist said.

Vicky felt as if her legs had turned to air. She had to hold onto the bannister knob to stop herself from crumbling to the floor.
They didn't see!

“Shut up and keep going,” Frankie hissed into her ear and gripped her arm hard. The gun pushed so hard into her ribs that she gasped with the force of it.

“What brought you in today?” The dentist was walking toward them now, the other man moving like a shadow behind him, something new flooding through their expressions—a mixture of interest, curiosity, and wariness.

“Move,” Frankie hissed again, pushing her forward.

Vicky felt herself propelled toward the wood-paneled door that rose before her like a barrier. The gun was still pushing into her ribs. Frankie's free hand reached around and slammed against the door, sending it swinging on its hinges out into the gray morning. In an instant they were through the door and scrambling along the sidewalk, Vicky's boots skipping and sliding on the wet pavement. Frankie's fingers dug into her arm, pushing and pulling her forward. A pickup drove past on
Main, tires whining, the distinct sound of hip-hop bursting through the unopened windows.

They swung around the corner of the building. Frankie pulled her off the curb and down the dirty, uneven tracks of snow and mud carved out by the vehicles parked around the lot. He steered her to the driver's side of a battered tan pickup, looking back over his shoulder toward the front of the building as he did so. Vicky glanced back. Before he yanked her around, she'd caught the slightest movement, like a disturbance in the air, of someone pulling back from the corner. A wave of weakness and disorientation came over her, as if she were in a nightmare where everything should be familiar. Wasn't that Main Street? The brick buildings across the street looming into the gray morning? The windows of the shops facing the sidewalk? And yet, nothing was familiar. Nothing was as it should be.

“Get in,” Frankie said, yanking open the door. “You're gonna drive.”

It was then Vicky realized that the humming noise she'd only half registered was the motor running. Warm air funneled from the cab.

She felt Frankie's fist clamp hard around her arm. Pain shot through her jaw as her face smashed against the steering wheel. She sprawled onto the front seat, the lump of her handbag digging into her stomach, and fought to right herself, finally managing to pull in her legs an instant before the door slammed shut.

She had a sense of being underwater. She was drowning at the bottom of a murky lake, unable to see anything, except for the dark smudge moving in the rearview mirror that had to be Frankie running around the pickup. She put the gear shift in forward and jammed down on the accelerator. The vehicle jumped ahead and slammed into something hard, pitching her forward. She threw up her hand to stop herself from hitting the windshield. The steering wheel dug into her chest. From far away, like noise traveling underwater, came the sound of crunching metal and breaking glass.

The passenger door flew open. Frankie jumped onto the seat. “I
oughtta break your neck,” he said, slamming the door behind him. Then he stuffed the gun under his belt. “Get out of here,” he shouted. “Take the alley.”

Vicky shifted into reverse and pushed on the gas pedal. Whatever she'd hit gripped the front bumper a moment before the pickup rocked free. She swung left, steered around her Jeep and headed down the alley toward the side street, where there would be even less traffic than the handful of vehicles on Main.

“I'm not gonna forget your little trick back there,” Frankie said when she reached the end of the alley. She was aware of him settling back into the seat, removing the gun from his belt, holding it in his lap, pointed at her.

“Where are we going?” Vicky asked. A sharp pain pulsed through her jaw. She strained forward, staring through the windshield.

“Just drive,” the man beside her said.

FATHER JOHN STOOD
at the door to Eagle Hall, shaking hands, patting shoulders, trying for an encouraging word, as Joanne Thornton, Don Menlo, Judy Pretty Horse, and the five other members of the education committee filed outside into the cool, moist air that seemed to have settled in. He waited until the last pickup had sputtered to life, backed across the gravel, and pulled out into the driveway that led to Circle Drive before he walked back to the front of the meeting hall and began gathering up the copies of the agenda.

Agenda. He shook his head at the idea that the committee might have actually gotten around to discussing the education programs for the summer. Religious education, high school tutoring, Head Start—everything would have to wait. The committee had huddled together in a circle of folding chairs under puddles of white fluorescent light that flooded down from the ceiling and talked about the murder of another Shoshone at Bates, and Liam Harrison's front-page article in this morning's paper about the tribal war on the reservation. Worry, shock, fear—
all of it was there in the brown faces turning toward him, black eyes pleading for some explanation, some words of assurance. Four Shoshones had already been murdered and more violence would end . . . where?

After sliding the papers inside a file folder and pulling on his jacket, Father John was locking the door outside when a green pickup squealed into the driveway and skidded to a stop a few feet away. Even before Leonard Bizzel, the mission caretaker, jumped out, Father John had started toward him, all of his instincts switched to alert.

“What's up?” he asked.

“You heard what happened?” Leonard gestured with his head toward the opened door of the pickup and the sound of a radio voice trailing from inside.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I was just heading home and turned on the radio. Hadn't even gotten out of the mission when this announcer comes on with a news bulletin.” Leonard leaned closer. “Frankie Montana's on the run from the police. They tried to arrest him this morning for shooting them Shoshones, and he took off.”

“Took off?” He could hear Ethan Red Bull's voice in his head.
It wasn't an Arapaho.
But if the police went to Montana's with an arrest warrant, there must be some new evidence to tie him to the murders. The rifle. Dear Lord, the rifle must be Montana's.

“Jumped out of the window,” Leonard said. “Made it to his pickup and drove off. Cops followed him to Lander before they lost him. Got an alert out, roadblocks everywhere.” The Indian hunched his shoulders and swept his eyes over the ground a moment before he said, “There's something else.”

Father John waited. He could feel the knot tightening in his stomach. Whatever it was, Leonard didn't want to tell him.

Finally, the man locked eyes with him again. “The cops say a couple of witnesses spotted Montana at Vicky's office. They say he's got her with him.”

“No!” Father John heard someone shout. But it was his voice, he
realized. He was the one shouting. Then he was running, boots pounding down the alley, past the church, and across the grounds to the pickup parked in front of the residence. He got inside and jammed the key into the ignition. Stomping on the gas pedal, he shot around Circle Drive, barely aware of the rear tires spinning in the slush and the mission buildings flashing past the pickup's windows.