Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?You?re going in there??

?We?ll bring the girl out of there safely. When you get out front, find my deputy. Her name is Pam Tibbs. Tell her exactly what you told me.?

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?Who?s the man with the shotgun??

?His name is Eriksson. My deputy will recognize the name. Better get going, Reverend.?

?You said ?we.??

?Sir??

?You said ?we?ll? get the girl out. Who?s ?we???

A moment later, Hackberry closed the distance between himself and the doorway while the minister and his wife began herding a group of twelve to fifteen people toward the front of the restaurant. Hackberry pressed his back against the wall, his revolver pointed upward. He could see the red sunset flowing through the destroyed front window and hear sirens in the distance. ?Hear that sound, Eriksson?? he said.

There was a beat. ?How?d you make me??

?I didn?t. If you hadn?t shot at me, I would have walked past you.?

?You?re lying.?

?Why would I lie??

Eriksson had no answer. Hackberry remembered that originally, a second man had been sitting in Eriksson?s booth, someone who had probably blown Dodge and left Eriksson to take the fall for both of them.

?Your partner screwed you, bub,? Hackberry said. ?Why take his weight? Send the little girl out, and it?ll be taken into consideration. You did security work in Iraq. That?ll be a factor, too. Get a good defense lawyer, and with the right kind of post-traumatic-stress-disorder mambo, you might even skate. It beats eating a two-hundred-and-thirty-grain round from a forty-five.?

?You?re gonna drive me out of this county. You?re gonna get me into Mexico. Or I waste the girl.?

?Maybe I can arrange that.?

?No, you don?t arrange anything. You do it.?

?How do you want to work that? Want me to bring a vehicle around back and load you and the girl up??

?No, you put your piece on the floor, slide it to me with your foot, then you walk in with your fingers laced on the back of your neck.?

?That doesn?t sound workable, Eriksson.?

?Maybe you?d like to see her brains floating in the toilet bowl.?

Hackberry heard the voice of a little girl crying. Or rather, the voice of a child whose fear had gone beyond crying into a series of hiccups and constrictions of air in the nostrils and throat, like someone having a seizure. ?Be stand-up. Let her go, partner,? Hackberry said.

?You want her? No problem. Kick the piece inside and come in after it. Otherwise, all bets are off. Think I?m jerking your johnson? Stick your head in here.?

Hackberry could hear a dronelike whirring sound in his ears, one he associated with wind blowing out of a blue-black sky across miles of snowy hills and ice splintering under the weight of thousands of advancing Chinese infantry.

?I?ll make it easy for you,? Eriksson said. He opened the bathroom door slightly, allowing Hackberry a brief view of the restroom?s interior. Eriksson was holding the little girl by the neck of her T-shirt while he screwed the cut-down pump into her shoulder bone. ?I got nothing to lose,? he said.

?I believe you,? Hackberry said. He stepped backward, opened the cylinder to his revolver, and dumped his four spent rounds and two unfired ones into his palm and threw them clattering across the floor. He squatted, placed his revolver on the floor, and shoved it with one foot into the restroom.

?Walk in behind it,? Eriksson said.

Then Hackberry was in the enclosure with him, staring into the muzzle of the shotgun.

?Go on, little girl,? Eriksson said. ?I wasn?t gonna hurt you. I just had to say that.?