Free Here Comes the Night by Linda McDonald Page B

scorching scrutiny. “Is any of you real? Do you even
care about me at all?”
    “Honest, Erika, I’m so sorry.”
    “You know what, Tony?” she said, her voice tired and raw. “I
don’t believe you.”
    He watched her walk away, her swaying figure silhouetted by
the red VACANCY sign at the entrance to the park.

Chapter 38
    Buck dialed the last number of his safe combination and
clicked it open. After his clumsy attempt to tackle Jorge on his way to
Gordon’s office, they had flex-tied Buck’s hands again in front. And his nose
was bleeding from a shot Meatface had landed. Now it hurt even to breathe in
short spurts.
    Twigs, holding her gun on him, motioned to his desk chair.
“Go sit down. And no more heroics.”
    When he was safely seated, she looked inside Buck’s safe and
whistled. “Oh, here we go.” She started dumping the wrapped bills out of the
recyclable brown bag Buck had brought them in.
    After a minute, Jorge popped his head in from around the
corner, eyeing Buck curiously. “Twigs, you gotta see this.”
    Buck dropped his head. All hope of a miracle officially
vanished.
    “What? I’m in the middle of this,” Twigs snapped.
    “No, trust me, you want to see it,” Jorge said.
    Twigs stopped and signaled with her gun for Buck to walk
ahead of them. When they opened the door to Gordon’s office, Meatface was
standing behind the desk, mimicking a ringmaster’s presentation of the big act.
    He extended one hand toward Gordon’s body and gave a
“Ta-da!”
    Twigs glanced over at Buck, grinning like she was actually
impressed with him. Then she walked around the desk, studying the dead body.
“No wonder our star quarterback was so nervous.”
    “You think he did it?” Meatface giggled.
    “If he didn’t, I bet he knows who did.” Then she looked
sharply at her boys. “You touch anything?”
    Both thugs showed her their latexed hands, like “of course
not.” All three of them looked at Buck with a new awareness, even respect.
    Twigs’ laugh was dark. “Boys, the vocabulary word for the
day is ‘serendipity.’ Find his safe.”
    Buck could only stare at Gordon’s body lying across his desk.
In the moment when it had taken everything Buck could muster to pull the
trigger, he had been in the grip of his hatred for the man. Gordon had known
how to push Buck’s buttons and did it regularly, laughing aloud when Buck was
slow or reacted like a hurt kid. Gordon always had an uncanny sense of how to
undercut Buck when he least suspected it. And Gordon had thrived on his little
game.
    Now, with impossible irony, Gordon was doing it to Buck
again. Seeing the blood drained to the front of Gordon’s face as he lay there,
the mottled white of his sagging skin, Buck remembered the first time he had
killed a rabbit. It had been so important to prove himself to his hunter father
and brothers. But afterwards, holding the innocent, limp body, blood dripping from
its ears, he had not been able to hold back his little boy tears. He had never
lived down the humiliation. No family get together was complete without
retelling the story with relish.
    That same wave of sensations push through him again. Tears
welled in his dark, swollen eyes, and he cried silently, unnoticed by Twigs and
the boys, who had gotten a drill out of Jorge’s workbag and were going at
Gordon’s safe.
    Of all the things Buck had figured on, the least of them was
the possibility that Gordon Wesner was just another man. In his death, he was
the dead rabbit from his childhood. Even his hands, with their caramel colored
liver spots, looked fragile and harmless in the moonlight.
    Buck looked out at the shadows of tree branches lightly
scraping the windows. He couldn’t imagine how the sun would ever rise again.

Chapter 39
    As she made her way home, Erika’s head slowly began to
clear. Getting a grip on the night’s events, however, was like chasing storm
clouds. Nothing, then bits and pieces would pop up with such intensity that