She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,227

all heard about the crazy show you put on with Reid the last time you were here. Guess they’re hoping for an encore.”

Preacher frowned. “What happened with Reid?”

Dunk smacked me on the back. “My boy here came out on the right side of a crazy game of Russian Roulette. He didn’t tell you?”

Preacher’s eyes narrowed. “No, he didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t fuck with him,” Dunk said. “The guy deflects bad mojo like Superman and bullets.”

Pinching his nose with the handkerchief, Preacher changed the subject. “How defendable is this place?”

Dunk went back to the window. “I’ve got a hundred and six people here, all armed. Lookouts in town, too. If someone tries to pedal up on a white bicycle, they’ll have a dozen weapons trained on them. One road in, one road out, with the Monongahela River at our backs and open fields all around us. See that tree line way out there? I’ve got people in blinds watching every inch. There are two sets of railroad tracks, with a deep gully between the trees and the furnace grounds. No way they get vehicles through there, and if by some miracle they make it on foot, it would be slow-moving. We’d pick them off before they even got close to any of the buildings. Between all the hills and the scraps of machinery scattered around, the property is covered with places to hide, and I have people stationed at all of them. We’ve got a solid perimeter. They’d have to airdrop into here to get any kind of jump on us. If by some crazy miracle they get past the outer defenses, we fall back on the mill. This place is a fucking metal maze, and my people have trained here for years. They know every inch. We’d slaughter them.”

“We start shooting, how long before the cops show up?” Preacher said.

Dunk laughed. “Who do you think I have running lookout in town? Our finest in blue, that’s who. Don’t need to worry about them. We’re too isolated, anyway. We set up a shooting range out back almost two years ago, and not a single person has ever reported gunfire out here. The sound doesn’t carry far enough. If this goes all out World War III, ain’t nobody coming to help us, and nobody coming to stop us. We’re on our own.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said softly.

The look in Dunk’s eyes told me he kinda hoped it did. He crossed the room and went to a wooden crate in the corner. “I’ve got a Plan ‘B,’ too, for that David character you mentioned.”

Dunk opened the lid and handed me a pair of over-the-ear headphones. “I picked up a truckload of these babies back in January. They were heading to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas from the factory in Massachusetts. They won’t hit the market for at least another year, so I’ve been sitting on them.”

“Bose Quiet Comfort?” I said, reading the box.

“Noise-canceling headphones,” Dunk said. “You put these on, hit the switch, and they block out all outside noise. Pickford can scream at the top of his lungs, and you won’t hear shit.” He took a Motorola radio from his pocket and plugged it into the dangling headphone cord. “We communicate with these. All other sound will be blocked out. We’ll be able to hear each other but nothing coming from him.”

When I made the phone call to Dunk back at my father’s house on Whidbey, I put my conscience in check. More accurately, I locked it away in a cold room somewhere in the back of my head. I knew he was mixed up in some horrible things, and by asking for his help, I’d find myself in the thick of those horrible things. When he said he ‘picked up a truckload,’ I was under no illusion he paid retail, and I told myself not to think about the driver of that truck or what may have happened to him. I sure as shit couldn’t think about Gerdy while I was around him. Not her, not the others at Krendal’s, either, none of that. When those thoughts popped into my head, I forced myself to think of Stella and the people with me, the ones I needed to keep alive today, not the ones I couldn’t bring back from my past. I’d mourn them again tomorrow. I told myself this man was my friend, had been for most of my childhood. He stood by