Shoot to thrill, p.19
Shoot to Thrill, page 19
part #5 of Midnight Rider Series
“Man he’s out cold,” Mick said, still watching Stacks sleep.
“Yeah, we had a…” Gabe started. I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell Vince and Mick that there was a siren in Toledo. They would probably do something rash and go try to kill Jo because of their fear of what might happen if she crossed paths with their Angelic.
“Long day,” I said. “Lots of travel and investigating. Just plum wore him out.” I met Gabe’s eyes and gave my head a little shake. Understanding moved across Gabe’s face and he looked back at Vince.
“Hang on, you said ‘one of the places’. What else happened in Indiana?” Gabe asked.
Vince shook his head. “Another hunter’s place was torched. Burned down his tire shop and his whole house. They haven’t been able to find the body in that one either. I’m telling you, those flames were hellfire. You should see the metal braces from that tire shop. They look like bread bag twist ties. It’s the only thing I know of that can produce that kind of heat.”
I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I had to be sure though. Other hunters had day jobs. There could be another one in Indiana who owned a tire shop.
“What town was this in?” I asked, almost dreading the answer.
Mick turned to look at Vince. “Proper or something?”
Vince shook his head. “You never listen. It’s a good thing I’m here to remember names. You’d be chasing your tail looking for Sunshine, Montana if it hadn’t been for me remembering it was Sunrise…”
“What fucking town?!” I barked at them.
Vince and Mick turned back to glare at me. “Prosper,” Vince said.
I moved to Noah and Stacks’ bed and kicked the mattress. “Get up, we have to go. Now!”
Noah opened a bleary eye and stared around the room. “What?”
“Get the hell up! We have to get on the road.” I moved around Gabe and pushed past Mick to start throwing stuff back into my duffle bag.
“Bane,” Gabe was shouting now. “What is it?”
I turned to look at him, clutching the handful of shells so hard in my fist that it was painful. I was poised to throw them back in the duffle bag. Of course, Gabe hadn’t ever been to his house.
“Tags,” I said. “Tags owns a tire shop in Prosper. It’s his house.”
13
Stacks was on his feet looking around him.
“You didn’t bring anything in with you,” I said, cramming the radio back into my bag. I grabbed the machete off the floor and picked up the duffle bag. Gabe had his arms outstretched as if he were about to grab me, but he dropped them when he saw the machete in my hand.
“Hang on, how do you know it’s Tags?” Gabe asked.
“Prosper is a tiny town,” I said. A memory flashed through my mind of sitting on Tags’ front porch with Gary watching literal tumbleweeds roll through town during a windy evening. I pushed the memory aside and focused on Gabe. “He’s the only hunter there. There’s only one tire store. How much more time are we going to waste standing here arguing about this?”
“Call him,” Gabe said, picking up my phone off the bed where I’d thrown it in my panic-packing. “Just to be sure.”
I snatched the phone from his hand and flipped it open. My hands were shaking so much I had to force myself to breathe and try to hit the right numbers. After Gary….no. Just no. The universe wasn’t getting to fuck over both brothers.
It was ringing when I put the phone to my ear and waited. Five sets of male eyes stared at me expectantly watching my face to see if I’d give any telltale sign of relief to show he was alive and on the other end of the line. That hope evaporated quickly. After one ring, his voicemail picked up.
A recording of Tags’ voice came on the line. “What? It’s recording now? Jesus, uh, you got my phone. Say something and I might call you back.” The beep sounded in my ear and I shut the phone.
I shook my head. “Voicemail.”
“Damn,” Stacks swore. Noah had his feet on the ground and had taken a minute to look around just like Stacks had. They both had slept fully clothed, including shoes. The only person who’d removed any clothing was Gabe. He had his boots on now and Vince and Mick moved aside to let him get his jacket off the back of the chair.
“Sorry to bring you bad news,” Vince muttered, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck.
“Well if it’s any consolation to you two, we’re leaving Toledo so whatever ‘shit’ that’s following me will probably meet us in Prosper and leave your Angelic alone,” I muttered heading out the front door with the duffle and the sawed-off in hand. I threw the duffle in the toolbox and put the sawed-off back under the seat. I turned back around and felt a jolt of anger that the others hadn’t gotten their asses outside yet. I hurried back to the open door and almost head-butted Noah in the face on his way out.
“We’re coming,” Noah grumbled, holding his head. Mick and Vince were right behind him and they followed me back to Lucy.
“Really, Bane,” Vince said. “I’m sorry for...bringing bad news. Maybe it wasn’t a tire shop and we got bad information. Maybe our informant meant a mechanics shop, not a tire shop and maybe it wasn’t a hunter in our sense of a hunter. Maybe it was just a regular…” I held up a hand to stop him.
“Who was your informant?” I asked.
Mick sighed. “One of our Angelics. She’s a seer. She called us last night to tell us about the fires. She mentioned demons. We knew you’d been in Indiana and there had been some ruckus and we just thought…”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s me?” I asked.
Vince was looking at the ground. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Well good luck with your Angelic. Thanks for the horrifying news. I hate to be rude, but we need to go, so feel free to beat cheeks out of here.” I knew I wasn’t being fair. I wasn’t really mad at them. I was terrified and mad at myself and I was taking it out on them. If I was responsible for Tags’ death...if something crawled out of the hell hole I was constantly teetering on the edge of and got Tags, I’d never forgive myself. Vince and Mick turned and started walking away. I reached out and put a hand on Vince’s back. He turned to look at me. I patted both of them on an arm and took a breath. “Thanks for coming to find us. And good luck with your Angelic. Hopefully, things will be smooth with us all out of here.”
They nodded and headed off to their Jeep parked in the far corner of the lot. I turned back to the rest of the crew. Noah was leaning on Lucy’s open passenger door looking back at the room. Gabe and Stacks came out, Stacks closing the door behind him.
“Let’s hit the road,” I said.
“I’m not riding with Gabe,” Stacks said. We both looked at Noah.
“I can barely feel my arms,” Noah said. “And I don’t even know why. There’s about an eighty percent chance that if I ride with Gabe, I’ll fall off his bike and die.”
I looked at Gabe. “See you in Prosper?”
Gabe nodded. “Drive safe.”
“No promises,” I said, climbing behind the wheel. Gabe jogged over to his bike and pulled his helmet out of a saddlebag.
“Get your collective asses in,” I barked at Stacks and Noah. As always, Noah refused to sit in the middle so Stacks scooted in close to me and I was sharply reminded of him trying to climb over me to get to Jo the night before. Noah climbed in after him and he hadn’t gotten his door closed all the way by the time I was pulling out of the lot.
“Shit, Bane,” Noah screeched. “What part of ‘I can barely feel my arms’ did you not understand? I’m trying to get the door closed.”
Stacks reached across him and together they got it closed. “Quit whining. You can’t feel your arms because you slept on them all night.”
“What ‘all night’?” Noah groaned. “It’s four am. We got to that jazz club after one. That was barely a nap.”
“Suck it up,” Stacks said. “Don’t you care that Tags is probably…”
“Don’t,” I said.
Stacks turned to look at me. “What?”
“Just don’t,” I said with as much finality as I could muster.
Stacks turned back to Noah. “Don’t you care about Tags?”
“The guy who kidnapped me when we were last in Indianapolis?” Noah asked.
“And then helped us in St. Louis, Sicily and then Messina?” Stacks asked.
Noah was quiet then. With no arguing to rebut, Stacks fell quiet too. The only sounds were Lucy’s engine as I coaxed her up to ninety.
“By the way,” I said, something Mick had said popping back into my mind. “Stacks, they burned your trailer down too.”
“Fuck,” Stacks said, deflating in the seat next to me.
“Well, they blew up the Death Star twice,” I said, trying to remember that lecture Stacks had given me about those space movies.
“Shut up, Bane,” Stacks said.
Three hours of road lay between Toledo and Prosper and we made it in a little over two. I would spot the Triumph behind us every now and then as we headed down 69 South. I’d started saying a mantra over and over to myself in my head, Not Tags too, not Tags, willing it to be wrong. Willing the fire to just have been the tire shop or the wrong town or some random mechanics shop instead. On the outskirts of town, I had progressed from saying it inside of my head to saying it out loud, muttered under my breath.
“What are you saying?” Stacks asked.
I was about to answer when the Triumph suddenly passed us.
“What’s he…” Noah started to say. As soon as Gabe was right in front of us, he hit his brakes and I slammed on Lucy’s to keep from hitting him. The road was a two-lane with a wide shoulder and Gabe pulled off the road. I was ready to beat the shit out of him. My heart was rocketing around in my chest like a pinball and that was on top of the clawing anxiety over Tags. What the fuck was he thinking?
I pulled over to the shoulder behind him, cut the engine, and kicked my door open.
“What the fuck?!” I roared at Gabe.
Gabe had his helmet off and he was getting off his bike when I stomped over to him.
“Just listen,” Gabe said, tossing his helmet to the ground. “What if this is a trap? What if the demons or the cannibals are in Prosper, just waiting for us? We could be seriously outnumbered.”
“I don’t fucking care,” I yelled. The anxiety was choking me, “I don’t care if there is a legion and a half of those motherfuckers waiting for us. I have to get to Tags.”
What was unsaid was that I had to get to whatever was left of him. I had to see it, had to know if he really was…
“Bane…” Gabe said.
I turned on my heel and headed back to Lucy. I climbed behind the wheel and slammed the door. I put her in gear and rumbled past Gabe who had picked up his helmet and was climbing back on his bike.
“He’s right,” Stacks said beside me.
“I guess you picked the wrong person to ride with then, didn’t you,” I said. I grabbed my phone and tried Tags’ number again. Voicemail. I hit the six on the speed dial and waited for Walter to answer. If there was a supernatural trap ahead, maybe he knew something. I slowed down as we rolled into town and turned down the main drag. On the seventh ring, Walter answered.
“Whoever this is, I hate you,” He grumbled. I glanced at the clock on Lucy’s radio. It was just after seven.
“Walter, is there anything going on in Prosper, Indiana?” I asked.
“Bane?” Walter asked.
“Yeah, good morning, it’s me. Now is there anything happening in Prosper, Indiana?”
Walter groaned. “What kind of horse shit did you step in now?”
“Walter, do you feel any bad vibes in northern Indiana? Any visions, tingles, or funny feelings?”
“Bane, you have no idea how Harbingers work, do you?”
“Walter!” I barked and I had to stop myself when I felt my voice crack. There was a stinging sensation in the corners of my eyes. “Please, just tell me.”
“Ok, ok. Let’s see, there’s something dark hanging over northern Indiana. I can’t pinpoint it. It feels like it did a week ago, but not as strong. You remember when I was blocked? It feels like something is pushing against me, trying to close a door so I can’t see what’s happening in the room.”
I took a breath. Walter had been blocked twice now in the last six weeks, first by his wife and then a week ago by Nigel. Well, at least we knew there was something in northern Indiana. We would just have to be ready for whatever it was. “Thanks, Walter,” I said, relieved I had control over my voice again.
“Be careful, Bane,” Walter said. “If anything else comes to me, I’ll give you a call.”
I dropped the phone on the seat and turned left off of Main down Oak. There were dark wisps of smoke clinging to the horizon ahead and to the left. The ball of anxiety in my chest started to harden and drop lower in my stomach. I knew this neighborhood. Tags’ tire shop was at the very end of the street, on the left side. I automatically slowed down as we reached the block. There were two houses before Tags’ lot. Both had smoke-smudged windows and water still drained off of the roof next to the blackened and twisted remains of Tags’ shop.
I pulled to the curb on the right side of the road and turned the truck off. I laid my head against the steering wheel and stared at the mess. There was caution tape cordoning off most of his concrete apron where cars would pull in to wait to have their tires rotated or changed out. The roof of the tire shop had collapsed inward. All of the garage door style windows had been blown out. The metal bracing was twisted and black, scattered amongst parts of the roof on the ground. Two of the exterior walls had caved in at the top, following the roof’s lead.
On the concrete pad, parked along one side of the shop was his Scout. The car he had doted on and lovingly scoured the earth for replacement parts, to keep her running. It was nothing but a twisted metal frame now. I looked past the Scout. Not much of Tags’ house was visible from the street because it was tucked behind the much larger shop. I kicked my door open and jumped out. I could hear Stacks and Noah calling to me from the cab. I crossed the street seeing the green Triumph approaching in my peripheral. I jogged across the concrete, ducking under the caution tape and rounding the tire shop, praying to anyone who held a bigger stick than me in the universe that the house was ok. That Tags was ok.
There wasn’t much house left. Even less of it remained than what was left of the shop. There were blackened bricks scattered all over the ground in front of me. An explosion. Not just a fire. The bastards had blown up his house. The squat brick structure was leveled. The roof was in pieces scattered with the bricks from the collapsed walls. Something dirty white near my foot caught my eye and I looked down. My knees buckled and I hit the ground. It was a ratty baseball cap. Almost completely burned black. A corner of the synthetic embroidered patch had managed to stay the original dirty white. I just stared at it. The stinging came to my eyes and I let it. His hat. His fucking hat. I could make out the Sin part of Sinclair’s Tires.
I heard footsteps behind me. I didn’t even turn to look. After a few minutes, I reached out a hand and touched the hat. I could almost feel the life leaving it. My fingers moved as if they weren’t actually connected to my brain. They closed over the fabric and drug it out from beneath the bricks and charred wood pinning it to the ground. My vision blurred and I could hear Gabe behind me, saying something, but the only thing I was connected to was the feeling of that hat in my hands.
“Bane,” Gabe said. “This wasn’t your fault.”
But he was wrong. Tags would have never been involved with me and my suicide mission if it hadn’t been for Gary. Gary had died on a hunt with me. Gary’s death was my fault. All of this was my fault.
14
“I’m going to look around,” I heard Gabe say behind me. That got me to my feet. I pushed ahead of him, pausing to look for the clearest path. What if Tags’ body was still under the debris? I picked my way over single layers of brick and wood in the dirt. My foot hit something solid and I realized it was his front porch steps. He’d built them out of cinder blocks and then covered them with wooden planks from pallets he’d stripped down. I kicked aside some of the charred wood and saw the cracked concrete beneath. I looked at the debris in front of me and recognized a melted patch of green shag carpet from Tags’ living room.
I rolled the brim of his hat and slipped it into my back pocket so I could bend down to move a chunk of roof. It was too heavy but it didn’t stop me from trying. I strained and my muscles screamed. I had to move it. I had to see what was beneath it. My sanity, my life depended on it. I had to know. There were shoulders next to mine. Another three sets of hands gripped the tin-covered wood. We lifted one side and managed to flip it over. The remains of the stupid mushroom lamp that had belonged to Tags and Gary’s mother. Tags had always hated it. Gary had told me once that he kept it mostly to annoy Tags. I choked and before I could stop it, a snort of laughter escaped my throat.
“What is it?” Gabe asked next to me.
“Tags hated that lamp,” I said. A large warm hand was on my back. I closed my eyes and clung to the feeling. I reached back and took the hat out of my back pocket and held it again. I moved away from Gabe, regretting the lost comfort. I didn’t deserve it. I had caused this mess. If this had been the demons, they were pissed at me. I had their soul stone, I was the one bucking their natural Hell-order. If it was the cannibals, same song, second verse. If this was some other hellion force-for-hire working for Berith, trying to draw me out, the song remained the same. I had to make it right. Somehow.
I passed the remains of Tags’ yellow Formica kitchen table. It only one leg still attached and it was half-crushed by another chunk of roof. I dropped to my knees to look under it, hoping against hope that Tags had had enough notice to dive for cover before the explosion. Charred wood and scraps of the walls with their yellowed floral wallpaper still attached, now blackened by the fire, lay under the table. No Tags. Every time I searched around a new area or under something I held my breath. Half hoping to find him, half hoping I didn’t.
