by Jim Heskett
CHAPTER TWO
20 DAYS UNTIL
On the way to Nederland, Micah tried to brainstorm a dozen or more reasons not to go, and he ran each one past Boba Fett. Boba held his little plastic tongue, and so Micah found himself trudging up Canyon Road in Boulder, inching along the winding street toward that little hippie commune of a thousand residents.
Magda would not be happy to see him. They hadn’t spoken since before the trial. She’d cut him out of her life long before that mess as a result of years of bubbling tension, finally brought to a boil during one of Micah’s last visits home. Four or five Christmases ago, maybe. He couldn’t remember anymore.
She would never let him forget the selfish mistake he’d made that had put her in danger, over ten years ago now. And rightfully so.
“Why am I doing this?” Micah asked the dashboard. In some ways, that drug dealer’s pursuit of him was an excuse. Micah knew that. Maybe half a decade of not speaking with Magda would open the door for a way to heal the old wound. Part of Micah’s sobriety was making amends for the things he’d done to hurt people, and his sister was high on that list. But he didn’t know anything about who she was now, even. She lived in a house with a bunch of other people, like some kind of co-op. Was she an artist, or possibly an organic farmer?
Micah entered Nederland well past midnight. The tiny town sat in a bowl, surrounded by foothills running up to mountain peaks. The Eldora ski resort was a mile or so past the town. White strips of the ski runs broke the otherwise solid green mass of trees blanketing the mountainside, a snowy triangle looming above Nederland.
Lights from dozens of houses dotted the foothills of the mountains around town. He passed the reservoir that marked the beginning of Nederland proper and scouted around for a motel. Dropping by her house this late would not be the best move.
After driving along quiet streets for a half hour and not seeing anything, he parked on a dark and barren dirt road, got a sleeping bag out of the trunk, and tried to get comfortable in the back seat.
***
A few hours later, Micah awoke, shivering from the cold when morning lightened his car. Frosty condensation obscured the inside of his windows. He rubbed his elbow against the glass until he could see outside. In a snowy valley to his left, a herd of deer were standing dead still, steamy jets of air pluming from their nostrils as the only motion near them.
Micah got out, stretched, and slid into the driver’s seat. He drove into town and found a coffee shop to get a bagel. The woman at the counter was wearing earth-toned coveralls with a tank top underneath that showed off the tattoos covering most of her exposed flesh, and she had dreadlocks tied up in a messy bun on top of her head. Not the kind of uniform and clean dreads you’d get at a salon. These were grungy chunks of coagulated hair sprouting from her scalp. Colorado mountain people usually had a certain look to them, like a perfect marriage of blue-collar worker and sun-worshipping tree hugger.
He munched his bagel, sipped his coffee, and checked his phone to see if Allison had returned his voicemail. She hadn’t. The most likely reason was that she’d skipped town when she realized how mad Seth would be about her losing all that cocaine. She was a clever woman; no reason to think she’d blindly wait for that steel cage to slam shut.
Not like Micah, who’d let the drug dealer jam a screwdriver into his leg. As if he’d invited it.
After breakfast, he stopped at a drug store to get a real bandage and hydrogen peroxide for the still-sore cut. The street sign next to the crosswalk read NEDESTRIAN CROSSING.
Then he headed out to Caribou Road to find the house and his pulse rose with each tick of the odometer. Half a dozen different scenarios of how the meeting with his sister would go flicked before his eyes. The one he hoped for the most, the tearful reunion, was also the least likely.
But as he drove along Caribou and craned his neck to find the turnoff, he became more and more sure that this needed to happen. That he was doing the right thing. That the moment he saw Magda, it would be the first time in nearly three years that he would have spoken to anyone from his life before the trial. His first connection with family in a long time.
Maybe this was the cure for the lingering loneliness that had plagued him ever since moving to Denver. Or maybe not.
He spotted the house through a sliver of trees as Caribou started to wind up a mountain road. A snowy path off to the side ended at a rusty metal gate, and he got out to open it. The house number 1623 was painted on a board nailed to a tree nearby. A little pile of snow rested on top of the sign.
Micah hopped out and pushed back the gate, but when he returned to the car, he froze. Couldn’t press on the gas pedal.
“What the hell am I doing here?” he said to Boba Fett, who was now sitting in the cup holder. “Is this the kind of thing I’m going to tell myself later that I should have known better?”
Back when he was still in the government’s program, contacting family was absolutely forbidden. Now that he’d voluntarily dropped out, doing this was still a bad idea, but no one could tell him not to. An urge for the familiar rose.
Magda was up here in the mountains, secluded, anonymous. She had little online presence. Would contacting her put her in the line of fire?
Before Micah could answer that question, a head popped out between two trees. Magda. She’d cut her hair short, barely above her collarbone, but Micah had no trouble recognizing her. She had their mother’s proud chin and button nose. Same as always.
She was clutching a bundle of sticks in her arms, squinting at the car. Micah remembered his tinted windows, and his hand hesitated at the door. Whatever came next, there was no turning back now.
He opened the car door and stepped out into the crunchy snow, and Magda dropped the wood in her arms as the whites of her eyes gleamed in the morning sun. Her chest heaved up and down as recognition lit up her face.
She gasped. “What? Is that you?”
Micah didn’t know if he should smile or nod, or what to do next. He left his car running in front of the gate and took a few steps through the trees toward his sister.
“Hey, sis.” He tried to sound cool and unaffected like a big brother should, but he could hear the unease in his tone. “Been a while, right?”
Tears streamed down her face as he narrowed the distance between them. “Michael,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”
Michael. Not Micah.
Explaining his new name was going to take some time, but that could wait. A long confession over a cup of coffee in town. “In a way, I was dead. It’s been a long way getting here.”
He stepped up onto the bank next to the driveway, and she threw her arms around him. Then, she held him out at arm’s length, and slapped him across the jaw so hard that he felt like she’d smacked him with a frying pan.
CHAPTER THREE
Micah wrapped a hand around his throbbing jaw. He didn’t remember his sister having such a powerful arm, but damn, she’d laid a smack on him harder than half the hits he’d ever taken in the boxing ring.
The McBriars had always been a feisty lot, something he hadn’t considered much in the last couple years. Memories as unexercised muscles. The world of backyard football games with hot dogs on the grill and beer in coolers had felt far away, for a long time now.
Micah took in the accumulation of a decade of seething on Magda’s face. He’d grown so accustomed to her anger, it seemed normal.
“Why are you here?”
Before Micah could respond, a woman’s voice said, “Magdalene? Where are you?”
Without taking her pointed eyes from Micah, Magda said, “over here, Lilah. We have a guest.”
Twigs on the ground crunched. From the thicket of trees emerged a woman with a shaved head. No cap in the cold weather, and a hint of heat rose to blur the air above her scalp. Tall, at least six feet, maybe thirty or thirty-five years old. She had model-high cheekbones and arched eyebrows. A strong jaw that was still feminine. She might have been beautifu
l, were it not for the scowl on her face.
“This is private property,” the woman—presumably Lilah—said, stomping through the snow, dodging trees to get to him.
“No,” Magda said, “it’s okay. This is my brother.”
Before Magda could out him as being Michael, he shot out a hand to shake and said, “Micah.”
Magda cocked her head and stared at him with flared nostrils, but Micah ignored her questioning look. The last time they’d seen each other, he’d been Michael McBriar, before the trial, before Witness Protection.
Lilah observed his extended hand, but didn’t offer her own. “Breakfast is all gone, but we have coffee inside, if you want it.” Lilah tossed a look at Magda, then spun and disappeared into the trees.
“She’s a cheery sort, right?” Micah said.
Magda swished her lips back and forth. “Why did you tell her your name is Micah?”
“Because it is now. Micah Reed.”
He could see the realization settle over her face. Her eyebrows shot a half inch up her forehead and her mouth creaked open. Little tendrils of steam leaked out as she breathed.
Her lower lip fluttered. “You selfish asshole.”
“I deserve that.”
“Yes, you do. That’s where you went, after you got arrested. The government hid you and gave you that whole witness custody thing.”
He nodded, impressed that she’d put it together so quickly. Magda had always been the smart one.
“We all thought you were dead, Michael.”
“Micah. You have to call me Micah. That other person doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Do Mom and Dad know?”
He shook his head. “They don’t, and they can’t. I shouldn’t even be here, really.”
Her face hardened. “Then why are you here?”
“I need a place to stay for a few days. A week, tops.”
She crossed her arms. “Because you’re in trouble, right?”
“It’s not like it used to be, Mags. I’m sober now and it’s a different kind of trouble. It’s not my fault.”
She wasn’t buying it. Why should she? How many times had Micah lied to his parents and his brother and sister, acting as if he was going to suddenly straighten up and stop causing trouble?
She didn’t respond to his comments, just collected the branches she’d dropped, then she jerked her head into the trees. “You can park in front of the house, but don’t block the driveway.”
She didn’t give him a chance to say anything before she strode away, so he hopped in his car and crept along the snowy path through the trees. Around the bend, nestled in a small clearing with a thicket of trees all around and steep foothills behind, stood a massive house. Like a log cabin on steroids, but dark and a bit creepy. Had to be at least five or six bedrooms, part stone and part wood. Magda stood on the wooden porch out front, waiting for him.
He parked and held out his hands to help with the firewood, but she shook her head.
“Who was that woman?” Micah said.
“Lilah. She runs the house.”
“Runs it?”
She leaned in close. “Listen to me, Micah, or whatever you’re calling yourself. I have a good thing living here. If Lilah decides you can stay, then you can stay. But if you screw this up for me, then you can go right back to being disappeared. You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Now, you wait here while I go explain to her what you want.”
She dropped the bundle of wood on the front porch and disappeared into the house, leaving Micah alone in the ankle-deep snow. He caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye, and squinted at a window on the second floor. A young woman with long, curly blonde hair looked down at him. She raised a hand in a half-hearted wave, and Micah smiled back at her. The window curtain closed.
This was all happening so fast, Micah didn’t know what to think of it. He would have preferred to take Magda out to coffee, to explain what his life had been the last couple of years. The end of his time with the Sinaloa cartel, his arrest, the trial, prison time, then becoming someone else to move to Denver. But she seemed much more interested in what this giantess Lilah had to say about him.
He wanted to tell her how good it was to see her, even if she couldn’t stand him. How that a link to anything positive from his old life was like a window in a dark room.
A couple minutes later, Magda creaked open the massive front door and waved him in.
“Did she say yes?” Micah said.
“She wants to talk to you first.”
He entered the house, which felt much like walking into an old person’s home. Furniture made from darkly varnished wood. A big fire raged in a stone fireplace in a den to the left. A set of carpeted stairs disappeared up to the right, with shelves of knick knacks and assorted little things filling all the wall space. Like a bed and breakfast, except without a fat cat lounging in front of the fire.
Magda pointed to the den, and Micah followed her finger to see Lilah sitting in an ornate chair with a high back, the kind of massive thing a queen would require. A tall, ticking grandfather clock behind her, mesmerizing pendulum swinging back and forth.
Lilah pointed at the floor a few feet away from the chair. “Sit.”
Micah did as he was told, trying not to wince at the pain of his leg injury. The rug beneath his butt felt cold.
As he sat, Lilah began an interrogation. “You’re Magda’s brother.”
“Yes.”
“Older or younger?”
“Older. Two years.”
“So that makes you twenty-nine.”
He had to do the math for a quick second. Birthday wasn’t too far away. “Correct.”
“Were you raised Catholic, like her?”
This line of questioning was odd, but Micah played along. “I was, yes.”
“Do you still practice it?”
“Not really. Not since I was a teenager.”
Lilah chewed on this for a minute. “And what do you believe now?”
Micah tried to get Magda’s attention, but she was standing at the edge of the den, with her eyes on the floor.
He could have explained AA’s non-religious spiritual program, but he didn’t want to delve into all the details of his complicated relationship with his higher power, since most people didn’t understand how AA was not actually a religion. “I guess you could say I’m more spiritual.”
She nodded and leaned forward, and the perpetual scowl on her face took on a serious quality. Whatever was about to come next, she wanted his full attention.
“Tell me your truth.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, and Magda’s eyes were still on the floor. A few smart-ass options sprang to mind, but Magda’s warning about how they’d be done forever if he messed this up played on a loop in his head.
Instead, he said the first honest thing that came to mind. “A couple years ago, I was drinking myself to death. I got sober, and now I need to repair all the things I’ve done wrong. I need to be a better person.”
Lilah sat back and tented her hands, appearing sated with his answer. “There’s no drinking in this house. No drugs.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“There are other rules,” she said, “and you will learn them soon. But Magda will help you get settled. I don’t normally allow that, but I’ll make an exception this time.”
Allow it?
Magda seemed surprised, but she hopped to action, waving Micah upstairs. He tried to put a hand on her back to guide her up the stairs, but she flinched away from his touch, and she shot a look at Lilah, who narrowed her eyes in response.
What was going on here?
Micah followed her up the creaking stairs. “You can stay in Eagle’s room for now,” she said. “He usually sleeps on the couch when he’s in town, anyway, which isn’t often these days.”
“Eagle?”
“I think he’s Cherokee, or maybe Navajo,” she said as she usher
ed him along a dark hallway toward the end. One door was cracked, and Micah caught a blue eye peering at him through the tiny slit into the room. A lock of curly blonde hair dangled below that eye. The same girl who’d been checking him out from the upstairs window.
Magda led him into a small room at the end with a single bed, a dresser, a table, and a lamp. Cold and wooden floorboards underfoot. The window looked out on the snowy hill behind the house.
“This is… bare,” he said.
“We all have something like it. When everyone is home, we’re all usually in the den or the kitchen, anyway.”
“How many people live here?”
“Well,” she said, “there’s me and Lilah, Rodney, Hannah and Garrett, and sometimes Eagle. For now. One of ours is coming home soon, too.”
“‘One of ours’? Magda, what is going on here? Why is everything so vague and weird?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”
They looked at each other without speaking for a moment. The corners of her mouth pulled down, then the tears came.
“I really thought you were dead,” she said.
“I know. I’m so sorry.” He held out his arms to hug her, but she hesitated. Then, as the tears reached her chin, she folded into his arms, and he embraced his sister for the second time today.
But the hug only lasted for three seconds, because footsteps came to a stop outside the room’s open door.
“Magdalene!” Lilah shouted.
Magda gasped and pushed Micah back. Lilah stomped into the room, brushing him aside. She raised her hand, and Micah made a motion to stop her, but before he could, Lilah smacked Magda aside her head with a closed fist.
If he’d been thinking clearly, he would have snatched Lilah’s open hand, bent her wrist behind her back, and used the leverage to force her against the wall. Applied some pressure to break her arm. But Micah was too shocked to do anything.