Chapter 7 - The Reckoning on the Asphalt
Sterling was half my age, but he was a creature of climate-controlled boardrooms and country club golf courses. He didn't know what it meant to swing a framing hammer for ten hours in the August heat or pull green hemlock logs out of a swamp with a logging chain.
When he swung the tire iron at my skull, his footing was terrible, his weight shifted too far forward on the rain-slicked asphalt.
I didn't back away. I stepped inside the arc of the swing.
The heavy iron bar glanced off the thick leather of my work jacket, bruising my shoulder but missing my head completely. Before he could recover his balance, I dropped the Pelican case, grabbed his extended wrist with both hands, and drove my forehead straight into the bridge of his nose.
There was a wet, sickening *crack*.
Sterling let out a high, choked gasp, the tire iron slipping from his numb fingers and clattering harmlessly against the wet bricks. He stumbled backward, clutching his shattered nose, blood pouring between his fingers to mix with the streaming rainwater on his expensive coat.
"You broke my nose!" he howled, sinking to his knees in the mud beside the SUV. "You savage! You broke my nose!"
"Get up," I growled, standing over him, the rain streaming down my face, washing the blood from my split lip down into my gray beard. "Get up, Richard. We're not done."
From the driver's side of the black SUV, a second door flew open.
A man stepped out, clad in a dark rain slicker, his hand reaching under his jacket for the butt of a concealed pistol.
"Freeze!" the man yelled. "Step away from him right now!"
Before the hired muscle could draw his weapon, the roar of a V8 engine ripped through the alley.
Elena dropped the F-250 into four-wheel drive, stomped the accelerator to the floor, and swung the heavy steel brush-guard of my truck straight into the front quarter-panel of the SUV.
The impact was deafening—a crunch of crumpling fiberglass, shattering headlights, and tearing steel that shoved the SUV two feet sideways, pinning the armed driver against the brick wall of the bank by his knees.
The man screamed, dropping his pistol into the puddle, clawing frantically at the hood of my truck as Elena kept her foot hard on the brake, trapping him completely without crushing his legs.
She rolled down her window, rain soaking her face, and pointed David’s old flare gun—which I kept in the glove compartment for emergency signaling—straight at the gunman’s forehead.
"Don't you dare move!" Elena screamed over the roar of the idling engine. "Don't you dare twitch!"
The gunman threw his hands up into the rain, his face green with sudden panic. "I'm down! I'm down! Don't shoot that damn thing!"
I looked down at Sterling, who was still curled in a pathetic ball on the wet asphalt, weeping into his bloody hands.
I leaned down, picked up the black Pelican case, and retrieved the tire iron from the puddle. I tossed the iron onto the hood of his wrecked SUV with a loud, metallic clatter.
"You wanted David's legacy, Richard?" I said, my voice cutting through the drumming rain like a saw through pine. "You got it. It's on a four-terabyte micro-SD card right inside this case."
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and hit speed-dial 1.
Sheriff Bennett answered on the first ring. "Arthur? Where are you? The troopers found the motel room empty—Sterling busted through the connecting door into four-ten."
"He's behind First Farmers Bank in Mason City, Tom," I said, looking down at the broken man in the puddle. "He's sitting in the alley with a broken nose, a wrecked car, and an armed accomplice pinned against the wall. Bring two sets of leg irons. And bring an evidence van. We have the dashcam."
The line went quiet for two beats.
"Is Elena okay?" Bennett asked, his voice softening.
"She just took out an SUV with my Ford," I replied, a faint, proud smile touching my split lips despite the pain. "She's doing just fine, Tom. Better than fine."
"Hold your position, Arthur. The Mason City cruisers will be there in three minutes. Don't let them bleed on the sidewalk."
I hung up the phone and walked over to the driver's side of my truck.
Elena cut the engine, the sudden silence of the alleyway filled only by the hiss of steam rising from the punctured radiator of Sterling’s SUV and the steady, relentless fall of the November rain.
She pushed the door open, stepped down onto the running board, and threw her arms around my neck.
We stood there in the pouring dark, soaked to the bone, bruised, battered, and utterly exhausted, holding each other up against the side of the truck.
"Is it really over this time, Dad?" she whispered, her voice cracking against my shoulder.
"It's over, baby," I said, running a rough hand over her wet hair. "They can't touch you now. They can't touch Chloe. David’s words are safe, and the law is finally on our side."
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Down Main Street, the first wail of police sirens began to rise through the stormy night, their red and blue lights flashing across the low rain clouds like dawn breaking through the dark.
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