Reckoning and Ruin (23 page)

Chapter Forty-seven

I woke up with a splitting headache and a splintering pain in my throat, duct tape over my mouth, hands and feet bound with the same. I smelled rubber and dust, saw only darkness. I blinked into it, heard the rumble of tires, felt the sway and lurch.

I was trapped in a trunk.

I cursed in my head. The green glow-in-the-dark child safety switch was faint but still visible. How long did it take that thing to go dark? The trunk was hot and close, and every time I turned my head, nausea roiled through me. I closed my eyes and willed down the heaves. I was being hauled to some secondary crime scene, the place where all the bad shit happened. This was not good.

My thoughts flashed on Train, but the panic that rose almost undid me. I breathed a silent prayer that his Higher Power had indeed kept him safe, and forced myself calm. I had two things going for me. One, they hadn't killed me, and they could have, which meant there was still something they wanted from me, which meant that two, I had leverage.

I heard voices from the front seat, Ivy Rae and Shane. The radio thump-thump-thumped—goddamn country music twang—but they'd jammed me with my head right up against the back seat so I could hear their voices too.

Ivy's voice was annoyed. “We should have killed that guy.”

Shane made a noise of annoyance. “So the cops could hear the gunshot and come running? That would have been stupid. We'll be long gone by the time they find him, so stop worrying.”

“You could have given him some of that stuff you gave her.”

“I needed it for her, Ivy.”

“I'm just saying.” The radio skipped down the dial from static to gospel then back to the country station. “At least Jasper was right about where she'd be.”

“Jasper said the tattoo shop guy would know where she was, not that she'd be there. I had to text her to get her to come back.”

“It worked, though, didn't it?”

“Because of me, not Jasper. He's not as smart as you think he is.”

“I know exactly how smart he is. He doesn't have a clue how smart I am though—how smart
we
are—and that's the important thing.”

The car shimmied over a bump and my hipbone drove up hard against the spare tire, so hard I had to clench my teeth to keep from screaming. I was a mass of bumps and bruises, my throat felt like someone had crushed it with a sledgehammer, and the dizziness and nausea were worse than any seasickness I'd ever had. They'd shot me full of something, who knew what, and that thought was almost as terrifying as being trapped in the trunk.

The radio switched to hard rock, and the speakers buzzed with the bass overload. “I still don't know why we had to get her,” Shane said.

“Because we still don't know where the money is, and until we do, we gotta keep up the act and do what he says. So like it or not, that means bringing her.”

“She knows where the money is?”

“Why bring her if she doesn't?”

Oh, triple crap. There was a ton of money floating around, every last cent of it ill-gotten and dirty and vanished, but I didn't have a clue where any of it was. If that was the only reason they were keeping me alive, I was doomed. I had nothing to barter except whatever half-cracked story I could drum up, hopefully one that would last until I could think of something better.

“Jasper's the one who hid the money,” Shane continued. “Why do we need her?”

“If he says we need her, we need her. At least until we can be done with both of them.”

“What you gonna do after that, dump 'em in the river? That worked real good with the last guy. I told you those weights wouldn't—”

“Did you come up with something better? No. So stop blaming me for it. What's done is done. And like you said, we'll be long gone by the time anybody finds them.”

I got sick again, and started shaking. John. They were talking about John. They were the ones he'd surprised at the trailer, and they'd killed him and dumped him in the river for the fish and crabs, and I was next, and…I blinked back more tears, the litany of obscenities running in my head.

Shane's voice was barely intelligible. “You let me handle this next part then, all right? We can't make any mistakes, not with Jasper. He's not like that guy at the trailer. And neither is this one in the trunk.”

“Her? She's just some cousin from Atlanta.”

“She took a hunk out of my arm, then about knocked my knee sideways, the whole time scrambling for that gun. She ain't going easy.”

Damn straight, I thought. But I wasn't in my car, which meant Trey couldn't track that, and I didn't have my regular phone, so he couldn't track that either. When I got out of this alive—because I sure as hell was going to—I was going to beg his forgiveness and have a GPS chip installed under my skin.

Ivy laughed. “Easy or hard, she's going eventually. So is Jasper. And then we're home free. You and me, baby.”

Shane laughed too, and I felt like throwing up. He was a KKK plant, that much was clear, the mark of the Blood Drop Cross as telling as a rap sheet. It was also clear he'd been deliberately placed in the prison infirmary, his record expunged, all as a ploy to get close to Jasper and find out where he'd stashed the missing money. It sounded like he'd ditched that plan, though, in favor of taking Jasper's money
and
his girl and hitting the road.

But until then, he was still following Jasper's orders. Which made no sense to me, none at all. Why follow the orders of a man you were leaving behind? A man in a jail cell?

The car slowed, and I heard a familiar crunching underneath the tires. Oyster shells. The car dropped to cruising speed, then stopped.

“I'll get the emergency override,” Shane said. “You drive through.”

I heard him get out, and then a couple of minutes passed as the car idled. Eventually I heard the screeching of a gate opening. The car rolled forward to a grinding stop, and I heard the front door open and then shut.

Five seconds later, Ivy banged on the trunk. “I am about to open this up! I have a four-ten sawed-off pointed at you, and I will blow you in half if you give me trouble. You hear me?”

She cracked the trunk. I blinked into a floodlight, Ivy silhouetted against the glare. She stepped back, and a massive form filled my vision. Shane. He was blurry and indistinct, and he dragged me out with more roughness than necessary. I fought to keep my balance as he dumped me on my feet.

He grabbed my hair and twisted my face up. “I gave you enough methohexital to knock you out, but not keep you out. That's so you can walk, because I don't feel like hauling your ass around. But you give me trouble, I'll shoot you full of something that will take you down hard. Then I'll drag you up those steps. You understand?”

I nodded. I'd had enough of unconscious. So I let him haul me upright and slice the tape binding my ankles. We were in a nondescript four-door car, yellow-looking under the amber bug lights. But we were parked next to a white pick-up with a camper top, just like the one Hope had spotted tailing her. She hadn't been paranoid. But it hadn't been the KKK after her, not exactly.

Ivy stuck the muzzle of the shotgun into my stomach. “Move it.”

I turned around. Boone's house loomed in the silver moonlight.

I managed to stagger down the path and onto the porch, Ivy right behind, Shane ahead. I noticed with some satisfaction that he had a bandage on his forearm where I'd bitten him. My only hope was that he'd bring some fleshy part close enough for another go.

He stopped at the front door. It was closed, but not locked, the strike plate a mess of ripped metal and splintered wood, the calling card of a battering ram. Shane snatched down the piece of paper stuck to the front door, official notice of search and seizure.

He pushed the door open with his boot. The house was dark inside, and silent. No little girl noises, no fish cooking in the kitchen. The ghostly animal heads loomed, but I didn't see a single weapon lying around, not a knife, not a gun, not even a baseball bat. Either Jefferson had taken everything with him, or the cops had confiscated it all. Either way, I was out of luck.

Ivy looked panicked. “You think the cops found the money?”

“No. Jasper isn't stupid enough to leave it where they could. Besides, they would have been bragging about it on the news. Taking selfies with it on Twitter.”

Ivy poked the couch with the end of her shotgun. “You sure it's cops? Could have been the Klan.”

“Klan wouldn't use fingerprint powder. Come on.”

They hustled me down the darkened hallway to the safe room. The door here was an even bigger disaster, completely blown off its hinges and propped against the wall.

Shane examined the scene. “Det cord. Good job with it too. Most cops don't know shit about explosive breaching.”

He kicked aside a pile of shredded paper and shoved me inside. Here was the most obvious evidence of searching—provisions scattered, the first aid kit jumbled up, the safe cut open with the door left dangling. The cops had been thorough and hadn't cared one bit about cleaning up. Shane pushed me down into a desk chair and rummaged through the safe.

Ivy stood beside him. “You sure they didn't take the money?”

“I'm sure. This is just legal stuff, bunch of paperwork.”

He'd let me see his face, and Ivy's. These were not good indicators of their eventual plans for me. What would the cops do when they got here? It would be a hostage situation, that was for sure. They'd send in the negotiation team, form a perimeter, then set a sniper up in the trees, somebody looking for a clean shot to the T-zone. My best bet was to stay small, stay down, and stay out of the gunfire.

Shane stood in front of me and peeled the edge of the tape up. “An overdose of methohexital sodium comes with nasty complications. Cardiac arrest, respiratory failure. You scream, and I put you out again, and this time you maybe don't wake up, you got it?”

I nodded. There wasn't any use screaming anyway. We were in the middle of twenty acres, in the middle of a house in a safe room with walls a foot thick, reinforced with concrete, designed to withstand automatic gunfire. I could scream until my tonsils bled and nobody would hear a thing.

He ripped the tape off in one brutal swipe, and I bit my tongue to keep from crying out.

“Where's the money?” he said.

I tried to talk, but dissolved in a coughing fit. He watched me hack, arms folded, his real tattoo shimmering black and red. He wore camo, army fatigues and combat boots. A man used to warfare, trained in it. His résumé detailed every deadly talent he possessed.

“I don't know anything about any money,” I said.

“Jasper thinks you do.”

“He's wrong.”

“Then what's he want you here for?”

“Don't know that either.” I looked him in the eye. “You say that like he's on his way. That's a nice trick for a man behind bars.”

Shane laughed. He started toward the door, pointing at me as he left. “Ivy Rae, you start with her kneecaps if she acts up.”

Ivy wrapped her fingers around the shotgun and took up position in front of me. She wanted to hurt me. She had a taste for hurting, I could tell, like a sweet tooth gone rotten. My head swam with all the hurt I wanted to put on her in return.

When Shane came back, he'd changed. His medical scrubs were dark blue and starched perfect, his tattoo once again the mascot of his platoon. He looked All-American scrubbed and sane, a real good guy. He smiled, a nice clean smile. His eyes crinkled. He knew how to fake it, knew how to fake a lot of things.

He sat opposite me and retrieved a prosthetic foot from his gym bag. It was covered with pale rubbery skin, unlike the futuristic biomedical blade he'd been wearing in the newsletter photo. He switched the new foot out with the identical one he currently wore and slid it into his sneaker.

He smiled as he laced his shoe, then fastened his prison ID to his shirt. “You girls be good 'til me and Jasper get back, you hear?”

Chapter Forty-eight

Ivy held the shotgun with no prowess, but shotguns at close range required zero prowess. I wasn't going anywhere, and the helplessness was beginning to eat away at me. I couldn't stop thinking, plotting, looking for places to get a toehold. But it was just me and Ivy and the infernal silent house.

I licked my lips. “If you're counting on Jasper, you may as well hang it up. He's in it for himself, not you.”

She smiled. “He's in it for me, don't you worry. I could tell from his first letter. Very courtly, gentlemanly, but hungry underneath.”

“Then why did he never tell you about the money?”

“Because that's men's work.” She pronounced it with a sarcastic edge, the smile twisting bitter at the corners. “Him and Shane, buddy-buddy all the way. They share a white man's understanding of the world, you know.”

“That what got him his OTH discharge?”

“That was part of it. Mostly it was the fact that he liked hurting people.” She readjusted her grip on the shotgun, kept her finger on the trigger. “The army doesn't actually approve of that, strangely enough. Not anymore anyway.” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you know about the OTH?”

“I looked it up.”

“That was supposed to be expunged. He got lawyers to do it.”

I hesitated. How much to reveal, how much to conceal? If she knew I knew about her and Shane, or about Shane's true reason for being in the detention center, she'd plug me before Jasper ever set foot in the place.

“I was convinced Shane was selling his professional opinion,” I said, “so I got Trey to look it up. He has access to stuff like that.”

Ivy burned with curiosity. She really
really
wanted to figure out where that money was before Shane got back, and keeping me talking probably looked like her best tactic. But she couldn't let me know that she and Shane were planning on betraying Jasper, and I wasn't about to let her know that I'd already figured that out. We were both in the same dilemma—trying to get information without giving too much away.

“So what's going to happen?” I said. “Shane gonna sneak Jasper out in the trunk of his car?”

Ivy smiled, then went back to searching through the papers. Suddenly, I wasn't sure who she was playing, Jasper or Shane. Maybe even both. Maybe she wanted to be Thelma and Louise all rolled into one so that she didn't have to go out in a blaze of glory. No, she'd go out with all the money and none of the hassles that a hanger-on man might bring. It was a plan I could approve of…except I was a hassle that needed leaving behind too.

“Shane works in medical,” I said. “No wonder Jasper's been complaining about his ankle, provoking fights. He needed face time with his accomplice.”

She'd moved to upending drawers, riffling through stacks of papers, running her fingers around inside the safe. Obviously taking advantage of her time without Shane or Jasper to look for the money herself. But Shane was right. No way Jasper would leave it in an office, especially not a safe room. If she knew Jasper, she knew this too. But she wasn't taking any chances.

Eventually, she gave up on the search and pulled a chair face to face with me. Her voice was pleasant, cajoling. “If you'd just tell me where it is, we could avoid all this.”

“I don't know where the money is.”

“You sure? It's here somewhere. That's why Jasper said to meet here. Well, one of the reasons anyway.” She leaned forward. She smelled of the same floral cologne my mother wore, almost syrupy. “But we don't have to wait for him. You tell me where it is, and I'll get it and let you go.”

“I told you, I don't know.”

“Fine.” She stood. “Suit yourself. He'll get it outta you one way or another.”

Ivy upended the box of blankets with her foot. I tried to think. Jefferson hadn't known where the money was or he'd have given it back to the KKK. Plus Trey said he'd been telling the truth. That meant Jasper had to have hidden it so well his own think-alike brother hadn't found it. And it had to be someplace Jefferson would never accidentally stumble on it. It would be simple to retrieve, but hard to find. I doubted it was in the house, but I wasn't about to tell Ivy that. Let her trash the place. It would keep her busy.

I pulled at my hands, the skin raw under the duct tape. Tugging wasn't particularly useful, and yet I couldn't help it. It was that or scream or cry or give up. Jasper knew I had no clue where the money was, which meant that despite what he'd told Ivy and Shane, he wanted me there for some other reason. I got sick at the thought of what that might be.

What I wouldn't have given for Trey to pull one of his stalker cards out of the hat and show up in full-on assassin mode, eyes like ice, perfect and deadly and ruthless. But no, he was headed for Statesboro, where he was expecting to meet me. That was my one ace in the hole, that when I didn't show, he'd come looking. But how would he find me? How would anyone?

Frying pans and fires, all of it.

I tried to keep my voice calm. “Whose idea was it to plant the gun on me?”

She pulled out a drawer and dumped its contents on the floor, poked through it with her toe. “Mine. Shane's the one actually did it, though. Popped the lock in ten seconds. He said you learn a lot of things hanging out with criminals all day.”

“When?”

“At the storage unit place. Shane had wanted to throw the gun in the river, but I told him we could use it, that people would believe you killed that guy, y'all having history and all.”

History. That was one word.

“It was Shane who attacked me at Billie's too, wasn't it?”

“Attacked you? You surprised him and he ran, that's all.” She shook her head and kicked at the mess on the floor, half-hearted now. “I told Shane that was a dumb idea, breaking in there, but does he listen? No. I told him you didn't have the money, and that even if you did, you wouldn't stash it there. I was right, yet again.”

“How'd you get Train's phone?”

“Took it. Amazing what people will hand right over at gunpoint.” She smiled. “Oh, don't make that face. We taped him up good and locked him in that little hidey hole at the tattoo parlor, that's all. He's fine. You can be fine too. If you'll tell me where the money is.”

“Fine like John?” I said.

Ivy's eyes went hard. “That was different. The trailer was supposed to be empty because he was supposed to be at work. But Shane had only been in there ten minutes, and here that guy comes, barreling up in the yard with a gun.”

“So Shane shot him. No questions, just—”

“No, honey, I shot him. I was lookout, parked on the road. But I didn't want to kill him. Wouldn't have if I hadn't had to. Remember that.”

I tried to say something, but I couldn't. She'd just confessed to homicide, which meant no matter what she'd just said, she knew I wasn't long for this world.

“Why'd you think he had the money?”

“Not him. His wife. She'd been seen talking to the Klanswomen at the—” Ivy stopped talking, recalculated. “But you know all about that, just like you know all about the money. You could save us both a whole lot of grief if you'd just tell me where it is.”

“I would if I could. Believe me.”

She sighed. Her phone rang once, then twice. Then silence. She checked the number. “That would be the good news. Let's turn on the TV and see.”

She switched on the dinky television in the corner. It was bad reception, obviously supported by some equally decrepit rooftop antenna. Despite the static, the breaking news report was clear.

The reporter was breathless, high spots of color on her cheeks, beautiful and perfect in front of smoke and strobing red and blue lights. Suspected gas leak at the detention center, followed by an explosion in the infirmary. Mass evacuation. Two dead, dozens injured. They didn't have a tally yet on the inmates and staff—how many were still under the rubble, how many slumped dazed and bloody in the parking lot, how many had fled to the surrounding woods.

The screen flashed with mug shots, including Jasper's. Prisoners unaccounted for, presumed at large. BOLOs for the general area. Already the news was pinging across social media, and the good citizens of Savannah were locking their doors, loading their own shotguns. Already every law enforcement officer in the Coastal Empire was being called in to help close the roads and blockade the area around the center.

Ivy watched the report, her face gleaming, positively patriotic. “Damn if it didn't work.”

I tried to sound calm. “Shane smuggled it all in, didn't he? Who's gonna check a prosthetic foot for det cord and blasting caps?”

But she kept shaking her head, smiling at the screen, her expression glazed with pride. Then she cocked her head, listening. A car coming through the gates. The panic was instantaneous. I'd had a chance with Ivy, maybe even her and Shane together, but not Jasper. I breathed it down. He wanted me alive for some reason, that was my leverage. I heard the door open, heavy boots on the wooden floor.
Breathe
, I told myself.
Stay calm. Work what you've got.

And then he was standing in the door—hiking boots, jeans, a dark gray long-sleeved shirt. Jasper. He looked untouched by the flames, undusted by ash.

He smiled, and a hank of blond hair tumbled over his still-bruised face. “Hey, cuz. Long time no see.”