Next of Kin (26 page)

He thrust his rifle out the window and took aim, although he feared he was too far away for a clear shot. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, the man dropped to the ground.

Good,
Ryal thought, and tried to get a shot off at the other one, but the man was on his knees and the grass between them was too tall.

The gunfire was constant, and he felt helpless so far away, unable to watch his brother’s back or aid any of his cousins.

He could feel Beth clutching his leg, but she hadn’t made a sound.

All of a sudden he saw the last man bend down, and when he came up standing, he had something big resting on his shoulder. The moment Ryal realized what it was, he grabbed Beth by the arm and yanked her to her feet.

“Run, Bethie! Run with me, and don’t look back!”

They flew through the house and out the back door, clearing the steps in one leap. They were less than thirty yards from the house when it went up in a ball of flame.

The impact of the explosion sent them flying, and then burning debris began raining down around them. He heard Beth groan, then saw her starting to move. He shoved her back down and rolled on top of her just before the world went black.

The house was a wall of flames by the time Quinn arrived. His chest was heaving, and there was a bullet wound in his thigh he had yet to acknowledge. He wouldn’t let himself believe they were dead. Ryal was smarter than that. He would have seen. They would have run. Surely to God they would have run.

He turned in a circle. His cousins were coming out of the trees and running toward the house. By his count, two were missing. He wouldn’t let himself go there. Not yet.

He kept thinking it was a blessing that they’d gotten so much rain or this explosion would have set the mountain ablaze.

He stomped out two small fires in the grass as he circled the burning house, telling himself that any minute now he would see Ryal and Beth coming toward him hand in hand and it would be over. The war on Rebel Ridge would be over.

But when he reached the back of the house, he saw nothing but burning debris. Tears clogged the back of his throat and blurred his vision when he called out, “Ryal! Beth! Answer me! Where are you?”

The fire was roaring at his back as he walked farther toward the woods.

“Ryal! Beth!”

Then he heard a sound—the sound of someone crying.

“Beth! Bethie! It’s me, Quinn! Where are you, honey?”

This time the sound was clearer. It was Beth, and she was calling out for help.

He started running and was almost on them before he saw Ryal’s body lying in the tall grass, with Beth’s legs caught beneath it.

“I’m here, Beth. I’m here,” Quinn said, as he dropped to his knees. He pulled Ryal’s motionless body off her and began checking for his pulse.

Beth sat up, sobbing and grabbing at Ryal’s shoulder. “Ryal! Can you hear me? Oh, my God, Quinn, is he breathing? Can you feel a pulse? Please, God, don’t let him be dead.”

Quinn rocked back on his heels. “He has a pulse.”

Beth couldn’t quit shaking. “We got out before it blew,” she said. “But the debris! It was falling and burning, and he rolled on top of me. I felt him jerk, and then he didn’t move.”

Quinn reached for Ryal’s head to check for injuries, and his hand came away covered in blood.

“Shit.” Head injuries were the scary ones. Too often you didn’t know how bad they were until it was too late.

The moment Beth saw the blood, calm swept through her. She began digging in Ryal’s pockets for the keys to his truck, which was only a short distance away. She dropped the keys in Quinn’s hand.

“Get the truck. We need to get him to a doctor.”

“I’m missing two more,” Quinn said. “Let me check on them. We need to take them all in one trip.”

“Hurry,” Beth said. “And give me your shirt before you go.”

Quinn peeled the T-shirt over his head and dropped it into her lap, then took off at a lope as Beth folded the shirt into a thick pad and pressed it against the back of Ryal’s head.

The waiting room at St. Benedict Hospital in Mount Sterling was standing-room only, with more than twenty members of the Walker clan and half that many again who were Venables waiting for word of their loved ones. They had gathered silently around Beth, who was visibly shaken, but without pushing her for answers. It was the only way they knew to show their support without sending her over the edge.

What they knew so far was that Vance was out of surgery. The bullet that hit his shoulder had missed the arteries but broken his collarbone and torn some muscle. Still, he would have a complete recovery.

Nathan was still in the E.R. waiting to be taken to surgery. The wound in his side had been a through-and-through and wasn’t deemed life-threatening.

Quinn was on an exam table in the E.R., waiting to get the gunshot to his thigh checked out, although he kept insisting it was nothing but a flesh wound.

Ryal was the only one who was still unconscious. He’d been in X-ray for nearly an hour, and Beth was frantic. Every time someone looked at her, she felt the weight of guilt on her shoulders and kept bursting into tears. Despite James’s and Granny Lou’s best efforts to reassure her that this wasn’t her fault, she knew better. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t come home.

As a matter of course, the hospital had reported the gunshot wounds to the police, which had brought a detective named Callaway to the scene.

He began hammering Beth with questions she didn’t know how to answer. She was terrified the local newspaper would get wind of the mess and then word would reach the national media, which would be disastrous. When the detective informed Beth that he was taking her down to headquarters for further questioning, she knew she had to explain.

“Wait. I’ll tell you, but not here. Somewhere private.”

“Want me to go with you?” Lou asked.

“I’m fine, Granny Lou. Just wait here in case we get news about Ryal before I get back.”

“Take him to the chapel,” Lou said, as she gave the man a warning glare. “It’s a few doors down this hall and on your right.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Beth said, then turned to Callaway. “Will you please hear me out before you do anything else?”

“I’ll give you five minutes, and then we’re going downtown.”

Beth couldn’t let that happen. She had to trust this man, even when every instinct she had said not to. As soon as they got inside the chapel, she hurried all the way to the front and sat down.

Callaway followed. “All right. You’ve got your five minutes. Now talk.”

Beth folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking, but there was nothing she could do about the tremor in her voice.

“You need to call Special Agent Ames with the FBI. He’s in California. They’re building a case against a man named Ike Pappas, who’s the head of an organized-crime gang out of L.A. I had the misfortune to witness him murder his wife.”

Callaway’s eyes widened. He clearly hadn’t expected anything like this.

“The Los Angeles police and the Feds had me in protective custody, and during that time had to move me to three different safe houses. And every time they moved me, Pappas’s men found me and shot up the place, and each time it was a miracle I lived through it. When the third house was breeched, I ran. I couldn’t trust the LAPD anymore. I couldn’t trust the FBI. Ike Pappas is a very powerful man, with snitches everywhere. There was nowhere to hide and no one to trust, so I came home. My people have been keeping me hidden up on Rebel Ridge until today, when Pappas’s hired killers found me again. From what I was told, we nearly had them whipped when one of them pulled out a rocket launcher. After that, everything went up in a ball of fire when they shot the rocket into the house where I’d been hiding. Ryal got me out just in time, or we would have died in the explosion. The seven men who attacked us are all dead, so they can’t tell a different story, and I need Pappas to think I died in the fire. I don’t have enough luck left to live through a fifth attack. Please, Detective…so many people have died or been hurt trying to keep me alive to testify, even my best friend, Sarah. I can’t let all that effort be in vain.”

Callaway’s mouth was open. He had the good sense to close it when she finally stopped talking.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked.

Beth sighed, and then looked down at her hands and turned them palm up.

Only the worst of the wounds that she’d suffered were still healing. The rest had already turned into scars.

“This is what happened to me the night I ran. I haven’t been able to use them at all until the last couple of days, and as you can see, they’re still not healed. Listen to me, please. I have cousins and a fiancé who nearly died trying to keep me safe, and if you take me downtown the media will hear about it. If Pappas finds out I’m still alive, you might as well shoot me yourself and save me some grief. This is my life we’re talking about. Just call Ames, but please don’t tell him where I’m at. Tell him I’m still alive, but to tell everyone else that I’m dead. I’ll still testify, but I’m not coming back until the trial.”

Callaway took out his phone and made the call.

Twenty

S
pecial Agent Ames was on his way to a crime scene when his cell phone rang. Hearing a man identify himself as a homicide detective from Mount Sterling, Kentucky, was surprising, but when he mentioned Beth Venable’s name, Ames’s heart sank. All he could think was that she was dead. He pulled off to the side of the road to finish the call.

“Yes, I know Beth Venable. Has something happened to her? Is she okay?”

“She’s all right,” Callaway said. “Although some of her associates were not as fortunate. Is it true that she witnessed a murder? Is she really going to testify for the FBI?”

Ames was stunned. “She told you all that? Why?”

“Because seven men tried to kill her today and they’re all dead. The state police are in the process of recovering the bodies as we speak. One was in a ravine off the side of a mountain with an arrow in his neck. One was pulled out of a pit lined with stakes, and the others were shot, some with arrows. Real crazy shit. Four of her family members are in the hospital being treated for gunshot wounds. The hospital called the police, which, of course, is protocol in gunshot victims. That’s how I got mixed up in this mess.”

Ames was impressed by the ingenuity of the people who’d been protecting Beth. “The men who attacked her… I don’t suppose you know who they were?”

“She says they were sent by a man named Ike—”

“Pappas,” Ames said, finishing the sentence. “We’re building a case against him, and she’s our prime witness. Can I talk to her? Is she there?”

Callaway held out the phone to Beth. “He wants to talk to you.”

Beth didn’t want to talk. She wanted to get back to the family and find out if Ryal was going to be okay. But just as it had been since this madness began, no one in authority much cared what she wanted. She took the phone.

“I’ll make this brief. Seven men tried to kill me today, and they’re dead—all of them—because my family saved me. Four of my people were hurt, one has yet to wake up, and if anything happens to him, I’m coming back to L.A. and killing Ike Pappas myself. If you want this trial to happen, then you tell the world we’re all dead. Tell them thieves broke into the house and caused the explosion that killed us all. Then, when the trial is set to begin, you call Detective Callaway, because I’m not talking to you again. He’ll get word to me, and I’ll be there. I have to go now.”

She handed the phone to Callaway and walked out of the chapel. Callaway started to call her back, then let her go and started finalizing details with Ames.

When Beth got back to the waiting room, her grandmother saw her and hurried over to her.

“Glad you’re back, sugar. Ryal woke up. He’s asking for you, and they can’t calm him down.”

Beth raced down the hall, and even before she got to the E.R., she could hear the panic in Ryal’s voice. She hurried past the nurses’ desk and over to the examining room, then pulled back the curtain. Ryal was pushing an orderly away while a male nurse was trying to restrain him.

“Ryal Walker, you stop that this instant,” Beth said, as she pushed the two men aside, then softened her words by putting her arms around his neck. “I’m right here, my sweet man. I’m right here.”

“I’ll be back,” the nurse said, as Ryal made a frantic grab for Beth’s shoulders, then held her close.

“Oh, my God, Beth. I thought you were dead and they just wouldn’t tell me.”

The kiss they shared was poignantly brief—a brush of lips, a sigh of relief. Then Beth took charge.

“Lie back down. You have six stitches in the back of your head, and you’ve been unconscious for almost two hours. I’m the one who’s been in a panic thinking I’d gotten you killed.”

Ryal lay back against the pillow but kept a grip on her hand.

“I have a hard head,” he said.

Beth sighed. “That’s what the doctor told us after he’d seen your X-rays. Quinn said he could vouch for that.”

Ryal’s eyes darkened. “Quinn’s all right?”

“He will be. He took a bullet in his right thigh, but it was just a flesh wound. Vance was shot in the shoulder. It broke his collarbone, but he’s out of surgery and expected to recover just fine. Nathan was shot in the side, but the bullet didn’t hit anything vital.”

“Thank God,” Ryal said.

Beth thought of the prayers Granny Lou had sent up and held Ryal’s hand a little tighter.

“Yes, we can all thank Him,” she said. “Now be still and be well. The sooner we can get away from here without causing any more scenes, the better.”

More than twenty-four hours had passed since Ike had spoken to Silas. He kept waiting for the phone to ring to tell him the job was finished, but with every passing hour he feared the worst.

It wasn’t until bedtime the next night, when he caught the national news on CNN, that he learned what had happened.

They were broadcasting a story about five members of a family who’d all died in an explosion in rural Kentucky. He fumbled for the remote and quickly upped the volume, listening intently as the details were revealed.

“…tragedy on a mountain called Rebel Ridge in rural Kentucky. Five members of the Venable family, people local to the area, were all killed by an explosion as thieves invaded their home. The thieves were caught in the explosion that they triggered and perished along with the family. Identifications of the perpetrators are still pending. The Venable family has announced that there will be no funeral services, but that sometime later a memorial service will be held.”

Ike leaned against the headboard and grinned. A huge weight had just been lifted off his shoulders. Let the cops try to pin Lorena’s murder on him now.

He still hadn’t heard from Adam, and the urge to talk to him again was overwhelming. It was almost midnight, but what the hell, Ike thought. Adam was like his old man—both were night owls. Maybe this time when he called, his son would answer.

Adam wasn’t awake. In fact he’d been in bed and asleep since a little after 10:00 p.m., and when his cell started ringing, he woke abruptly. Without thinking, he almost answered it then roused enough to check the caller ID. When he saw who was calling, he let it ring and was about to go back to sleep when a shadow in the corner of the room suddenly moved and came toward him.

He reached for his gun, but it was too late. The room was flooded in lights, revealing Amato and Staley, two lieutenants from his father’s syndicate. He’d known something like this might happen, but it didn’t change his decision about what he’d done. He sat up in bed and lifted his chin in a defiant gesture.

“So, is this a social call or a cleanup operation? I ask because I need to pee. If you’re here to talk, I’m gonna take a piss. If you came to shoot me, get it over with and I’ll just pee the bed when I die.”

Amato’s eyes narrowed as he waved Adam toward the adjoining bathroom. “Just leave the door open.”

Adam threw back the covers and got up, sporting an impressive erection he was about to pee off. He walked across the room without a hint of reluctance to be naked in front of two men. As soon as he was finished, he washed and came back, picked up a pair of sweatpants and pulled them on, then sat down on the side of the bed. It was their party, so he waited for them to start talking.

Amato was a short, heavyset man who’d worked his way up through the organization the hard way. Staley’s old man had been a bagman and then a cleanup man before he was killed.

Amato didn’t know Adam all that well, but he knew what he’d done. They all knew, and he and Staley had been the ones chosen to sort it out.

“You went to the Feds,” Amato said.

Adam’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know why it surprises me that you know, but it doesn’t matter. You would have found out soon enough anyway.”

“Why turn on your own kind?” Staley asked.

Adam’s face underwent a dark transformation as he stood abruptly, his hands curled into fists. His nostrils flared as a dark flush spread beneath the skin.

“Because my kind turned first, goddamn it!”

Amato nodded slowly. “So it is about your mother’s murder.”

“Hell yes, it’s about my mother’s murder. My father…my own fucking father cut her throat and left her to bleed out on the living room rug, then lied about it to my face. If that’s the kind of people I belong to, then I just abdicated the fucking throne. She was my mother, for God’s sake. My
mother!
”

He was so angry his whole body was shaking. The urge to hit something or someone was overwhelming.

Amato held up his hand in a calming gesture. “We’re not saying it was right. What we want to know is how much are you going to tell the Feds in return for a conviction in Lorena’s death?”

Adam moved closer until he could feel Amato’s breath on his face. “I’m gonna tell them whatever the fuck they want to know, so if you boys have any exit strategies planned, you better take them. And just so you know, even if you kill me tonight, it won’t stop what’s already happening. They have hard evidence,” he lied. “I expected this to happen, so I made sure they’d have what they needed.”

Staley sighed. “It’s a damn shame you turned rat on us. You’re focused and hard-nosed…as hard-nosed as they come, to turn on one of your own. You would have been a good man to run the organization.”

“Yeah, like father like son, right?” Adam said. “We’re all about betrayal and deception. So do whatever my father told you to do or get the hell out of my house.”

“Just so you know, your father had nothing to do with this visit. When we took a vote, it wasn’t you we wanted to eliminate, it was your old man. He crossed a line and put us all in jeopardy.”

“So there’s a hit out on him and not me?”

Staley smiled. “Weird how that happens sometimes, isn’t it? We just needed to know where you stood. Now we know—and thanks for the heads-up. We’ll let ourselves out,” he added, and as they left the room, they turned out the lights, leaving him standing in the dark.

Adam heard the front door slam, then the sound of a car engine firing. He walked to the window and watched until the taillights were no longer visible, then sat down on the side of the bed and began to shake.

It was just after 10:00 a.m. when Special Agent Ames and Federal Prosecutor Ashton Caine walked into LAPD headquarters. Ames flashed his badge, informing the desk sergeant that Captain Tatum in Homicide was expecting them, at which time they were promptly escorted to the captain’s office.

Tatum was still smarting from the Feds taking over their murder case, so his greeting was somewhat clipped when he offered them a seat.

Ames sat. “I’ll get straight to the point. The FBI no longer wishes to be in charge of Lorena Pappas’s murder. We’re turning all the evidence and authority back over to you. We’re asking you to issue a warrant for Ike Pappas’s arrest, and then to proceed with a trial as soon as possible. A judge will be made available ASAP, so tell your D.A. to get it in gear before everything goes sour.”

Tatum was stunned. “What’s going on? First you usurp our jurisdiction in the case, and now you dump it back in our lap when everything’s gone cold and the witness is missing? I don’t think so.”

Ames glanced at the prosecutor.