Dirty South Drug Wars (39 page)

*

The smell of rain lingered all around me. The rolling clouds snuffed out the moon and stars, but I searched for them. I searched for some semblance of him, of the moon and stars, of Artemis and Cash, of the truth that we were here, that he was still alive, but there was none. Not one twinkle dotted the black mass above me. My heart sank as I wrapped my arms around my knees, drawing into myself on the wicker chair on Graham and Melissa’s porch, waiting for something, anything, that would lead me to believe Tanner truly was alive and well since no one had contacted us concerning him.

Graham and Detective Holloway sat nearby, smoking cigars and carrying on easy conversation. I found it very odd and highly unsettling how these men acted, how a criminal and an FBI detective could keep such casual company with one another, chatting as though they were old fishing buddies instead of two men on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Their friendly demeanor was more shocking than the fact that Graham was alive at all.

“How long have you had your brother posing as a deputy in Mayhaw, Benson?” Graham reached inside his breast pocket and removed two cigars.

Oh, they’re on a first name basis now?

Detective Holloway shrugged and accepted the offered cigar. “A while now. Where’d you learn how to build a car bomb?”

“In Kentucky,” Graham drawled, puffing away, his cheeks hollowing out as he inhaled. “But it’s been years. Guess my timing was a little off.”

The two men shared a hearty laugh. I couldn’t be mad at Graham for my cousin’s fate. He was playing his part in the plan, rigging up the vehicle that inevitably exploded. He’d slipped away undetected into the night, unknowing that a young girl would be with my uncles.

Unknowing, but also uncaring.

“Rue, honey, why don’t you eat something?” Melissa hovered in the nearby doorway wringing her fingers.

I toyed with my cell phone, clicking on my photo album app. “I’m not hungry.”

Scrolling through my photos, Tanner’s lazy smile greeted me. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, but I forced them back. The sound of a heavy engine and the crunch of gravel beneath thick tires drew my attention away from the phone. I stood as Brodie’s truck pulled in, followed by Bryce’s.

The two boys left their vehicles and crossed the drive. Brodie’s face was a mask of worry. He trudged up the steps with Bryce on his heels, their playful demeanor gone once they saw me standing on the porch.

“Where’s Tanner?”

“We don’t know,” Brodie replied, running his fingers through his thick curls. “He told us to haul ass if Amos were to show up while y’all were breaking into the office, so that’s what we did. Then I called Detective Holloway and told him which direction y’all were heading.”

“So I heard. You were in on this too? In on this with Tanner? You knew Tanner was talking to the FBI. And you didn’t tell me. None of y’all told me.”

“No offense, Rue,” Bryce drawled. A tiny shadow of a smile curled one side of his mouth. He leaned on the porch railing. “But you’re not exactly working with a full deck of cards. Excuse us for not letting you in on a highly important secret.”

Puzzled by his smirk, his words, and the stern glare Brodie gave him, I shook my head. “I have no idea what you mean. Where’s Josie?”

“In the truck,” he said, jutting his thumb in the direction of the tinted windows. “She just found out about Olivia. She’s … I don’t know what to do for her.”

“I’ll talk to her,” I told him, walking down the porch steps. He gave me a silent nod.

I walked across the lawn and down the drive, pulled the driver’s side door open, and climbed inside Bryce’s truck. The door gave a decisive sound as it slammed behind me. I turned sideways, tucking my legs up to my chest.

Josie stared at the dashboard. Her eyes were swollen and red, the whites bloodshot yet void of tears. I guessed she’d already cried them all out.

“They airlifted Olivia to a burn center in Birmingham,” she whispered. “She has burns on over eighty percent of her body, most of which are third-degree. Peyt called me. He’s hysterical! His mother is hysterical. My mother is freaking out because my father never came home tonight. Mama hasn’t heard from him and doesn’t know where he is. This is so messed up, Rue. This wasn’t part of the plan.”

Josie’s breathing increased, coming out in short, rapid wisps. She brought her head down in her hands, the tears making a return.

My comforting hand was shrugged away at first, but she soon welcomed it. Her shoulders relaxed as I rubbed her back, staying silent, letting her work through her own emotions without verbally consoling her, because words were moot at that point. Telling her we did the right thing would be a lie. We took matters into our own hands, and what came out of it? Olivia was out of state in a burn unit fighting for her life, Tanner was somewhere, possibly dead, and my sister still wouldn’t answer the phone, no matter how many times I called her, craving nothing but her voice, her silly laugh, and the warm familiarity of someone I could trust with my own life.

“There’s a storm coming through tonight,” I said. “I smell the rain.”

Josie sniffed, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “You sound like your sister. That sounds like something Lucy would say. She was always saying the storm was coming.”

“Maybe I’ve got a little of Lucy inside me. We
are
sisters after all.”

A strange look crossed my cousin’s face, a look of pity, longing, and anger. She straightened up in the seat and pulled a hair tie from around her wrist. Twisting her long, cornsilk strands, she tied her hair up in a sloppy bun on the top of her head then turned to me.

“I wish we’d never gone to that party.” Her words were so firm, so steady, that I didn’t doubt them for a second, although they shocked me into silence. “All this shit started because of us crossing that stupid bridge.”

“How can you even think that, let alone say it? How can you say you wish we never crossed that bridge? You would’ve never met Bryce. I would’ve never reconnected with Tanner …”

“Olivia would be okay. You …
you
would be okay. Lucy would be here. This is all my fault. It was my idea to go to that stupid party. I talked you into it. I practically forced you to go.”

“Hey.” I gently shook her arm, hoping to shake a little sense into her. “You didn’t force me to do anything. I’m my own person. Besides, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. I love Tanner. I’ll do anything for him.”

“You’d risk losing your sister all over? You’d choose him over Lucy again?”

“I’ve never had to choose Tanner over Lucy.”

Josie’s face blossomed into a brilliant red. “You have to admit that if you never met Tanner then Lucy would still be here. I can’t believe that means nothing to you!”

“You’re crazy.” I threw my hands up in aggravation. “What does any of this have to do with Lucy? The Montgomerys
helped
Lucy and so did Chance. She’s safe with him, somewhere up north. Why are we going over the coulda, shoulda, wouldas? We can’t change the past. I feel horrible for Olivia, but she double-crossed us. That’s not our fault! And Lucy, Lucy was an innocent bystander who is lucky enough to have gotten away undetected by Amos and the others.”

Josie stared at me for a long moment before slowly shaking her head. She pressed her hand to her wrinkled brow, rubbing it in frustration. “Don’t you get it? Lucy isn’t coming back, Rue! Lucy is gone! She’s never coming back!”

I chuckled, rolling my eyes at my cousin’s dramatics. “Of course she’s coming back. She’s my sister. She loves me. I’ve always taken care of her. She won’t forget that.”

“Lucy is dead, you moron!” Josie screamed. “Why can’t you process it? She’s dead! She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!”

I needed Tanner.

I needed him like I needed the sun. All living things depended on the sun for survival, and he was my sun, orbiting his way into my life without my permission, skyrocketing into my once unwilling heart. I needed him to tell me everything was going to be okay, that my sister was alive, and it was all a huge mistake. I needed him to tell me Josie was lying to me, that Brodie was lying to me, that everyone was lying to me.

But he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there.

Two days.

It had been two days since Josie had uttered those fateful words.

Lucy is dead.

Life continued. The rain set in. People shuffled in and out of Tanner’s bedroom where I holed myself up for those two days, knees tucked to my chest as I stared past the window, cell phone in hand. I searched for any sign of the river that churned past the trees; I saw nothing but relentless rain and occasional bolts of lightning flashing through the pines.

My mind traveled back to the night Josie had screamed at me, revealing what she claimed was Lucy’s true fate. She became violent in her words as she verbally thrashed me. Anger brewed inside, the white-hot heat intensifying within me, rising up from the pit of my stomach, clawing through my chest, and burning my throat. My hands balled into two hard knots, and suddenly I was hitting her. I was hitting and punching, pulling her hair because that made her cry out in pain the most; if she was crying out in pain she couldn’t form a cohesive sentence, and couldn’t continue spitting out her dirty lies.

I clawed at her face, leaving four bloody trails of open flesh across her cheek just as the space behind me seemed to collapse. My cousin’s blood, and probably skin, was beneath my nails.

Brodie retrieved me from Bryce’s truck and guided me inside the house, his thick arm around my waist. His normally boisterous voice was stern yet comforting, although the words were nothing but a jumbled mess inside my mind, hidden by thick clouds of confusion.

I vaguely remembered Detective Holloway receiving a phone call when we passed by him on Graham and Melissa’s porch just as the mist began to swirl about. I heard the words “trespassing,” “breaking and entering,” and “misdemeanor” fall from his muffled lips, but it wouldn’t register until later what or who he was talking about.

There was no way Lucy was
dead
. I saw her. I saw my sister the day of the funeral. She stood next to the grave as clear as day wearing a black veil and red lipstick. The key we found hidden in Nana’s safe was hanging from a necklace, dangling from her neck against her pale flesh. Hadn’t anyone seen her? Hadn’t anyone seen her on that grassy hill, standing right beside me? Looking at me?
Speaking
to me?

That day was so vivid. I remembered Tanner and the others waiting for me to return from the graveside. I remembered Chance standing near his truck.

But I didn’t remember Lucy following me down the hill. I didn’t remember her getting in Chance’s truck and driving away.

Scrolling through the photos on my cell, I found a picture of my sister, her head thrown back in laughter. The photo wasn’t that old—just a few months, really. It was taken the night Lucy, Mia, Peyton, Brodie, and I had partied at my house. The night we were lured to the old train station. The night my sister stood beside the pool and announced the impending storm.

I shoved the thought aside and tossed the cell beside me on the bed. They were
wrong
about my sister. How could I simply
not
remember her death? How could my mind weave together such a story, such an elaborately confusing web of hidden truth, of someone else’s body resting in her casket, buried in the earth?

I struggled to remember who’d told me, who had explained the fire was a ruse, that Lucy was really alive and well, living with Chance somewhere up north, but I drew nothing but a blank. I remembered absolutely nothing of who told me those things and I wondered … could it be true? Could Josie and the others be telling me the truth about my sister?

It explained so much. Was this why my sister, who was always dependent on me, never called and never returned any of my calls? Looking back, I should have known something was wrong. It wasn’t unusual for Lucy to take flight and disappear for a day or two, but to completely abandon her family to travel north with Chance and never return my calls? It didn’t make sense.

I felt like a fool, a complete and utter fool.

Melissa and Shelby offered unwelcome comfort. They came and went, finding me on Tanner’s bed each time, wearing his oversized shirt which still smelled of him. My time was spent staring through the window and clinging to my cell phone. Melissa and Shelby couldn’t provide the comfort I needed. I needed something more, someone I could trust.

I needed Tanner.

The thought of “trust” intermingled with thoughts of Tanner brought forth a bitter laugh. It crackled across the staleness of the room like the lightning outside.
Trust Tanner.
It was a humorous thought, considering he’d allowed me to believe my sister was alive all that time and that he’d been working with Holloway, never mentioning his involvement with the FBI to me. Not even once.

I stood and walked to the window. The large pane of glass separated me from the outside forces of the torrid wind whipping and bending the pines. I pressed my hand against the glass and raised my eyebrows at the coolness under my fingers. October had crept up with little warning.

Holloway’s car was no longer in the driveway. I spied Graham’s Caddy parked just outside the garage, spattered with rain, glowing with the occasional bolt of lightning slicing through the sky. The woods lining the churning river looked ominous, but I was never afraid of the woods at night. I was never afraid of much of anything, at least not until now.

I was afraid of myself.

My mind was, to an extent, gone. There was no sense denying that anymore. It took two days to comprehend that it wasn’t some psychotic scheme, some well-orchestrated plot against me. There was no reason for anyone to lie to me about Lucy’s demise.

I’d lost my mind, plain and simple.

It wandered away sometime between here and there, and I didn’t know where I stood anymore.

The lines between fantasy and reality were fuzzy at best. The words of our relatives mattered little when I knew the truth. The truth was that I saw her. I saw her.

I saw her that
very second
.

She stood there beside Graham’s car, illuminated by the flash of lightning, silhouetted by the sooty forest just beyond. The dress she wore to her own funeral was unchanged, black and lacy, chic and sophisticated, much fancier than we could ever afford. How had I not realized that before? How had I not realized that to begin with?

The veil was gone. In its place was moon-white skin, unmarred by the sun. The bright redness of her lips remained, although those lips were no longer curled into a smirk or turned down by a scowl, but were as straight as an arrow. It was such a resolute look for my little sister as she peered up at me through the wind and rain.

I staggered backward, heart in my throat, until the back of my knees hit Tanner’s bed. Landing with a soft sigh of the mattress, my fingers found a loose tendril of hair and I tugged it out of habit, out of fear, out of uncertainty, because they were correct. They were all right.

I’d really lost my mind.

The bed dipped beside me, shifting my weight to one side. My heart found its way into my chest again, dislodging from my throat and forcing itself against my ribs. I thought it was her, but it wasn’t. The speed of my heart slowed, but only by a baby’s breath.

I felt him. I felt his warmth. I felt the hard planes of his body press against mine as he sat beside me, pulling my limp body into his arms. I could smell his skin, kissed by the rain, all wet and earthy and alive.

Alive.

“Rue,” he whispered. “Come back to me, baby.”

“You’re home.”

“I’m home.” He chuckled, the sweet, deep tenor rumbling from his chest, the familiar sound tugging my heartstrings.

“How?” I asked, still unable to meet his gaze as I stared out the window. “How did you get out? Graham said they had a bunch of trumped-up charges against you. Besides the legit ones.”

“Yeah,” he said in a slightly arrogant tone. “They did. I didn’t exactly … make bail. I had a little help from someone on the inside, thanks to Detective Holloway. Wes, his brother, has been posing as an officer in the county jail for months now, trying to get intel on our families.”

“Hmm, seems like you have lots of friends on the inside. Must be nice to always be in the know of things, working with someone in the FBI, knowing who’s really dead and who’s really alive.”

The arrogant chuckle had long since faded away, replaced with a stagnant silence. The air grew thick and uncomfortable, so thick I found it difficult to breathe.

“Did you tell me the truth?” I blurted after taking in some of that humid air. “About Lucy? Because I don’t remember.”

There was a moment of hesitation, a long moment of silence except for the patter of rain against the wooden house and the occasional rumble of thunder in the distance. My gaze remained fixed on the window, anxious to spy my sister’s face.
Terrified
to spy my sister’s face.

“I tried,” he said. “But you wouldn’t listen. You were convinced Lucy was alive, that we were all playing some crazy trick on the Monroes.”

“And Chance?” I asked. “I’m assuming he’s not somewhere up north.”

I turned to face him and cringed at what I saw. His arm was wrapped in white gauze. There was a light dusting of dark circles under his eyes and his normally tanned skin was a bit pale. With the bandage on my neck and the one on his arm, we were quite the banged-up pair.

“Chance went back to MSU.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s coping,” Tanner replied. “He has his bad days, but for the most part he’s doing well, considering.”

Considering Lucy is dead.

“Rue …”

“Where’s Davis? If he’s not buried in Lucy’s plot, where is he?” I slumped against his body, giving up the struggle.

“Dead.” He buried his nose in my hair, leaving a light kiss against my temple. “No one will ever find him.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I just don’t understand how you tried to tell me about Lucy, but I have no memory.”

“Graham consulted a doctor,” he explained. “A friend of his in Oxford. He specializes in this sort of thing. He said that sometimes the human mind plays tricks on a person, fabricating a lie to protect itself from the truth. You were too fragile to accept what really happened, so your mind fooled you into believing your sister was still alive. It happened just after the fire. That’s when you began having these delusions about Lucy still being alive.”

Delusions.

I was
delusional
.

“What
really
happened? At the hospital?” I asked. “Graham didn’t set the building on fire as a distraction?”

Tanner shook his head. “No, baby. Amos started the fire. He set out to kill Lucy one way or the other. She had too much on him. Only Lucy and Drew knew what happened the night she overdosed, but I’m sure he’s involved. If she’d lived,
everyone
would know. They’d link it all back to him, the drugs and the fact that Drew was working with him. Who
knows
what Drew told Lucy that night? Who knows what even really happened? Only Lucy and Drew, and, baby, neither one of them are talking.”

I thought about the night of the fire. I remembered the flames and the smoke and scared, confused people, but that was it. That and Tanner standing beside me, consoling me as the building stood ablaze.

I shook my head, muttering below my breath. Fresh tears formed, but I foolishly wiped them away. I should have just let them flow. The more I attempted to hold things together, the further I felt myself slip back.

I didn’t want to slip back.

I couldn’t return to that place of denial, because it wasn’t safe. It wasn’t safe for my mind to believe something that just wasn’t real. I had to escape from this place, had to flee from whatever warped dimension I found myself in. I had to do it.

And it had to be me to end it.

“Is there anything else my mind made up? Or is it just Lucy?”

“It’s just Lucy,” he replied. “I swear, Rue. I swear on my parents’ graves.”

I nodded, hoping he was telling the truth, although he’d never lied to me. Not really.

“Are you hungry?” he whispered, the concern thick in his voice. “Melissa says you haven’t been eating well. Do you want some soup or something?”

“Soup.” I might have even nodded as I said the word, although I wasn’t completely sure. The mention of food made my stomach clench in pain.

Tanner wasn’t gone two minutes when my cell rang, the standard ringtone cutting through the air. It had rung constantly for two days, since the night in the woods, the night my cousin was flown to Birmingham.

For the first time in two days I answered it. I listened as Nana’s voice spoke softly through the phone asking if I was all right, snapping at me because I hadn’t answered the phone, and then ending in a tremor when she spoke of Olivia’s condition.