Reaper's Property(84)

The fallout from this was gonna suck, no question.
I grabbed my purse and walked toward the barn. No sign of Jeff. No sign of Ariel either, which made me really nervous. I pushed through the open door, noting the broken lock. Horse wasn’t going to like that either, I thought, biting back a hysterical giggle. Poor man would have a heart attack before the night was over at this rate. Jeff grabbed me as soon as I walked into the barn, pulling me to the side of the door with one hand and waving a gun around in the other. All of Horse’s training must have sunk in, because I hit the ground automatically as the barrel swung toward me.
“Don’t point that at me!” I hissed, and Jeff glanced down at the gun, startled.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you come by yourself?”
“Yes,” I replied, standing up and dusting off my knees. “But they were lighting up my phone on the drive out here. We don’t have a lot of time. What’s the proof you were talking about?”
Jeff walked over to a work bench and pulled out a folder. I flipped it open and saw several articles about the massacre from different news outlets. None of them had any information I hadn’t seen already.
“Keep looking,” Jeff said. I flipped further, finding a copy of Horse’s discharge papers. Honorable. I found a memo stating that his unit was being cleared of charges based on a lack of evidence. Another newspaper article followed, this one stating that the killers had never been found and now several key witnesses had disappeared. That was it.
“You see?” Jeff asked. “It’s right there. Now do you understand?”
I looked at him, confused.
“This doesn’t say he did anything,” I replied softly. “It just says they never figured out who did it. Sometimes that happens during war, Jeff, especially in areas with competing guerrilla groups. This doesn’t prove anything.”
He shook his head, clearly frustrated.
“It’s a conspiracy, you have to read between the lines,” he said. “The witnesses disappeared. Why do you think that happened?”
“Probably because they were afraid they’d get murdered if they collaborated,” I replied, shaking my head. “Jeff, forget about this. You need call off the Jacks and stop working with them. Then you need to disappear. Otherwise I’m afraid the Reapers will kill you. I love you so much—I can’t lose you.”
Jeff’s face softened, and I saw a trace of the laid-back, loving brother he’d been most of my life. He pulled me into his arms but he didn’t feel right to me. His heart raced, he’d gotten far too thin and I felt and smelled clammy sweat coming off him. I pulled back and looked into his face, feeling indescribably sad.
“Jeff, what are you doing to yourself?” I asked. His features hardened and he jerked away.
“I’m trying to take care of my family,” he snapped. Outside I heard the roar of bikes and I froze.
“Oh shit, they’re gonna kill you,” I said, panicking. I started looking around, trying to find somewhere to hide him, which was ludicrous. The barn door flew open and banged against the wall. It was Horse and Max, holding guns. They froze as Jeff grabbed me and held his own weapon to my head.
“Don’t worry, sis,” he whispered in my ear. “I would never hurt you. I just need to get out of this so we can start over somewhere else. It’s going to be great, you won’t have to worry about anything.”
Oh f*ck.



Chapter Twenty-One

Horse
Horse saw red when he saw the gun at Marie’s head. Jensen stood next to her, trembling so hard he thought it might be enough to pull the trigger. The man was obviously tweaking hard on something, probably meth. Very bad news. Might even be hallucinating. It took everything he had not to charge Jensen and kill him with his bare hands, but he had to be smart.
“Hey,” Max said, sounding a little too casual. Horse glanced over at him and caught his play. “We’re just here to make sure Marie’s all right. We were afraid the Jacks got her. We know you love her and would never hurt her so let’s talk this through. Win/win, right?”
Jeff laughed, the tone high-pitched and more than a little crazed.
“I showed her the evidence,” he said. “She knows all about what you did in Afghanistan to those kids. And now you’re going to die for what you did to her.”
Horse ignored his words, focusing on reading his tone and body language. No clear shot, obviously. How could he get to her? He’d been in tighter situations but never with so much at stake.
“I’m going to put down my gun,” he said, setting the gun very slowly and carefully on the floor. Then he held his hands up, showing Jeff they were empty. “Max will do the same. Then you can take the gun away from her head. I don’t want any accidents. We’ll let you get in her car and go, sound good?”
Jensen laughed again, something new and ugly on his face…honest glee, with a hint of gloating.
“I want you out in the center of the floor,” he said. “No tricks.”
Horse stepped forward, hands up. The gun trembled in Jensen’s hand as he pulled Marie backward, deeper into the barn’s open central floor. Fuck.
“That’s good,” Jeff said. “Your turn,” he added, looking at Max now. Horse heard Max shuffle behind him and then Marie’s eyes went wide. She opened her mouth and screamed at him as a bullet tore through his back, pain exploding as his vision started going dark.
He hit the floor, seeing his blood flowing out onto the ground next to him. He couldn’t move but he could feel, the pain beyond anything he could have imagined. This is how Bagger went, he realized. Alone in a pool of blood, knowing that he failed his woman. Then he stopped thinking and everything stopped.