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Saturday, July 11, 2015

41 Born to Make the Kill

After Tony drove through the gateless opening in the chain link fence, he turned the car left and the foursome headed south. Sure the neighbor had called the police, as he accelerated down the highway he glanced out his side window toward the man’s darkened room. All seemed quiet, but he could feel a nasty storm forming just over the horizon and only a slim chance remained that he could make it through the eye unscathed.

Something in the way Natalie took control of the situation minutes before resonated for him. He realized she had a strength he had not expected, a power he needed, and that shook him. Not since his ma kicked him to the streets had he depended on anyone, at least not like this. Others before her had faced him off, but in the end, they whimpered for mercy. But Natalie didn’t back down. She had kept eyes on him so long he had to look away to disguise his flaw. If he hadn’t, she might have gaped into his core and understood his plan.

Is it possible? he thought and turned his eyes to the rearview mirror.

When all he found was a dark shadow where her face should have been, he turned his mind back to the situation at hand. He didn’t know why it would take so long for the police to arrive, but for the moment he felt grateful. It had been almost an hour since Rudy left for the store, and if the man in the next room had figured out that something was wrong with Tony’s backfire story, or if he had heard his own life being threatened when Tony yelled at Natalie, presumably he would have called the cops. But both those incidents would have given the pigs ample time to get the motel. Their delay, probably because they were busy swapping stories while they ate slop at some local trough, had given him a small crack through which to slip. So far he had been able to stay one step ahead, but with them close enough he could smell the stink of their sty, he felt he needed to widen the gap and, if at all possible, fall below the radar.

As he headed toward the nearest town, he knew at any moment he could see the flashing lights of approaching doom, but, like always, he had a plan. There was no way a cop’s bullet or lethal injection would be his fate. And he wasn’t going back to a place like Sing Sing for another five years let alone fifty.

Tony pressed the accelerator down on the Impala, and watched both sides of the road. They had only travelled a few minutes from the motel when he drove past what he had been looking for. With no headlights in front or behind him, he stomped on the brake. In his peripheral vision he saw Rudy brace himself from careening into the dashboard. Tony swung a quick U-turn.

Rudy twisted toward Tony and asked, “Why’d you turn around? We can’t go back to the motel.”

Tony didn’t answer. Rather he drove north on the highway for a few yards and then turned right onto a narrow tractor trail between two rows of almond trees. He steered back into the grove a hundred yards from the highway, made another U-turn and then turned the engine off.

“We’ll wait here,” he said and flipped off the headlights.

“For what? I thought you wanted to get out of here.” Rudy said.

“Shut the hell up and watch.”
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