He knew she wasn’t wrong, but he’d been off-kilter, and the memory of their childhood felt fresh. “It was that or Billie fucking Holiday!”
Jennie’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
Malcolm blew out a breath. He saw the truth in her eyes. Elias had heard the music, but Jennie was deaf to it. “Never mind.”
He slid back across the front seat and used both hands to dig into the ignition wires. This wasn’t a trick he’d learned in boot camp but on leave in Seoul during the war. The night had started with a prank on a senior officer they’d all hated and ended with a jeep buried in sheep shit, and an off-the-books, bare-knuckle boxing match in which the hated officer beat the daylights out of the mouthiest soldier in their platoon. It was an ugly night, but Malcolm had come away with a story and the ability to hot-wire a car engine. He’d had to do it twice more before the end of the war, under far more dire circumstances.
“You heard something,” Jennie whispered as he cut and stripped the wires. “Music?”
“Maggie’s favorite.”
“I didn’t hear a thing.”
“It’s not the first time,” he whispered, embarrassed. “Ever since she died.”
When he twisted the exposed ends of the wires together, the minibus started right up.
It had taken only seconds. He slid out and turned toward Jennie, ready for her to question his sanity, but he could see from her expression that not only did she believe him but something about what he’d said had made her angry.
“Jen, what’s the—”
From behind the ash tree, Violet shouted for Jennie. She turned to look, but Malcolm’s view was blocked by the minibus. When he tried to come from behind it, his sister shoved him backward and walked away from the VW.
“Sir,” Jennie said, loudly now. “There’s no need for the gun. Please let her go and we can talk about this.”
Malcolm hissed a profanity, dropped into a crouch, and scuttled around the minibus to the side of the barn. In the dark, the terrain around the building was a risk, but he had no other choice. Quick and quiet.Sneaky motherfuckers tend to make it out alive.
To him, his passage through ragged grass sounded loud enough to give him away, but at least he avoided tripping over a rusty old woodstove that had been abandoned there. Malcolm could hear voices, the calm of Jennie, the fear of Violet, and the anger of a man he assumed was the owner of the house and at least one of these vehicles. He couldn’t make out the words, but he hoped the man’s anger and volume would be distracting enough that he wouldn’t hear Malcolm coming.
“I promise, it’s not what it looks like!” Jennie said as Malcolm came around the other side of the barn.
In the rutted driveway, a fiftyish man in a plush robe and muddy slippers held a shotgun aimed at Violet’s back. She stood with her hands up, facing Jennie, who had come away from the Volkswagen minibus and now stood beside the rusty pickup truck. Malcolm stayed mostly hidden, hoping the shotgunner’s peripheralvision wouldn’t notice him. He tried to gauge the distance between himself and that man, and the amount of noise he’d make if he ran that distance. The ground was uneven, the grass tall in some places but bare and muddy in others. If he tried to attack, he could see only two options—the guy would be startled and pull the trigger, cutting Violet in half, or he’d turn in time to take aim and obliterate Malcolm’s face.
He waited. They kept arguing, but Malcolm stopped listening to anything but the tone of their voices. Jennie trying to reason, the homeowner angry and suspicious, Violet scared but also frustrated that he’d gotten the drop on her.
Malcolm steadied his breathing and took a step. His boot squelched in the sodden earth.
“Listen!” Violet shouted, her back still to the shotgunner. “Would you just listen for a moment? The train derailed. You must have heard it, or at least the police and maybe a fire truck going by! We’re trying to get help, but we ran out of gas. I knocked on your door and nobody came, and we were desperate!”
Malcolm hesitated. The homeowner let his shotgun droop a little, pondering. Violet had that effect on people. She just seemed so true.
The shotgun came back up. The man scowled. “That car you say run outta gas is a police car, and you sure as hell ain’t police.”
“They sent us,” Jennie said.
Violet’s face brightened. “They did! There were only two of them at first and so many injuries. Their radio’s not working. They had to send someone.”
He looked ridiculous in his robe and slippers, but the man was no clown. The shotgun stayed level as he marched up to Violet’s back and jabbed her with the barrel. “You and your girlfriend get over to the house. We’re gonna make a phone call.”
Malcolm crouched to run. Once they turned toward the house, he would attack.
As Violet walked toward Jennie, the man with the shotgun paused, cocking his head. They could hear a siren in the distance.He heard Jennie curse, but this wasn’t a police siren. The wail, growing louder, belonged to another fire truck.
The man turned toward the road.
Malcolm hurtled from the darkness. The man heard him coming and swept the shotgun back around, but Malcolm reached him first, grabbed the barrel, and yanked it from his grasp. The man went for his throat, but Malcolm batted his hands away, then cracked him across the head with his own shotgun.
The fire truck roared by, siren shrieking, as the homeowner slumped to the ground.
