The Red Hunter(104)

“I suspected,” said Seth. “I wasn’t sure until recently.”

“I thought you were one of the good guys,” I said. He looked away from me, grabbed the tarp, and started dragging until he disappeared into the dark of the warehouse.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Mike said. “He struggled with it. But he was broke, about to lose the firm. Money. There’s no seductress more alluring, no corruptor more total.”

I scissor kicked, taking Mike’s feet out from under him. He fell hard, surprised, but he pencil rolled quickly away from me, leapt to his feet. I was up, too, and it was on. We danced around the warehouse space in the dim light. I am small, so I must be fast, come in tight. He is large, at least three times stronger. My first order of business is to tire him out. You can’t fight for long; your body can’t handle all those brain chemicals, the effort it takes to punch, kick, deflect, evade. A cheetah can run sixty miles an hour, but only for thirty seconds.

He threw three powerful strikes: A roundhouse kick. I ducked; it flew over my head and sent him spinning off balance. A hook intended for my head. I backed away and felt it graze the tip of my nose. A claw headed for my throat, which I deflected and stepped around, bringing my elbow hard into his kidney.

He kicked his leg out and tripped me as I came around. I landed hard on all fours, but hopped up quickly to my feet and turned in time to take a blow to the side of the head that sent me staggering back. Then he’s a freight train, coming at me with blow after blow, some of which I evaded but most of which I took—a crushing strike to the ribs, a hard kick to the shin, punch to the jaw. Then I’m down, the ground rising up, the world in an ugly spin. His face, blank and hard hovered, a face I loved, a man I trusted. All the fight left me. I was beaten. I was beaten long before it ever began.

My father stood on the edge of the light. Didion lay on the floor bleeding. My father was stoic, but a single tear drifted down his face.

“If I told them where it was,” Dad said. “They’d have killed us all. I was buying time. I swear it.”

I knew it was true. My father may have been a dirty cop, a gambling addict drowning in debt, but he loved us, and I always knew that. He wouldn’t have let us all die for money. He was stalling, trying to keep us alive until help came.

“I thought maybe, maybe you’d come back,” my dad said. “That you’d know something was wrong before you came through the door. I thought you’d run for help.”

“I tried,” I said.

“I know you did,” said Mike, thinking I was talking to him.

“I know you did,” said my dad. “I’m sorry, Zoey. I made so many mistakes—with you, with your mom, with my life. I fucked up. But the only thing that matters is that you got out of there. That’s all she would have cared about, your mom. We would both happily die if it meant that you lived and went on to live a happy life.”

But I didn’t do that. Trauma was a wrecking ball that moved through my world. The pieces never fit back together quite right. I was a zombie, or had been, the walking dead.

“I’m sorry,” my dad said again. “I love you. Forgive me.”

Then he turned and walked into the dark. Didion was gone, too.

“Dad,” I called. “Daddy, don’t leave me.”

But he was gone, and I knew he wasn’t coming back. It was just me and Mike, who shook his head with pity.

“I didn’t want it to be like this,” said Mike. “But you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The gun glinted silver in his hand.

When you seek revenge, dig two graves. One of them for yourself.





forty-two


Claudia watched, disbelieving, as great plumes of white showered her house, dousing the flames that shot up through the roof. Troy under one arm, Raven under the other, they watched from the bed of the pickup. Raven softly wept. Troy just looked stunned. And Claudia—well.

You never understood the power of things. You saw a lot on television—raging forest fires, tsunamis, hurricanes. You knew that people got raped, beaten—killed, murdered, life wrested from them in all kinds of horrible ways. But there was a kind of safe distance—the sense that it was happening elsewhere to others. Until you had a violent man’s hands on you, until your body was violated. Until you felt the massive, frightening heat of fire, knew its roar, how it sucked the air from a place and replaced it with poison. How just its nearness could overcome you. How you couldn’t fight. That was the hardest thing to learn, that sometimes, some things—you just can’t fight them.

“They got away,” said Raven. “With all that money.”

“Shh,” said Claudia. “The important thing is that we’re all alive and okay. Nothing else matters.”

“It doesn’t matter that the house burned down?” said Raven, reaching for sarcasm through her tears.

“No,” said Claudia. “Not really.”

She even believed it.

Josh Beckham sat in the back of a squad car. They’d all been questioned. Claudia, Raven, and Troy each gave their version of what happened. Claudia told Officer Dilbert about Zoey Drake running off on her own to stop Rhett Beckham, that Josh knew where she’d gone. And he promised to find her, to help her.

Josh Beckham had asked for a lawyer, said he had information about the case ten years ago, was ready to come clean. She felt bad for him—in a way. You can’t carry a secret like that around without it doing some damage, even though he was probably just a kid at the time—maybe too stupid to know what was happening until it was too late. He didn’t seem like a bad man, but really—what did she know? She was literally the worst judge of character imaginable.