She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,173

took out the bottle of Maker’s Mark. About a third left. I twisted off the cap and threw it aside, then tore a strip of cloth from one of the pillowcases, rolled it, and shoved it into the mouth of the bottle. “I need matches,” I said, pulling open the other drawer and looking inside; only an old Bible.

“I saw some over here.” Stella went to the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed, grabbed a matchbook from beside a filthy ashtray, and tossed them to me. “Will that work in the rain?”

“I have no idea.”

I put the yearbook in my backpack and slung the bag over my shoulder. “Do you have the other book?”

She nodded. “In my bag.”

The motel room door burst open, and Stella let out a sharp scream.

Two men came in, both moving low and fast. The first had a 9mm in his hand. The second man had a shotgun. Both were dressed entirely in white. Without a thought, I dropped the bottle of whiskey and charged the man with the semiautomatic, my shoulder plowing into his gut and sending him flailing backward into the other man. All three of us tumbled out the door onto the concrete walkway and fell into a pile. I brought my elbow down hard into the jaw of the man with the handgun, and his eyes rolled back into his head. I scooped up the gun and rolled to the side as the man with the shotgun pushed the limp body away and began to stand.

I leveled the gun on him. “Don’t.”

He smiled at me. “The safety is on.”

“Glocks don’t have safeties. Set the shotgun down, and take a step back.”

The man had cut himself when he fell. Blood rolled down from his forehead into his eye. He ignored it, his grin widening. The shotgun continued to rise.

I fired twice. Both rounds hit him in the gut. I tried to fire a third time, but the gun came up empty. I tossed it aside. The man looked down at the growing red spot on his white coat, then fell to his knees, the shotgun dropping beside him. I grabbed it.

The bottle of whiskey sailed out the door of my room, past my head, and over the balcony, a flame trailing from the makeshift wick. It exploded on the roof of the Cadillac Escalade in the center of the parking lot, flames spreading over the SUV despite the rain. The man who had been on the phone jumped aside and disappeared from sight somewhere below.

Stella ran past me toward the stairs, my backpack over her shoulder. “Come on!”

I followed her down the steps, the shotgun leading.

A third man in white was waiting at the base of the stairs, the barrel of a shotgun pointing out from under his white trench coat directly at me.

Stella walked straight toward him, her pace quickening with each step. She tugged the glove off her right hand and reached for him. The man’s face went pale, and he swung the gun from me to her.

A blast rang out.

The shotgun bucked in my hand with the recoil, and the man flew back against the wall, then dropped to the ground.

We ran toward the Jeep and jumped inside. As I threw the shotgun behind my seat and started the engine, Stella’s head swiveled, looking for others. One of the white cars, a Chevrolet Cavalier, was parked behind us, blocking our path. Instead of backing up out of the space, I put the Jeep into first and drove right over the concrete parking block, over the edge of the blacktop, and into the muddy field separating the Chestnut Motor Lodge from I-118. Behind us, the man we had first seen standing next to the Cadillac ran out from behind the safety of a Ford F-150 into the center of the lot, the phone still pressed to his ear, shouting over the rain.

6

In the early hours of August 9, Preacher sat on a bench in LA Union Station with a copy of the Los Angeles Times in his hand. He kept one eye on the newspaper and the other on the large man in the brown suit and funny little hat.

He didn’t get the hat.

He knew it was called a boater and made of straw, but what he didn’t get is why this man wore one. Aside from the occasional costume party, boaters hadn’t been in fashion since the late nineteenth century. You don’t steal two million dollars from the