The Red Hunter(68)

“Look closely,” said Rhett. “What do you see?”

Josh looked. “Nothing,” he said. “Just the house and the barn. I’ve been through every inch of both.”

Rhett tapped on the page, between the two structures. Josh leaned in close to see two faint blue lines.

“What’s that?” he asked, digging through his memory for the various survey codes and markings. “Plumbing? Electric?”

Rhett shook his head, that smile practically gleaming. “It’s a tunnel, connecting the two buildings.”

Josh leaned in to take a closer look.

“I don’t know,” said Josh. He’d never seen anything in the house or the barn that looked like any kind of door. But to be honest, and maybe Rhett picked up on this, when Josh was looking for that money, a big part of him was trying to prove that it wasn’t there. Because he didn’t want it to be. They’d done a horrible thing; they didn’t deserve a big reward. Now that Rhett was back, the enterprise of looking had taken on a different energy.

Rhett fished the key out from under the papers. “That’s where it is. Has to be, baby brother. There has to be access from the house, probably in the basement. A million dollars just sitting there, waiting for us.”

The basement was a disaster. Truth was—those fallen beams, the mess down there, the heavy mold in the air—maybe. Maybe he hadn’t looked as hard as he could have.

Josh nodded toward the key. “Where did you get that?”

“Never mind.”

“You’ve been talking to him,” said Josh. “The old man.”

“He says he had his doubts until now,” he said. “Something happened. Something to do with Didion’s murder.”

Josh blew out a long breath. “Let me guess.”

“He says if we go back for it, we split it with him. Fifty-fifty.”

“If he’s so sure it’s there and he knows where it is,” asked Josh, “what does he need us for? Why doesn’t he go back for it himself?”

“Hey,” said Rhett. “I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you know.”

“We get half,” said Josh. “And you and I split that?”

“Well, we have to cut Missy in.”

“Wait,” said Josh. “She knows about it? About everything?”

“She’s cool,” said Rhett. “Don’t worry.”

God, Rhett was so fucking stupid.

“So we do all the work, take all the risk. He gets half, and you and I each get a quarter. Minus whatever you promised Missy. Who now knows what we’ve done, what we’re about to do.”

“She always knew,” said Rhett, with a wave of his hand. “She’s been cool all this time. Anyway, look. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t even know about the money. We never would have known about it. Think of him as a contractor; we’re doing the work for him that he doesn’t want to or have time to do for himself.”

Josh wished with all of his heart and soul that they didn’t know about the money, that they never had. That Rhett hadn’t come into his room that night, that he hadn’t gone with his brother. How, how would his life have turned out differently if he’d only had a backbone?

“No one will get hurt this time, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Rhett, making his voice softer.

“That’s what you said last time.”

He still dreamed about it. He still heard the girl and the woman screaming, still saw their eyes wide and wet with terror and confusion. The woman, she begged for her daughter. Please, she said with her last breath. Please don’t let them hurt her.

“It wasn’t me,” said Rhett. “It was Didion.”

That was a lie. It was both of them, two wolves in a pack, taking their fill.

That’s the thing about addiction, Lee always said. It’s not the substance you’re addicted to. It’s the person you are, the way you feel, when you’re high or stoned or drunk.

Looking into his brother’s face was like looking into the amber face of a cold beer or smelling that first tang on the air when someone lit a joint. It wasn’t the taste, the first drag, it was the moment right after when Josh’s whole body seemed to release the tension it was holding, when everything that worried or frightened him just receded like players from a stage.

There was something about who he was when Rhett was around. It was like Rhett knew that somewhere inside his little brother, down deep, there was a guy who wasn’t that much different than Rhett. There was something dark hidden inside Josh, like a feral animal in a burrow, one that only needed to be lured out.

Rhett took a long swallow of his beer. Corona Extra. Rhett never bothered with the lime.

“We could be drinking this on a beach in Anguilla,” said Rhett. “And think about Mom. Think about how comfortable we could make her.”

Josh shook his head, had to smile. Rhett knew. He knew how to push every single button.

“And what if it isn’t there?” said Josh. “What if that’s just plumbing lines or nothing at all?”

“Then it’s done,” he said, lifting his palms and raising his eyebrows in a show of sincerity. “We move on and start making money the old-fashioned way.”