The Red Hunter(39)

“With a lunch break, that’s fifty dollars an hour. That’s fair.”

Rhett blew out a breath of disdain. “Tell her five hundred a day with a second man and the work will get done faster. Tell her she’ll actually be saving money. You got to learn how to work people, little brother.”

Josh wasn’t going to do any such thing. But he nodded. How was he going to get out of this? He could already feel the poison of Rhett leaking into the air of his life.

“Didion is dead,” said Josh. “Do you know that?”

Josh pulled onto the main road, hung a right toward town. The weight of his words was heavy in the air, expanding. “Someone broke into his apartment and killed him.”

“How do you know that?” Rhett asked. He sat up and climbed awkwardly into the front seat, knocking Josh in the head, causing him to swerve a little. Christ.

“The old man called,” said Josh.

“Called you?”

Josh didn’t say anything.

“When were you going to tell me this?” Rhett asked.

“I’m telling you now.”

“When did he call?”

“The night you came home,” Josh said. He didn’t want to turn and look at Rhett, those staring eyes turned Josh into a puddle, made him feel like he was a little kid. “He called you, too, right? That’s why you’re here. It’s not a coincidence.”

“No one knows it was us that night,” said Rhett, apropos of nothing, like he was having a whole different conversation in his head. There was a ragged edge to his voice. “We got away with it.”

“Did we?” asked Josh. “We killed a cop and his wife. Left the girl for dead, except she wasn’t dead. All for a pile of cash that wasn’t there. You went to prison for something else. I’m still here working in Dad’s shop. You’re still looking for money that never existed. What did we get away with, exactly?”

“The money’s there,” said Rhett, not listening. “We just have to find it. We have to get into that house and tear it apart. When we find it, everything we’ve been through will be worth it.”

A flutter of fear laced with anger moved up Josh’s throat from his belly.

“Didion was killed with a hunting knife,” said Josh.

“So?” asked Rhett, his expression blank.

Did he not remember that night? What they did to the woman and the girl? Did it mean so little to him, did he not hear their screams at night, like Josh sometimes did?

“So—I think we have a bigger problem than money that may never have existed.”

Still nothing. “What’s that?”

Josh pulled the car over onto the shoulder and turned to look at his brother. Rhett had a raggedness to him, now that Josh was really looking at him—time behind bars, booze and drugs and cigarettes and bad food taking their toll in his pasty complexion, the deep wrinkles around his eyes. There was a strange glistening to his stare, something like desperation residing in the corners.

“We didn’t get away with anything,” said Josh. He’d have to spell it out. “Someone knows.”

Josh expected to see the dawning of fear, a realization that if in fact the universe wanted something for them, it wasn’t a big payday. Josh’s father was right. You don’t get away with a thing like that. It hunts you down, one way or another.

Instead, a kind of steely resolve hardened his brother’s face.

“Well, then, we don’t have any time to lose, do we?” he said.





thirteen


Lately, I have been thinking about how I want to die. I don’t want to slip away, a ghostlike figure disappearing into the mist between trees. I don’t want normal, the things that other people seem to want. I don’t want to fall in love with someone, get married, have children. I don’t want to watch them grow, go away to college, get married, too. I don’t want to then watch my grandchildren grow, then maybe watch my husband die, until something starts to gnaw at my insides, slowly taking me away bit by bit. I don’t want to die like Paul will die, fighting for every last breath, every day an agony of the disconnect between his agile mind and his failing body.

I want to fall from a great height after leaping from buildings, watching, breathing all the way down until the concrete rises up to greet me, smashing my bones. Or having rushed into a burning building to save a crying baby, I want to go up in flames. Or get torn apart by bullets in a gunfight. I want it to be big, loud. I want to leave a mess when I depart this world, leave a stain that can’t be washed away.

That’s what I was thinking about when my phone buzzed on the bedside table, announcing a text. I grabbed it quickly, worried that it was Paul, needing me—not that he was one to text. Instead, it was Nate Shelby.

How’s the new kitten?

You’re a man of action.

Always.

Tiger and Milo are fast friends.

Good call.

I waited, watching the gray buttons pulse, sensing there was more to come.

Then:

So what’s your story?

What’s my story? How should I respond to that? I wondered. I shouldn’t. I should just let the text slip into the oblivion of the unanswered. Maybe he’d get the hint that I didn’t exist. Instead, I found my thumbs moving.