If it wasn’t Bob, I’d be putting buckshot into a roo, using up a shell I couldn’t spare, and feeling like an old fool.
I’d take the foolishness.
A long stretch of nothing. Long enough that I started to wonder if I’d dreamed the bottle tops, too, the way I’d dreamed boots on gravel half a dozen times last night.
“I know you’re in there, Frank.”
The blood went out of me.
That voice. That fucking voice. The one that told me to dig a grave fifty years ago, while a girl who couldn’t have been more than seventeen lay in the dirt at our feet. The one that laughed at me through cigarette smoke when I’d told him I was gonna marry Edith. The one that leaned across the desk at his cop shop and told me he’d fixed Kayden’s army application and that I owed him. Nearly fifty fucking years of hearing that voice and hating every word that came out of his mouth.
I closed my eyes for one beat.
“So, come and get me, asshole,” I called back.
My voice came out steadier than I’d expected. Better than I felt.
Bob laughed. A short, dry bark of a laugh. The evil one. “Figured you’d say that.”
He didn’t come through the gap.
Smart bastard.
A heartbeat of silence followed. Then the crack of a service pistol and a round whined into the cave and clanged into the drum. Hit it square. The metallic note rolled around the rock walls and faded out, and my whole body locked up.
I didn’t fire back. Two boxes of shells and a shotgun were all I had between me and the rest of my life, and I wasn’t burning a shell on a man I couldn’t see.
Boots crunched fast over gravel, then went quiet again. He’d shifted position outside, probably to one of the boulders to the left of the entrance. He knew this cave, too. Knew where to stand to keep me from getting a line on him.
Decades of using this place together. We’d buried bodies and other shit here. We’d camped out here, shooting the breeze, drinking rum, and acting like we liked each other. Decades of him learning every rock and shadow, same as me.
That was about to bite me in the ass.
“You alive, you bastard?” Bob called.
“You won’t kill me that easily.”
Another laugh. This one tighter.
“Where’s my money, Frank?”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” I smirked. I knew. Just wanted to hear him say it.
“Don’t fuck around. Where’s my damn money?”
“Just took what I earned.”
“Like fuck you did. You took the damn lot.”
What? I went quiet. Let him sweat on the silence.
“I went to the fucking outstation, Frank. Every wall was stripped clean. I know it was you, you bastard.”
My breath hitched. What the hell?
I’d taken one bag full of cash. One. Maybe three hundred grand all up, four if I was lucky. It was all I could carry. I’d patched the wall back up with the same plasterboard, just like I had after every batch I’d nicked.
“Tell me now, Frank, or I’m gonna tear the answer out of you, one body part at a time.”
