If I Should Die

“I’ve done everything to keep you safe and out of harm’s way,” Jimmy had said. “Make sure you go to college and get out of this backwater. And you’re walking right into the shit. Who are you, Rick? Are you your mother’s son or your father’s son?”

Ricky hadn’t spoken to Jimmy for a week after that. His uncle knew how he felt about his father. Ricky wanted to do the right thing, but he no longer knew what was right. And Jimmy was a hypocrite. He was in deeper illegal shit than Ricky.

He promised to lay low, but Ricky had been terrified after Rogan had fallen down the mine shaft, and he had to tell Jimmy the truth. Maybe Jimmy wasn’t still upset with him. He couldn’t be madder at Ricky than Ricky was at himself.

He felt awful about setting the fire. He hadn’t wanted to do it in the first place. He hadn’t wanted to do anything to Joe Hendrickson’s place. He’d liked the old man, missed him more than he’d miss his dad if he croaked.

The reason he agreed to help Reverend Browne was because he hated Adam Hendrickson. Adam hadn’t even remembered him.

Ricky didn’t know Tim, the older brother, but Adam spent nearly every summer here. They’d gone fishing half a dozen times. The last time, Adam was seventeen and Ricky was twelve, two months before his mom died. Joe had taken them on an overnight fishing trip. They’d camped under the stars and Ricky desperately wished that Joe was his dad and Adam was his brother and his mom wasn’t dying.

Stupid, stupid childish fantasy.

Adam didn’t even remember Ricky, and why should he? Ricky had been a runt until recently, and when Adam went to college he stopped visiting Spruce Lake. That was fine with Ricky. He had Joe all to himself. He started helping him with chores every Saturday. Joe paid him, but Ricky did it for the company, not the money.

Then he died. A heart attack, Doc Griffin said. Ricky had found Joe on the kitchen floor when he’d come by the first Saturday in March, over a year ago. After that, he started doing odd jobs for Reverend Browne.

“I’ll help make this right. I mean what I say.”

Ricky felt queasy as he remembered Rogan’s words. Why would a stranger offer to help him? Rogan was a friend of Tim Hendrickson, which meant he was one of them. And even if he tried to help, what could he do? Ricky just needed to lay low, stay out of Rogan’s sight, and eventually the dude would go home. The resort wouldn’t open, and everyone would finally relax. Get back to business as usual. It was the whole resort thing that made everyone crazy. And while Ricky understood the resort wouldn’t be good for the town’s illegal business, he didn’t understand why everyone was so freaked out.

He turned down a long, bumpy street that bordered the so-called town of Spruce Lake. The potholes were so bad he had to work on his alignment damn near every month. The sad houses mirrored their occupants-tired, sagging, appearing older than their years. Everyone had big lots filled with cars and junk. The skinny Doberman across the street from his house barked at Ricky, teeth bared. The chain-link fence didn’t keep the attack dog in the yard, but the rope he was tethered to did. Ricky suspected that one day, the dog would bust the rope and rip out someone’s throat.

He pulled into the carport, relieved Uncle Jimmy wasn’t home yet. He worked a three days on, three days off schedule at the fire station. Ricky went in through the side door, dumped his backpack on the kitchen table, and opened the refrigerator. Nearly empty, but at least the milk was fresh. He took the container, drank half from the bottle, and put it back.

As he closed the refrigerator door, his peripheral vision caught movement to his right. He glanced around, looking for something to defend himself with, when he recognized the intruder.

“Hello,” Sean Rogan said. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you tried to kill me? Spare no details. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

EIGHTEEN

Sean stared the kid in the eye. First reactions tended to be the most honest.

The kid was scared, but ready to defend himself. A survivor. Cocky and cautious, a familiar combination. So much like the young Sean Rogan that he could have been looking at himself in a mirror fifteen years ago.

Still, because he, too, was a survivor, Sean watched the kid’s body language for signs that he had a hidden weapon. Sean didn’t think so-but there could be a gun under a table or cabinet.

“I could kill you for breaking into my house,” he said.

“So James Benson is your dad? He seems kind of young to father a teenager, but anything’s possible.”

The kid couldn’t hide his surprise. “You followed me?”

“I thought you’d spotted me at the school, but I didn’t need to follow you,” Sean replied. “I tagged the license plate number, ran it, found the registered owner was James Benson at this address.”

Benson lived in town, one of the few side streets off the main road that intersected the highway two miles west. About half the nearly four hundred residents lived in the one-mile-square “town” on large parcels with small, ramshackle homes where the “newer” houses, like Benson’s, were still more than fifty years old. The rest of the town lived in the “country” on acreage, but most of the houses were just as rundown.

“I didn’t want to follow you,” Sean continued. “Didn’t want you to do something stupid like drive off the road trying to get away. This way, I could do a little research. Like figure out that James Benson is an employee of Fire and Rescue. And he’s one of the few residents here who still owns his house. Very interesting to me, since Jon Callahan owns seventy percent of the properties in Spruce Lake. Been buying them up for the last couple years.”

At the mention of Callahan, the kid tensed.

“I offered to help you,” Sean said, “and you tried to kill me.”

The kid spoke. “I didn’t want to kill you.”

“You’re lucky my girlfriend is smart and tracked me down. Otherwise, I could have died down there. So right now, you have two options. I haul your ass to Canton and have you arrested for arson and attempted murder or you tell me what the fuck is going on, starting with your name.”

Sean watched the teenager weigh whether he was serious or not. Sean let him stew.

Finally, he said, “I don’t want your help.”

“Fair enough. Come with me.”

“I ain’t going anywhere.” He backed away, eyeing a butcher block of knives.

Sean was getting pissed. “Look, kid, I can draw my gun faster than you can grab one of those knives, and that’s not taking into account that I doubt you know how to throw a knife with any accuracy. I want to help you. But you have to want help. You can think there’s no way out, that you’re drowning in whatever shit you’re stuck in, but I promise you-there’s always a way out. Might not be pretty, but when you’re drowning and someone offers you a life preserver, you’d be smart to grab it.”

Sean held out his hand. “You know my name. I don’t know yours.”

“You found Jimmy, I bet you can figure it out.”

Jimmy. That meant either an older brother or an uncle.

“Let me tell you what I think is going on. I think Jimmy has you doing something you don’t want to do. That he’s mixed up with some people and got you mixed up with them, too. First you start small-basic sabotage. Slows construction at the Hendrickson place, costs them a bit of money, but doesn’t stop them.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Jimmy has you by the throat, and he’s going to get you killed or in prison if you don’t take my help.” He held out his card. “I’m being straightforward with you, kid.”

“Jimmy’s not-” He cut himself off and grabbed the card. Stared at it as if it were a lifeline, his face trying not to show how worried he was. How scared. How protective of Jimmy.

“Jimmy’s not what? Maybe I should just hang out here until he gets done with his shift, talk to him, find out if he knows what you’ve been doing while he’s been working seventy-two-hour shifts.” Sean pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. He leaned back, pretending to relax.