He’d had a rough week. The dream had hit him three more times in the four nights since Sunday, and he’d been, he knew, drinking too much to try to hold it back. The string of drunk nights and hung-over mornings was taking its toll.
Luckily, it had been a pretty light week at his shop. The great bulk of his work was farriering—there wasn’t much call for a true blacksmith these days, except on the festival circuit, and that wasn’t his scene. But he was one of only a few true forge smiths in the state, so he had a more or less steady stream of artisanal projects coming in—mostly wealthy folk who wanted original ironwork in their home, or any number of historic sites that needed to maintain and refurbish antique equipment. Plus, he made his own horseshoes. Most farriers bought machine-forged shoes in bulk these days and only shaped them, if they got them hot at all. Heath made his shoes from raw metal.
It was late April, the point in the season where most everybody had their horses shoed for warm weather. Most people in the area shoed their horses; the earth around the mountains was rocky, and this was still a place where horses worked for their oats. He’d had a wall-to-wall busy several weeks, but now everybody’s stables were ready, and he was getting far fewer urgent calls or appointments. This lull was normal; the farrier work would pick up again in a few weeks, as maintenance calls picked up. In the meantime, he’d finished a couple of decorative projects and then spent most of the week in the shop, doing equipment maintenance and keeping to himself.
Keeping to himself was the smarter, safer course. He’d struggled to enjoy being around people for years now, but this week had been the hardest spell in a long time, and his head felt wobbly. He looked around the table at his friends. He should have just gone home tonight.
But Friday at the Jack was a decades-long tradition, so entrenched in his fibers that he’d headed over after he’d closed the shop without thinking twice about it, despite his overall gloom.
Now he was sitting with his lifelong friends, who’d grown used to his taciturn presence. He set the front legs of his chair down and tried to focus on their conversation.
“No way, man,” Victor was saying. He tossed his black hair back over his shoulders, which meant he had an important point to make. “I’m telling you—Denny Whitt is up to something.”
Denny Whitt was an outsider, some kind of corporate guy who’d had his dude-cation at the Moondancer about ten years earlier and decided to stay. He wanted himself and his bank account to be important in Jasper Ridge, and he’d been continually frustrated by the townspeople’s deep lack of interest in his money or ideas. Heath’s family was the power in this town, and people had liked it that way for about a century and a half. But Whitt—whose name was actually Denham, and he hated that everybody around here called him Denny—kept trying.
He’d been quiet since he’d lost a bid to be mayor. The general consensus was that he’d finally gotten the message that history and tradition made the real influence in a small town like this. Money didn’t talk near so loud.
“What?” Heath asked. “How do you know?”
It was his first contribution to the discussion in who knew how long, and everybody stopped for a beat and stared at him.
“Nice nap, bro?” Victor smirked.
Heath sneered back. Victor was a construction worker, so Heath didn’t know how he’d have dirt on Denny. “What’d you hear? Denny out campaigning with the road crews now?”
Victor flipped him off. “Asshole. No—my pop.”
That got Heath’s attention—and Emmett’s and Paul’s, too. Victor’s father was the County Clerk.
“He file somethin’?” Emmett asked.
“Yeah. Deeds to three parcels totaling three hundred acres. Right up against the Twisted C.”
The Cahill ranch. They only had two neighbors, and one of them was the Federal Government. “Granville is selling off to Denny? Small parcels?” Heath asked. “Why?”
Victor shrugged. “Dunno. But he’s got to be up to somethin’. Pop is over with your dad tonight, talkin’ it out.” Heath’s father and Victor’s had been friends since childhood, just like their sons.
“Fuck.”
“Eloquently said.” Paul stood up. “We need another round. Pitcher, or is it time for a bottle?” He glanced at Heath’s glass—he’d been at the bourbon since he’d sat down, but he was a good ways from drunk yet.
“Bottle,” he said, and Paul nodded and headed to the bar.
Emmett whistled, low but lustily, and Heath turned. Gabe, Pearl, and Ellen had walked in. They went straight to the bar, talking and laughing together. Heath watched Gabe, both hoping and fearing that she would see him. She didn’t.
Emmett leaned toward him. “Don’t hit me again, but damn, that new chick is fine. If you’re just gonna stare at her, y’oughta let a guy take a chance.”
“No,” he said, forcing his eyes away from the bar and to his friend. “She’s too young.”
“You hear her story?” Victor asked.
Paul came back with a bottle of Jim Beam and four glasses. “Whose story?” he asked as he sat down.
“Shut the fuck up,” Heath said. “Fucking vultures.” He poured himself a full glass of bourbon and took a long swallow.
Victor ignored him. “The new chick. Gabe. Her dad’s a fuckin’ mass murderer. You didn’t hear?”
Emmett nodded. Paul said, “Oh, right. Yeah. That’s truly shitty.”
“I bet she could use a cuddle. I bet she’d be real fuckin’ grateful for some affection.”
With barely a thought, just a bright flash of red rage, Heath kicked out at Emmett’s chair and knocked it right out from under the skinny son of a bitch. He landed on the wood floor with a shout, and the chair clattered away, and for a radius of about fifteen feet—which included Gabe and her new friends at the bar—Heath and Emmett had everyone’s complete attention.
Gabe stared right at him, her eyes sharp and curious. Damn. Every time, he got caught. Then she looked away and said something to Ellen.
She was wearing that black choker, and Heath wondered if his sister was right. He thought she probably was. It covered a scar.
“Shit and fuck! What’d you do that for?” Emmett stood and collected his chair. He brought it back to the table and sat down. Under his breath, so that only the table could hear, he added, “I was talkin’ about you, asshole. Fuck her or get yourself square some other way, man. I am over your feel-my-pain bullshit. I thought that was done. You had a bad turn. It’s time to move on.”
Heath brought his attention back to his friend. “Fuck you.”
Before Emmett could come back at that, Paul, always the calmest among them, said, “Heath. Keep your seat. Take a breath. Keep your cool.” He’d been looking around the bar, waving attention away from their scene. Heath’s eyes followed the direction Paul had been turned when he interrupted.
Brandon Black had walked in.
Heath had one enemy in the world: Brandon Black. Black was the reason for everything that had gone wrong in his life.
He was the reason for the dream and the loss it remembered.
He had no business breathing the same air Heath breathed. And yet there he was, and everyone who’d noticed was now focused on Heath, waiting to see what he would do.
Four years ago, Black would not have dared show his face in the Jack—or anywhere in or around Jasper Ridge—under imminent threat of having that face and the skull it covered beaten into mush. He’d been literally driven out of town. If it had been a hundred or so years earlier, he might have been tarred and feathered and taken out on a rail.
Instead, Heath’s father had driven him to Boise. And Black had stayed away.
But then Black’s father had fallen ill, and his mother had asked Heath if her only son could please come home. Three years had passed; Heath had healed enough to find pity for the sad woman with the dying husband, and he’d said yes.
Black the elder had died, but his son had stayed on, easing his way back into the community o
ver the past year, almost imperceptibly, so that even Heath’s close friends had stopped icing him out completely.
Watching Black amble to the bar as if he belonged there, and seeing Reese take his order after a guilty glance his way, Heath felt his mouth twist into a snarl.
“You okay?” Victor asked. “Let’s just get outta here. We can drink at your place. Raid your old man’s bar, like the old days.”
“No.” It made no sense, but he didn’t want to leave Gabe in the same place as that piece of shit. “I’m cool. Let him get his drink.”
He felt a pressure on his arm and looked down to see Emmett’s hand on it. “You’re shakin’, my friend. You sure?”
Heath pulled his arm free and filled his glass. “I’m sure.”
In his head, Ruthie’s screams ricocheted against his skull, and when he closed his eyes, he saw flames.
He finished his glass and poured it full again.
*****
He held it together for a long time. For several more glasses of bourbon. He’d even held it together when Black had pushed in between Gabe and Pearl and bought the women a drink. And a second. He’d held it together when Gabe laughed at something Black had said.
Heath and his friends had finished off a second bottle and made a dent in a third. In the back of his increasingly muddy mind, a mind that had become a pulsing red tunnel, with only Black and Gabe in focus, Heath suspected that his friends had decided to keep him drinking until he was too drunk to cause trouble.
They’d miscalculated the motivating quality of his hatred.
He had no claim on Gabe—he hadn’t even spoken a word to her in nearly three weeks—but that was a sober thought, and he’d drowned it.
Then Black gave him cause.
When Black set his hand on Gabe’s back and she’d shrugged it off, Heath sat up straighter in his chair. When Black then hooked his hand around the back of her neck, sinking into that wavy mass of dark hair, and she’d shrugged away again, Heath pushed his chair back from the table.
Then Black leaned in and said or did something, and Gabe pushed him away, with some force, and Heath was up and at the bar before his head realized it was drunk and began to swim.
Though he didn’t remember picking it up, he had an empty Jim Beam bottle in his hand, and he swung it at Black’s head. It didn’t break—bottles never broke like they did in the movies, and that was why they were, in reality, dangerous weapons—until Heath dropped it as Black reeled backward with his hand over his eye and temple. Heath charged in, grabbing his mortal enemy by the throat with one hand and slamming jabs into Black’s face with the other.
People were on him, trying to pull him back, but he shoved them all away. Black fell to the floor, and Heath dived after him, landing blow after blow, feeling blood washing over his hands and spattering his face, feeling bone give.
Black flailed his hands around the floor and came up with the broken neck of the bottle. He wielded it weakly, and Heath snatched it away. He pressed the jagged edge against Black’s throat.
He didn’t know if he would have killed him. He didn’t get the chance to know. Reese and Paul had him by the arms and finally managed to pull him off. He fought, but booze and fatigue were on him hard now, and he no longer had the strength to fight them.
With a last twist of his shoulder in Reese’s grip, Heath yelled at the gooey mess on the floor. “I swear to GOD, you murderous son of a bitch. If you ever come near her again, I will pull your fucking heart out with my HANDS.”
His friends wrestled him to a chair and shoved him in it. “I’m cool, I’m cool!” he barked. “I’m done.”
He looked up, straight into Gabe’s old, haunted, beautiful eyes. They were wide and afraid.
Of him.
She had both hands up around her throat, over that black choker, like she was protecting herself.
“Gabe,” he said, but he didn’t think anyone heard him over the commotion. He’d barely heard himself.
She ran out of the bar.
He tried to stand, but now there were four men on him, and his energy was spent. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Her friends stood in place and watched her go, their mouths gaping, until Reese said, “Jesus, ladies—git! I got your tab!”
Then they hurried after her.
Reese watched them go, then waved a couple of guys over to Black, who was still moaning on the floor. “Pick him up, take him to the back. Linda!”
“On it,” his head waitress said. She’d stitched up more than a few guys in her time. As Cole and Zack heaved Black up and dragged him away, Linda tutted. “He’s gonna need more than a stitch, though.”
“We’ll sort that later. For now, just stop him bleedin’ all over my damn saloon.”
With Black dispatched, Reese turned to Heath. “Dammit, man.”
If Reese was looking for an apology, he wasn’t going to get one. Heath just stared, too tired and drunk and pissed off to form his face into an expression.
His friends had let him loose; he couldn’t recall when that had happened. He folded forward, meaning to put his head in his hands, but he kept falling, straight into the dark.
*****
DAAAA-DEEEEE!
Heath jolted awake with the smell of fire and smoke and burning thick in his nose and mouth. His throat was raw, and he could feel the asphalt digging into his knees.
Somebody had him, was shaking him, holding him back, keeping him away, and he struck out, landing a sidelong blow on a bearded jaw.
“Ow! Fuck! Wake up!”
He blinked, and blinked again, and saw his brother’s face looming over him. A familiar light fixture in the ceiling glowed dimly beyond Logan’s head.
He was in one of the guest rooms at the big house. His old room.
“You good?” his brother asked.
Not sure of the answer, Heath nodded, and then threw himself sideways as everything he’d ever eaten or drunk in his life charged up his throat. Logan swung a lined wastebasket under his head, and he heaved until he was empty.
“Jesus hell,” he moaned when he could roll back to the pillow.
“Yeah.” Logan, in pajama bottoms—Heath must have woken him up—sat down on the side of the bed. “You were yelling your head off. I thought this shit was behind you.”
“Me too.” He put his hands up to rub his face and realized that his right hand hurt like a fucker. Pulling it back, he focused and examined it in the low light, and then the night rushed back into place. “Fuck.”
Logan chuckled without a lot of humor. “Yeah, little brother. You gave the tongues something to wag about, no doubt. Black’s in the hospital. You broke his face all kind of ways. But he’s not so stupid he’d press charges, and nobody’s gonna push the point. There’s probably nobody in three counties don’t know about Syb and him and what happened, and probably nobody not named Black don’t think he deserves every beating from here to eternity. For Ruthie if nothing else.”
Heath felt much too shitty to deal with this conversation. “Shut up, Loge.”
True to form, his brother didn’t shut up. “Why now, Heath? People’re saying it was about that new girl, the one Em’s all fired up about.”
He thought of the fear in Gabe’s eyes, and he rubbed his own to try to erase the image. “You know what it was about. I was drunk. He was there. I lost my shit. The end.”
“If you say so.” Logan stood up. “Okay. You gonna hold now till morning?
He didn’t care; he just wanted to be alone. “Yeah, I’m good. Sorry I hit you.”
Rubbing his jaw, Logan laughed. “Yeah. S’okay. Rest up, little brother. Dad’s got shit to talk about in the morning.”
Vaguely remembering that there was some kind of important news, Heath nodded. When he was alone in the room, he closed his eyes and stopped fighting the movie his mind wanted to make.
Immediately, his head filled with flame and stink, with the screams of his five-year-old daughter, and with his own screams as he was wres
tled to the road and stopped from running to the burning car to save her.
Sybil, his cheating cunt of a drunk wife, had been driving and had passed out at the wheel and run off the road, flipping into a rocky ravine. She’d been screaming, too, but Heath never heard her in his dreams. All he heard was Ruthie.
Brandon fucking Black, Heath’s friend from the time they were six and until he’d started banging Heath’s wife, had been in that car. He’d gotten out and clear before the fire started.
He’d left Heath’s wife and child behind to be burned alive.
Chapter Seven
During the week, Alyson, Morgan Cahill’s housekeeper and cook, made meals for their dad and Logan—and, usually, Heath. On Sundays, Emma brought her family over to the big house and kept up their mother’s tradition of a full-family breakfast. She did the same on Wednesdays, for dinner.
But Alyson had weekends off, and Emma had a busy family of her own, so Saturdays meant the Cahill men were on their own. Meal-wise, that meant cornflakes and cold cuts.
On this Saturday, Heath flopped out of the bed in the guest room and stumbled to the bathroom, then, dressed just as Logan had left him when he’d apparently dumped him onto the bed, in his jeans and socks, he made his way downstairs, leaning on the wall the whole way.
He hadn’t felt this flattened in years. His right hand ached fiercely—it was swollen, and he had trouble flexing it. Had he broken something in it? Fuck. His work was in his hands.
His brother and father sat at the round oak table in the kitchen, their father with the Boise paper held up before his face—he would never accept the idea that news could be read in any other way—and Logan leaning over his tablet, next to a bowl of corn flakes. Neither one acknowledged Heath.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 7