D
espite the goofiness with the chopper and all the
rest of it, Jonah was back pulling notable scores within a year. Chase had been worried for the first few months after the botched museum heist so he kept in touch with Murphy, an old-time safecracker who’d done a nine count in the pen, took a bullet in the hip during his last job, and decided to retire. Now Murphy ran a used car lot in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his two adult sons, and passed messages for the pros. He sold cars with clean papers to crews operating in the Midwest, and he always kept an ear out for any buzz or action.
Chase checked in a few times to find out what the word was on Jonah. It had taken a while for the stigma to fall away but eventually everybody just blamed Buzzard Allen for the troubles during the museum heist. Buzzard’s friends apparently didn’t like him enough to argue the point too emphatically.
Murphy asked, “You want me to give your grandfather a message?”
“No,” Chase said and got on with his life.
For three years he worked his way mostly south under different names, stealing cars or driving getaway on various easy jobs. He stayed out of the circuit he had known and wound up in Tennessee running moonshine for a couple of months, listening to the locals talk about the federal government like they thought Lincoln was still in charge. Every time someone mentioned revenuers he’d burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t realized they really said shit like that.
They started acting like he might be under-cover for the Treasury Department and he finally took off.
He met Lila
while he was driving for a four-man string knocking over jewelry stores in northern Mississippi. They were a flashy bunch who liked to blow up gas stations for diversions. Nobody had died yet but that was bound to change. When Chase came on board for the job he talked them down from TNT to simply planting homemade smoke bombs in the kitchen of the one fairly up-scale hotel in town. Same effect—a lot of confusion—but no one would get hurt.
They liked to argue among themselves and draw little diagrams and math equations with graphs and vectors before they decided on any move at all. It made them feel smart. You’d think with all the notations and planning one of them might’ve brought a flashlight, but the first thing they did when they got inside Bookatee’s Antiques & Rustic Curio Emporium (Gold, Silver & Jewelry) was pull up the shade to get some street light in the place.
Chase knew this crew wasn’t going to last long, but he’d recently lost a bank account of stashed funds when the guy he’d bought his fake identification from went down in a federal sting. The name was useless now and the money had gone with it. He needed to rebuild a quick cache. Otherwise he’d never have worked with these nitwits in the first place.
The crew assured him that Bookatee had money and knew jewelry. This was where you came for the good merchandise. So at midnight Chase waited down the block in a ’69 Mustang with the lights off while the others boosted the goods. He’d rebuilt the Mustang’s engine from damn near scratch and it hummed perfectly in tune with the crickets and katydids, so that he could feel the darkness throbbing. Sirens erupted in the distance. The fire engine was actually
clanging
on its way to the scene. He looked over his shoulder through the back window and watched a bloom of smoke rise against the silver-tinged clouds.
It was only because he was glancing in that direction that he spotted the police cruiser easing around the corner behind him. Mostly hidden in the shadows of a large maple, he slid lower in his seat. It was a warm night and hopefully the cop wouldn’t spot the muffler vapor. The driver slowed in the middle of the road, then veered to the curb ahead of him. Chase cursed beneath his breath. A female deputy sheriff climbed out and craned her neck. She’d noticed Bookatee’s window shade.
He sat up and drummed his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. She was pretty as hell and her body language somehow got to him—how she moved with poise and a solid, confident power. She stood at the outer rim of the streetlamp’s circle of illumination. Why wasn’t she calling it in yet, asking for backup? Probably because she didn’t want to pull anybody off the fire detail where they might be needed.
Chase noted her full lips, dark eyes, and the short, feathered black hair that framed her valentine-shaped face. It was a haircut he disliked on most women, but somehow it worked on her. He drummed his fingers harder. She had some muscle and meat to her and she jiggled in all the right places beneath her uniform. He couldn’t stop staring.
When she stood on tiptoe trying to get a look inside the front window, going for her billy club and not her sidearm, he knew he had to move. She was assertive but too optimistic.
He slid out of the ’Stang without closing the driver’s door, moved silently in a wide arc so he’d come up directly behind her. She was still on tippytoe and he liked the way the shadows edged her curves, the streetlamp casting a soft pale light and the moon throwing off a much more vivid liquid silver, accenting every detail. Then someone inside the shop knocked over a vase or some shit and the noise made her stick the billy club back in her belt and start to draw her .38. Goddamn idiots.
He sped up. She was sharp and fast enough to sense him while he was still sneaking up on her. He was maybe five feet away when she turned and swung the barrel toward him. He dove at her, his hand flashing out, and after a brief struggle in which she tried to knee him, he managed to wrestle the gun free from her. She elbowed him in the gut and came in again with a right cross to his chin. It rattled his teeth and he saw stars, but once he held her own pistol on her she settled back. They faced each other.
She controlled her fear. Chase watched as she tightened herself around it, tamping the panic down, and he felt a surge of respect for her. It wasn’t easy to keep calm looking into a gun.
“You’ve got mean eyes,” she said.
She should only run into Jonah. “If you think so, then you’ve never really seen anybody with mean eyes.”
“I think I have.”
“In this town? Get real.”
It made him itchy, the way she looked at him, and he hated holding on to the gun. He tossed it from one hand to the other, like it was red-hot.
“My, but you’re a fast one,” she said.
“You’ve got some speed yourself, lady.” It was about the finest compliment a driver could pay.
“You set that hotel fire?”
“It’s just a smoker, I didn’t want anyone hurt.”
“People can still be hurt stampeding outta the building. You ever think’a that?”
He’d always hated the Southern accent until he heard it on her. There was flint in her voice, a lot of heat.
“Well, I am a bad guy,” he said, reasonably. “Just not too bad.”
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Tossing that hardware. You’re likely to shoot me without even meaning to.”
Chase almost apologized. He relaxed his hold on the .38 and pointed it down at the sidewalk.
“There’s somethin’ truly goddamned infuriating about having your own gun aimed at you,” she told him.
“I imagine there would be. But it’s not really aimed at you.”
“Too close to shave the difference.” She lifted her chin and stuck her chest out. It was a pretty chin and a damn fine chest. “You gonna pull the trigger?”
“I thought we might avoid all that.”
It made her firm up her bottom lip into a sexy but very serious pout. “You could’ve avoided it by refraining from scoring jewelry shops at near 1:00
A.M
. in my hometown.” She held her hand out. “You return that to me now and things will swing a lot easier for you, especially when I drag your ass before Judge Kelton in the morning.”
“Let me ask you,” Chase said, “what kind of antiques and rustic curios is Bookatee likely to have in this rustic curio emporium?”
She thought about it for a second, moonlight glazing her features. “I believe my cousin Ferdie once bought a stuffed gray squirrel dressed up like Robert E. Lee, with saber pointed skyward, astride his horse Traveler, from this here shop.”
“Holy Christ, why?”
“I never asked.”
A small tug in his chest grew stronger. He stared at her, really trying to reach deep and see what might be inside, what gave her such confidence and strength. But the mercury sheen cast against the side of her face faded as clouds passed by the moon, throwing a veil across her eyes.
“You’re by far the cutest cop to ever draw down on me,” he said.
“And you’re just another damn outlaw, though younger than most I’ve seen.”
Chase grinned. “And how many have you seen?”
“Including you and Cousin Ferdie, too damn many. But I reckon there might be time for you yet, to do the right thing. So why don’t you try real hard to follow the smarter course?”
“You’re not much older than me. How’d you become a deputy sheriff so young?”
“The sheriff is my daddy,” she told him, “but don’t let that fact fool you. I earned my way.”
He nodded, sure that she had. “What’s your name?”
That got the pout out again. “Why? You plan on sending me a postcard from Angola?”
He needn’t have asked. What with the Southern hospitality and all that shit, she wore a name tag beneath her cop badge. Shadow-obscured but still readable.
Lila Bodeen.
The klutzes inside the store knocked over something else with a loud ka-klunk. She said, “Not too nimble, your friends.”
“Not my friends either.”
“Well then, what’s a good ole boy like you want to boost a shop dedicated to improving the quality of life with curios anyway?”
“Trust me, I’ve been asking myself that repeatedly.”
“You’d think a smart fella could have answered by now.”
She wasn’t going to give an inch, which made him like her even more. “Why aren’t you at the hotel making sure all your traveling soap salesmen are getting out safely?”
“Somebody’s got to keep an eye on the town. Just in case some less than savorish types might be using smoke to cover illegal actions of one sort or another.”
A laugh rose from him as he turned her name around and around in his head. He smiled and tried to stamp a sweet expression onto his face.
She said, “I’m made of flesh and blood, not tinder. Those eyes aren’t going to burn me down.”
So much for the charm and wit being able to work wonders. He could feel himself moving toward her. She saw him about to take a step. She misread his intentions and almost made a break for it. He held his hands out palms up to show he didn’t mean anything, that he was harmless really, but considering he still had his index finger in the trigger guard of her .38, he figured he wasn’t exactly getting the point across.
The crew came
rushing out carrying a couple of gunny sacks each. Hopefully the loot would be of greater value than stuffed gray squirrels posed in those The-South-Will-Rise-Again stances.
The three-man string stopped short and stared at Deputy Sheriff Lila Bodeen. They didn’t ask any questions or run for the car or wait for Chase to say anything. They started talking among themselves and quickly decided they wanted to kill her.
They threw down the sacks while they chattered and Chase took a peek inside. He saw a lot of crap and nothing that might be worth the fifteen grand he’d expected from his share.
The string stood around arguing, discussing Lila’s murder like she wasn’t there. Saying they should give her a double tap to the back of the head and dispose of her body in the hills near one of the old abandoned stills. The corpse might never be found. Another wanted to tie rocks to her feet and toss her in the river. They considered which rocks might work best and which method they should use to attach them to her feet. Ropes or chains, netting or mesh. They still had some TNT stashed, maybe they should blow her up. One of them wanted to rape her first. Then all of them did. Lila kept her face tight, doing her best to force out any fear.
Chase sighed and shot all three of the nitwits in the leg.
It made her jump, which was nice to see. She glanced at him and he was tinder, burning. He stuck the pistol in his belt and disarmed the others while they rolled around in the street yelping and gripping their wounds. Blood pulsed through their fingers. He told them to stop thrashing so much, it would just make them bleed faster. No one listened.
They didn’t know his real name and even if they ever did run into anybody in prison that might recognize his description or skills, taking out these mooks would probably work in his favor.
He turned to Lila and said, “Okay, there you go. You just bagged a few more unsavorish types, cracked another gang of regional jewel thieves.”
“Not all of them,” she said. “There’s still you.”
“Start with these three. Your Judge Kelton will give you a medal. Town this size, they might even throw you a parade.”
“My daddy wouldn’t let them. He believes in humility almost as much as he does justice. I want my pistol back.”
“I hate guns. I’ll leave it and the others on the curb when I pull out.”
“You’re not taking the boodle?”
Christ, maybe he really was in love. Boodle. Your heart had to skip at that. “I wouldn’t be able to unload this shit anyway, they’re the ones with the fence.”
She cocked her head, studying him. He appreciated the way she looked at him, unsure but curious. She moistened her lips and the moon glistened in them. “You’re the damn strangest outlaw I’ve ever run into.”
He shrugged and backed away down the block. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
“Stay in my town and you can count on it.”
Well, all right then. “I might just do that.”
He dropped the guns in the gutter, got in the ’Stang, and started to pull away from the curb. Before he could put the pedal down she was running for her cruiser, leaving the three geniuses still rolling in the road and clutching their legs. He thought it might be fun to get into a high-speed pursuit around here. He figured he could out-drive her easily, but she’d know these roads better. It would even it up, make things a little more interesting.