Stare Down: A Thorn Novel by James W. Hall

Author:James W. Hall [Hall, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dead Last Press
Published: 2024-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

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SIXTEEN

“No guns, Rayanne. Put it away or I walk.”

They were parked in the lot of the Trigg County High School off Lafayette Street in Cadiz, Kentucky.

“Self-protection, that’s all. I don’t like guns either. Believe me.”

“So put it back in the glove compartment.”

“Where’s this coming from, Thorn? You a pacifist all of a sudden?”

“No guns.”

“We can’t get caught. This is way too important.”

“We’re not kidnapping the boy. We’re here to talk, that’s all.”

“Look at all these cops. One of those sharp-eyed guys sees us, tries something, I don’t want to be helpless.”

“Put it away or I’m done.”

In the driver’s seat, Rayanne huffed, leaned past Thorn and slid the automatic back into the glove box and slammed it shut.

Ray was right, there were a lot of cops, at least a dozen stationed around the school. Way more than he’d ever seen keeping an eye on the end of a school day at Coral Shores High back in Key Largo.

Though it made sense. Only a month since the mass shooting just a few miles away and clearly the trauma and dread hadn’t faded. No doubt some of these students had witnessed the events in Yonder Meadow, maybe their friends had been wounded or even killed. The small town invincibility they’d always known had been shattered. Like a noxious gas, PTSD was drifting through the autumn air of Cadiz, Kentucky.

Those police officers, men and women, scanned the area with the sharp-edged vigilance of parents whose own children were mixed with this flock of students.

Rayanne plucked at the sleeves of the t-shirt she was wearing. Pinching the fabric and stretching it away from her freckled arms as if it might be cutting off the circulation.

The T-shirt was white with a blue Kentucky Wildcats logo on the front. She told Thorn she’d purposely bought it a size too small to flaunt her ample breasts. Hide behind distractions, she told him, that was her approach for staying incognito.

It had worked for her in her months living in Miami.

Her jeans were bright yellow, her new sneakers black, her baseball hat purple. A gaudy outfit for deflecting attention from her face.

In the Goodwill store outside of Nashville, Thorn had chosen a blue denim work shirt that was worn to a comfortable softness and a pair of gray jeans whose legs were a couple of inches too long, requiring him to roll up the cuffs.

An hour north of the clothing store, in Clarksville, Rayanne, who’d taken over driving duties, steered them into a strip shopping center where she’d spotted a barber shop. She badgered Thorn to do his part in assuming a disguise, and get his shaggy hair trimmed.

With Rayanne egging on the barber, the man skinned Thorn close to the scalp. It would take a year to regrow the hair that lay on the linoleum. Not quite the burr of his youth, but close. After the barber finished and shook out the sheet, the guy Thorn saw in the mirror before him looked more like a marine drill sergeant than the Keys fishing guide who’d sat down in the chair a half hour earlier.

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