The Shack: An Implacable Man

That was little more clear a fraction of a second later when we burst into a small clearing and saw the glow of flames at the end of Mooky's trailer.

"He's in there!" Delaney pointed at Mooky's patchwork Pinto parked a yard or two from the trailer.

I stomped Sally to a stop far enough to the side of the trailer to makes sure she wouldn't be scorched, jumped out and sprinted for the front door. I yanked on it, but the lock held. Mooky's special door to keep the thieves out of his grow house was going to get him killed.

I started to turn toward Sally, but Delaney was already shoving the crowbar from Sally's trunk into my hands with a smug grin.

I jammed the edge into the jamb right at the lock and heaved back on it until the door popped open. Mooky was right, it was a damn good door, but it was still mounted on a cut rate thirty year old single-wide.

The wave of heat from the flames consuming the end of the trailer was staggering, but I gritted my teeth and pushed in.

Roiling black smoke filled the place, I dropped straight down into the clear space below the smoke, crawled in and found myself staring right at Mooky's skinny ass. As in his butt was less than a foot in front of my nose. I grabbed his belt and started dragging him backwards, searching for the door frame with my foot until a hand grabbed my ankle and began tugging on me. Delaney, half in and half out the doorway guided me back.

We tumbled in a heap down the cheap aluminum steps.

"Is he alive?" Delaney, tears from the smoke tracking down her face, tried to shake Mooky awake. I sat up and reached over just as he gave a weak cough.

"Thank God."

Delaney gave me a crooked grin. "I knew you liked him! How can you not like somebody named 'Mooky'?"

"Fuck no, I was just afraid I'd have to try to resuscitate him. Be like giving mouth to mouth to a fucking bong. End up coming to, in Cleveland, with no shoes, no shirt and 24 cents in bent pennies in my pocket."

"What'd the Sheriff say? 'That's oddly specific'?" She snickered and we managed to sit him up. Half his hair was curled by the heat, he was lucky it hadn't caught fire. Angry, livid bruises were starting to form on the whole left side of his face.

Delaney looked sharply back down the road. "I think they're coming back."

I listened and made out the distinctive sound of the Audi's engine getting louder. They must have reached the main road then decided to come back to finish the job and get rid of the witnesses.

"Shit." I looked around. A second later, the sound of a siren wailed up from the same direction. The distinctive pops of a handgun drifted up. I caught Delaney's eyes. "We need to get him back behind Sally, this is about to turn into a fucking circus."

Just as we reached the back of the Mustang, the Audi erupted from the trees and slid to a stop next to the Pinto. Before it was even completely still, a deputy's cruiser powered in, pulling sideways, blocking most of the road. Two men in suits were out of the Audi almost simultaneously, firing what looked to be Glocks at the police cruiser. A second later, shots started answering from near the front bumper of the cruiser.

"Fuck this." I stepped past Delaney and Mooky, reached under the dash and pulled out my .45. "Stay down."

Delaney flattened herself to look under the car. Not exactly what I intended, but I didn't have time to argue.

I walked forward until I had a clear line of sight on both gunmen. Blinded by the blazing trailer, they couldn't see me. I was hoping the deputy would realize we were on the same side and not shoot me.

The driver spun as the first two rounds from the 1911 caught him in through the chest. The second shooter, too focused on the deputy, took too long to react, and the next double tap caught him easily. It was a little sloppy, the first round was center mass, but the second punched up through his collarbone into his neck. Neither one of those fuckers was getting back up.

Hoping the deputy was watching, I held the 1911 up and ejected the magazine, then locked slide back, sending the chambered round flying into the darkness. "Clear"

A hand tapped weakly at the ground near the front tire.

"Shit." I sprinted for the fallen deputy, shoving the gun into my belt.

Deputy Hyatt, all four foot ten inches of her was staring up at me, gasping in pain. "Hit..twice. knee...and...and..." She shook violently for a second. "Arm."

"Delaney! Trauma kit! Now!"

She must have already been on her way, she slid to a stop on her knees shoving the kit into my hands. "Work fast. I'm getting Sally now."

"We need to call..."

Delaney grabbed my shoulder. "I don't think we have time. Remember how you told me 'most' cars don't explode?"

The way she said, "most" caught my attention. "The Pinto?"

"The Pinto. It's on fire."

"Fuck." With the cars packed in the way they were, the small clearing was about to become an inferno. The Pinto probably wouldn't actually explode, but in an area as small as this, it wouldn't really matter.

I could hear Sally roar to life as I struggled to get Hyatt's vest off and get a look at the wound. She wasn't bleeding out, so at least that was a good sign. I took a quick look at her knee. Plenty of blood, looked like a tib fib injury, both bones in the lower leg had been smashed near the knee. Had to hurt like hell, but she had a little time.

Delaney pulled up next to me, she had the passenger seat all the way back and laid down so I could just pull Hyatt in on top of me and slammed the door. She screamed as her leg bounced.

"Go!"

As Sally tore past the cruiser, I heard a crunching sound, but the thump of the Pinto's gas tank immediately overwhelmed it as the whole clearing filled with flame.

"I'm sorry. God. I'm sorry." Delaney looked horrified.

"We made it." I managed to get the pressure dressing on her arm, then pulled a roll splint out and began to stabilize her knee.

"Your mirror. There wasn't enough room and the mirror on this side..."

I couldn't help it. I started laughing. "I can get another. It's just a mirror, Princess. I'll trade that for third degree burns any day.

She started to slow. "I can stop here if you want."

"Keep going, there's a propane tank by the trailer."

I was still working on Hyatt, nearly another mile down the road when I saw the flames shoot up into the sky behind us. "Sheriff better have his insurance paid up on that cruiser."

Delaney suddenly slowed and began flashing the brights. "We better get out really slow. They look pissed."

Every deputy available must have been standing at the road block, shotguns out.

Delaney shut Sally off and stepped out slowly with her hands up. "Hyatt's been shot. Needles is trying to help her. He's getting out now."

I managed to get Hyatt on the ground, and two EMTs were at my side almost instantly. The one with the blonde crew cut looked her over rapidly as I described the injuries. "This is pretty good work, you do this in a moving car?"

"Didn't have a lot of choice. Done it in Humvees a few times, anyway. How the hell did you get here this fast?"

"When the deputy called in 'shots fired,' the Sheriff gave an all call. He figured somebody was going down."

Delaney had raced over to the Sheriff and was talking animatedly.

We started to load Hyatt up and Delaney raced over and leaned over her. "You still owe me some candy bars. You're not getting out of it this way."

Hyatt blinked her eyes open and tried not to laugh. "I'll pay up. I still think you cheated somehow."

Delaney grinned. "We didn't have electricity for four months when we first moved to the cabin, so we played poker every night."

Hyatt narrowed her eyes at me the best she could. "You turned her into a card shark?"

"What? I was teaching her math. It was homeschooling."

Hyatt was still chuckling weakly as we watched them load her up into the ambulance and head out.

The Sheriff walked up beside us. "Delaney explained it. Two perps down, maybe Hyatt..." He stared at me from under lowered brows. "Maybe you. That's fine, they shot at one of my deputies, so they're bought and paid for. We'll fill in the details later. I'll need your gun though, to check ballistics." He looked up the road at the blazing clearing. "It'll be morning before we can even recover the bodies."

I nodded and handed it to him carefully. "Am I gonna get it back?"

"It's not gonna come up hot on a ballistics check, is it?"

"Not this one." Car compactors are great for getting rid of evidence. Nobody wants to deal with a two ton steel origami wrapper that just might have something in it.

He looked upward for a moment, probably praying for patience, "Fine. You'll probably get it back. Hell, I'm sure you have a half-dozen more anyway."

I gave a non-committal gesture. Hell, I had another 1911 in the trunk, in a "hide" under the carpet, but I didn't plan to share that.

He leaned back. "I do have one question. Where's Mooky?"

Delaney shrugged. "In the trunk. What else was I supposed to do with him?"

We walked around Sally and Delaney popped the truck. Mooky was snoring peacefully, drooling on my trunk liner.

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow at Delaney. "You stuffed him in there by yourself?"

She grinned. "I lug wheels and tires around half the day. I kinda got his top half in and poured the rest of him in."

I looked him over. "We probably outta drop him at the hospital and get him checked out. I think he's okay, but he's got some smoke inhalation and maybe a light concussion."

The Sheriff sighed. "I'll get an ambulance headed this way."

Delaney twisted her mouth, eying Mooky. "Be a pity to wake him up just to put him in an ambulance."

I nodded. "He does look peaceful, doesn't he? We can drop him off, I want to see how Hyatt is doing, anyway."

Delaney closed the trunk.

I fired up Sally and had Delaney call Sheree.

After a few minutes of quiet conversation, Delaney hung up. "Sheree says that gives her time to clean up before we use up all the hot water. She's glad we rescued Mooky and Hyatt. Especially since there's no way it was our fault this time."

When we popped the trunk at the hospital, Mooky looked up at us bleary-eyed. "Dude, I had, like a really bad nightmare." He pulled himself up to sitting and got out of the trunk. He was completely unsurprised by waking up in a trunk in the first place. "Those two suits, they took my shit, and they like burned my place and..."

He trailed off, staring up at the hospital sign, then touched the side of his face, wincing at the pain. "Awwww, Nooooo. They burned my place didn't they?"

I held my hands up. "It was all we could do to pull you out. It was too late for the trailer."

"One of them took my seed, too."

"I'm pretty sure it's gone this time. Your 'suits' got in a shoot-out with Deputy Hyatt outside our trailer, they ended up dead and the fire burned the whole area."

His face fell. "Gone?"

I nodded. "Gone."

Mooky looked down at his feet. "This sucks man."

Delaney glared at him. "Hyatt got shot trying to stop those two. That's why we're here."

He rubbed his forehead and looked down with glassy eyes. "Nobody's supposed to get hurt. It's just weed, man, not meth. This isn't like "Breaking Bad" or some shit." He looked up at the sign. "Is she here? Can we see her?"

We led him in and ran right into the Sheriff standing in the waiting area outside of surgery. There's an advantage to having lights and sirens when you want to get somewhere fast.

He gestured us over. "Doc says she should be okay. No promises, you know how they are. He said you kept her from losing too much blood and it looks like nothing vital was hit. She won't be able to see anyone until tomorrow afternoon if everything goes well."

"She was doing pretty well when we loaded her into the ambulance, or I'd have ridden with her. She's tough; she should be okay."

He pulled out his notebook. "I talked to her a little before she went in. The pain meds were working well enough for her to concentrate. From what I can put together, they wounded her when she did the initial traffic stop, shot her through the door when she started to get out. She blocked the road, started shooting back, so they took off back toward Mooky's place."

"That fits."

"Once there, they re-engaged and... the perps became shot. It'll probably take til morning for us to get in there to see what's left. Whatever was there, it's probably burned to ashes by now. The fire can't really go anywhere, and Chief Simmons isn't really interested in risking his people." He glanced at Mooky who was still trying to get his brain around the disaster. "Which brings us to whatever the hell was going on in the first place."

I sighed. "Believe it or not, I think this is about a few ounces of marijuana seed."

"C'mon, Needles, nobody kills anyone over weed anymore."

Delaney looked up at a glassy eyed Mooky. "Just tell him the truth, Mooky. He's a good guy." She smirked. "Besides, all the evidence is gone."

Mooky sighed and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

The Sheriff eyed me. "I'll get his story now, but I'm dropping by to get yours later tonight. I know it'll be late."

"One of your deputies got shot. There's no such thing as late when one of your people gets hurt. I'll let Sheree know."

"Damn right."

As we left the parking lot Delaney bit her lip. "Do you really think this is over that package he had?"

"I don't know. It fits. It doesn't make any sense. But it fits."

"How much could it have been worth?"

"Not much, a few thousand bucks, tops. Sure as hell not enough to kill for. Unless..." I stopped. The whole idea was ridiculous.

"Unless what?"

"Unless somebody really believes what Mooky said about it curing cancer, but that's nuts."

Delaney stared out the window. "A class of new drivers started the week we left Texas. They sent two guys home because they tested positive for marijuana."

"They'll do that."

"Kurt told us why. He said it slows your reflexes and makes it harder to think clearly." She shuddered. "I can't imagine wanting to make it harder to think or read or..." she stopped, looking a little sick.

I could see where she was going. Delaney already felt "stupid' sometimes, because of her dyslexia, no matter how much Sheree and I supported her. She'd come a long way, but reading was still hard and always would be. "Yeah, it's probably not something you'd want to use."

She nodded slowly, then forced a smile. "I know I'm a pain in the ass, but at least you don't have to worry about that."

"Just wandering power-sanders."

She shrugged dramatically. "So with all the shooting and the burning and shit, it's the sander that bothers you?"

"I'm used to the 'shooting and burning and shit,' but I hate it when my tools aren't where they're supposed to be."

Delaney rolled her eyes. "Oh. My God. The end of the world. A misplaced power-sander."

I shook my head sadly. "It's a sad world when sanders get misplaced." She always left the sander exactly one foot in front of the shelf cubby it belonged in. Carefully oiled, cleaned up and with a new sanding pad in place if it needed one. It was one of those weird little "us" things that people have. She knew she could be "bad" and I would growl about it, but we both knew it was okay, that it was just how we were.

We both knew what it really meant, and I could see her settle comfortably.

As we reached the cabin and pulled up to the right of it, Delaney glanced over her shoulder. "Damn, the Sheriff must have left just after we did."

I glanced in the mirror and caught blue and white disco lights coming up fast behind us. I slammed Sally into park. "Take the phone. Get into the woods and call the Sheriff."

She looked at me in shock. "What?"

"The Sheriff and his men use red, white, and blue lights. Not blue and white. That's a state cop thing."

"Shit. What are you..."

"Go, dammit."

She flew out of the car and dashed around the cabin as I hit the trunk release and dropped out the door to the ground.

I was planning on trying to get to the 1911 in my trunk, but bullets were already slamming into Sally's ass end.

I didn't recognize the passenger, a bullet-headed man with a grey T-shirt, but as soon as I saw the driver I hoped Delaney was making good time.

Stein, looking like a frazzled racoon with his two black eyes, was shouting at his partner. "Just put him the fuck down and get that little bitch!"

I was moving as fast as I could, but the guy had a clear shot at me and he seemed to have his shit together. I'd pretty much resigned myself to getting shot for the fourth time in my life when the overwhelming boom of a shotgun from the front window of the cabin shocked everything into silence.

The guy staggered back, red blossoming across most of his chest. A second deafening shot pitched him over backwards. The peculiar jingling of shattered glass raining to the ground was the only sound at all for a second.

Stein dropped into a crouch to take himself out of the line of fire and began quickly working his way around the car to get a shot at me. Asshole or not, he was well trained and losing his partner hadn't shaken his nerve at all.

He was just getting around the car, grinning, when something buzzed from the side of the cabin, cracking him across the face and falling to the ground.

He staggered back a couple steps, his nose spouting fresh blood. I dove for his partner's Kimber.

Delaney crowed wildly from around the corner. "Asshole!"

He straightened up snarling. "You little bitch!"

I rolled to my feet, thrust the muzzle of the Kimber against his temple and fired. He collapsed and I stared down at him. "I fucking warned you about calling her that." Not that he could hear it.

Sheree stalked from the front of the cabin, shotgun cautiously leveled. "Is that all of them?"

"I think so." One glance at Stein's partner told me he was dead.

Delaney crept around the corner of the cabin. "Sorry. I know I was supposed to run, but the cell fell out of my pocket when I ran." She walked over and picked it up from the ground. "So I kinda improvised."

I shrugged. "Well, I'm kinda glad you did. If you hadn't, I'd have had a real problem."

Sheree looked over Stein and his man suspiciously until she was convinced they were dead. "I was finishing up my hair when I heard the shooting. Wasn't 'xactly planning on having a gunfight just now."

Delaney gave a chirping laugh. "I was gonna ask about that."

Sherree tugged her pink "Virginia Beach is for Lovers" t-shirt down a bit in a vain attempt to cover her red lace panties. "Next time we do this, y'all call ahead and let me get into some coveralls, too, okay?" She tried to sound surly, but her amusement still peaked through.

I pretended to study her. "I dunno, I kinda like it."

Delaney gave a long dramatic sigh. "God. Of course, you do. Eeewww." Then she broke down in a giggle.

I watched Sheree carefully, trying not to be obvious. She seemed more composed than I would've expected.

"Somebody's coming." Delaney pointed to a pair of headlights coming up the road.

We looked at each other for a second, then Sheree hefted the 12 gauge and moved behind Stein's car. I stuck the Kimber in my belt and pulled the back-up 1911 out of the hide in Sally's trunk. Delaney picked up Stein's gun; she took a deep sigh and looked at me.

I gave her a nod. "Stay close to Sheree."

The Sheriff's Tahoe slowed to a crawl as he took in the scene. He stopped. Once I could see his face clearly in the light from the cabin, I put the 1911 on the hood of Stein's car.

He slid out, hand hovering over his sidearm. "I'm sure there's one hell of an interesting story here, Needles."

"Stein."

"Shit. You guys okay?"

"Car's shot up, but all of us are fine."