Weston slumped to the step of the trailer as if his knees had lost the will to lock. He put his hand to his eyes as tears started rolling down his cheeks.
I made a little hand gesture toward Sammy in the truck, to tell him to stay put. Then I stepped out of Sammy's field of vision, closer to Weston.
"Joseph," I said. "Or Weston? Which do you prefer?"
He rubbed his eyes and looked up at me. His fingers trailed down his face, dragging trails of wetness down his cheeks.
"Weston, I guess," he said. "It's been a long time since I've heard it." His tears stopped quickly, and his face took on a stony resignation. He stared straight ahead at the rutted parking area in front of the trailer, focusing on nothing.
"I almost believed he'd never find me," he said. "After so long, I started to let myself believe."
He covered his mouth with his hand as he thought a moment in silence. Then he looked up at me.
"Tell me, before you take me to him," he said. "Mom and Dad? Did he kill them already?"
"Your parents died a couple of months ago," I said uncomfortably. "An auto accident, he said."
"Yeah," he said, snorting. "I'm sure it was."
He stood up.
"What happens now?" he said, without defiance.
"Let's back up a bit," I said. "To that part about taking you to him."
"That's what he hired you for, isn't it? At least let me leave a note for Christine. My girlfriend." He paused. "Then I've gotta think of what to tell her."
"Weston," I said, "I'm a private investigator. Your brother hired me to find you. Not to kill you. Not to drag you away. In fact, he just wanted me to find where you were. He didn't want me to approach you or speak to you. And I think that I've been working for the wrong side. But I know so little of the story here that I'm not sure what each side is."
"Yeah." He stood on the step, shifting his weight back and forth between the balls of each foot. "I guess I should invite you in or something and explain, if can. Though I'd like to wait for Christine, you know? She needs to hear it too now, I guess, and I don't want to have to go through it all twice."
He glanced at his watch. "Her shift ends at five-thirty, so maybe --"
He stopped abruptly. We both heard, approaching up the lane, an engine that was revving far too fast for the terrain.
I spun around to see a silver Mazda with rental plates burst into the clearing. Joshua Blakely was behind the wheel.
He stuck an arm out the open driver's side window. His fingers were wrapped around a shiny new automatic.
"Down!" I shouted, and pushed Weston from the steps. .45-caliber slugs ripped through the aluminum screen door and the rusted metal sheeting of the mobile home.
I shoved harder and got him on the far side of his Toyota quarter-ton.
"I okay?" I said as I unlimbered my 9mm from under my jacket.
Weston nodded. His face was white.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "I just... oh, God."
I didn't know if he was hit, or just reacting to the shock. And I didn't have time to find out which one it was. I heard more slugs pound the far side of the truck, but apparently there was enough steel left between the rust spots to keep the bullets from puncturing all the way through.
Then silence.
I flattened myself against the ground and peered under the pickup. The ground was uneven, but I could just see a sliver of the wheelbase of the Mazda. I heard its door open, and a pair of feet deliberately stepped out onto the ground. There was a click as a clip was ejected, and a second click as a fresh clip was slid home.
I extended my arm as far as I could under the truck and fired twice. The report was deafening, and it was a lousy position to aim from, but it did the trick; the feet disappeared, presumably around the far side of the Mazda.
"Rennie Avalon!" called Joshua Blakely. I could just barely hear him as I sat up; my ears felt like they had been packed with Play-Doh. "I told you not to talk to him, didn't I?"
I sat with my gun in both hands, back against the Toyota, trying to think of our next move. The truck was tilting away from us; one of Joshua's shots had punctured a tire.
Well, that gave me an idea. I moved to the other side of Weston and popped up over the hood. I fired four shots at the Mazda. My 9mm bullets didn't have nearly the damage potential of his .45, but I put one bullet through his front left tire and three spaced across the windshield, rendering his driving visability nil.
Then I popped back down as another two reports echoed. One ended up in the Toyota's engine block. The other presumably crossed through the airspace where my head had been.
"Any weapons in the house?" I asked.
"There's a... rifle. A twenty-two," Weston said. "It's in a cupboard in the kitchen. I use it for getting rid of skunks."
Somehow, I didn't think a .22 had the stopping power to be worth the risk of trying to make it into the house. Especially since I didn't know how much ammunition Joshua had to play with.
Me, though, I knew. I had two bullets left. My spare clips were up in Sammy's truck.
And then, finally, I heard the sound I had been waiting for. There was a boom like an oil drum being hit with a sledgehammer, and the entire front windshield of Joshua's car exploded inward. Joshua himself rolled under the car as Sammy came down the slope behind the mobile home, watching his step carefully so that he could keep the muzzle of his sawed-off shotgun trained on the Mazda.
"Rennie!" he bellowed. "You okay?"
"We're fine!" I shouted back, looking to Weston for confirmation. He nodded; the color was returning to his face in a pink adrenal flush.
Bullets ricocheted off the rocks in Sammy's general neighborhood. Joshua was firing blind from his position of cover under his car.
Sammy hammered another blast into the Mazda.
"Get up here!" he shouted. "I'll cover you!"
I pulled Weston to his feet and half-dragged him across the open, unshielded area in front of the trailer while Sammy kept blasting away at the car. The headlights and grill shattered spectacularly, and paint blew off the hood in puffs.
Another bullet whined from under the car, pocking the dirt near Sammy's foot.
"Come on," he said as we reached him. "He could still get lucky."
We hustled back up the slope as .45 slugs followed us, crackling through the evergreens around us.
Sammy slid into the driver's seat. I threw myself into the passenger side, with Weston behind me.
"What do we do?" Sammy said. "Stick around and try to take him out?"
"Hell with that," I replied as I pulled out my cell phone. "We'll let the police take care of that. Get us the hell out of here."
