Chapter Two
The reception raged through the afternoon, until there was nothing left of the barbecue but bones and stained cuffs, nothing left of the beer but half a hundred spent Solo cups. Just after five, it was announced that the party was moving to the bar.
Miah busied himself folding chairs and plucking stray napkins from the savaged lawn, hoping nobody would notice him in their rush to leave. No such luck.
“You comin’?” Vince asked, shrugging into his leather jacket. Kim already had her helmet on, busy with her phone beside Vince’s old motorcycle.
Miah shook his head. “Gotta work. This was a nice break, but no rest for the wicked.”
“Just half an hour?”
“Nah. I’m beat. I’ll tackle some shit now and I might get to bed by midnight.”
“Suit yourself. Come out for a drink this week sometime.”
“We’ll see.”
Vince gave him a slap on the arm and headed to the lot. To his bike, to his woman, to the second half of the party. Miah might’ve felt jealous, except fun sounded like the most miserable prospect just now.
Some of the junior ranch hands had been charged with cleanup, but he helped haul the tables and chairs back to a storage shed. As he carried one end of a long folding table across the lawn, he eyed the spot where the old junk barn had stood until the fire. It should still be here. That should be where this table was bound. And not this table. This table was new, same as all the chairs, the grill, and everything they’d bought to replace what had been burned up or melted in the blaze. He shivered. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help the rage that rose inside him to imagine his father in there, swallowed up in those flames like so much old junk.
Work can wait, he decided as he headed back to the house. In truth he’d cleared his schedule completely. There was always paperwork that needed doing, always a fence that could use a repair or a vehicle that needed a checkup. Always something.
But the something that was calling to him now was a bottle. A clear bottle full of liquid the color of saddle oil—the whiskey he’d been working so hard to avoid. But his defenses were in tatters, his will broken. Without a sixteen-hour workday leaving him numb, he was itchy for a quicker solution.
Inside, he found the kitchen all but spotless, no evidence of this morning’s party-prep chaos aside from the churning of the dishwasher and a dozen half-drained bottles of wine lined up on the counter. He stuck his head out into the hall. “Mom?”
A faint “In the office” came in reply.
“Just checking.”
She’d be drowning her sorrows in work. Miah crossed to the cabinet beside the fridge, eager for his own escape.
He was spoiled for choice—business associates and salesmen and clients were always gifting the Churches bourbon and rye and Scotch. Miah’s dad had enjoyed a glass now and then, but his daily drink had always been a single bottle of beer after dinner. Miah preferred the same, and his mom drank wine, which left a vast array of spirits all aged two to ten years on top of whatever their labels boasted. His mouth felt dry as he eyed them, an unwholesome but magnetic thirst coming over him. He wanted to get drunk. He wanted to get obliterated, though he couldn’t afford a late start or a foggy head come the morning.
Just a glass, maybe two.
But that sounded so unsatisfying. Like a tease. Like a peck on the cheek to a man who needed to fuck like an animal. The emptiness inside him didn’t want a buzz. It didn’t want moderation. It wanted liquor enough to drown a horse.
When’s the last time you were late to start? he asked himself. Not since just after the fire. Go on, make a terrible decision for once in your life. His gaze roamed the bottles. Then something drew his attention to the right. To the fridge. To a business card.
Patrol Deputy Nicki Ritchey. He stared hard at that name, hard, hard, hard. His fingers stung and he looked to his fist, bleached bloodless from how tight he was gripping the cabinet door. He let it go. He slid the card from under its magnet and went to sit at the old trestle table.
As he punched in her personal number, the one she’d jotted on the back, his fingers felt clumsy, as though he really were shitfaced. God help him if he sounded the part.
The dial tone hummed. “Pick up,” he muttered as his brain chanted don’t, don’t, don’t. Christ, he felt about seventeen again. Ridiculous, when it wasn’t as though he was after a date or any—
“Hi, this is Nicki. Please leave a message.” Beep.
He nearly dropped his phone in his hurry to slap it shut. Shit. Fuck. He sighed, shaking his head at his own nerves and glancing back to the cupboard, contemplating that drink.
Brrrzzzz. This time he did drop his phone, sending it clattering to the floor in his surprise. He scrambled for it, flipped it back open. “Hello?”
“Hi, who is this?”
Miah didn’t have to ask the same question—he’d know that velveteen voice anywhere. “Hi, Deputy, it’s Miah Church.”
“Oh, Miah. How are you? Sorry I missed you—I ducked out to the garage.”
That answered one question.
“I’m all right,” he lied. “How are you?” Christ, this was so awkward. Why was this so awkward?
“I’m fine. Just got home.”
Miah could hear noises in the background, clanking and rustling. “You sound busy.”
She laughed, that sound like sparklers. “Not really. Just putting groceries away. I’ve got a tween boy descending in three days, so the pantry needed some serious restocking. To what do I owe the pleasure, Miah?”
“I, um . . .” Goddamn, but he didn’t even know what he wanted from her. Or he did, but saying it aloud was so daunting. He looked to the hutch on the other side of the room, then made his way over to it.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You need to talk about your dad?”
“No. Well, maybe. I’m not sure.” He pulled open a drawer full of Post-its and pens and batteries. He reached back, deeper, past the crap until his fingers found cool, smooth metal.
The busy background sounds on Nicki’s end stopped. Miah thought he heard the squeak of a chair being pulled out, then quiet. “You okay, Miah?” She said it with the grave, earnest tone one might use to approach a man perched on a ledge, forty stories up.
Get it together, Church. She thinks you’re fucking suicidal.
“It’s not that,” he said, eyeing the pocket knife in his hand—his dad’s old knife, the wood of its handle scorched black. Nicki had returned it to Miah after the fire, along with a few other pieces that had been collected as evidence. “I’m okay,” he told her. “I called you on impulse, actually. I was going to . . .” He took an almighty breath and let the truth tumble from his mouth. “I was going to see if you were free. And if you’d like to take a walk.”
“A walk?”
Shit, what was that tone? Bewilderment?
“Yeah, a walk. I suppose I would like to talk, and I know your son’s still out of town, and . . .” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Nothing to do now but own the awkwardness, he supposed. “Shit, Nicki, this sounds completely psycho, doesn’t it?”
She laughed. “No, no. Of course not. I’m just surprised. Where is there around here to walk?”
“Plenty of places,” he said, and a little buoy of hope bobbed inside. She sounded curious, not skeptical. “You could come out to the ranch, if it’s not too long a haul. Sunset’s not for a couple hours yet.” He prayed she was as frank as she was kind, and would make an excuse if she didn’t want to.
“What kind of shoes should I wear?”
He blinked, not quite believing what he’d heard. “Sneakers’ll do.”
“Okay. Just give me a few to get this food put away and change. I could be out there in maybe forty minutes?”
“Uh, yeah, that’d be perfect.”
“Great. See you then.”
“See you.” He waited until she hung up then closed his phone, staring around the big kitchen and feeling . . . what? Some nervous cousin of hopeful. Unprepared, but excited.
He looked to the clock. What the fuck was he going to do with himself for forty minutes?
Get busy remembering this isn’t a date, for starters. He wasn’t fit to feel for anybody right now. There wasn’t enough of his heart left for it. Not yet.
I’m making a new friend, that’s all. If I’m nervous it’s only because I respect her.
And he committed that lie to memory as he headed upstairs to change.
* * *
Oren’s contact was late.
He was always late, Oren thought bitterly, and it wasn’t a character flaw, wasn’t disorganization or carelessness. It was a power play, and the thing that really burned was, there was no way the asshole would ever let Oren get away with the same.
He thinks he’s my boss. The man certainly spoke as though that was the case, talked down to Oren.
Well, fuck, he gets to. His contact held all the power. He had the money, with the very real potential to score more—a multitude more. He had the plan, he had dirt on Oren, and, most crucial of all, he knew Oren’s weakness.
I handed it all right to him. The potential payday had blinded him, twisted his better judgment, and with a few veiled threats thrown in for good measure, before he’d known it, Oren had gotten in way over his head, complicit in shit he couldn’t walk back. If the choices were to go to the cops and try for a plea deal—maybe get a decade in prison for conspiracy to commit arson and murder—or to see this plan through, keep his wife safe, and maybe even stand a chance at getting rich beyond his wildest dreams . . . He couldn’t go to prison. Hell, he was a pacifist. How he’d gotten here he could barely remember now. In less than a year he’d become a man he no longer recognized.
Finally, a car pulled up around the back of the building, headlights unmistakable—those obnoxious, superbright xenon kind. Oren squinted against the blinding beams, hating himself for it, feeling like a bullied kid flinching as his tormenter appeared at the playground’s edge.
Oren pushed his car door wide and stepped out. The night air felt cold; colder than it had a right to, and he had to fight an urge to hug his arms against the breeze. It was the man now exiting his own vehicle that brought this chill to his bones.
“Hello, hello,” the man boomed, that smile so maddening in its believability. The warmth was fake, of that Oren had no doubt, but you’d never guess. Even he couldn’t spot the frost, and he knew better than anyone how cold-blooded this fat little psychopath truly was.
“Evening,” Oren said, cringing inside. Much as he loathed this man, he could never bring himself to sound anything but grateful and compliant. He’d always been a goddamn coward.
“Do pardon my tardiness,” the man said, and leaned on the hood of his car, dipping the vehicle with his considerable heft. “Busy day, busy day.”
He always said shit twice. Drove Oren up a goddamn wall. If you got hit by a meteor tomorrow, he thought, everything would be so much easier. Sadly, he wasn’t capable of orchestrating a homicide himself. Only of middle-manning one, it would seem.
“You’ll forgive the formality . . . ?” The man nodded to a second figure now unfurling his tall, beefy form from the car—the very personification of a henchman, and his employer’s physical foil.
Oren shivered. “No, go ahead.”
The man approached and began a swift, businesslike frisking, patting down Oren’s clothes then examining his phone, peering inside his car.
“Nothing personal,” the man said, just as he said every time they met, every time this humiliation went down. He was checking for wires.
“No problem,” Oren said, hating himself nearly as violently as he hated these mismatched trolls. The hired muscle retired to the front seat once more.
“So. Status update?” Oren prompted. He’d requested one weeks ago, but this man got off on making him wait. The thing that really burned was that Oren had the same dirt on this shithead that the shithead had on him, essentially. That Oren could be kept waiting was just more proof that they both knew he lacked the spine to do anything with said dirt.
“Yes, yes, as you wish. Not much to report—and not smart to risk being seen together, come to that—but I can appreciate your concern. Sadly, my boy, we’re in a wait-and-see situation for the foreseeable.”
Boy. Oren was nearing forty, this man probably in his midfifties. Fuck you. “No rumblings? No rumors?”
“None of much import,” the man said grandly, trying import on for size as he might a ten-gallon hat. “We’re playing the long game, here. The Churches are hobbled—that’s what they say about horses, right? Hobbled. Patriarch out of the picture. Son and heir would’ve been preferable, but there’s nothing to be done about that now. That’s a personal blow for them, and I know for a fact the last couple years have been brutal, drought-wise. One more blazing summer and they’ll fold, mark my words. Plus you’ll make that appointment we discussed, won’t you? ASAP.”
“I will.”
“Good. So you’ll put an extra nail in the coffin, hopefully hurry things along.”
Oren shivered. He wasn’t built for conspiracy.
“What’s to guarantee you’d even secure the land?” he asked.
“Cash and leverage. Cartloads of leverage. It’s only too tragic they didn’t take the bait on a buyout to begin with, but what can you do with proud people, am I right? Too proud for their own good. Too hopped up on their good name. But what’s that name even going to mean in a year’s time? Fodder for the history books, and nobody writes history books about Fortuity. Not yet. But when they do, the Churches, they’ll be a mere sidebar. You and I, though, this grand enterprise—we’ll be front page news.”
Oren rankled at the metaphor mixing. Everything about this man made him feel cold and edgy, psychic fingernails on a chalkboard.
I dug my own grave, though. And knowing what this man was capable of, that particular idiom was far too close for comfort. He was in over his head, and all there was to do now was paddle or drown.