Page 120 of Kings Don't Break
Bullets fly. Both Stricklin firing Ozzie’s Glock and Mace and Moses shooting back at him.
Stricklin doesn’t hang around. He’s already split from the room. Ozzie’s the first to rush after him.
The adrenaline that had been consuming me earlier returns at full force.
I unwrap my arms from Korine and push myself up off the floor. Both Mace and Korine call after me, but there’s no stopping this time—I dash from the room, leaping over Janessa’s collapsed body—she’s been shot in the crossfire and lays in a puddle of blood. I race down the stairs just as Ozzie chases Stricklin out the front door.
“HE’S MINE!” I roar, leaping down three, four steps at a time.
I shove my way past Ozzie in time to watch Stricklin thrust himself into the front seat of his patrol car. He flicks on the switch that controls the lights and siren and then swings out of the front drive so recklessly he almost rams an older woman out walking her dog. She clutches at her chest in a horrified scream, first from witnessing him almost mow her down, then me as I mount my bike and rumble after him.
We streak through town like this—Stricklin’s patrol car whirring as if he’s racing toward an emergency and me barreling down on him from behind. More than a few times he checks the rearview mirror to make sure I’m still following him, then swerves hard to the left or right. Once, he almost collides with a metro bus picking up passengers.
The farther we make it across town, the more corners Stricklin begins cutting. He weaves between other cars in traffic and runs a red light, narrowly avoiding another crash. He makes a sharp turn around a corner that almost has him mowing down a group of pedestrians. He spins off road across the grassy hills of the park.
All things he does to try and shake me.
Each one I anticipate and work around. As he cuts a path through the park, I circle another way and meet him once he’s careening back onto the streets.
Finally, as his manic desperation becomes too much, he twists around in the driver’s seat and opens fire on me. A skilled rider that’s dealt with my share of shit on the road over the years, he’ll need to try harder. I’m smooth as I glide left, then right, dodging his attempts.
I’m keyed into the same violent urges as earlier. Only difference being I’m smarter this go round. More strategic.
Stricklin’s operating off of the same kind of hunger. He’ll do anything to see me go down. That becomes clear with each law he openly breaks in public. Every wild turn of his patrol car and bullet he fires.
By the time we’re closing in on the trailer park and ravine, he’s broken the law in front of half the damn town.
I hang back far enough to let him self-destruct. Let his mania fester and then implode. All I’ve got to do is trail him, show I’m closing in, and can’t and won’t be stopped. It makes him that much more desperate to beat me.
He contorts himself from the front seat of his patrol car to take aim yet again. His clammy, bruised face shines as he bares his teeth and squeezes the trigger. I anticipate his move, veering left in time to avoid the errant bullet.
Stricklin doesn’t set himself right in time to avoid the row of trees leading to the ravine. The car smashes straight on with one of the towering oak trees. The sound of metal crunching and twisting as it collides with wood decades older echoes for miles across town. Smoke hazes the air, almost obscuring the accordion remains of what was once Stricklin’s patrol car.
I’ve gradually braked coming upon the crash.
The crinkled driver’s side door wobbles open, half off the hinges. Stricklin pours out onto the ground, more bruised and banged up than ever. He’s still clutching Ozzie’s gun as he stumbles onto unsteady feet and half falls, half jogs.
I don’t even got to do anything but walk toward him. He’s not getting away. He’s so fucked up, so disoriented, he’s about to collapse any second.
The sirens of real police and emergency responders ring in the distant background. People around town must’ve called 911.
Stricklin stumbles all the way to the spongy edges of the ravine, where the wild grass meets the strip of water that passes through. In his rush to flee, he trips over some pebbles, landing in a bed of jagged rocks. Rolling over onto his back, his hands tremble as he tries to take aim at me.
“Stay the fuck away!” he coughs out. Blood dribbles down his chin. “You… you must have a death wish, Mr. Cash.”
I don’t stop approaching him, cutting down the distance between us, closing in on him like he’s feared.
“It’s over,” I say. “You lost.”
“I didn’t lose a damn thing!” He double blinks, struggling to keep his right eye open. It’s swollen shut. “You just couldn’t let it be! You couldn’t let me have what was mine!”
“Kori was never yours.”
“SHE’S MY WIFE!” he yells. “She was mine, not yours! But you had to take her away! You had to fucking ruin my life!”
He’s pathetic. It’s never been more obvious than in this moment. As he lays on the bed of rocks, bleeding and swollen, shakily pointing a gun at me, he’s destroyed himself so I don’t have to. He’s got nothing left and he knows it.
Killing him would put him out of his misery. Does he deserve that level of mercy?
