by H. P. Bayne
“Mind on the task, man,” Dez said. “Leave the rest to me.”
As they drove farther in, the signs of disaster were less obvious, the flood not having ravaged this part of the large island quite as badly. But the area remained just as dangerous, if not more so, given the homes were more habitable.
Ahead, a man appeared in the roadway and, as Dez continued forward, several more flanked him, fanning out across the street. Several, Dez noted, had guns.
“Shit,” Forbes said. “Just go through them.”
“I might hit someone.”
“So you hit someone.”
“Are you serious?”
“Hey, you stop or try to turn, we’re dead. Just floor it. They’ll move.”
“Bloody hell,” Dez said. The damnable thing was Forbes was right. If bullets started flying, he stood a better chance of avoiding them if he was speeding past. That said, would-be killers or not, Dez would have a hard time sleeping if he ran over someone. Saying a silent prayer, he stepped on the gas. “Get your head down and hold on.”
Blaring the horn, Dez sped toward the group. The sound of three gunshots spurred him on, and he held one eye shut and squinted through the other as he neared potential impact. The group cleared a path for him at the last moment, throwing themselves onto the pavement as Dez blew past. A hail of gunfire sounded behind them but it didn’t sound or feel like anything impacted.
A wild laugh erupted from his throat as the rush of narrow escape hit him. Forbes didn’t sound quite so excited.
“Fucking hell. Fucking hell.”
“You all right?”
Forbes stared at him. “Ask me that when we get out of this hellhole.”
But the fear had left Dez, at least for the moment; he could only hope his courage would hold out once they reached their destination.
Forbes was still providing directions, but Dez now knew their destination without being told.
The smoke, rising from behind a row of overgrown trees and neglected homes up ahead, was all he needed. He would not easily forget the words spoken from within the frozen sneer on Lorinda’s face.
They will burn. They will all burn.
“It should be just up ahead and to the right,” Forbes said. “Must be one of these estates.” He finally looked up from his screen. “Holy hell, it’s got to be where that smoke’s coming from.”
Dez would have made a smart comment had his pounding pulse not been threatening to choke him, had he not known instinctively Sully would be in the middle of that.
Dez turned through an open gate and flew down the treed drive, the branches of the untrimmed elms bowing low enough to scrape at the top of the vehicle until, on the far side, they parted to reveal a large house in flames. Nearby, close enough to be clear it was meant to catch fire, was a white delivery van.
“No,” Dez said. “Jesus Christ, no.”
“What?” Forbes said. “You think she’s in there? You think Greta’s in there?”
Dez threw the van into park and jumped out, shouting directions. “Move the van! If it goes up, it’ll explode!”
Fire was visible through the house’s windows, the open doorway encircled by tongues of it. It was only a matter of minutes before the house was fully engulfed.
A small pond lay just to the left of the driveway, and Dez sprinted over and belly flopped in, soaking himself head to toe before racing back to the house.
Forbes’s voice came from behind him. “There’s no key!”
“Hotwire the damn thing!” Dez yelled back, not stopping as he ran headlong through the doorway. He thought he heard Forbes yelling at him, but he didn’t care. Only one thing mattered, and he knew without a doubt it was somewhere inside this house.
The smoke wasn’t heavy yet, but it was bad enough, the worst of it pillowing against the high ceilings as flames ate their way up a set of curtains in the sitting room and chewed away at the edge of an area rug.
Dez screamed his brother’s name and ended in a cough, keeping low as he moved through the house.
The smoke grew heavier and the heat higher as Dez kept low. Not for not the first time in his adult life, he cursed his six and a half feet.
He called out again for Sully, this time managing just the first syllable before choking on the name. A coughing fit followed, and he moved lower still, dropping into a full crouch as he continued into a kitchen. The smoke was even worse here, black and poisonous, and the tears that formed amid coughing grew thick enough to obscure vision.
There was no sense trying to call out, no way he’d manage anything other than a squeak. He dropped to his hands and knees, pressing forward, holding his breath as he prayed for a break in this somewhere.
His eyes burned, and he gave them what relief he could, clamping them shut as he felt his way forward. He had yet to attempt another breath, and he knew without seeing there would be no oxygen left to allow it.
What was left of his logic suggested he could go back the way he came—if he could figure out which way that was—but he knew that wasn’t an option. Not really. He’d come here for Sully, and he wasn’t going anywhere without him. They were leaving here together, one way or another.
He was still in what he believed was the kitchen, and that was where he’d be staying, unable to find a way forward as he butted against a wall in one direction and something metallic—fridge? stove?—in another. His head swam, starved of oxygen and sense, his body acting on instinct as he drew in a partial breath that left him gasping and choking. Each cough drew in more smoke-poisoned air, and he collapsed onto his belly as unconsciousness lurked just inches away, preparing to take him down.
And then he heard a voice.
Quiet at first. Then louder. His name repeated over and over, coaxing and then ordering him forward.
“Dez. Dez! Open your eyes. Open your eyes, Dez!”
He obeyed, hot tears partially blinding him as he cracked one eyelid open. He was amazed to see the blackness had abated, a small clear bubble around him, enabling him to take in a ragged breath, to see the edge of a fridge on one side and a wall on the other. Just in front was an opening, an entrance to what looked to be a rear porch or a mud room.
And there, standing in that gap, a gentle smile on his freckled face, strawberry blond hair made darker by the water dripping from the ends, was Aiden.
33
She was there, hovering nearby, watching, waiting.
At some point—Sully had no memory of how or when—he had made it to his feet, and she was now standing in front of him, large, kohl-rimmed eyes staring up into his.
And for the first time, when she opened her mouth, he heard her.
Her voice was what he’d imagined it to be, soft and feminine with the ring of youth. “You’re giving up, Sullivan. You need to fight. You have to live.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? All these years and you never told me you were my mother. Why didn’t you want me to know?”
“You were afraid of me.”
“Only at first. I was afraid of everything back then. If I’d known—”
“You deserved better than me, than this family.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I should have gone back for you. If I had, I wouldn’t have ended up here, with them. I might have lived. But I wanted you to escape the fate of my grandpa and my brother. And I wanted you to have something better than I had to give. Instead, what I gave you was pain.”
“That’s not true. I found a family.”
“And that’s why you need to hold on. Dez is coming for you. He’s close.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“I will always be nearby, Sullivan, and I won’t cross until you’re beside me. But that time isn’t now. You have so much more to do.”
“I’m tired, Mom. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”
“What about Dez? He’s already broken. Losing you again would kill him.”
“He’ll get through it.” But the wor
ds rang untrue even as he uttered them. Just a few years shy of thirty, Dez had already dealt with far too much heartbreak.
“The danger’s not passed for him. Rhona’s daughter is back, and she’s waiting. She’ll kill him. Now, listen. You need to fight. The drugs are slowing your heart but it won’t stop unless you allow it. You need to wake up, Sullivan.”
“You mean this is a dream?”
“It’s an in-between. You need to go back. Please. I need you to live. I need you to live for me.”
She was weeping, black eye makeup streaking her cheeks, and Sully realized he was seeing the Purple Girl free of blood.
He reached out for her, expecting to find nothing more substantive than the usual combination of energy, consciousness and air. What he found instead was a solid shoulder in his gentle grasp, the feel of flesh and bone beneath his touch. He choked on a sob as he folded the slight teen into an embrace that might have been too tight had she been fully alive to feel it. He felt her arms around him, squeezing back just as hard.
She pulled away first, that familiar urgency in her eyes. “Go, Sullivan. You need to go. Now.”
“What about you? You can’t stay on this side. If I find your mother and sister, if I can bring them to justice, then—”
“No. They can’t know you’re still alive. They’ll come back for you. They won’t stop, not ever. I will find them, and I’ll watch them. If you see me again, you’ll know they’re close by, and you should take precautions.”
“I need you to tell me how to help you.”
“You’ve already helped me. I’ve found my peace in you.”
Sully gave her one last hug, closing his eyes tight and committing the feeling to memory, praying it would still be there when he returned to the dark reality of full consciousness. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too. I always will.”
Sully opened his eyes. The image and the feel of Lucky was gone, replaced by darkness and the unsettling feeling of being upside down. There was a solid pressure against his abdomen and the jarring feeling of movement as awareness settled in more fully, and he became aware he was slung over someone’s shoulder.
He drew in a partial breath and started coughing immediately as smoke invaded his throat.
“Hang on, Sull. We’re almost out. Don’t you give up on me, buddy, you hear me?”
The voice, low and gravelly with smoke inhalation and, quite possibly, emotion, was the sound of safety, and Sully nodded his agreement before realizing Dez wouldn’t see it.
“I hear you,” Sully managed before breaking into another coughing fit. In the midst of it, he heard what he recognized as one of Dez’s ridiculous laughs of relief. The sound of his brother’s broken tension eased Sully’s as well and, by the time he felt the cool outside air against his face, he was no longer struggling to breathe.
Or maybe it had something to do with Aiden, standing as he was in the back doorway of the house, an aura-sized bubble around him untarnished by smoke and flame.
Sully had been in the dark so long, the low sun was to his vision what the heat and smoke had been to his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut against it as he was first righted and then laid down in what felt like a layer of long grass. Beside him, he heard the heavy sound of Dez’s body impacting against ground and a series of heaving, gasping breaths punctuated with periodic coughs.
Sully wrenched open one eye and blinked away the tears created by smoke, heat and the outside light. He turned his head, taking in the sight of Dez’s smoke-smudged face next to him, face twisted in a grimace as he rubbed at his chest.
“You okay, D?”
Dez’s response began as it so often did when they survived one of their mutual scrapes: with a wide grin and a chuckle. He turned his head, meeting Sully’s gaze with red, watery eyes.
“Am now. You?”
Sully’s smile was a natural response to his brother’s. “Am now.”
They rested back in the thigh-high, wild grass as they worked on drawing in fresh oxygen, breathing becoming less laboured and riddled with hacking coughs. Sully lifted himself just enough to look back to the door they’d left by. Aiden was gone, replaced by billows of black smoke and hungry flame shooting up the walls and through the roof. Any longer in there, Aiden’s protection or not, and neither of them would be lying here breathing.
A moment of panic seized Sully and, lying back, he felt around inside his jacket until his fingers closed over what he’d sought: the notebook.
“Think you can walk?” Dez asked, voice no less croaky than it had been on the basement stairs. “We need to get out of here.”
Sully wasn’t sure, head still spinning under the influence of tranquilizer and smoke, but he was willing to give it a go, bearing in mind his mother’s warning. Margaret was returning, and she’d go through Dez to get to Sully.
He was about to nod yes when he froze under the sound of an approaching voice. It belonged to a man, not a woman, and he was addressing someone named Greta, not Margaret.
“Greta. Greta, wait. I need you to talk to me. Please.”
“That’s just Raynor and his wife,” Dez said. “Stay down. I don’t want them to see you if there’s any way to avoid it.”
By the time the warning bell sounded in Sully’s brain, it was too late to stop Dez from climbing shakily to his feet. “Dez, wait. Her name’s not Greta. It’s—”
The woman’s voice drowned out his whispered warning. And Dez had taken a few steps forward, distancing himself from his still-concealed brother.
“Dez,” she said. “What are you doing here?” To Sully, she didn’t sound overly surprised, which made perfect sense since, given her connection with Brennan, she’d no doubt aided in Dez’s premature burial the other night.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
There was a short pause in the conversation, ended by a stunned-sounding Forbes.
“Greta, what are you doing?”
The warmth from the house fire was stolen from Sully at Dez’s words. “Put the gun down, Greta.”
“Where is he?” she asked. “Where’s Sullivan?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sullivan who?” Forbes asked. “Sullivan Gray? Greta, he died two years ago.”
“No,” she said. “He’s here, and he’s alive. Even in a place like The Forks, nothing stays hidden forever.” She spoke more loudly, as if to ensure Sully would hear should he be on the opposite end of the property. “Come out, Sullivan. Come out or the next time you see Dez, he’ll be one of your ghosts.”
Dez spoke in a mumble through largely closed lips, quiet so only his brother would hear. “Sully, no.”
But the time for concealment was over, Dez’s life worth far more than any threat Sully would face by revealing himself. He forced himself to his feet as Dez, in front of him and just to the right, heaved a pained sigh.
“Damn it, Sull.”
Forbes and Greta stood to the north side of the house, Rhona’s revolver in Greta’s hand levelled unwaveringly at Dez. And, unfortunately for him, his height and muscle made him a significant target.
Forbes, staring at Sully through saucer-round eyes, had yet to close his mouth. He fumbled through a few attempts at speech until he finally came up with something he could pronounce. “Jesus Christ.”
Dez spoke through a forced grin, an effort at de-escalation. “I see the resemblance but, no, wrong guy.”
Forbes looked to be fighting to turn his gaze to the other sight which probably seemed just as impossible as Sully’s return from the dead: his estranged wife aiming a shaking gun at the brothers. While it was clear she was no gun expert, that probably made the situation worse given the unpredictable tremble of her finger on the trigger. Add to that the fact she looked to be tweaking out on one or more substances, and the situation was set to go from bad to worse at a moment’s notice.
“Greta, come on, babe. Someone’s going to get hurt.”
She gigg
led, the sound wild rather than innocent. “Really, Forbes?”
“What are you on this time?”
“That’s just your trouble, baby. You always want to explain me away. It was easier to say it was drugs or mental illness than to just accept me the way I am.”
“But this isn’t you. You’re not a killer.”
She laughed again, higher pitched this time and containing even less humour. “You think so? Look me up. You’ll find out a few things about me you wouldn’t believe.”
“I have looked you up,” Forbes said. “Your past is clean.”
“You never wondered why there was no trace of me before I was sixteen? That you never saw a birth certificate, anything with my name on it before then?”
Forbes stumbled over his words, so Greta helped out. Her voice was growing louder, her gun hand waving wildly between Dez and Sully as she vented her anger at her estranged husband. “It didn’t bother you, did it? Because you’d rather I was the perfect little angel you fell in love with than have to face the truth about me. Let me tell it to you now. Or better yet, let Sullivan. Go on, Sullivan. Tell Forbes a story. Make it a good one.”
Sully dragged his eyes from the gun and looked to Forbes. “Her real name is Margaret Dule, daughter of Rhona Dule.” He risked a glance at Dez, whose eyes remained fixed on Greta. “Rhona’s the one you’ve been dealing with, Dez. Not Lucky. Rhona was keeping an eye on you, making sure you weren’t getting too close while they satisfied themselves I was Lucky’s son and that I shared the one trait with her. Once they had their proof, their plan was to kill me.”
“I was starting to come around to that,” Dez said.
Sully returned his attention to Forbes, providing the history Rhona and Lorinda had shared. At the end, Greta provided her confirmation.
“I didn’t get far after the fire at the Blakes. I was charged with three counts of murder and two of attempted murder, so I faked insanity. Any decent shrink probably would have seen right through me. But you know better than most, don’t you, Sullivan? Dr. Gerhardt is no decent shrink. After two years in Lockwood, I wished I’d just pled to my charges in court and taken a youth custody sentence.”