Gun Lake Read Online Free PDF Page A

production on a made-for-television miniseries.
    “Turn it back to the game,” Lonnie said, bored.
    Kurt tossed him the remote. “We’ve got another hour or so before we leave,” he told them.
    “And then what?” Craig asked.
    “I’m not sure. It depends on how tonight goes.”
    Lonnie actually seemed interested in the conversation now. “Are we sticking around here?”
    “I hate Texas,” Craig said. “We’re going to Mexico or something, right?”
    “We do what Sean says. We all agreed to that.”
    “Yeah,” Lonnie snipped. “But he ain’t
said
a word.”
    “Whoa, hey, leave it here,” Craig said, animated, forgetting about what they were talking about.
    “What?” Lonnie asked.
    “This is one of his best movies.”
    Kurt looked at the television and saw a young Clint Eastwood in a cowboy hat and poncho.
    Craig cursed as he exclaimed how much he loved
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
.
    “Kurt, quick, name your top five Eastwood movies.”
    “I don’t know. What kind?”
    “Just westerns,” Craig said. He was playing a favorite game that had passed time back at Stagworth.
    “Well, this is one.”
    “Besides this one.”
    “A
Fistful of Dollars
, maybe.”
    “Another spaghetti western,” Craig said.
    Kurt found it ironic how a somewhat slow and dim-witted good ol’ boy like Craig could be such a fount of knowledge when it came to movies. He was a walking—who was that one movie reviewer, the chubby one? Kurt didn’t remember the guy’s name, but that was Craig. Movie-man Craig, a gentle, laid-back guy who should have been married and had a family he could take to Disney movies. Good ol’ Craig who, by the way, had stabbed an acquaintance to death in a parking lot outside an Atlanta bar. He admitted it had been partly booze, partly self-defense, partly stupidity. But all the parts had added up to a fifty-year sentence in Stagworth.
    “What else?”
    “I don’t know,” Kurt said, with other things on his mind.
    “Gotta have
High Plains Drifter
, of course. That’s a classic. Paints the entire town red and calls it hell.” Craig laughed. “What a classic. Then there’s this one. And
The Outlaw Josey Wales
, that’s another. And
Unforgiven.”
    “I never saw that one,” Kurt said as he walked toward the side of the room where the bathroom was located. He looked at his watch.
    Where’s Sean?
    He could make himself sick worrying. He needed to keep his thoughts clear, keep a cool head. Wes and Craig and Lonnie—especially Lonnie—were not clear-thinking, coolheaded guys. Somebody needed to make this work. Sean might have the plan, but somebody else needed to have the patience.
    He wondered how tonight would go. He feared another incident like the awful one in the sporting-goods store. He felt sick every time he thought about that room, that stocky body on the floor. Just one gunshot, and now they were past the point of no return. They weren’t just fugitives anymore. They were murderers too.
    For some of them, that made them repeat offenders.
    We can’t get caught. Not now
.
    As he finished washing his hands and turning off the faucet, he heard a whirr of something mechanical and steady coming from behind the wall to his left. He thought for a few seconds, then rushed out of the bathroom and scanned the walls in the family room for the lights.
    “… and there’s a bad sheriff of the town played by Gene Hackman—you know, the guy from
The French Connection—
”
    “The garage door’s coming up,” he told Craig and Lonnie.
    “What?” Craig looked up, clueless.
    “Grab your beer and come on,” Kurt said as the lights in the room went dark.
    “Where?”
    “The basement. Hurry.”
    Craig was the first to head downstairs. Kurt and Lonnie followed, hurrying him along. Kurt paused at the bottom of the stairs and then cursed.
We left the television on
.
    In the unfinished basement, obviously used for storage more than anything else, they stood looking at each other.
    “Get