The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,58

Another man was cuffed and sitting up on a stretcher, looking mildly dazed as he was wheeled toward the vehicle. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth.

“You didn’t tell me it was this serious,” Malone said as I got to the porch. “Vinny stopped the first guy but the other one got inside.”

“Vinny didn’t just stop the guy,” Doc Simeon said, walking past us toward the house. “That man will never walk properly again. His kneecap was shattered. Felt like eggshells in there.”

Everyone looked at Vinny, who had a blanket with a large hole on it on his knees. His old hands were clasped on the fabric and his eyes were on the trees; he looked like a man watching a football game, half listening to us.

“I don’t know what everybody’s complaining about.” He shrugged. “Guy’s got another one.”

Susan explained what had happened as the ambulances rolled on into the night. Angelica was leaning against a porch column, one hand on the back of Vinny’s wheelchair.

“Maybe Doc doesn’t approve of Vinny’s violent approach,” Angelica said. “But I think it was warranted. We’ve shown them that they can’t come at us with force. They’ve shot at us. We’ve, uh … done some things to them too. Now I think the only course of action is to invite this Mr. Cline over here to discuss the issue of his leaving town. We could put together a nice lunch.”

Vinny started laughing, a gravelly, hacking sound.

“What?” Angelica stroked the sling on her arm consolingly. “People of your ilk have them all the time in the movies. Sit-downs, you call them. With the, uh … the consiglieri?”

“All that time you spend making shit up in books has given you a real interesting perspective on life, Ange.” Vinny nodded appreciatively.

“This whole event is like an allegory.” Angelica looked around, her voice wistful. “The gunmen in the night. The porch here is like a theater stage, the silent trees beyond an army of judgmental yet silent souls.”

“Dear God.” I massaged my brow.

“Hey, innkeeper,” Vinny said as I turned to go inside. “You want a real laugh, go talk to the sheriff. He’s in the kitchen.”

Susan followed me through the dining room and across a scattering of broken glass and splintered wood it seemed we had cleared away only a day earlier. I stopped in the hall and put my hands on her shoulders.

“I’m so lucky that you were here,” I said. A stirring deep in my chest had begun, terror at the reality of the situation, the danger my guests had been in, the awful possibilities. “I might have come back and found them all dead in their beds.”

“The people here can take care of themselves,” she said. “It was actually Mr. Ives who dealt the finishing blow.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. The man with no past who dwelled in the room next to Marni’s was emerging, and I had to admit I was feeling a shift in my perception of him. He’d always made me uneasy, like a monster that lives under the stairs, a shadow I crept past like a child. But I was starting to appreciate the guy who lingered in the dark, who could take out a fleeing suspect with a rickety old door and go back to sleep like nothing had happened.

Clay was in his usual position, leaning into the refrigerator, loading a plate in one hand with sandwich fixings. I saw in the gold light that at the back of his head, a patch the size of a playing card had been shaved and a mean-looking gash stitched closed. When he turned to us, I could see the beginning of two black eyes. He limped to the table and sat down, eased a heavy ice pack onto his crotch.

“Look at this, would you?” He sighed, gestured to his face. “I have to have a meeting with the school-district woman this morning. I’m gonna look like a panda.”

“Christ.” I sat down, put my head in my hands as he made his sandwich. “What happened?”

Clay explained about the abduction, the fight in the woods, half his story muffled by bites of an enormous sandwich and slurps of Miller Lite. Despite everything, a smile played on Susan’s lips as she listened.

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “Two days ago, a housewife nails you in the face with an encyclopedia, and tonight you fight off two guys with your hands cuffed behind your back?”

“It was a dictionary.” Clay held the