The next part happened so quickly it was hard for Rusty to remember later, much as he tried. All he knew was that in the moment of the distraction he was stepping away from Brady, hands raised, turning around to face whatever music needed to be faced, and the next second his right hand was stopping at his belt, his fingers closing around the black steel hilt of the fixed-blade Buck GCK hunting knife that hung there, and then he was turning to his left, his hand moving upward, fast.
And then there was the awful slurping sound of the blade finding home in the big guy’s abdomen, just beneath his belt line, and the soft, surprised gasp that came from Brady’s mouth. His breath, which still smelled faintly of peanut butter, caught Rusty full in the face, and the big man’s weight dropped forward. Rusty’s reflexes commanded that he catch the guy before he hit the ground, and he did, Brady’s full two hundred and some pounds collapsing onto him.
As the fleeing car and the pursuing police vehicle disappeared into the night, intent on one another, Brady and Rusty stood there in the yard for a moment, Brady’s mouth opening and closing soundlessly. His eyes swam and then focused on Rusty, confused.
“Terence?” he asked. Then he went into shock.
Rusty’s scalp tingled and he felt out of his own body; he could see himself standing there in his ex-wife’s front yard, holding up the bleeding body of a guy he’d just stabbed in the gut. He was going to spend the rest of his life in jail.
But then he calmed and forced himself to think. This wasn’t over. He hadn’t lost. All he needed was for a lifetime of bad luck to turn miraculously at that exact moment, for the gambler’s concept of “being due” to prove itself true right when it was needed most.
The first imperative, he knew, was to keep the big guy on his feet. If that 220 pounds went down in the front yard, the game was over. Rusty would never get him back up. He’d be there in the morning, dead from a knife wound, Rusty’s knife wound, and there’d be no cleaning that mess up.
But if he kept him upright, even just for the ten seconds it might take to reach his car, Rusty still had a chance. He wrapped both arms around the guy, whispering calmly in his ear.
“You’re OK, you’re OK, hang in there, hang in there.”
The words meant nothing, but Rusty hoped that, to a guy who was in shock from a major knife wound, they sounded just reassuring enough to keep him conscious. Rusty brought his left hand back as far as he could and reached into the guy’s right front trouser pocket, praying for a bit of luck.
He got it—the keys to the BMW were there. He pulled them out, shifted his grip underneath Brady’s armpits, and started backing up across the grass, toward the black car. When they were within a few feet of it, Rusty leaned backwards against the trunk, letting it support both of them for a moment. Brady was rapidly losing consciousness and would soon be dead weight.
Rusty pressed the alarm button on the BMW remote. The doors unlocked with a soft thunk. The lights flashed, but only once, and at 2 a.m. there was no one out to see them. Second piece of good luck: the alarm was not set to chirp.
Rusty threw the car door open, and with one hard twist of his shoulders and hips, he let Brady’s weight slide off of him and fall into the back seat. Rusty got behind and shoved him the rest of the way in. He closed the door softly and turned.
Step one was complete. Step two was harder.
He had to go back in the house.
Rusty took a breath and forced his feet to start moving. He hadn’t come this far and committed himself this deeply to stop short of his goal. He strode across the yard, opened the front door, crossed the hallway, picked up the duffel bag from the living room, and exited the house again, closing the door softly behind him.
Outside, he retraced his steps across the grass, staring down at it, squinting his eyes in the greenish glow from the sky, looking for bloodstains. He couldn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. On that, he’d have to hope and pray for the best, and he thanked the goddess of fortune, who usually seemed to hate him, that at least the entire incident had happened over grass, rather than sidewalk. Maybe any blood or footprints would be unnoticeable in the morning.
Rusty kept moving, his plan becoming clearer in his mind.
He came around to the driver’s side of the BMW, slipped behind the wheel, and was about to start it when he noticed the EV sticker in the middle of the steering wheel. Another piece of luck: the car was a hybrid and could be started in electric mode. He searched the control panel, found the mode-select button, and made sure it was turned to EV before he started the car. The car turned on, but the gas motor did not fire.