Now it had been replaced by another fire, a hunk of brimstone buried inside him that was torched by the light of the full moon.
Glen wasn’t the kind of man who prayed, but he hoped he wouldn’t feel that fire when he watched the sun rise in just a few hours.
If he watched the sun rise.
If he stuck around long enough to do that.
Glen’s grip tightened around the.45. He knew what the silver bullets in the gun could do to him, the same way he knew what the moon above would do to him the next time it rose in the night sky, full and bright.
Just one bullet. That’s all it would take.
Just one, and he’d never end up like Kale Howard.
Glen raised the pistol. He placed the barrel beneath his chin.
And he waited. He waited for a sign… a sign from somewhere… or someone… perhaps a sign from Kim. Right or wrong, the things he’d done tonight he’d done for her. So he waited for an acknowledgment, a rush of images his brain could catalog the way it had cataloged every movement and expression of the people he’d just killed.
The ivory pistol grips were slick with his sweat. The gun barrel dug into the taut flesh beneath his chin. That brimstone fire inside him was cooking his heart now. Suddenly Glen heard words, down there in the sizzle.
But they weren’t Kim’s words.
They belonged to another, and he’d heard them earlier this night.
The words were lost for a moment, sizzling in the brimstone roar. It was as if something inside Glen wanted to incinerate them, the same way he’d burned down the woman who’d spoken those words. But they came around again, surer this time… as if they were his own.
Glen lowered the pistol.
The sound of his cell phone brought Bryce around. It was still dark-a glance at his watch told him it was just past midnight.
Damn. His skull was pounding in time with the phone’s insistent ringtone. J. J. reached for his cell, but it wasn’t there. It was over on the patio, murky LCD light glowing as it chirped like a confused little bird. And there was his pistol, right next to it, and-
That thing he’d wrestled lay on the patio, too. Only it didn’t look like a wolf anymore. Now the damn thing looked like Kale Howard. And now J. J. remembered. He’d cracked his head on the patio when he’d taken that fall. In the moment before he’d passed out, Glen Barlow had appeared in the doorway with a nickel-plated.45 in his hand. He’d looked like a refugee from a zombie movie, but he’d gunned down the monster beneath the patio overhang.
And now Kale Howard lay dead in its place.
Bryce stared at Howard’s corpse for a long moment.
Because there wasn’t much else you could think. Not if you could add two and two. And even with a knock on the head, J. J. could do that. He moved on to the next order of business and tried to rise, but his legs wouldn’t quite make the trip. And the rest of his body… Jesus. It felt like his right arm wasn’t even there.
What the hell was going on? He was ass-down in the dirt, leaning against something hard. He couldn’t move his right arm at all. Damn thing was asleep, bent above his head, stuck there as if tied.
Bryce leaned to the side and looked up. He was handcuffed to the driver’s door of a truck. Not his own truck- Barlow’s piece-of-shit rustbucket… which hadn’t even been there when J. J. pulled in a couple hours ago.
His brand-new Ford was gone, too.
Still, the wheels started turning in his head. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Sooner or later, he’d have to decide what the hell he was going to say.
To Sheriff Randall.
And to Lisa, too.
In the months since he’d left El Pasito, Glen had a lot of time on his hands. That was good. There was a lot he needed to think about in the wake of the bloodbath out there in the desert. Things had changed for him… a lot of things. Everything.
But as the days closed into night, what he thought about most was Kim. He’d always felt responsible for her. After all, he was her big brother. That reaction was as natural as breathing. But he was starting to understand that Kim had made her own decisions in life, and he wasn’t responsible for them any more than he was responsible for the trouble they’d brought her way. They were Kim’s choices, not his. And she’d shut him out when making them, and she’d shut him out when they went bad… especially when it came to Kale.
And maybe that was part of the reason for his anger. She’d shut him out, and then she was dead before either of them could change the way things were. Maybe that was the reason he hadn’t heard his sister’s voice in the desert on the night he’d nearly taken his own life.
Maybe he hadn’t know her well enough to ask for that kind of help.
Maybe she was still shutting him out.
They were brother and sister, sure. They’d shared memory, time, and blood. But Glen had never known the secrets Kim kept locked up in her heart. And he wondered if you ever could know that about someone else, no matter what ties you shared.
Just lately, he’d been thinking about that a lot. He hadn’t reached any particular conclusions, but there was one thing he was sure of. In the time since he’d left El Pasito, he was beginning to understand his own secrets, and he was beginning to understand his own heart.
He wondered if someone else was beginning to understand those things, too.
It wasn’t easy to find a pay phone anymore, but Glen turned one up.
He had to buy a phone card from a little Cajun girl working the till in the convenience store before he could make his call. The phone was on a pole across from the gas pumps. There weren’t a lot of people around, just a lot of kudzu. And that was okay with Glen. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to share with anyone.
He dialed Lisa’s number.
A man picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
Glen didn’t say a word.
“Hello?” the man said again. “Hey… is anyone there?”
A click on the line, and the familiar voice was gone. Glen hung up the receiver.
He stood there a minute, thinking about it. A truck roared by on the two-lane highway, heading toward Baton Rouge. Glen shook his head, grinning. A lot had surprised him just lately, and he couldn’t see a single reason why this should be any different.
But, right now, that was okay with him.
Really, it was.
Man, if there was one thing J. J. hated, it was hang ups.
He turned away from the phone. At least it hadn’t been another lawyer calling. Since the gunfight at the Barlow Corral, he’d had enough of lawyers. And administrative leave. And state and county investigators.
