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wheel, poring up at it.
"It'll make it easier to run without lights." busy attaching the silencer to
his automatic, Lath glanced up long enough to see they were almost to the end
of the lane. The highway was just ahead. "Turn right. We'll go to O'Rourke's
first ."
"O'Rourke's?" Rollie shot him a surprised look.
"Yeah. If he's there, we'll take him out. If he isn't, then we gotta worry
about him being somewhere around the Calder house."
On that sobering thought, Rollie fell silent. It wasn't hard to figure out why
Lath hadn't said anything about O'Rourkr before now. He thought Rollie would
chicken out. Truthfully, Rollie felt a little sick at the moment , and a whole
lot scared. He saw the logic in it, just as he'd seen the logic of carrying
guns in case they had to shoot their way out lout killing someone that way
seemed more like an accident and less like murder.
He clung to the hope O'Rourke wouldn't be home, knowing it was stupid, knowing
that it could mean the old man might be at the Triple C, that he could screw
up the whole works.
A half mile from the Shamrock ranch yard, Lath told him to kill the engine and
let the van coast. It rolled to a stop about a hundred feet short of the
house. No lights showed from its windows.
"It doesn't look like he's there," Rollie whispered.
"I'll take a look." Lath pulled on his ski mask, adjusted it, then zipped up
his jacket.
All the bulbs had been removed from the van's interior lights before they left
the Simpson place. The door latch clicked under Lath's hand. Then he was
outside the van, the moonlight glinting on the automatic's metal silencer.
Nervous, Rollie chewed at the inside of his lip, watching while Lath darted
into the shadows of the nearest trees. Almost the instant he melded into the
darkness, a door slammed. Rollie jumped at the sound and broke into a cold
sweat.
A second later, he saw O'Rourke's thin shape moving across the moonlit ranch
yard, a rifle loosely carried in his swinging hand. He scanned the shadows
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under the trees, searching for Lath.
"O'Rourke!" The ski mask partially muffled the barked call.
The old man swung in a half crouch, then jerked as if he'd been punched in the
stomach and crumpled to the ground. Rollie hadn't heard anything but the
crunch of gravel under O'Rourke's boot. Lath came out of the shadows near the
yard and approached the man on the ground with caution. Pausing, he looked
down on him, took aim and fired again.
Swearing bitterly, Rollie looked away, fighting tears and a churning nausea.
He didn't say a word when Lath climbed into the passenger seat.
"Let's go. Let's go!" Lath ripped off the mask, sounding breathless and high
all at the same time.
There was no turning back now. If there had been a chance before, there was
none now. Recognizing that, Rollie started the engine, a cold anger welling
inside.
Back on the highway again, they followed it for a short distance, then turned
onto a side road that took them to the Triple C's seldom-used north gate. The
last time they'd tried to snatch the kid, Rollie had been a bundle of nerves.
This time he felt nothing. It was as if everything inside him had turned to
ice. Hot ice.
He drove straight to the big house and parked behind it, out of sight. In
silence, he donned the ski mask and pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves
while Lath did the same.
"Got the tape?" Lath asked.
Nodding, Rollie patted the bulge in his jacket's zipped pocket. Lath jammed a
clip in the second automatic, its silencer already attached, and passed it to
Rollie, then gathered up his own. At a signaling nod from Lath, he slipped out
of the van. Quickly they found the breaker switch and cut the telephone line.
The back door was locked, but the massive front door wasn't. They stepped
inside and closed it carefully behind them. A pulsating silence greeted them,
heavy and thick. Lath snapped on his penlight. It lanced the darkness, touched
on the rounded back of a sofa in an area directly ahead of them before Lath
switched it off.
The living room. According to their mother, the staircase emptied into it.
Their rubber-soled sneakers made only a whisper of sound as they crossed the
room to the staircase. Lath went first. Rollie followed, wincing when a board
creaked under his weight.
At the top of the steps, they paused to listen. But all was quiet.
Concentrating on the front section of the house, Lath streaked the penlight
over the room doors. One was open a crack. Rollie pointed to it. When he was a
kid, his mother had always left the door to his room ajar like that.
Lath nodded, and Rollie wondered if he remembered the same thing. He waited,
fingers flexing around the trigger guard, while Lath went to check it out.
Within seconds, Lath was motioning him to follow.
It was the kid's room. Rollie couldn't believe their luck. Moonlight flooded
through the windows, spreading to the bov lying on his stomach. Rollie handed
Lath his gun and quickly got the tape out of his pocket, tore off a wide strip
of it and moved to the bed.
The kid mumbled a sleepy protest when Rollie turned him over, but he didn't
wake up, not until Rollie slapped the tape over his mouth. He grabbed the
slender arms that came up to fight him off, held them easily in one hand and
wrapped the tape tightly around them, then went to work on the wildly kicking
legs.
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