Page 28 of Dodge

“And if somebody else’s with her?”

Offenbach was a smart man and connections and deductions came instantly to him. He had to remind himself that the rest of the world was not like that. He offended people from time to time. And offended people could be dangerous. He’d had to kill several of them. “We go forward anyway.”

“All right, ” Travis grunted. He climbed back in his florist van and returned to the highway.

Offenbach walked inside the shack. Closed the door. The groaning of rusty metal was loud.

He looked around, inhaling hot air aromatic of dust and mold. The interior was about eight hundred square feet and largely empty, though a card table sat in one corner beside an old office chair, the upholstery ripped as if shredded by a bear’s claws. The other decorations: hypodermic needles, broken meth and crack pipes, and rocks thrown through the windowpanes, all of which were shattered. What was there about human nature that could not allow a single piece of glass in an abandoned building to remain intact?

The shack was at a bend in Trail Ridge and the front window offered a perfect view of his shooting range—exactly where Constant Marlowe would be driving on her way to the Cotter house.

Last night, after the whiskey and pipe, he’d gone to bed without a solution to the problem.

Now he had one.

A half hour ago Tomas Wexler had called.

“Offenbach. Listen, Marlowe made your house on Trail Ridge.”

“How?” It was supposed to be hidden beneath layers and layers of legal documents.

“Digging in Public Records. I’ve got somebody works there. My niece. She’s a ditz but she does what she’s told. Always lets me know if somebody from out of town’s nosing around.” A pause. “For this, Offenbach, I get points off my next delivery?”

He had agreed.

Now, he’d go with the simple solution. Marlowe would have looked over a map and seen that there was only one way to his family’s house—straight up Trail Ridge. Her plan would be to drive close, then pull off the road and hike up, undetected, through the brush.

But she wouldn’t get that far.

When she slowed for the curve here, he would open fire with his Bushmaster assault rifle, modified to be fully automatic.

Your destiny, Constant ...

Suicidal probably ...

He’d be doing her a favor.

As he slipped a magazine in and chambered a round, he happened to think of the comic books his father had owned. These were not about superheroes but soldiers in World War II. Big American GIs fighting Germans and Japanese inked into embarrassing ethnic stereotypes. The lieutenant or dogface heroes were forever letting loose with their tommy guns. The artists had written the sound in angled, boldface, all-cap type.

BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA ...

So, kill his nemesis. Take the millions waiting for him in the house and then get to a private airport where a pilot who was making a great deal of money would spirit him off to a dirt field in Ontario ... and onward from there to a new life.

He checked the stubby black gun. He had an extra magazine in his pocket. Unnecessary—the field of fire was a mere thirty feet away—but its presence reassured him.

He moved the grizzly-ripped chair to the window, which was partially covered by a tattered drape that was gray but had probably started the decade white.

Aiming out the window, he reminded himself to grip tightly. With the gun in full auto mode, the muzzle rose like a basketball player about to dunk.

He set his phone on the sill so he could see the screen. It was on silent and he didn’t want to miss Travis’s call. Just then, two things happened at once: the left panel of the curtain flew violently inward and there was a loud snapping bang from the floor.

This was followed by a third occurrence: a rolling boom of a long gun in the distance.

Offenbach dropped the assault rifle and flattened himself on the filthy and fragrant oak boards beneath him.

A wave of disgust. Marlowe had figured the whole damn thing out. She’d probably looked at Google Maps and found both his house and the shack. She understood that this was a perfect ambush spot.

Another crack as a slug dug wood out of the floor closer to him. Another boom of thunder.

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