I couldn’t stay put. I had to join Lawrence.

I moved up to the corner of the barn he’d disappeared around, stuck my head around it, let my eyes adjust. Crossing along that side, he would have scooted past the big barn door, which had been pulled shut about ninety percent of the way. There was no Lawrence. So he must have gone around the next corner, and was peering in from the opposite side.

From this vantage point, I could see the farmhouse, and as I started to make my move to the next corner, the back door of the house swung open, and out stepped Charlene, a tray in her hands.

The sandwiches were on their way.

I couldn’t go around the barn that way without being seen by Charlene, so I doubled back to the other corner, all the while aware of the murmurings of Timmy and Wendell and Dougie inside. I peered around it, and again, no sign of Lawrence. Which only left one side of the barn for him to be on.

I tiptoed through the tall grass, sidestepped a rusting plough blade from God knew how many decades ago, and when I reached the end of the wall, tipped my head beyond the edge.

No Lawrence.

Pressing myself up close to the barn, I moved along the wall, wondering what could have happened to him. He couldn’t have gone the other way. That would have exposed him to the house, and Charlene the Sandwich Lady.

The ground was built up on this side, and I realized it was a ramp leading to the upper part of the barn. My eye followed the ramp up to a narrow opening, a door that was only slightly ajar.

Lawrence had gone into the barn. What the hell was Lawrence doing in the-

“Okay, nobody move!”

Oh shit.

I ran up the ramp, squeezed in the doorway, my shoes kicking old hay and stones out of the way. Once in, I found that this upper level of the barn afforded a view into the lower area, where the Wickens crew had been occupied with the white van. And down there, I could see Lawrence, doing the cop stance, both hands on his gun, barking commands at Timmy and Wendell and Dougie.

“Put the guns down,” Lawrence said.

“The fuck?” said Wendell.

“Jesus, you,” said Dougie. “That’s the guy, Timmy. He’s the one was so mean to me.”

“I know, Dougie,” said Timmy. “I talked to him. Remember?”

So Lawrence had snuck in from above and gotten the drop on them. I sure hoped he had a plan for subduing the three of them. Was he carrying several sets of handcuffs I didn’t know about? And if not, where was my friend Trixie when you really needed her?

And where, exactly, was Charlene?

She should have been to the barn by now. It wasn’t a long walk. Which meant she must have been almost to the barn with her tray of sandwiches when she heard Lawrence’s voice, and knew there was trouble inside. So where had she gone? Was she running back to the farmhouse? Going for help?

What to do? Shout to Lawrence? But would that distract him, give the others a chance to get the jump on him? Maybe if-

“Drop it.”

Off to Lawrence’s left, standing in the narrow opening of the big barn door, stood Charlene, a long-barreled gun in hand, a goddamn six-shooter it looked like from my hiding spot up in the barn, pointed straight at Lawrence’s head.

Fucking Ma Barker.

32

NO ONE MOVED.

Not Wendell or Dougie. Not Lawrence. Not Charlene. Lawrence had his gun aimed at the three men, who were clustered together at the back of the van, and had, I could see from my hiding spot, put down their weapons. But Charlene Wickens had her gun firmly in her grip, and it was trained on Lawrence.

“Put your gun away, Mrs. Wickens,” Lawrence said evenly. “Drop it.”

“I don’t think so, boy,” she said. She practically spat out the last word.

“Mrs. Wickens,” Lawrence said, his eyes darting back and forth between her and the men in front of him, “I’m sure you don’t want to see one of your sons, or your husband, hurt.”

“And I’m sure you don’t want your fucking head shot off.” She held the gun with such confidence, I had the sense she could do it.

Lawrence persisted. “Mrs. Wickens. If you don’t put down your gun and stand over here with the rest of your family, I may have no choice but to use my weapon. Who do you want to see die first? One of your boys, or your husband?”

“Well,” Charlene Wickens said, appearing rather thoughtful, “I guess if you gotta take one of them, best it be my husband. I wouldn’t feel good about you taking one of my own flesh and blood.” I wished I could see Timmy Wickens’s expression, but Wendell was standing to this side of him, and his face was obscured.

Charlene Wickens continued, “But the way I see it, the best you might be able to do is get one out of the three, and by then, I’ll have put a bullet of my own into you. And if you figure it makes sense to shoot me first, since I’m the one holding a gun, lots of luck there, pardner. The moment I see your muscles twitch to start aiming in my direction, I’m dropping you.”

There was one thing Lawrence had on his side that none of the Wickenses knew about, and that was me. He must have figured that I was watching this, not from inside the barn, perhaps, but at least from the spot outside where he’d left me. And he’d know that, even if I lacked the requisite heroic skills to turn the tables on the Wickenses at this moment, I could at least run like hell for help.

If only my bear spray had a range of forty feet.

“Maybe,” said Lawrence, “I’m willing to see how many of you I can take out before you shoot me. I’m betting I can kill at least two of you before you kill me. And that ought to be enough to disrupt your plans for tomorrow’s parade.”

Everyone thought about that for a few seconds.

Then Charlene said, “We do it your way, then after, whoever’s left standing here is going to take a walk down the road and get rid of every possible witness who could ever tell the police anything about what’s been going on around here. Walker, and that meddlesome son of his, and whoever else is down there. We’ll take care of all of them. And then we’ll pack up and move on.”

That didn’t sound good at all. And I could tell, from Lawrence’s expression, that it didn’t sound very good to him, either.

So, slowly and deliberately, he bent down and set his gun on the barn floor. And Dougie walked over and kicked him in the balls.

Lawrence dropped like a bag of cement. He lay on the floor, writhing.

Timmy shook his head, walked over to Charlene. “Nice going, honey.”

She smiled, gave him a peck on the cheek. “I hope you know I didn’t mean nothing by telling him to shoot you first. You know I love you, even if not quite as much as I love my boys.”

“I know,” Timmy said. “You did what you had to do.”

Wendell said, “Were you still making sandwiches, Mom?”

“Oh, almost forgot,” she said. “I was bringing the tray over, and when I heard the commotion going on in here, I put it down outside, ran back and got my gun. Just a sec.” She slipped out the door and was back ten seconds later, the tray of sandwiches untouched by any creatures of the night.

Wendell and Dougie rushed her. “Which one’s without cheese?” asked Dougie, who was already lifting the lids of the various sandwiches to check.

“This one,” Charlene said.

Dougie grabbed it, shoved a quarter of the sandwich into his mouth, his cheeks bulging out. Wendell did the same.

“Nothing for you?” Charlene asked her husband. “I made you one without mustard, just like you asked.”

Timmy shook his head, glanced back at Lawrence Jones on the floor, slowly twisting and turning. “I’m a bit worried about him. I don’t figure he’d be out here working alone. It was Walker’s son brought him up here from the city.”

Wendell and Dougie, looking like squirrels hiding nuts to take back to the nest, stopped chewing a moment to take in the significance of this comment. Charlene said, “You think he might be around here, too?”