Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [78]
The thought of defying Burt sickened him even more.
He got up and went into the bathroom and turned on the light, then stared at his reflection for a long time. He wasn’t a killer. He’d never wanted to be a killer.
When he’d started this whole thing, he had no idea what it would be like. He wished he’d never had to go into that room with Curtis and Vince that day. Wished he’d never met either one of them. Wished he’d kept his damn big mouth shut.
It had sounded so tough, so cool. Yeah, let’s talk about who we’d do when we get out.
God, he didn’t know it would be like this.
Tears rolled down his face, and he didn’t even bother to wipe them away. One way or another, no matter what he did now, he was fucked.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Archer made his way through the early-morning mist and listened to the engine of Burt’s truck fade into the distance. Today was the day, Burt had declared when he woke him up at four that morning.
“Today’s the day,” he’d growled as he shook Archer awake. “Get up and get moving. You have a job to do.”
Archer had all but frozen to the bed. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to do this job, he’d longed to protest. But the words stuck in his mouth, as words in defiance of Burt’s orders always did. As terrified as Archer was of killing another man, the thought of what Burt would do to him if he refused terrified him even more.
So he had gotten up and gotten dressed and gotten into the pickup while it was still dark, and he rode with Burt in the silent truck through the dawn. When they came to the place where Burt always stopped to let Archer out, Burt asked, “You know what you’re going to do, right?”
“Right.” Archer’s head nodded jerkily. “Sure. Right. I know what I’m going to do.”
“You’re going to hide in the barn. . . .”
“I said I know.” Archer jumped out of the truck and slammed the door before Burt could reach across the seat and slam it in his face. He set off down the dark road in the direction of the woods he’d come to know well over the past week.
In his pocket was the cell phone and the tiny folded-up card with Miranda Cahill’s phone number on it. All the way through the quiet woods he debated. What would happen to him if he called and told her everything? Would she send someone to get him, someone who could protect him from Burt? Maybe even arrest Burt?
“What could they arrest him for?” Archer mumbled aloud as he picked his way through the dark. Burt hadn’t shot anyone. Was it a crime to make someone else do something like that? Archer wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be. Then again, he had no proof. It would be his word against Burt’s. Who would the law believe?
Probably not me, Archer lamented as he reached the edge of the field. No one ever had . . .
He leaned back against a tree and sighed deeply. He’d flip a coin. Heads, he’d call the FBI; tails, he wouldn’t. He took a quarter from his pocket and flipped it into the air, but he couldn’t see where it landed. He got down on his hands and knees and searched the ground, but the coin was nowhere to be found.
“It figures,” he muttered as he walked the tree line down to the fallen log he’d used as a perch the previous days.
He took the cell phone from his pocket and turned it on but did not dial. Instead he sat for a long while, staring at the farmhouse just a few hundred feet away, and thinking. The man who slept in there had only a few more hours to live, and it would be he, Archer Lowell, who would be pulling the trigger. Not Burt. Not Vince Giordano. Archer Lowell. He’d killed one man so far, and he’d hated it. He hated the thought of doing it again.
He took the card from his pocket and unfolded it slowly. He studied the number, then started to dial, and stopped. Started, then stopped.