Seeing Red

Acting instinctively, Trapper lurched forward.

Hank yelled, “Jenks! Shoot him!”

“Wait!” Trapper froze and raised his hands higher. “Leave Kerra alone, you can do with me whatever.”

> Hank, breathing with exertion—excitement?—said, “Well, that’s real generous of you, Trapper, but you’re in no position to dictate terms, seeing as how I have all the advantages here. Tell Kerra to take hold of the rifle.”

Trapper glanced at Jenks, who had moved to stand at The Major’s side. Any of them made an easy target for his revolver. Coming back to Kerra, he bobbed his head. “Do as he says.”

Eyes locked on Trapper’s, she allowed Hank to place her hands where he wanted them and secured them with his own. Her left supported the barrel, her right was wrapped around the trigger guard. Hank’s finger remained crooked around the trigger itself.

Looking at Trapper from over Kerra’s shoulder, Hank chuckled. “It was the darnedest stroke of luck. I was about to leave the hospital with The Major tucked into my van when she drove into the parking lot. I invited her to ride along with us and told her she could call her crew to meet us out here. Except—”

“Except that when I tried to make the call,” Kerra said, “he backhanded me and took my phone.”

Trapper settled an icy gaze on Hank. “I’m going to have to kill you after all.” He glanced over his shoulder and spotted his holster on the floor two yards away. He knew a bullet was chambered, but how to get the pistol out of the holster…

Reading his thoughts, Jenks said, “I don’t advise it.”

“Better heed him, Trapper,” Hank said. “Being a lawman, he’s got lots of tricks up his sleeve.”

“Tricks like planting evidence to frame a white-trash parole violator for attempted murder?”

“That’s the least of Jenks’s talents,” Hank said. “He can make people disappear without a trace.”

“The Pit.”

“Your bodies will never be discovered.”

“Like that of his partner Sunday night?”

“Petey Moss,” Hank said.

“Who was the third?” Kerra asked.

“Wasn’t a third.” That from Jenks.

“Yes, there was.” Trapper directed Kerra’s attention to The Major.

She looked down at him, her lips parting with bewilderment. Wearily, he nodded. “He’s right.”

Trapper wished he could take satisfaction from his father’s admission. He couldn’t. He said to Kerra, “The day I came here, I figured out it had to have been him who tried to open that door before you heard the shot. But I couldn’t reason why. No, let me rephrase.” He looked down at his father. “I didn’t want to reason why. I get it now.”

“I don’t think you do, John,” he said. “I heard them coming toward the house and tried to warn Kerra. Ran out of time. That’s all.”

Trapper held his father’s gaze. Breathed in, breathed out. He thought his ribs would break from the pressure building behind them. His heart was already broken.

Hank said, “Ah. A pregnant pause.”

Trapper ignored him and looked at the six-shooter in Jenks’s large hand. “If The Major doesn’t get back to the hospital soon, you’ll be charged with murder.”

“I didn’t shoot him, Petey did. Excitable little bugger.”

Hank said, “Language, Jenks, language.”

Trapper was still holding the deputy’s implacable stare. In his mind, he was reconstructing Sunday night’s scenario, piecing it together, getting a fix on how it had played out from Jenks’s point of view. “Petey was quick on the draw. You didn’t expect that. Seconds after The Major was down, you noticed the powder room light go out.”

“Didn’t expect that, either,” Jenks said.