Twelve
Lazarus lay in bed at dusk, running his tongue along
teeth loosened in his lower jaw. Abe had hit him too hard. His right eye
was swollen shut. Blood continually seeped into his mouth.
Abe had gone somewhere and come back during the past
hour. Now, he could hear Abe and Noah talking in the living room. “King
wants to have a talk with me,” Abe said. “I’m leaving it up to you to run
Evie to the Trevor place first thing in the morning. Get Lazarus off to
work, then drop her off at the gate, and get your own ass to work.”
Noah mumbled a few words of protest.
“Lazarus hammers nails into his own coffin if he
causes any more trouble. I won’t be back until day after tomorrow. Just
deal with Evie like I tell you and everything else will take care of
itself.”
Abe then tapped on Evie’s door. The conversation was
muffled. Lazarus caught a reference to Ella May. In case of trouble, go
to Ella May, Abe was saying.
Lazarus suppressed a stab of resentment. Ella May
was the bitch at the grocery store that Abe had been screwing in the
evenings. The slut had no right interfering with Darker family matters.
Abe would knock her up sooner or later. He’d split the family apart for
an outsider, just as he was doing with Evie.
The front screen door creaked open and slammed shut.
The house fell quiet.
Lazarus swung his legs out of bed and sat up. He lit
a cigarette, then reached for a bottle of cheap whiskey at his feet and
took a hefty swig, enduring the sting of alcohol against torn flesh inside
his mouth until the numbness set in. He shuffled into the hall and put
his ear to Evie’s bedroom door, then went on into the kitchen.
He took a seat at one end of the table and waited for
Noah to join him. Noah heard the noise and made a reluctant appearance
after a few minutes. “You heard what he said,” Noah said blandly. “Abe’s
got his hands full. Push too hard and he’ll bust your skull.”
“He busted my teeth.”
Noah stood looking out the kitchen window out into
the dusk light, uncaring.
“He’s got no right beating on me like he does.
Evie’s done worse. She ain’t so innocent.”
Noah wasn’t about to argue the point.
“You ain’t fooling nobody, Noah. The whole damned
county knows about what happened to Pa and how much you hate the Trevors,
but I still get all the shit because I almost killed the son-of-a-bitch
bastard of one and ruined business. That’s all Abe gives a damn about. Business. We
live like shit. He stashes all the money away so it doesn’t look so
obvious. What we feel about things don’t mean nothing.”
“You were drunk,” Noah muttered. “You could have
gotten us all killed beating on a Trevor.”
Lazarus glared at the younger man in subdued anger.
His memory of the incident was vague, bits and pieces of images that had
survived his booze-soaked brain. He had a dim memory of kicking Billy
Trevor in his bare ribs until the boy had rolled into the underbrush.
Evie had leaped onto his back, screaming in his ear and raking his face
with her fingernails. Then there had been the blow to the side of his
head, probably Billy’s doing, and a later, less coherent memory of
flooring the roaring old pickup with the Jaguar sedan shining in his high
beams and kicking dust in the air as it tried to get away.
Knocking the Jag into the ravine had been an
accident. Maybe that’s why everyone hated him so much, because they
believed he had tried to kill Evie along with Billy Trevor, but it had
been awful seeing Evie thrown from the car, spinning end for end through
the air in the glare of his headlights. He had driven away and left them
to die, but who could have guessed that they’d survive the brutal fall
down the long hill? Maybe, he tried to tell himself, he had seen the cars
pull to the side of the highway at the top of the hill. Maybe he had
assumed others had gone down to help.
“What we feel about things don’t mean nothing,”
Lazarus said, bringing his thoughts to bear on the challenge at hand.
“You’re going to give Evie away to Billy Trevor so she doesn’t interfere
with business. Business, goddamn it! Fucking business!”
Noah twitched and clenched his fists when Lazarus
bellowed, and Lazarus’ eyes narrowed with interest. Noah wasn’t so
intimidated by Abe after all. “After what they did to Pa,” he growled,
“you’re just going to hand Evie over to them, because Abe never gave a
shit about Pa either.”
Noah turned smoothly and rushed him, but Noah had
never been a match for Lazarus’ greater reach and quicker reflexes. Only
Abe could best the both of them. Noah swung a fist. Without rising from
his chair, Lazarus deflected the blow, punched the heftier, but shorter
man in the solar plexus, and grabbed him by the throat. Defeated, Noah
went limp.
Lazarus threw him back disdainfully and stared his
brother down, challenging him to deny his accusation. “We don’t have to
take his shit, little brother. It’s getting too much to put up with.”
Noah gasped for air. “Yeah, but Abe’s right about
them drugs we’re running through town. They’ll get us killed if we mess
up.”
“That doesn’t mean Abe’s gotta treat Billy Trevor
like he was better than us, letting him get away with what he did to Pa
and taking Evie away. We should kill the bastard, you and me. Maybe Abe
doesn’t want to take the chance, but I bet you and me could get away with
it.”
Noah grew still, clearly tempted by the bold idea.
Lazarus kept his voice low so that Evie would not
hear. “What is he but some arrogant little shit in a wheelchair living
all alone in a big house? He’s damn well asking for trouble. How hard
could it be to get to him?”
Noah bit his lower lip and turned away, rife with
anxiety. “It’s too late for that. Abe said to take Evie up to the house
in the morning.”
Lazarus grinned. “Yeah, but what if Trevor calls?
What if Trevor doesn’t want Evie at the house until the morning after? I
could fake the call from work. Evie won’t know no better. You could do
your thing tomorrow tonight before Abe gets back. Snuff the little
bastard. You got enough friends at work to cover for you. And Abe’s sure
as hell got enough enemies. Then, when you run Evie up to the house and
Trevor don’t answer that fancy intercom of his, and we call the sheriff
like good citizens. They’ll find the little snot ground into hamburger
with that wheelchair of his shoved up his ass.”
Noah sneered. “You idiot. Evie don’t show up when
she’s supposed to and what’s Trevor going to do?”
Lazarus already had that one thought out. “He’s a
cripple. He’s alone. He sends his toys out to talk to Evie, but he won’t
do that until dark. By the time it gets dark, he’ll be dead.”
Noah looked aside, silently considering the proposal.
“Pa gets paid back for the way the Trevors treated
him, maybe for getting murdered, if it wasn’t as much as an accident as
they say. How many points do the Trevors give themselves for running down
a Darker, do you suppose?”
Noah eyed his distrustfully. “Why me? Why not you?”
“Because you’re the one who wants to do it! Besides,
Abe’ll go easy on you if he finds out. He hardly ever hits you. He’d
kill me.”
Noah shook his head. “You want me to leave you alone
with Evie while I go up there and put my head on the chopping block. No
way, Lazarus. You’ll hurt Evie and Abe’ll kick both our faces in.”
Lazarus calmly spit out a bloody tooth that had
worked loose talking so much. It rattled across the broken table, leaving
a dotted trail of blood. When Noah said nothing, he endured the pain it
took to push another loose and spit it out as well.
“You see what I’m doing,
brother? I’m spitting out my teeth. If I mess with Evie, I’ll
get the other side of my face bashed in and I’ll wind up spitting the rest
of them out.”
Lazarus moved around the table
and forced Noah to look him square in the eyes. “We were just kids
when it happened. Sure, I peek at Evie sometimes. So do you,
and I’ve even seen Abe watching her when he didn’t know anyone was
looking. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything stupid the first
chance I get. Besides, I’ll need a cover, too. I’ll get my ass
drunk at the saloon after work. You got my word on that.”
Noah paced in front of the sink, knotted with
tension. “Trevor will be gone when the weather changes. Maybe the
Trevors won’t ever come back now that the old man is dead.”
Lazarus gave a sarcastic chuckle. “What if Billy
wants to live here in Silver Ridge? What if Evie has his kids? Would Pa
like his only daughter living like a whore in the castle? We’d have
nieces and nephews laughing at their dirty old uncles wallowing in the pig
sty. Do you think we’ll ever get invited up for their birthday parties?”
Lazarus glanced through the connecting hall to make
sure Evie’s door was still shut. He waited for Noah’s decision, rife with
tension. He could almost taste victory, it was so close.
Noah leaned against the sink and stuffed his hands in
his pockets. He stared at the floor with his face twisted by inner
conflict, then looked up with dark eyes smoldering. “You gotta back me up, though.”
Lazarus grinned magnanimously. “Little brother, I
got you backed up all the way from here to next Sunday.”
“You go to work in the morning early and phone before
I leave,” Noah said. “I’ll pretend it’s Billy Trevor asking that I bring
Evie up the next morning. Then I need to talk with some friends I know
who can get me in the castle and make it look like burglars did it. I’ll
be gone most of the day, so you stay at work.” Noah stabbed Lazarus in
the chest with a forefinger to emphasize his demand. “You stay at work
and you get drunk after and you don’t you bother Evie. Like you say,
if you mess this up, I'm not dead. You are.”
The thought of being alone with Evie made Lazarus’
guts feel funny. He tried to keep a poker face. He was so close. “No
problem. As long as you’re sure you can pull it off.”
The intensity of Noah’s murderous gaze startled him.
“I’ve had enough time to think about it. I can pull it off just fine.”
