He realized he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to stop. Then he swore softly and picked up the phone. “What is it? I’m fighting the traffic here.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Hello? Brenna?”
“Yeah…uh, it’s me.”
She sounded strange. Hesitant. Like she was preoccupied. Or maybe afraid. What the hell? “I know who it is. What do you need, Brenna?”
“You…you have to turn around and come home.”
“What are you talking about? I just left. I have a busy day today, I can’t just come home because you decided—”
“It’s your brother.”
“Derek? What about him. Is he okay?”
“He’s here. He got in with the key you gave him.” Her anger was evident, as was her hurt, as she emphasized the words “you gave him.”
So okay, she was pissed. But why would she be afraid?
He sighed. “I’m sorry I never told you about the key, but it didn’t seem like a big deal when I did it, and then it slipped my mind. But I can’t miss work just because my brother stopped by for a visit.”
“He’s holding a knife on me, Greg, and my foot is bleeding and you need to turn the damned car around and get back here.”
He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it as if waiting for it to explain itself. When it didn’t, he stuck it back against his head. “A knife? What are you talking about? He stabbed you in the foot? I don’t understand.”
“He walked in the front door and surprised me and I dropped a glass on the floor. Then I stepped on the glass when he picked up a knife and threatened me. Now you’re all caught up on current events. Get back here.”
The tears had started on the other end of the line, Greg could hear Brenna sobbing, and he still had no idea what the hell was happening. “Put my brother on.”
“Can’t you please, for once just—”
“Put him on, Brenna.”
She mumbled something that sounded like a swear, one of the biggies, one of the words he rarely heard her use.
Then there was a loud clunk as the phone hit the floor, and about three seconds after that a voice said, “Greg?” The voice was shaky and oddly strained, high-pitched, but it was definitely his brother’s.
“Derek? Are you holding a knife on my wife? Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you? Put the fucking knife down right n—”
“I’m in trouble, Greg.”
“Damn right you are. I’m going to kick your sorry ass when I see you, but for now get the fuck out of my house and leave Brenna alone.”
“No can do.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Maybe I’ll just call the cops on you, what do you say about that, genius?”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You won’t like what happens next if you do that.” Derek’s voice was quiet and calm and…something else. It took a second for Greg to put his fingers on what that something else was, but then it came to him. Derek’s voice was cold. Devoid of human emotion.
Greg had never heard such iciness out of his brother. Or out of any human being. Then the almost robotic voice continued. “I’m in real trouble and I’ve got nowhere else to turn. I need money and a reliable ride, and then I’ll go away. But for right now, you need to get back here before I have to hurt Brenna.”
“Hurt…are you fucking kidding me? Touch my wife and I’ll fucking kill you, you fucking junkie asshole.”
“Just get back here. Now.”
Greg was ten seconds into his description of what he was going to do to his brother before he realized the son of a bitch had hung up on him. He was red-faced and sweating, furious, and he squeezed his Mustang into the left travel lane, moving at stop-and-go speed but not about to stop, not even when the old fucker in the Honda next to him leaned on the horn and flipped him off.
He returned the salute and added a few choice words. When he’d wedged himself far enough into the gap he had created, he wrenched the wheel left and hit the gas, laying rubber before blasting onto the median strip, scattering field grass in his wake.
The Distressway leading away from the city would be wide open until later this afternoon, when all the corporate zombies fighting each other to get to work right now would be forced to fight each other in the opposite direction going home. Greg manhandled the Ford, telling himself he was concerned for Brenna’s wellbeing and not just pissed right the fuck off at Derek.
He got home in no time.
5
The first thing he noticed when he walked in the front door was the shattered glass scattered across the kitchen floor. Even from the other end of the hallway, a distance of probably fifteen feet, the shards glittered like tiny diamonds in the sunlight streaming into the room.
That was what finally clued Greg in to the seriousness of the situation. Even after hearing his wife say his brother was threatening her with a steak knife, even after being consumed with fury on the drive home, somewhere in the back of his mind Greg had figured it was all some kind of big misunderstanding. A fucked up, scary misunderstanding, but a misunderstanding nonetheless.
The thousands of pieces of broken glass convinced him otherwise. They lay on the floor refracting the light, bright and shiny and dangerous, and it occurred to Greg that whatever was happening was really bad, even in the context of his fuckup brother, around whom bad things seemed to happen with disturbing regularity.
The house was deadly silent. No radio playing, no TV newscaster babbling in the background. Nothing. Jesus Christ, that stupid son of a bitch carried through on his threat to hurt Brenna. I’m too late and she’s lying somewhere dead or dying, and—
He shook his head to clear it of that ridiculous thought and hurried down the
