Page 78 of Three-Inch Teeth

“Dallas, you need to get control of Axel before he gets us all arrested or killed.”

“What about him?” Cates asked, momentarily confused. He hadn’t even seen Axel since they’d returned to the compound and all of them had gone their separate ways with their own separate thoughts about what had just happened.

“Have you been in the bedroom?” she asked, chinning toward the closed door of what had been Eldon and Brenda’s room.

“No.”

“That couple last night, they’re in there. They’re dead. He shot them in the head this morning. Unless it was you who did it.”

“It wasn’t me,” Cates said. “I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but no, it wasn’t me.”

“Did you know about it?”

“Not until it was over.”

Tears formed in Johnson’s eyes and she swiped at them angrily with the back of her hand. “We’re in too deep, Dallas. I’m in too deep.”

“It’ll be fine, Bobbi,” he said as he moved in close to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Believe me, it’ll all be fine. We’re going to get to the end of this and no one will suspect a thing. Nobody’s going to arrest us or hurt you.”

She melted into him and buried her head in his chest. He wished she wouldn’t cry like that. He wished she was tougher.

“I did my job this morning,” she sobbed. “I called you the minute that guy came through the gate.”

“You did your job,” he said. “None of it was your fault. I’m the one who screwed up. Not you, not LOR, and not Axel.”

As he’d paced through the house, he replayed the events of that morning over and over in his mind, wondering if he should have made different decisions.

Should he have just held off firing the shooting head and waited for another shot the next morning? That had flashed through his mind at the time, but he’d rejected it. Not with the laser point on Hewitt’s face and the revolver coming out.

What if, instead of telling Axel to get the hell out of there, he had waited for the deputy to show up and taken him out? He could have possibly created two grizzly bear fatalities at the same location. Then he could have finished the job on the judge with the bat. But Dallas had rejected that scenario as well. For one, the tanks couldn’t have been recharged in time for a second strike. Second, if the deputy had called for backup before he arrived at the scene, that could have been a catastrophe for them as well.

No, it all came down to not seeing that goddamned branch in the dark. And the unlucky break it had been that the deputy just happened to show up at exactly the wrong time.

Cates was ninety-five percent sure the judge was dead. He’d not only felt the power of the crushing mechanical bite through the metal arm of the telescopic scissor jib, but he’d glimpsed the still body of Judge Hewitt on the cart path. There had been a lot of blood. The grizzly bear teeth in the steel jaws were crimson with it.

“We don’t need him,” Johnson said, pulling him out of his musings. She was back to Axel. “We were doing just fine before he showed up. I mean, I know why you have to keep LOR around. I fucking hate him, but he can fix the Zeus II machine if it breaks down. But Axel? What good is he to you? To us? He’s a loose cannon.

“I mean, he just killed those two people in there,” she said. “What if somebody misses them and shows up? Will he just kill them, too?”

Probably, Cates thought but didn’t say out loud. She didn’t even know about what had happened to the attendant in Thermopolis.

“I mean, what are we going to do with those bodies?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about that. I grew up here on this property and I know there are places to hide bodies where they’ll never be found. My mom …” he said, but let it trail off. There was no need to get into those stories now.

She asked, “What if those people in there had a meeting in town and they don’t show up for it? Wouldn’t that raise suspicions? What do we do if one of their cell phones ring?”

“Those are good questions,” Cates said. “My only answer is that the only way to avoid those problems is to work faster than I’d planned. Speed everything up so we can get out of here before any of that happens. We’ll go see your sister,” he said, having no intention of ever doing that.

“He’s going to screw everything up,” she said. “I don’t trust him and he scares the shit out of me. Do you trust him?”

“I don’t trust anyone except you,” Cates said soothingly. Which was a lie, of course. He didn’t trust her, either. “I’ll tell you something I learned in prison, though. When the situation turns all raggedy-assed, it never hurts to have somebody crazier than you on your side. That can freeze your enemies in place.”

She said, “He’s a psycho. I thought LOR was bad, but he’s not on the same level as Axel.”

“Maybe that’s what we need for the time being,” Cates said. “Someone so unpredictable and ruthless that they’ll think twice about coming after us.”

“Axel isn’t worth all that,” she said. “I’m afraid he’ll turn you against me. He wants new recruits for his stupid plan.”

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