In Laymon's Terms

“I know,” Keyes said, and he looked for more to say. Sometimes he tried to tell Danni how he felt, but he didn’t like the tremor that crept into his voice when he talked about his fears. Sometimes, he’d try to brush the whole thing off and say that the problem wasn’t in trying to fix what was left of him, the problem was getting back the pound of guts that Elise had carved out of his belly. Most of all he knew that he’d lost something, something important and vital, something more than flesh. But most of the time he couldn’t find the words to make Danni understand that, and he felt like he didn’t even know where to look for them.

Danni did. She always found the right ones.

“I love you,” she said, and Keyes knew that it was true.

But late at night, when the fever returned and the shadows started to laugh, he wondered how Danni felt about the wounded man who lived in the dark little room.

Keyes doubled back to the road that led to Murdock’s cabin. He figured fifteen minutes had passed since Morales opened fire on him...maybe twenty at the outside. That was good, because it meant Danni wouldn’t be due at Murdock’s place for at least another hour.

If Keyes had anything to say about it, Morales would be dead by then, going cold as the banana slugs that crawled across the forest floor. Keyes liked the thought of that. He pictured Morales crumpled on the ground, curled up in a fetal ball with his throat cut and a knife buried in the gristly hunk of muscle that passed for his heart—

And he felt stronger seeing that. A sliced throat and a knife in the heart. That was the way he’d take Morales down, because the Mexican wasn’t the type of bastard you’d want to play around with. You bumped up against his action—straight ahead, from the back, or sideways—you’d have to be sure you finished him, because a guy like Morales wouldn’t quit until the devil himself had boxed up his sorry excuse for a soul.

Keyes wished he’d killed the man a long time ago, when he’d had the chance, when Morales wouldn’t have been expecting it. But he knew that wishing was a waste of time. As he hurried down the road at an unsteady trot, looking for Morales’ car, he concentrated on reality.

The car had to be around here somewhere, because he hadn’t seen it at Murdock’s place. Morales had been careful about that. Obviously, he hadn’t wanted Keyes to know that he was anywhere near the old man’s cabin. He’d wanted to get the drop on Keyes, the same way he had on Murdock.

But it didn’t look like that was going to happen. Keyes came around a bend, and there it was—Morales’ old Dodge Charger. He grinned, knowing that he’d hit the jackpot. Because wherever Morales went, he went armed. And not just with the .45 he’d most likely used to ventilate Murdock’s front door. No. Morales kept his own private arsenal in the Charger’s trunk—a sawed-off shotgun, a couple German machine-pistols, and enough ammo to stop a platoon.

Keyes pictured the stash as he jimmied the trunk.

It didn’t take long.

A soft thunk, and the lid rose before him.

He saw the guns, all right. But he saw something else, too.

Morales’ corpse was crammed into the compartment along with all that hardware. The Mexican was curled in a fetal ball around a pile of bloodstained cartridge boxes. His throat had been cut to the bone, and there was a knife buried in his heart—a knife just like the one that filled Keyes’ hand.

Keyes stumbled away from the car. The stitched hole in his belly had never felt so empty, and he dropped his knife without even knowing he’d done it. By the time he recognized the trap he’d fallen into, it was already too late.

Keyes didn’t want to turn around, but he knew that he had to.

Behind him, from a tangle of ferns beneath a thick-trunked redwood at the edge of the road, there came a sound.

It was a sound that Keyes knew all too well.

The long, cool whisper of deeply drawn breaths passing over dry lips.

The ferns parted, and the man who had set Keyes up for a perfect ambush stepped from the shadows. He held a pistol in his hand, and he didn’t limp at all because his knee had never been peppered with buckshot, and he approached Keyes with a slow, even gait.

Keyes jolted at the sight of the guy. He took a stumbling step backward. He didn’t know how to react...not at first. And then he knew. Suddenly and exactly, because there was only one thing he really cared about anymore, and it wasn’t the guy standing in front of him.

“Where’s Danni?” he asked. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” the man said. “But she couldn’t stand to see this. That’s why she didn’t come.”

Keyes nearly closed his eyes, just for a second, wondering how much he could take. The man’s voice seemed to rise from a gut lined with steel. It was so strong. So sure. And the funny thing was that Keyes almost didn’t recognize it. But he did, because you had to recognize the sound of your own voice, even if you hadn’t really heard it in the last four months.

“And the money?” Keyes found himself asking.