Strike

  He starts walking toward the trail we took to Brady and target practice a few days ago, and I stick my hands in my pockets and hurry to keep up.

  “Do you mean the neighborhood off Hayley Bridge? Across from the Estates?”

  My dad snorts, the same way I snort. “No. I mean the Cannon Wildlife Preserve.”

  “Never heard of it.” But I’m not going to tell him about going through the photos at my uncle’s house. Not yet.

  “See, the Cranes and the Cannons go way back. Me and Leon grew up together. Crane Hollow extends into the forest, where it meets Cannon land.” He beams. “Our family’s land. Leon’s granddad got into some money trouble a long time ago, and my granddad offered to buy some land off him and turn it into a shared preserve, hunting land. Cranes and Cannons only.”

  “Okay, but I have so many questions. Where—”

  “Plenty of time for that, pip-squeak. Let’s just walk a bit. Get farther away.”

  We walk past the bullet-gouged targets and the trailer where Brady probably stays. The lights are still on. My dad holds a finger to his lips, and I nod and walk in silence. This is as far as I’ve been in Crane Hollow, but my dad keeps walking, taking a dirt path through the overgrown field. We pass a deer stand and the remnants of a bonfire strewn with beer cans and shotgun shells as we push past scrubby pines and into a hardwood forest. I expect it to be colder in the shadows, but without the brisk wind, it’s warmer, and my shoulders unhunch a little. Normally, this situation wouldn’t feel safe to me, but I’ve got a gun, and I’m willing to bet my dad does too. I don’t know if I trust him yet, but in this moment, I know that I would follow him anywhere if it meant I got the answers I crave.

  This close to my dad, I feel like a live wire, humming with emotions and energy. On one level, the little kid inside me got her wish, and everything feels right. But deep down, the grown, monstrous version of me knows nothing is right.

  “We grew up back here. Building forts, hunting, running wild. All the Crane and Cannon kids, a whole passel of cousins.” My heart twists. I always imagined having cousins, and I did. They were less than five miles from my house, all this time, but I grew up alone.

  “So does this land belong to you?” I ask.

  He holds a branch out of the way for me. “My father’s trust, technically. John Cannon Senior. They called him Devil Johnny. For good reason. Did your mom ever . . . ? No.” He chuckles sadly. “She just told you I left, didn’t she?”

  I’ve heard that name before, though, and then it comes back to me. Leon told my dad that Devil Johnny would be proud of his hacking skills when he helped me scrub the Valor SUV over the phone. But I don’t say that, either.

  “You were there, and you said you had to leave but you loved me and you’d be back one day. You gave me the locket. And then you were gone. Mom never said why.”

  He’s just a shadow in the woods ahead, but I can feel sadness radiating off him. “Did you keep the locket?”

  I nod even though he can’t see me. “I did. Until last week. Lost it running from Valor. But I still have your gun.”

  “Probably more valuable these days.”

  “It saved my life.” But I don’t mention that it’s the same gun Wyatt pulled on him earlier. I don’t want him to take it back.

  “So how’d you get involved with the CFF?”

  My head jerks up. “How’d you?”

  He sighs. “Okay, so Leon was my best friend growing up. Our families ran this town. The Cranes still do. All those businesses, all this land. They put my granddad’s money to good use, turns out. As soon as Valor’s takeover stopped being a threat and became a promise, it made sense to join forces. I’m the brain; Leon’s the brawn. Or that’s what I used to think. Like he was the mad dog and I was holding the chain. Turns out he was just playing dumb while his daddy and older brother were alive. Now they’re gone and he’s off the chain.” He looks down at me, a little stern. “But how’d you end up here? It’s not safe.”

  I step ahead and catch his jacket so he’ll stop. “You already know. Valor tapped me. I found the flyers in Alistair’s trailer. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  My dad turns and looks down at me, eyes sparkling in the low light. He’s been crying. “I wish I’d known. I would’ve done anything on earth to stop that from happening. I thought I had. I—”

  I let go of his jacket and shake my head. I’m not ready to hear his tearful apologies. Not when I still have other people to worry about.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m fine now. But Leon has Mom. Dad, he’s hiding her somewhere. So he can make me do things.” I hold up the rosary, my throat dry and my eyes stinging with cold. “We have to find her.”

  “We will, honey.” Something snaps in the forest, followed by a soft curse. “Goddammit. Come on, Pats. Fast and quiet.”

  When my dad starts running, I struggle to keep up. My heart’s gotten a workout this week, but my lungs and legs are as limp as ever. He said to be quiet, but how can I be? I’m in the woods in the pitch-dark, and I’m terrified. I hear someone crashing through the brush behind us and speed up. My dad’s waiting ahead, by a tree.

  “Up you go. Hurry, now.”

  A ladder of wooden planks waits, and I scramble upward to a rickety platform, the tree bark tearing at my hands. My dad is behind me, and as I drag myself over the edge of the deer stand on my belly, he pushes me down and lands on top of me.

  “What is it?”

  “Shh,” he whispers in my ear.

  For a moment the only sounds are my heart beating in my ears and my dad’s rough breathing, his weight crushing me to cold boards that smell like old tobacco and rain. Then I hear the crunching leaves and whispering down below. Ever so slowly, my dad reaches between our bodies and withdraws the gun plastered to my spine. I feel cold and fragile without it, not to mention angry and scared to have it taken so easily by someone I want to know but clearly don’t. And then he slides it into my right hand.

  “Loaded?” he whispers.

  I nod.

  “Good shot?”

  I nod, jaw clenched. How does he think I lasted this long?

  “Me too. If Leon sent them after us, either they die or we do. You ready for this?”

  I nod and find my grip, glad I’m in the habit of reloading every time I get home.

  My dad edges off me but keeps his body between me and whoever is coming after us. He’s on his belly, peeking over the edge of the platform. He holds up four fingers, and I nod. The gun in his other hand is yet another 9mm. I didn’t even see him draw.

  “Leon send you boys after me?” he barks, and one of the fools below fires a shot that wings off our tree.

  “Come on down and talk, Jack.”

  “We can talk from here, Hartness.”

  The big man chuckles below us. “Well, now, that ain’t fair. I can’t look a man in the eyes, I don’t feel like it’s a real conversation.”

  “Four men follow me into the woods with guns drawn, I figure they lack any real skill at conversation, anyway. Now y’all go on home and tell Leon I’ll report back when I’m done here.”

  Down below, the sound of a shotgun cocking. “You known Leon long enough to know that he ain’t much for waiting. So are you gonna come down here, or are we gonna shoot that old stand full of holes and wait for you to fall?”

  “You known me long enough to know the answer to that question, boy.” Quick as a whip, my dad fires three shots. I hear one of the guys break toward my side, and I peek over the edge to shoot him in the back as he runs. He falls face-first and tries to crawl, crying and snuffling in the wet leaves. So I shoot him again, and he stops moving.

  “Goddammit, Jack! You shot me in the leg!” Hartness yells.

  “Only because I meant to. Now throw down your gun.”

  During the tense moment that follows, I shuffle around and aim my gun next to my dad’s, right at the big Crane goon that I had pegged as a sweet-natured good ol’ boy. Two men lie dead in the leaves
. Hartness mutters some pretty foul words under his breath and throws his shotgun to the ground.

  “All your weapons.”

  A pistol and a Glock follow.

  “And your knives.”

  Hartness shrugs, a picture of innocence. “What knives, Jack?”

  My dad groans. “The only reason I ain’t shot your other leg is that I can’t drag your heavy ass through the woods by myself. Now toss out all your weapons or eat a bullet.” Funny how when my dad was talking to me earlier, he barely had an accent, but now it’s here and hard, just as slow and twangy as a Crane.

  Starlight flashes on blades that clank as they hit the ground. “I’m clean, you bastard.”

  “I’m coming down. You go for anything, you’re going to get shot by my friend up here. You got that?”

  “Got it.”

  My dad leans in close to whisper, “Try not to speak. Just listen. If he goes for anything, shoot him somewhere that won’t kill him. You hear me?”

  I nod.

  I belly up to the edge, pull up the hood on my coat, and aim for Hartness’s leg, the one already dripping blood as black as the sky. My dad’s on the ground before I can track him, yanking off Hartness’s belt to lash the man’s wrists together. The big man’s jaw is tense, and each touch causes him to grunt in pain. I’m damn glad I haven’t been shot yet. Looks like it hurts.

  My dad kicks all the weapons far out of reach and says, “Okay. So here’s where we are. You’re going to answer all my questions, or I’m going to leave you out here to die.”

  Hartness splutters a laugh. “You think Leon tells me anything? Shit, I’m just an errand boy. We’re all just errand boys, to him.”

  “Well, big pitchers have big ears, so maybe you picked something up. Now, what happened to my daughter?”

  “Didn’t know you had one.”

  “What about my wife?”

  Hartness spits and laughs. “You got a wife, Jacky boy? Well, hellfire. And to think you didn’t invite me to the wedding. I’m hurt.”

  “Why were you following me?”

  “Leon told us to. Said you might be meeting your daddy’s people for a little midnight rendezvous. Said to shoot you as soon as you crossed the line to the preserve.”

  My dad looks away like he’s pained, wipes the sweat off his forehead, and paces like he’s running out of time. “I’m the best tech guy he’s got, one of the best friends he’ll ever have. Why’d he set me up like this? He needs me for what’s to come.”

  At that Hartness laughs for real, big belly laughs. “Hellfire, son. He don’t need you. You already built remote buttons for all the bombs and cracked the laptop codes. What the hell else are you good for? You ask too many questions, and you know Leon Crane don’t like to be questioned. Now, is that all?”

  My dad steps behind the bigger man and kicks down at the back of his calves. Hartness hits his knees with a grunt and almost falls on his face. “That is not all. Now, if there’s a woman named Karen Klein on Crane property, you’d best tell me now, or you’re not gonna see morning.” His Glock comes to rest on Hartness’s forehead, and I have to look away.

  My heart goes cold. This is not how a girl gets to know her father.

  “You go on and shoot, Jacky boy. Because everybody you ever loved is dead, and if I go back to Leon without your head in a bag, I’m dead too. And he’ll make it hurt a lot more than you will. So go on. Go on and shoot the boy you grew up with. You go on and prove you’re the bigger man.”

  My dad sighs sadly. “I chose your side. Leon’s side. I went against my family. I defied my father. I abandoned my woman and baby daughter to join you in a bigger fight, to do the right thing. Now I want to know if Leon’s holding a woman named Karen Klein captive, because if so, none of you are the good guys you pretend to be.”

  “Nice speech, brother. But it don’t change nothing. Dead is dead.”

  The silence drags out, and when I peek down, my dad is staring up at me, his gun resting against Hartness’s forehead, tears coursing down his cheeks like his heart is breaking.

  “You understand what has to happen,” he says. It’s not a question.

  I can only nod.

  “Then look away.”

  I do.

  He fires.

  17.

  The forest is strangely silent for a moment, and then a body hits the leaves. Poor Hartness. He seemed like an okay guy, and maybe Leon really did keep him in the dark, just like the rest of us. But I understand that what has just happened is the same as what I described to Wyatt: My dad looked at him and me and decided that only one of us could live. And he chose me.

  “Come on down, baby,” he calls softly, and I uncurl my frozen fingers from the edge of the wood and shake as I hurry to the ground.

  My dad is doing what anyone in our situation should do: searching Hartness’s body. When he pulls out another burner phone, he mutters, “Aha!”

  I head to the other guy, the one I shot in the back, and find yet another identical black phone. You can’t have too many in the post-Valor world. The dude also has a wallet with three different IDs and a wad of cash, some of which is way too worn to be counterfeit. I take the guy’s Glock and check the clip. He’s missing one shot, so I guess he was the one who fired first. The third guy is too messy to touch; it was a head shot. Nice aim, Pop. The fourth guy isn’t here, which must mean he hightailed it back to Leon. That can’t be good.

  My dad stares at the woods, at the way back to Crane Hollow, and sighs. “I didn’t want to do that, goddammit.”

  “Then why did you?”

  He kneels and closes Hartness’s eyes. “Because I needed to know if Leon knew about you and your mom, and once Hartness knew, I couldn’t let it get back to Leon. Once he realizes I’m gone for good, he’d use her to get me back.”

  “So what now?”

  “You know we can’t go back to the CFF,” he says quietly, and the words die on puffs of frost.

  “But Wyatt. And Matty.” I can feel it coming on—that sense of panic, of being trapped. My heart is fluttering, and the air burns my lungs.

  He shakes his head. “Leon Crane will want us dead after this. Whether it’s because he thinks I’m a double agent for my dad or because I shot his boys, he’ll forget we were ever friends and make it his duty to put me in the ground. If I didn’t know these woods and my dad hadn’t been too busy to tear down that old deer stand, we might be full of holes. We go back there, they’ll finish us.”

  “But they can’t kill us in front of everybody,” I say, the desperation making my voice high.

  “They’ll find a reason. They always do. Everybody loves to see a traitor get executed.” He holds up a burner phone. “Does your boy have a phone? We could meet him somewhere.”

  I hold up the phone still warm from my pocket. “He gave it to me. It was our only one.”

  “Then we’ll keep going. I know somewhere safe. It’s close. Leon doesn’t know about it. We’ll figure out a way to get in touch tomorrow. Leon’s going to be busy with Operation Nutjob.”

  I scoff. “That’s seriously what y’all called it? Because of the nut cans? Jesus. We almost got caught, planting those damn things.”

  His head snaps to me, alert as a dog in a thunderstorm. “You put ’em all in the mall, right? Like the list said?”

  I put my hands in my back pockets, but the urgent look on his face is making me deeply uncomfortable. “Ha. We only got seventeen of them placed, so I hid a couple around the house, along with some dye packets. Just to mess with Leon. My friend only got three done. And there’s still one in my backpack.”

  “Where’s your backpack?”

  I shrug. “In my trailer.”

  “Oh, shit.” My dad paces toward the trail to Crane Hollow, then back to me. He’s looking all over like he’s trying to solve math problems in his head. “Why the hell did you do that, Pats?”

  I lick my lips and rub my arms, feeling cold and stupid and like maybe I’ve been fooling myself all a
long about Leon’s chores. “Because it was funny. Because it was stupid. I don’t know. I imagined Leon and all his Crane goons sitting around the card tables in the morning and getting splattered with ink. It was a joke.”

  “Patsy,” he says, slowly and carefully, like I’m an idiot. “Patsy, they’re bombs.”

  I can’t speak. Can’t even find words. Suspecting it is one thing, knowing is another. Mouth open, head shaking, I head for the trail, or where I think the trail might be. My dad grabs my jacket as gently as he can, and I spin around.

  All I can do is shake my head and say, “No. They can’t be.”

  “They were supposed to make the dye packets explode, but we couldn’t work it out in time. So they’re just bombs. Full of nails and nasty stuff. Leon’s specialty.”

  “He showed us the inside of one. It was just . . . wires. The rest were glued shut.”

  “He showed you a dummy. And you believed him?” He runs a hand over his beanie and kicks a log. “Jesus, Patsy.”

  “I . . . I had to believe him. He had Mom. He had Matty. I would’ve planted anything.” Then the realization trickles down, cold as ice. “Wait. When are they supposed to go off?”

  He looks up, and his face is hard.

  “Six in the morning.”

  I spin to run back to Wyatt, but he grabs me by the shoulders and holds me back. I fight and pull, and he just holds me, tight, around the waist.

  “Dad, we have to go back. We have to. There’s one in the trailer with Wyatt and Matty. And there’s one in the room next to Kevin, this sick kid who can barely walk. And another one—hidden in the house. But we can’t let it happen. All those innocent people. Mom might be near one. I think Gabriela has a bag filled with the ones she couldn’t plant. My friends. I can’t . . . I can’t . . . I need them. Okay? I need them.”

  I double over in his arms, crying, wishing to be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. In all the killing, I’ve never been this helpless. I was always the one in charge, the one with the mandate, the one holding a gun. But now I’m powerless to protect the people I care about.