“You get it back,” Virgil said. “Shrake and I will go after Vike. I don’t want you there with a gun if the Wisconsin cops show up. At this point, we can just tell them you were the boat driver.”
Johnson grumbled a bit, but he was worried about the other boat. He put them ashore two hundred yards down from where Laughton had landed, and said, “Just angle in right toward the beer sign. The track is straight as an arrow. Don’t get shot, it’s a long ride back to the clinic.”
—
SHRAKE AND VIRGIL climbed ten or twelve feet up the bank, found the end of the track. Virgil turned off the spotlight, which was way too bright, and they started following the track toward the clubhouse, staying ten or fifteen yards apart, moving slowly. They came to a circle of trees around a green, and Virgil said, “Find a place to take cover. I’m going to yell at him.”
They squatted behind separate tree trunks, and Virgil shouted, “Vike! There’s no point! The Wisconsin cops are on the way! There’s no way out, we know all about the house in Tucson, you can’t go there. Give it up before you get killed—”
Boom!
Laughton, who’d been waiting by the corner of the clubhouse, fired in their direction, and Virgil thought he might have heard buckshot tearing through the trees twenty or thirty yards to his left.
He heard Shrake move, and move fast, jogging hard to come in at the clubhouse from the back. Virgil went left thirty yards, found another tree, and shouted again. No response this time.
He moved forward: there was an overhead pole light at the clubhouse, in addition to the beer sign, enough light to see by. He moved forward another thirty yards: at this range, if Laughton showed himself, Virgil could reach him with the shotgun. His phone dinged, and he slid down on his side and pulled it out of his pocket: a note from Shrake: “Now what?”
Virgil texted back: “Wait just a bit, and I’ll start yelling again.”
He never had the chance.
—
TEN SECONDS LATER, there was another Boom! but from some distance away. Virgil shouted, “Shrake, don’t shoot me, I’m coming in.”
He started running toward the clubhouse, and saw Shrake come in out of the dark and peek around the corner. Down toward what appeared to be the entrance road, under another pole light, they could see a yellow corrugated metal shed.
“Must be a maintenance—” Shrake began.
A moment later, Laughton rolled under the light, and then out the exit driveway, away from them, driving a golf cart.
“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Shrake said.
They both began running after the golf cart, which had two tiny taillights. They saw the lights make a turn to the left, apparently out at the road, and Virgil shouted, “You follow, I’m going to try to cut across and see if I can catch him that way.”
Shrake grunted and Virgil broke away, running left as hard as he could, up a fairway distinguishable by starlight. The fairway was lined by trees and, Virgil suspected, a fence to separate it from the road. Before he got to the fence, he saw Laughton coming down the road—Virgil wasn’t close enough to stop him, but he hit Laughton in the face with the jacklight and saw him swerve to the far side of the road, blinded, putting a hand up against the light. Laughton passed in front of him, and on down the road, and Virgil kept him pinned in the light, watching for Laughton’s shotgun, and chased after him with no hope of catching up.
He went through the tree line, found the fence, clambered over, went down into a ditch and up the other side in time to see Shrake coming, in another golf cart.
Virgil shouted at him, and Shrake slowed just enough to get Virgil onboard, and Shrake said, “Get your gun out, we’re faster than he is. We’re catching him.”