by Cora Brent
He stared at me. He betrayed no hint that anything I’d just said had made the slightest dent. Keeping a wary eye on him, I stood up and started backing toward the door. This would be the last time I would ever see this place. This would be the last time I’d ever utter a word directly to him. I turned around and had my hand on the doorknob when he let out a raspy laugh.
“How’s your wife, Cord?”
No. I wasn’t taking the bait. I opened the door.
“And your girls? How old are they now?”
The threat was clear. I paused, watching my hand close the door without having stepped outside.
“Maybe they’d like to find out they have a grandpa other than that waste of skin McCann.”
Slowly I turned around. Benton Gentry sat there grinning in all his bloated triumph. He rocked the chair back on its hind legs, clearly enjoying the sick expression I could feel crawling across my face. No, he wasn’t going to let us shake him loose that easily. He was a regenerating tumor that choked off life and breath. He was evil.
I found myself staring at the bottle on the table, imagining the glass broken and jagged, sharp enough to gouge an important piece of flesh that guarded a man’s lifeblood.
“What are you thinking, Cordero?”
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I stared through the bottle glass. Objects on the other side appeared wavy, distorted.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Benton whispered. He wagged a finger and then allowed his right hand to rest on his hip. “You figure you can take me down. You might be right. But son, there’s something you haven’t figured on and it’s hidden under my shirt here. You move sideways and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes. Self defense. Fact is you’re fucking lucky I haven’t done it yet.”
The evil giant laughs and gives the knight a rotten green-toothed grin. He is completely confident that he will easily destroy the knight, as he has destroyed everyone else who has ever stood up to him. It’s what evil giants like him do. He ruins all that is good. And once the knight is gone there will be no one to stop him from invading the peaceful kingdom and attacking everyone and everything in his way.
“I hate you.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. The words were primitive, delivered in a growl.
But the whole time the knight is thinking, ‘I must win. No matter what, I must win.’
Only now did I fully realize my mistake. The sight of the gun took the air out of me. If I rushed him he’d shoot. If I turned and ran out the door he’d probably fire anyway. Shooting a man in the back wasn’t the outcome of self-defense but maybe Benton just didn’t care. He was drunk and he was crazy and he was so filled with wicked bile that the law was nothing but a distant nuisance.
And either way I’d be dead. Saylor widowed, my girls orphaned. Benton Gentry’s final word on the matter. Except it wouldn’t be. If this was the end of me, then this was going to be the end of him too.
The knight has his sword raised, prepared to die fighting if that’s what it takes to defeat the evil giant, when suddenly….
I had my back to the door but the sudden stream of light into the room and the squeal of brakes that stopped not ten feet away threw Benton off balance. The gun went slack in his hand and confusion took over as he squinted into the glare. I saw my chance and took it, my right foot kicking out with enough force to upset the table and send it crashing at an angle right into his chest. A bolt of pain shot through my shin but I ignored it and leapt over the table to grab the gun that had clattered to the floor as Benton scrambled around like a crippled rat.
The knight’s two brothers, great knights themselves, come rushing in just in time! They stand beside their brother, offering up their swords together.
“CORD!” my brothers cried and there they were, standing in the doorway in wide-eyed shock as my hand steadily pointed the gun where it needed to go.
I couldn’t drop it. I wouldn’t drop it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CREED
Chase drove as fast as he dared while I gritted my teeth and grabbed the door handle. Not out of fear over the way the truck careened through the night but because if I didn’t have something solid to hold onto I might bust right out of my skin.
We hadn’t said a word since we closed ourselves in Carson’s tow truck and burned rubber getting out of the parking lot. There was no way to be sure where Cord had gone until we got there but somehow I knew we were headed to the right place. Carson had briefed Chase on his tense conversation with Cord but even before that I had the nagging sense that something wasn’t right with my usually level-headed brother. Of course today had been a tough one for us but it seemed Chase and I were alone in our relief over Maggie’s death. It was over. Tragic and awful anyway, yet still closure.
But somehow I couldn’t get a read on Cord and I’d always been able to read Cord like a large print book. I could tell when he was hurt, when he was angry. Years ago I caught on right away when he fell hard for a hometown girl who should have hated him forever. I could tell when he was calm and when he was at ease. And I could tell when fury simmered in his heart, threatening to erupt.
“Hurry,” I urged Chase, breaking the silence. He threw me a look that said he understood and didn’t need any prompting.
I loosened my grip on the door handle. What did I expect to find when we got there? I shut my mind off to the possibilities as soon as they started invading. Benton Gentry was not only vicious but he was manipulative as fuck. If he started taunting Cord with thinly veiled threats to his family then there were no guarantees that Cord’s common sense would win out in a battle between logic and protective instinct.
There weren’t any streetlights this far from the center of town and Chase nearly missed the sharp turn down the narrow road that led to our childhood home. If I hadn’t been so focused on getting to Cord I would have been a lot more keyed up about being in this neck of the woods.
“We’ll find him,” Chase said, then he swallowed hard. “Right?”
I nodded. “We have to.”
“And we’ll fight if it comes down to it.”
“Of course.” I looked down at my bare hands. “Unless something’s changed though Benton has a few guns to choose from if he feels backed into a corner. We don’t have anything.”
One of the truck’s front tires bounced in and then out of a small ditch. The vehicle swayed and Chase cut the wheel, slowing down and righting it.
“Yes we do,” he answered with cryptic confidence.
As if in response to the tumult of the night the wind suddenly kicked up, raking the desert floor, sending gritty clouds of sand into the air. Lighting flashed in the distance but there was no rain, not yet, nothing so cleansing. Just dust and wind.
A single pinpoint of light showed in the distance and I knew what it was even before Chase turned on the high beams. Benton had always kept at least a single bulb burning over the door because he liked to wander in the dark and his eyesight was shit. I tensed as I looked around and then calmed down slightly when I saw my truck parked about twenty yards off from the front door.
“He’s here,” I told Chase but I didn’t need to. Chase had seen. And he apparently wasn’t going to stop. He kept gunning toward the house and we were close enough now for me to see the derelict mess that I’ve been trying to push out of my head for years. Memories don’t work like that though. You can refuse to wave to them whenever they popped up but they were still crouched around the corner, waiting.
“Chase,” I shouted and grabbed onto the dashboard just as he slammed on the brakes. Papers, old soda cups and a pornographic dashboard ornament all came flying out of their hidden corners but I had the door thrown open and my feet on the ground before the debris had finished settling. Chase was almost as quick.
I could see Cord standing in the doorway, on the other side of a half ruined screen. The glare of the lights and noise of the truck must have startled him but he didn’t turn around for some reason. Instead time achieved a
slow motion quality as I took a step.
There was Cord’s back, there was Benton’s face. There was a gun.
Step.
Cord lurched, kicked a leg out and threw a table over.
Step.
My body was moving as fast as it could while my brain screamed that it wasn’t fast enough. Chase was beside me. We reached the door together, we flung it open together, we spilled into the room together, and we shouted our brother’s name together.
“CORD!”
Benton was sprawled on the floor, scrabbling around with his hairy potbelly hanging out and clumps of greasy hair falling in his face as he grunted his way to a sitting position. When he got there he stared at the scene before him and blinked.
Three sons. Three sons who had been abused, neglected boys and were now strong men, each one far stronger than him.
But it was not our faces that caught his bloodshot eye. It the gun that was leveled at his head.
Cord was so intently focused on the weapon in his hand and the target not ten feet away I wasn’t sure he even realized we were there. One jerk of that trigger and he’d send Benton Gentry into oblivion even as he sentenced himself to a different kind of hell.
Chase tried first. “Cord,” he said firmly, edging closer with caution. He extended his open palm. “Give it to me.”
Cord didn’t waver. “No.”
I shot Benton a fierce glare that warned he’d better not move or even breathe if he didn’t want a head full of holes.
“Cordero,” I said, not daring to come any closer lest something set him off. “Think of Saylor. Think of your daughters.”
“Boys,” whined Benton as he held up two shaking hands, “I just-“
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Chase screamed.
In two strides he was looming over Benton, who looked wretched and pathetic cowering there on the dirty floor. “Just shut up.”
I felt around behind me until my fingers found the rusted door handle. I opened it slowly and backed up until my heels were on the threshold. Whatever words I uttered right now would be some of the most important ones I would ever say.
“Cord.”
He didn’t look at me. I was going to make him look at me, goddammit.
“Cordero!”
He looked. The pain in his eyes seared me.
“You’ve pulled us back from the edge,” I told him. “You’ve pulled us both back.” I shook my head slowly from side to side. “Don’t go there now. Please. But know that if you do we’re climbing in after you.”
“Every time,” said Chase and our eyes met. He remembered. This was not the first time we’d played this scene. “Every time,” he whispered again.
Cord lowered the gun. His hand went limp at his side and he let the piece of deadly metal fall to the floor where it thudded once and then was still. Chase instantly swooped in to pick it up. He removed the clip, tossed it down the hall and pushed the gun into his back pocket.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. Cord accepted the help when Chase wrapped an arm around him and started leading him gently toward the door. He must have bruised himself badly when he unleashed that powerful kick to the table because he limped noticeably. I moved aside and helped them out of the room.
Only when they were safely beyond reach did I turn back to face Benton Gentry. He hadn’t moved an inch and was fixed in such a wide-eyed slack stare I thought for a second he might have had a stroke or some shit. But then he lowered his hands and blinked, because apparently the universe doesn’t give out such dumb luck easily.
“You’re not dead,” I told him, “Not yet.” It occurred to me that I could easily stomp a boot on that soft gut or press my knee into his windpipe. He wouldn’t be able to stop me from squeezing the life out of him. Back in my hard drinking era this was my darkest wish, to have Benton cornered and helpless as he’d kept us cornered and helpless for so long. And if I’d been standing in this very spot on any one of a thousand other moments I wouldn’t have hesitated to fucking crush him.
But this was now.
And I wasn’t sunk in some alcohol haze fighting imaginary wars.
I knew who I was. And I knew what I was going to do.
“You’re not dead,” I repeated, “but you’re dead to us. And you know, someday your eyes will close one last time and no one alive will be sorry to hear it. I hope you’ll think of this moment when that day comes.”
His lip curled and his face reddened and he struggled to rise but I was done. I stepped out into the night, letting the door bang shut. I heard his shouts, furious and incoherent, but they were easily swallowed by the wind.
Chase had already helped Cord into the tow truck and started the engine. Cord tossed me the keys to my own truck and I didn’t waste any time following them out of there, except I chose to back out all the way to the road. I kept a wary eye on the empty doorway because somewhere in there Benton still breathed and it’s never wise to turn your back on any beast with claws and teeth, no matter how disarmed they seemed.
Finally I was able to breathe easy when I shifted the car into drive and started driving straight, following the taillights of the tow truck. The thunderstorm had veered off to the east without touching down after all and the winds were dying. Quick bursts of lightning still flashed in the sky but they were further away.
Once we were out of the neighborhood Chase signaled that he was pulling over and I stopped right behind him on the shoulder of the road.
When I reached the tow truck Cord was positioned in the passenger seat kind of awkwardly. He was right in the middle of picking up his leg and trying to roll his ankle around. He winced.
“Broken?” I asked, leaning into the open window.
He reached down and pressed. “Don’t think so.” He breathed heavily and settled back down. “How did you know?”
Chase scoffed. “You’re asking how we knew where you went? My brother, we bounced around in amniotic fluid together for a little while and spent our formative years curled up together like cats. We know every damn thing worth knowing about each other, including a few things we probably wish we didn’t.” Chase gave Cord a shrewd look. “We know you, Cord. We know when you’re hurting and when you’re happy and if something bad is boiling inside of you it doesn’t take us long to figure out who lit the fire. And you know the same about us. Because that’s what it means to be us.”
Cord seemed to chew on that quietly. He laced his fingers together and massaged his left ring finger.
“Would you have done it?” I asked. I’d looked in the other direction and spoken so softly I wasn’t sure anyone could have heard me.
But the sound of the wind had ceased and the radio was silent so they heard. A car suddenly sped past on the two lane road and then raced off into the night. It made me think about recklessness and the fragility of a good life.
“No,” Cord finally answered. “No, I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. It crossed my mind. In spite of all the distance we’ve traveled I still have days where there’s nothing I’d like better than to see his blood in a puddle.” He swallowed and relaxed his hands. “But there’s no way I would risk my family for revenge. I wouldn’t have killed him. I just wanted him to know that his claim to us had ended.”
I was relieved to hear it. When I straightened up I could see the subdued lights of downtown Emblem, and beyond it the more garish lights of the prison, surrounded by barbed wire.
Chase opened his window and pitched the empty gun deep into the unseen brush on the side of the road. I imagined some roaming rattlesnake finding our discarded trash, curling its long body around the metal and dragging the thing deep into the bleak desolation it inhabited.
“Boys,” Chase leaned over. “We should get out of here.”
I nodded and started back to my truck. “Meet you at the med center.”
Once I was back on the road the buzz of the phone in my back pocket made me jump. Even though I had a thing about using phones behind the wheel it was a good time
to make one exception. Truly was worried. I imagined her sitting at home with her black hair running riot over her shoulders as our son slept in her arms. I hated texting and anyway I wanted to hear her voice so I dialed, unsurprised when she picked up on the first ring.
“Are you coming home soon?” she asked, her voice high and hopeful. “We miss you.”
“Yeah, honey,” I smiled. “I’m coming home real soon.”
Nothing in this world could keep me from it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHASE
Of course we wanted to drive out of Emblem real bad by this point but we still had to figure out what to do with the boy. As we coasted back into town with Creed right on our tail I briefed Cord on Tracy Gentry’s declaration that she was quitting motherhood.
“Shit,” Cord cursed, running a hand through his hair like he did when he was especially agitated. “Con just saw his girl killed and his brother hauled off to prison. Now his mother’s giving him the boot.”
“We can try to figure that out later. But for now he needs a place to stay and he needs someone to watch out for him.”
Cord nodded. “We’ve got that extra bedroom so that’ll work for at least a few days. I’ll have to check with Say but I’m sure she wouldn’t have a problem with it.” He paused. “He’s going to need a lot of hand holding for a while.”
“I’m willing,” I said quickly. “It would be no problem to bring him along to the day camp. Maybe being around some other kids who’ve also been knocked around by life will make him feel a little less lonely.”
As I said it I thought about Conway’s tears, about the anguish in his voice as he sobbed on my shoulder. I thought about how in a few minutes here we were going to have to break the news that he wasn’t welcome in own home anymore.