The Widower's Two-Step (Tres Navarre #2)(61)

Miranda kept giving me a silent request.

I looked at Allison. "Why don't I drive you home? You need to get out of here."

Wrong answer. Miranda tightened her lips, but she said, "That's a good idea."

Allison collected herself. She was just about to agree, I think, when Tilden Sheckly barged into the room.

He moved like he was still groggy, but he managed a pretty hideous facsimile of his regular grin. The left side of his face was still mostly blood and dirt. His unruly graybrown hair was flattened on top by sweat in the shape of his missing hat.

"Allison SaintPierre," he croaked. "I think we need to talk."

Sheck walked toward her. I made the mistake of trying to stop him, figuring that he was still dazed.

The next thing I knew I was sitting on the rug with my jaw feeling like it had just been branded. There was either blood in my mouth or dark beer—Guinness, maybe. I don't remember Sheckly's upper cut at all. I certainly didn't have time to block it.

"I'll talk to you in a minute, son," Sheckly said unevenly. He was focusing a little to the left of my eyes. "We'll have some words about trespassing in people's offices. Right now, stay out of my way."

He grabbed Allison by the wrist.

Allison managed to break Sheckly's grip and rake the bad side of his face with her fingernails, but Sheck looked like he'd expected that. He winced and swayed backward and then smiled, like he'd just been given permission to try again with a little more force.

"Sheckly," Miranda said, soft but insistent.

"Miranda, darlin'." He kept trying to get his mouth to work right, to have that normal smooth tone to it. "This ain't your fault, honey. I know that. But you understand what your friend here did? At your Daddy's party? You think I'm gonna let her walk away from that—would that be right?"

Allison tried for another slap and got her wrist intercepted. The back of Sheck's other hand struck her across the mouth with a sound like a leather belt snapping.

Miranda stood frozen, staring at Sheckly's fingers around Allison's wrist. I had no luck trying to get off the floor.

Sheck was raising his hand to strike again when Brent Daniels stepped into the doorway and cocked the hammer of his shotgun.

Brent didn't need to say anything. Sheck knew the sound of a doubleaughtsix just fine. Sheck's hand froze next to his shoulder, like he was saying the Pledge of Allegiance. He turned around.

When he saw it was only Brent he tried to reconstruct his smile. A little bead of blood dripped off his chin.

"Aw, Christ, son, put that damn thing down. You know I ain't—"

"You step away," Brent insisted.

Brent's voice was even and deadly serious. His eyes were still bloodshot but there was no alcoholic glaze to them. No hesitation and no uneasiness. Brent's eyes were alert and dangerous and I couldn't quite remember why I'd ever thought of him as dimwitted.

"Brent—" Miranda started to say, firmer than before.

"Shut up, Miranda."

Sheckly stepped sideways, toward the foot of the bed. He wiped at his chin. "All right, Brent. It's your house. Just appears to me—"

"Get out, Mr. Sheckly."

Sheck raided his hands slowly, giving up. "All right, son. All right."

He looked at Allison to let her know nothing was finished. He searched his pocket for a handkerchief and realized he didn't have one. He walked toward Brent until his chest was only a few inches from the shotgun's muzzle.

"Can I pass?"

Brent stepped aside silently. Sheckly got a glint of dazed amusement in his eyes.

"Maria would be proud of you, son. Taking up a gun again." He winked, I think. With his ruined face it was hard to tell what was intentional and what was just the flesh going into shock. "You cut a fine figure of a man."

Then, mumbling pleasantly to himself about all the people he was going to kill, Tilden Sheckly left the room.

When he was gone the barrel of Brent's shotgun lowered to the floor. I got to my feet.

Allison collapsed onto the bed. Her hands clenched but they trembled anyway. She gave Brent a crooked smile, winced, dabbed her tongue into the corner of her mouth, and tasted the blood there. "My hero."

Brent was blushing violently, but I don't think it was from Allison's comment. Miranda looked at him with an expression somewhere between outrage and sympathy.

"Oh, Brent—Good Lord, I'm sorry."

"Shut up, Miranda," Brent said again. He was staring at the floor, digging a hole in the rug with the shotgun muzzle. "For once, just shut up."

30

I leaned against a cedar post on the Daniels' back porch, staring across the dark field toward the barn where Brent Daniels had retreated. I could only see what was illuminated by the kerosene lantern Brent had hung at the edge of the roof, and from a hundred yards away that wasn't much. The building was apparently half tractor shed, half apartment. On the side closest to me was a curtained window with no light coming through.

The field between here and there was scarred with black lines of trenches, pocked with mounds of dirt. About thirty yards out was the dark silhouette of a backhoe. Some kind of plumbing work in progress.

My jaw where Tilden Sheckly had hit me throbbed every time my heart beat. My lower gums were puffy, but I hadn't chipped any teeth and my tongue had stopped bleeding from the hole I'd bitten into it. Compared to Sheckly—compared to a lot of people I'd met this week—I counted myself lucky.