“You can tell Dickey Snell you haven’t seen me.”

  “Never cared for that kid.”

  “And don’t believe anything he tells you about me. If he says I’m lost in the woods, don’t be alarmed. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And take care of Fred while I’m gone.”

  Grandma twitched. “That’s expecting pretty much.”

  “And no hitting him with the fly swatter.”

  Grandma groaned and looked down at Fred with a distrustful glare before switching to her old helpless lady face to gaze at me. “Anything to help,” she said. “I want to get back in your good graces and have my family together like before. I’d like to see us all together at the supper table. Does this mean I can stay?”

  “Let me think a minute.”

  What could I say? She was ninety-two and trying to turn over a new leaf. After digging in my closet and pocketing the pistol, I gave Grandma her answer.

  “You can stay,” I agreed, knowing I’d regret it soon enough.

  ____________________

  All of Tamarack County’s law enforcement agents were busy over at Walter’s house, so the jail wasn’t guarded. Blaze was lying on a cot. When he saw me rummaging through desk drawers, he popped right up. “Look in the top right one,” he said, good-guessing my intentions.

  I found the key and opened the cell.

  “This is crazy,” I said. “You didn’t kill Bob Goodyear or steal money from the credit union. I didn’t either. So why are you in jail? And why am I on the run?”

  “What’s that thing on your head?” Blaze was staring at my blond hair.

  “A disguise.”

  “What’s all the commotion I’m hearing?” Blaze said, sounding pretty normal.

  “Someone shot Kitty.”

  “Hell’s bells,” he roared. “I need to get my job back and help you hunt for whoever did this. Is she dead?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  “You need my help.”

  I had to remind myself that Blaze wasn’t much of a criminal catcher even before the disease struck him down. But Dickie was far worse. The kid’s college education hadn’t taught him common sense or street smarts. Going by the book is a bad plan way up in the north woods.

  “Here’s a badge,” I said to Blaze, handing him the one I had ordered for myself and watching him pin it on his shirt. “You’re the sheriff as far as I’m concerned. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  I looked at my son. “I have absolutely no idea,” I answered.

  Chapter 24

  TUESDAY STARTED OUT COLD AND rainy. Blaze and I were holed up in an old-fashioned motel on the far side of Escanaba, less than half a mile from the hospital. The motel had twelve units and each one had its own entry. The heater below the window rattled continuously and condensation formed on the pane above it. Any colder and the rain would turn to snow.

  Kitty had made it through the night. Cora Mae’s last update had her whispering that Kitty had survived through surgery, but it was still wait-and-see.

  The TV6 morning news anchor had a bucket load of live updates, as well as last night’s news regarding the backwoods shooting. Cameras rolled as an ambulance unloaded Kitty at the hospital’s emergency entrance. More coverage of the local sheriff’s attempt to apprehend a suspect.

  “We’ve ascertained that the suspect fled through the woods,” Dickey had said on TV, puffing up for the camera. “Wanted criminals were hiding in a trailer on Walter Laakso’s property in Stonely. Mr Laakso has cooperated fully with the investigation. There’s no reason to believe he knew anything about his unwelcome guests. We believe that the shooter was known by the victim, but that has not been confirmed, since the victim remains unconscious at this time.”

  The same photo of me appeared on the screen and Blaze chuckled. “What a bad picture,” he said.

  “I’ll be sure to send them a better one when I find time.”

  “Gertrude Johnson,” the anchor said, “is wanted for questioning in the death of Detroit native Robert Goodyear. Please contact the authorities if you see her. Do not approach her. I repeat, do not approach. She is assumed to be armed and dangerous.”

  Unbelievable what the media would say and do to sensationalize a story.

  Blaze quit smiling when his own mug flashed on the screen.

  “Bonnie and Clyde couldn’t have captured the Upper Peninsula’s imagination with any more color,” the anchor said. “Witnesses saw a blond woman assisting Blaze Johnson in a breakout from the Stonely jail last night, fueling the flames of a rumor that the Johnson family masterminded the robbery of tens of thousands of dollars from Stonely’s credit union. The blonde Bonnie Parker hasn’t been identified yet, but authorities are questioning witnesses and hope for a break in the case soon. This is TV6 live. Stay tuned for more updates.”

  After a commercial break, they interviewed Grandma Johnson. I watched through little slits between my fingers while holding my breath. “You pissants must have something better to do than scare an old lady half to death, coming around here, leaping out of trucks. I should sic my dog on you. If my favorite daughter-in-law and my grandson are in hiding, it’s cuz you people like to tell lies to sell more papers. I oughta hit you with my flyswatter.”

  I wondered why she had the thing in her hand in the first place, since she wasn’t supposed to hit Fred with it. I should have taken it with me when I had the chance. I also wondered how she got away with saying pissants on TV without getting bleeped.

  Blaze and I sat in the motel room all morning staring at the television set, waiting for word on Kitty, and talking about what to do next.

  “I can’t sit here any longer,” I said eventually, when we still didn’t have a plan. “I need a new wig and you aren’t exactly easy to miss. We have to figure out a disguise for you, too.”

  The only thing going our way right now was Blaze’s condition. I hadn’t seen any signs of abnormalities in his thinking process.

  When we left the motel, I found a care package from Cora Mae on the passenger seat of Walter’s truck. A black ball cap and a stick-on mustache for Blaze and the black flip wig for me – the one Kitty had been wearing when she got shot. I combed through it with my fingers. Images of last night kept flashing through my mind. Her lying on the floor, blood everywhere, Cora Mae holding her in her arms.

  I wanted to kill someone.

  Maybe the news guy was right. I was definitely armed and maybe I was dangerous.

  My radio sprang to life while Blaze and I were on our way to Stonely. “Muffin Cakes,” I heard and smiled. It was Sweet Cheeks. “Are you safe?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I answered. “Any new news?”

  “Not much other than the entire town has been mobilized in the search. I offered to scout around in Escanaba. That’s my territory.”

  “Be careful. I hear your target is armed and dangerous.”

  “Always has been,” he said before signing off.

  How would I survive without my friends? I could kick myself in the hind end for doubting Cora Mae. Jealousy can twist a person until they are barely recognizable. Kitty, Cora Mae, and George were the best friends a woman could have. And my family? Well, that was another story. But Grandma Johnson hadn’t blown my cover when she talked to the news reporters. Because of that, they might be still searching for me out in the woods.

  I yawned from behind the wheel. We passed along the corridor leading from Escanaba to Gladstone with the bluff on one side and Lake Michigan on the other. A crisscross of train tracks lay ahead. We zipped past parked train cars and turned left on M35, windshield wipers pounding on high against the rain.

  I yawned again. Sleep is my favorite hobby, especially on a day like today when it’s overcast and rainy. I love to sleep more than anything, and I wasn’t getting enough. I never learned to function on just a few hours. I get crabby. That’s the only explanation I can give for why I’d go into Ruthie’s Deer Horn Restaurant in broad daylight and draw on Tony Lento.

  He sat at the counter, swiveled with his back to it, eating a sandwich, and sharing a joke. Carl and Otis were telling tales at a table in the middle of the room, and Tony was chewing and listening. It was almost the end of the lunch run so at least the restaurant wasn’t packed with many witnesses to my madness. Carl and Otis knew me well enough and I hoped they liked me more than they liked Dickie Snell. They might not tell him what I did next.

  I had left Cora Mae’s black wig in the car and went in as myself. Blaze followed me even though I’d expressly ordered him to stay in the truck. But he has my genes, so it’s hard to tell him anything if his mind’s already made up.

  “Hey, Gertie. Hi, Blaze,” Carl said as though it was just another day at Ruthie’s and we weren’t wanted by the law. “Pull up a chair. Otis is telling me about the tom turkey he tried to shoot.”

  “Dang thing came after me,” Otis said. “That was one prehistoric reptile, big as a T-Rex. Did you hear from the newspaper that turkeys descended from dinosaurs? You’d know it was true if you saw this one lift up and come at me. Claws the size of pitchforks.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Ran in the house.”

  Tony watched me out of the corner of an eye. Ruthie came in from the kitchen carrying a coffee pot. “Gertie, gee, I never expected to see you in here today.”

  “I can’t stay away from your good cooking,” I replied, my eyes never leaving Tony. “We’ll have something quick to take with us, something that doesn’t need time to cook.”

  Ruthie poured coffee into two tall Styrofoam cups and packed up a whole cherry pie from behind the cash register. “Looks like snow soon,” she announced. “I think I see a few flakes. Spring is going to have to wait. Hope it doesn’t kill the daffodils before they get a chance to bloom.”

  “Daffodils are tough,” I said. “They’ll make it.”

  I paid up, and Blaze picked up our order from the counter. That’s when I pulled Grandma’s handgun from my purse and laid it against Tony’s temple just like in the movies.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” I said. “I’m a little jittery from lack of sleep. I don’t want to blow your brains out before I’m good and ready.”

  “Holy smokes, Gertie,” Carl said.

  “Be quiet, Carl.”

  Tony’s eyes weren’t shifty anymore. They were wide open. He tried to talk without moving his mouth. The ‘I’m so handsome’ grin wasn’t on his face. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I could have asked myself the same thing. Other than his extra marital activities and accusations from a woman I didn’t trust that he’d planted evidence, I didn’t have anything on him. And last I heard cheating wasn’t a killing offense, although it ought to be.

  It felt good to see sweat beading on his forehead.

  I pushed the barrel of the gun against his head just a little bit more. “If my friend in the hospital dies,” I said. “So do you.”

  “Do you know who you’re threatening?” Carl stammered. “Tony’s done a lot for our community. You’re over the top now, Gertie. Maybe it’s that change of life thing, you know, that women go through when they get older.”

  Blaze just stood by the door with our bag of goodies, watching the action. The sheriff’s badge on his chest gleamed. I’d parked the truck where the restaurant’s diners couldn’t see it. “Go, Blaze,” I said. “I’m right behind you.”

  I kept an eye on every man in the room. Ruthie, I could trust. She was one of my species, and would let this play out.

  “Tony,” I said. “Anything you want to tell me before I squeeze the trigger? Anything at all?”

  He licked his lips and thought it over. “No,” he said. “If I tell you what you want to hear, it’d only be a lie. Is that what you want? Or do you want the truth?”

  “The truth works.”

  “The truth is that I don’t know any more than you do.”

  I let him live in spite of an itch in my trigger finger. My bluff didn’t work. Or else he was telling the truth. Or else he had nerves of steel.

  Later in the truck, I began shaking so hard I almost drove into the ditch. Blaze had to take over. What was I thinking to put a gun to another human being’s head? The worst thing was that it felt good. I enjoyed it! What was I capable of? What if I had lost control? What if I had pulled the trigger?

  Then I thought of Kitty. She might be dead right this minute.

  It made me want to kill somebody all over again.

  ____________________

  “I’m not taking them,” Blaze said to Mary, after a long embrace and a lot of explanation.

  “The doctors say you have to,” she replied, trying to hand me six little brown bottles of medication.

  “Why is he taking all of these?” I wanted to know.

  “Two are so he doesn’t have seizures. This one’s supposed to knock out the infection in his head, this one’s for pressure in his brain. I’m not sure about the other two.”

  “He seems perfectly fine to me,” I said. “Better than when he was taking them.”

  “I never had any seizures,” Blaze said.

  “No, you didn’t. But you might.” Mary would never challenge a doctor on any medical decision. I don’t have the same blind faith in them that she does. In my opinion, a current bad patient is a future live patient.

  To make Mary happy, I took the bottles of pills. We’d decide later whether Blaze needed them. I’d seen very few signs of illness since we’d been hiding out together. Mainly little signs that indicated he didn’t remember everything that he should.

  The family had been warned that even when he was well he might have trouble differentiating between the realness of his nightmares and reality. The lines could blur and they had. Imagine waking up from your worst nightmare and believing it really happened!

  “How are you doing?” I asked Mary.

  “I’m fine.”

  “How’s Fred?”

  “He’s out back. With Grandma Johnson inside your house and the guineas outside, he decided to move in over here.”

  I ran outside in the rain and there he was. Fred came running like he was about to fling all hundred-plus pounds at me. He tried to stop at the last second, but I landed on the ground anyway. Fred towered above, lapping at my face.

  I came up wet and happy.

  Blaze bagged some clothes, kissed Mary, all the time ignoring her protests that he should turn himself in, that he wasn’t well enough for what we planned. He and I set out, leaving Mary crying in front of their house.

  Blaze and I had chosen this path, and there was no turning back until the end of the road. We didn’t have a choice. We’d committed.

  Fred leapt past Blaze when he opened the truck’s door and refused to budge from the seat. He rode between us.

  Chapter 25

  “WHO KNEW YOU WERE STAYING in Walter’s trailer?” Blaze asked.

  “George and Walter,” I said. “That’s it, besides the three of us inside.”

  “You’ve been talking on the radio?”

  “That’s how we keep in touch. We have our own frequency.”

  “Frequencies are open to the public.”

  “That’s why we have code names.”

  “Quit using the radios. Throw them away,” Blaze said. “Someone’s been listening in. You’re lucky you aren’t all dead. Hand it over.”

  My son threw the radio out the window and we drove along in silence, listening to the windshield wipers and watching rain turn to snow. Enormous flakes blotted out my view. “Better pull over,” Blaze advised. When I did, he got out and came around to my side. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “I’m driving just fine,” I said.

  “My memory’s coming back,” he said, pushing me over. “You don’t have a driver’s license.”

  I should have given him the medications, kept him soaring in outer space. “Have a pill,” I said, holding up one of the bottles. He ignored me.

  Blaze was wanted as a murder suspect. He had let me and Kitty escape while beading on the acting sheriff, had even put Dickey behind bars, and finally had broken out himself and was hanging with another wanted criminal.

  And he was worried about a driver’s license?

  ____________________

  Lyla was out in front of the Gladstone salon taking a break from doing customer’s nails and smoking a cigarette. Blaze dropped me off around the corner, and I walked up to her.

  She gave me a surprised stare, took one long, deep drag, and ground out the cigarette under her shoe. “Stay away,” she said, smoke curling from her nose. “I can’t be seen with you.”

  “I have a few questions, then I’ll go.”

  Lyla glanced around, moving closer to the side of the building. “You’re wanted by the cops.”

  “Believe me, I know. I heard about you and Tony. I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Everybody who knows Tony loves him, but they don’t see what he’s like at home. He’s an entirely different person then, nothing like the easy guy others see. Him and me? We’re through.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I could have told her things to solidify her decision to leave, but she was hurting enough without more bad news.

  “When you and Tony were serving beer at the dance the night Bob Goodyear was killed,” I said, “did you see anything suspicious? Did you see anyone go outside? Hear anything unusual?”

  Lyla shook her head. “I don’t remember anything that would make a difference. Look, I know you want to get Blaze off, but maybe he did it. Did you ever think of that? Everybody knows what he went through with the meningitis, and we all saw how he wasn’t right in the head afterwards.”

  I sighed as snow covered the top of my head. That’s what they all would say. That Blaze hadn’t been in his right mind and had killed the guy in the parking lot. He’d have to plead insanity and hope it stuck. Not to mention that I might go down with him.

  “You heard about Kitty?” I asked. “She’s near death because a killer opened fire on her. Blaze was in jail when it happened. How do you explain that?”