The Bourbon Thief(66)

“Get a broom,” Levi said.

“It’s too close to you. We don’t have time.”

Levi’s body shook so hard he heard his teeth chattering. Tamara took one tiny step forward and Levi sensed the snake tensing. It coiled tighter, lifted its head higher. A mad, bad terrible thought hit him right then. Was Tamara going to kill him? Wouldn’t that be nice for her brand-new husband to die so suddenly, so tragically, but would it be tragic if she inherited every penny?

When he spared a second glance at her, he saw her finger shaking on the trigger.

She was going to kill him. A tiny thing like her couldn’t handle a gun that big. The recoil would send her flying. Her hand could hardly hold it. She’d aim for his feet and shoot him right in the chest. But maybe that was what she wanted.

“Tamara, don’t shoot.”

“Levi, I’ve got to. It’s moving.”

“Don’t. You’ll hit me.”

The house turned silent as a tomb. There was nothing to hear but his breathing, her breathing and the snake’s belly rustling along the floor. The snake’s triangular head rose off the floor an inch or two and its long black tongue flicked here and there, tasting the air, tasting Levi’s fear.

Tamara stepped right and the floor creaked.

“Tamara?”

“Hush.”

Levi hushed.

Tamara tapped the floor with her foot.

The snake seemed to like it. It swiveled its head toward her. The copperhead pushed away from Levi and toward her. Levi reached behind him and opened the door as slowly and carefully as possible, not wanting to startle the snake into striking.

“Run, Tamara,” Levi ordered when there was enough distance between him and the snake to speak. “Run upstairs. Run right now.”

“There’s this verse in the Bible,” Tamara began, her voice soft like it came from far away. “Says a believer can pick up a venomous snake and not be harmed. Mark chapter sixteen, verse eighteen.”

“The Bible says a lot of things,” Levi said. “We don’t have to believe them all.”

“What if it’s true?”

“It’s not true. None of it’s true. There was no Adam. There was no Eve. There was no ark and no flood and you can’t pick up a copperhead and not get bitten.”

“There was a flood,” she said. “And it killed the wicked. It didn’t kill me.”

“You aren’t special, Tamara. I told you that. You can die like everybody else. Don’t even think about it.”

“We all die,” Tamara said. “So what’s there to be afraid of?”

“That fucking snake, for starters.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“I am. Now do what you’re told.” The snake had stopped two feet from Tamara. From Tamara’s bare feet, her naked legs. Levi had on jeans, which wasn’t much protection, but nothing stood between her and the copperhead.

“Shoot it if you want to shoot it,” Levi ordered. “But don’t you dare—”

Tamara took a step forward and reached down. It happened fast, but Levi saw it all like a movie slowed to a single frame a second. She grabbed the snake at the neck, right behind its head, and she ran with it, bare feet on bare floors. Then she tossed it on the ground outside the house and turned her head away.

Bang, bang, bang.

She got off three shots.

Levi ran after her and lifted her in his arms out of reach of the snake’s bite, if it had any bite left. He swooped her up onto the porch and dropped her on her feet.

“Are you bitten?” Levi asked, running his hands all over her arms and hands looking for puncture wounds. Tamara didn’t speak. Her eyes were wide, her pupils fixed. He slapped her lightly on the cheek, snapped his fingers in her face. “Tamara Shelby, did it bite you?”

She shook her head slowly, still in a daze.

“Is it dead?” she whispered.

Levi looked back. Nothing but the snake’s tail was left twitching. The head had been blown clean off at the neck.

“It’s dead.”

Tamara nodded.

“Good.” She stood up straight. “That’s good.”

She didn’t look like a child or a girl right then. No, she looked like some sort of angel, some sort of goddess, with the porch light glowing behind her, turning her hair to flames. She’d picked up a copperhead with her bare hands, then blown him away with three perfect shots. Who was this girl?

His wife, that was who. He saw she was shaking, shivering, not a demon or angel or goddess, but a girl again. A girl who’d looked death in the face and held it in her hands. Levi picked her up in his arms and carried her into the house. He set her down on the sofa, kissed the top of her head, then went back out to bury the beast. In the shed he found a rusted shovel and used it to dig a hole in the soft earth at the edge of the woods. He used the shovel to toss the head into the hole. Its maw was open, its fangs exposed, its eyes open, staring, accusing. Levi covered it with pile after pile of dirt. Then he scooped up the lanky body and tossed it deep into the trees. Some animal would have a nice midnight snack, probably another snake.

When the snake was dead and buried, Levi leaned on the shovel and breathed and breathed.

What was wrong with him? How could he have thought for one moment that Tamara was going to kill him? This was Bowen’s doing with his ghost stories and his talk of curses and graves and warning him to never love a Maddox. She had saved his life and there he’d been, worrying she’d destroy him. Levi felt like the worst fool on earth to think that little girl had plotted some sinister scheme behind his back. He ought to grovel at her precious feet and kiss her purple toes for saving him. And then he would wring her neck for picking up a poisonous snake with her bare hands.