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  Suddenly I realized all that training I got in the Navy hadn’t been wasted. It was kicking in. I automatically took in my full surroundings, figured out my best chance of escape, and identified exactly where the danger was coming from. The guy with the gun was now standing at the foot of my car, peering into the dark woods.

  I weighed my options. I could turn and run down the path away from the road, but that would give him a clear view and opportunity to shoot me. If I waited, he might walk into the woods searching for me and I’d have a chance to strike if he got close enough. But this guy seemed too professional for that. He was weighing his own options and knew time was on his side.

  I needed something, some distraction to make him look away or run toward me. Without conscious thought, my right hand was in a fist and ready for action. But the last thing I wanted to do was get in a fistfight with a guy who had a gun.

  Then I heard a noise on the other side of me. It was a low rustle in the brush. I jumped when a figure appeared out of nowhere. My fist almost struck out on its own. Luckily, my brain was able to register who it was.

  “Jesus, Al. What are you doing here?” It was a hoarse, harsh whisper, but this was not the time for the older homeless guy to be hanging out.

  “It looked like you could use a hand, Mitchum.” He slipped off the fleece coat I’d given him a few days earlier and said, “Put this on. You’re not used to the cold like I am, and if you lose too much blood the coat will help.” Then he peeked at the spot where the man with the gun had stepped farther into the woods. Then Al said, “Be ready to take this guy out.”

  Before I could even ask him what he was talking about, Al stood up and sprinted, though not all that fast, on the path where the man could see him.

  The man took one wild shot then fell into pursuit, immediately running hard right down the middle of the path. He had no idea I was behind a tree that was coming up quickly.

  I could hear his footsteps as he raced down the path and was able to time the swing of my arm to clothesline him perfectly. His whole body rose in the air as my arm caught his chest and slid up to his chin. He landed on the ground with a thud.

  The gun flew from his hand and landed somewhere in the brush, out of sight. In the few seconds I spent looking for the gun, the man was on his feet and facing me.

  He was about my size, with close-cropped brown hair and a tattoo of a teardrop next to his left eye. That meant either he had never been in the military or had been out long enough to get the facial tattoo. Right now that kind of deduction wouldn’t help me. He was tough. Too tough for his own good.

  He also knew how to fight. His stance gave away nothing, with his fists up to protect his face.

  I stepped in and his right leg swung up, blasting me on the right side of my body with a round kick. I deflected some of it with my arm but it still sent a shiver of pain and shock through me. So now I knew he was as fast as lightning, too. I leaned in again and drew a swing of his right fist, which was what I wanted. I dipped slightly and connected with a big punch into his side and was rewarded with the sound of a rib cracking. It might not stop him, but it would make him think every time he moved.

  The man backed off slightly but gave no acknowledgment of the blow. We were both breathing hard already and starting to sweat. Most people have no idea how hard it is to actually fight. Adrenaline and physical exertion together can be a bitch.

  The man moved forward and threw two front kicks, which I blocked, but they were still powerful. I managed a glancing elbow to his chin, which drove him back and also convinced him he wasn’t going to beat me hand to hand.

  He kept his distance as he reached into his rear pocket and yanked out a knife. It was the Army Ranger version of mine.

  I matched him by jerking my knife from my front pocket and flicking it open, then holding it steady a little in front of me.

  The man had a loose grasp on his knife and swung it from side to side as he circled me, looking for an opening.

  A trickle of sweat slipped into my eye, but I couldn’t wipe it.

  The man’s lip was bleeding from my elbow strike.

  He still said nothing. I had no real idea who had told him to make me the target of this attack. But I wasn’t the one who’d regret it. The last thing I wanted to do was stab anyone. Well, second to last. The last thing I wanted to do was die. That meant I had to take serious action.

  He swung at me once, with his blade landing on the back of my left hand and cutting me. The next backhand swipe missed me. When he stepped forward again, I knew what he was going to do. As he started his strike again, I raised my bloody left hand and blocked him, and at the same time, I drove my knife straight up into his solar plexus. I heard the sickening sound of the blade piercing the flesh and then driving up.

  The man froze mid-strike and just stared at me. Then he took a few staggering steps away as he tried to form a word. Then he collapsed onto the path, holding his wound.

  I leaned down and could already feel his pulse had stopped. I must have nicked his heart.

  A quick search found no identification on the man. Not that I really needed any. I knew why he had attacked me: I was looking for Bailey Mae and whoever killed the Wilkses—and maybe even poor Mabel.

  And I didn’t have any real regret for killing this guy unless it kept me from finding Bailey Mae.

  Chapter 20

  I sat on the frozen ground, leaning against a tree, trying to catch my breath. I’d used the snow to clean my knife and pack the cut on my left hand. I can’t say why. I seemed to be operating on instinct now. It didn’t particularly bother me that a few feet away there was a body that I had killed. It had clearly been in self-defense.

  A noise to my right made me jump. Then I realized it was Albany Al coming back.

  He said, “When this asshole didn’t follow me, I figured you’d cleaned his clock.” The older man inspected the body more closely. “You don’t do anything halfway, do you? Nice job.” Now he looked at me and stepped closer, then ran his index finger across my forehead. “Jeez, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig. The bullet must have nicked your scalp good.” He showed me the blood on his finger. “You are one lucky son of a gun.”

  All I could do was shrug my shoulders and say, “Yeah, lucky.” I didn’t feel so lucky. The older man shivered, so I gave him the coat back. I struggled to my feet. My vision was a little blurry.

  Al said, “What about him?” He pointed at the body a few feet away.

  “I’ll worry about explaining him later.”

  Al held up both hands and said, “I didn’t see a thing.”

  Once on my feet, I really felt the blood. It was a warm sensation in the bracing wind. I nodded good-bye to Al and stumbled back to my car. No one had even driven past the accident yet. It was too early and too nasty out. I had to yank the fender away from my front tire, but the good old station wagon would run. A minute later I was on the highway, headed to the one place I knew I’d be safe. I loved that car. At least for the moment.

  My mom’s house was a few blocks from mine. I don’t care how old you are or what you do in life, your mom’s place is always a safe haven. It was the house I grew up in. I stayed there alone with my brother when my mom worked a late shift as a nurse at the emergency room in Newburgh. It was the one place in the world where my troubles never caught up with me.

  She was home, and Bart was sitting next to her on the sofa as they both watched a talk show.

  She said, “I went to walk Bart and he wanted to come here after.” She always made up an excuse to spend a little extra time with my dog. Then she took a closer look and sprang to her feet. “What happened to you? Are you okay?” She was a typical mom at heart.

  My mom sent me into the bathroom as she gathered her supplies and made a quick phone call. When she came in, I was already sitting on the stool we’d used for medical treatment since I was a kid. Both Natty and I had most of our injuries tended to here.

  Mom had me lean over the sink as she w
ashed my scalp, first with warm water, then peroxide. She parted my thick hair carefully with her fingers and then doused the wound with more peroxide.

  I flinched.

  My mom said, “Relax—it’s not that bad.”

  “You could be a little more gentle.”

  “I could be, but this way is faster. I’ve had too much practice with you. Always pretending to be a SEAL and then all those crazy training courses you invented. You got nicked up all the time.” She continued to check my head, then finally said, “This isn’t like any of your crazy cuts or bruises. This was a bullet, wasn’t it? You going to tell me what happened?”

  “I was hoping to avoid that.”

  “The cut on your hand could be anything, but now I’ll assume it was part of a fight.” She inspected my left hand, cleaned it easily, and used three butterfly bandages to close it. “You’re lucky it’s superficial. A deeper cut could have damaged the tendons and affected your grip.”

  She refocused on my head wound, dumping more peroxide on it and moving my hair again, making me jump. It was like a needle in my head. “I can patch you up a number of different ways.”

  “But I still won’t tell you what happened. I don’t want to get you involved.”

  “Okay then, go bleed to death somewhere else.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. But there’s something weird going on around town, and it may be related to Bailey Mae. I’m okay—that’s why I came here.”

  “And you didn’t want anyone at a hospital asking questions, did you?”

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  She worked miracles with a couple of fancy bandages and some dissolving glue. When it was all done, the bleeding had stopped, and she even combed my hair the way I like it. As she dabbed the dried blood from my forehead, I heard the front door open. I sprang from the stool and reached for my knife. My first thought was that someone had followed me to her house. Exactly what I didn’t want to happen.

  I stood in the hallway that led to the living room and listened for a moment. I wanted to have an idea of how many people had entered the house. It didn’t matter—at this point I was going to deal with all of them at the same time.

  Then I heard a male voice that froze me in place.

  It was my brother, Natty. That explained the phone call my mom had made.

  Crap.

  Chapter 21

  My mom walked casually past me into the living room, saying, “I called Natty so you could work together to find Bailey Mae. You each have your own strengths and complement each other very well.”

  I said, “I’m looking for three strangers.” I faced my brother and said, “You sell any of your nasty poison to any strangers passing through town?”

  Natty said, “I told you I didn’t recognize the three people in the photo. I only sell to regular customers.”

  “You’re lying, Natty. Don’t be an asshole. Those strangers are tied to Bailey Mae somehow. Bailey Mae and the Wilkses. I know it.”

  “You don’t know shit. You’re just a pretend private investigator in a shitty little town. Bailey Mae probably ran away, so we’ll find her. I don’t have time for any of this shit. At least I have a business to run.”

  “Selling crap to people who can’t help themselves? Like the heroin that killed poor Mabel.”

  Suddenly Natty was indignant. “I never sell heroin and never sold anything to Mabel. If she had asked for anything, I would’ve told you.”

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. My brother’s self-righteous excuses for how he made a living caused something to snap inside of me. I punched him right in the face. Hard. The punch was so solid it made my head hurt.

  To Natty’s credit, he wasn’t on the floor long. He sprang to his feet and hurled his whole body into me with a vengeance. I stumbled back and we both crashed onto my mother’s coffee table, breaking it into a thousand pieces. Magazines flew in every direction.

  We ignored our mother’s shouts for us to calm down. She even threw in a few curse words, which was rare for her. We tore up her living room, knocking books off the mantel, bending her floor lamp, and flipping her recliner end over end, with my brother’s scrawny body lost in the heap. It might’ve been the loss of blood or the fact that I underestimated my brother’s fighting abilities, but going up against him was harder than I would have thought. I guess he had to be in a few fights before he could afford a bodyguard.

  We took a moment and backed away from each other when we were both on our feet. I moved to the mantel and caught my breath. He backed toward the kitchen door.

  Then I heard an odd sound, like the chime of an old grandfather clock. My brother fell onto the floor, holding his head, as my mom stepped out from behind him with a heavy cast-iron skillet in her hand.

  She looked at me with those cool, brown eyes and said, “You want some of this, Bobby?”

  I glanced down at my brother, on all fours and shaking his head. “No, ma’am.” I didn’t want to have anything to do with that skillet.

  Chapter 22

  I tried to be a good brother and helped Natty off the floor and onto the couch. My mom took charge quickly and said, “Bobby, go get the ice bag out of the cupboard and fill it.”

  That’s right. My name is Robert Mitchum. Just like the actor. Named for my grandfather, who was a long-distance trucker, born a few years after the famous Robert Mitchum.

  Bart hopped onto the couch just as I came back with the ice bag. He licked Natty’s face as my brother slowly regained his senses. His eyes were dilated, which made him look like a cartoon character. My mom, who was acting like she had nothing to do with his present condition, sat on the edge of the couch and gently placed the ice bag on his head.

  She said, “You two shake hands and make up.”

  Way to make your adult sons feel like eight-year-olds, Mom.

  Then my mom said, “Are you idiots ready to talk?” She looked at Natty. “I don’t care what you do for a living. I’m your mother and I love you. But we need to find Bailey Mae. I’m her great-aunt. So you’re going to tell Bobby anything he wants to know, and you’re going to do it right now.”

  Natty mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Apparently moms work as well as enhanced interrogation because Natty turned to me and said, “What do you want to know, Mitchum?”

  “Have you sold to any strangers?”

  “I don’t sell to anyone but regular customers.”

  “Have you seen anything unusual?”

  Natty thought about that for a few seconds and said, “The Clagetts have been buying some ‘medicinal’ pot over the last few weeks. A lot more than usual.”

  The name didn’t spring to mind, so I knew they weren’t on my paper route. Then I remembered. “You mean the people who bought those old cabins up in the hills off new Unionville Road?”

  “Yeah. But they seem like a nice enough couple.”

  “Let’s head out there and pay them a visit.” The fact that we were working together seemed to make my mom happy, even if she was a little worried about what we were doing. She kissed us each on the cheek as I called for Bart to join us. He happily hopped off the couch and trotted toward the door.

  Chapter 23

  We took my brother’s sports car because it was a little more dependable than my beat-up station wagon. He was clearly uncomfortable with a dog riding unattended in the backseat. It brought a small smile to my face.

  We’d been in enough fights with each other since childhood that there was nothing awkward in the aftermath of our last dustup. But as always, Natty was hesitant to talk about his business.

  I said, “All I’m asking is to know how you met the Clagetts. No one in town has seen them, except for when they do a grocery run once a week or so.”

  “I just met them one day and it all worked out.”

  “Is that how you describe business transactions? They work out?”

  “What do you want me to say, Mitchum? We can’t all know what we want to do from childhood.”

&nb
sp; “You noticed my dream didn’t work out too well for me.”

  “At least everyone looks up to you around here. I’m just the drug-dealing brother.”

  “You can’t change that?”

  “Not now. Not after all these years. I am what I am, and you’re the guy in town everyone counts on. No one cares if you were a SEAL or not. You’re still the Man in Marlboro.”

  I had never considered how my brother felt or knew that he might resent me. It was disconcerting to have to reevaluate my relationship with him, which was based on mutual contempt. He wasn’t the shallow narcissist I assumed he was.

  We didn’t say much more as we turned off Unionville Road up the winding, unnamed gravel path that rose in the foothills and then the steeper inclines of the mountains.

  I’d never been back here, just heard about the three cabins that had been part of a resort back in the sixties. The front cabin was clearly the main residence. It had been remodeled, and an asphalt driveway ran up to it. The carport connected the detached garage to what appeared to be a three-bedroom building. Behind it on each side were smaller cabins that were more run-down and had no carports.

  A Ford sedan was parked in the driveway. As we approached the front door, I touched the hood of the car to feel if it had been driven recently. It was ice-cold.

  I let Bart out of the car to get some exercise and do his business. There were a few patches of grass around the house, but the snow got thicker heading up the hills.

  The front porch creaked as we carefully stepped up to the door. This time I’d thought ahead and had my pistol tucked in my pants. My knife was safely in my pocket. I was tired of getting surprised and abused by strangers.

  Natty tapped on the door like we were visiting a relative. There was no immediate answer so I pounded on it with my left fist. When we got no answer for a second time, I tried the handle. It was locked.