The Brothers (17 page)

“Never mind Yallow over there. He’s three sheets to the wind. Keep trying, contestants. Tick, tock.” He fixes me with a look, and he blends into darkness.

My eyes find the clock again: 3:02.

Heart pounding, I reach around the floor and find the rest of my rods. With tremulous fingers, I start fitting small rods into bigger rods, building what I think are triangles, but they’re lopsided and twist and slip. I glance up and see the old man is weeping again. His strategy seems to be shoving sticks anywhere they will fit. In his hands is a prickly ball nowhere close to the model in the center.

The clock ticks down. In the darkness, it sounds like a group of men are fighting. They’re going to kill me in the hallway.

A peg slips and clatters to the table. Tears pool in my eyes and slide down my nose.

“Come on!” Tarrish yells behind me.

I look up at the clock: 1:22.

Oh God
.

But something is building in my hand that looks similar to the model. Carefully, I interlock rods until my box is almost finished. At fifty-nine seconds, I have two rods left. At forty-five, all my rods are gone.

“Done!” I scream, holding the box aloft.

A roar erupts from the crowd. The old man shoots me a hateful glance from across the table.

Noble steps up and takes the ball from my hands. My heart is pounding, but relief—huge, floating relief—fills my heart. I did it. I mastered the—

“Not done,” Noble announces.

The crowd loses its mind.

I look at him in shock. “What are you talking about? It looks just like the model.”

“A piece is missing.” He points to a hole in my design.

“But, but…”

He hands it back to me. “Not finished.”

I look at the clock. Twelve seconds.

I curl under the table. The rod must’ve fallen. I scramble on my hands and knees, sweeping the floor while trying to keep my puzzle intact. Sweat drips into my eyes. It’s dark under the table, and the ground is vibrating with the throng of men ready to burst from their seats and attack me.

“Ten. Nine. Eight.” The crowd counts down.

My trembling hands sweep over the dirty floor.
Where
is that
goddamned
rod?

“Seven. Six. Five!”

Something rolls under my fingertips. The rod! I grab it and stand up.

“Four. Three!”

I fit the rod in.

“Done!” I scream. “Done, done, done!”

Noble strides over and takes my box. An eternity passes while he examines it. My heartbeat blares into my ears enough to deafen the awful crowd.

“It’s complete!” he says.

Half the crowd cheers. Half the crowd shouts. I did it—

The old man lurches at me, smashing into the card table, the table and a chair flying. The table smashes into me. His arms flail. I smash to the concrete and then he’s on top of me, growling and spitting. His hands slap out, striking my cheek, my ear, my chin.

“Stop!” I try to push him off.

His weight disappears as men haul him up. Tarrish and Noble pull him back and begin punching. I lie on the ground, unable to do anything but watch as they beat him.

“You don’t need to hit him,” I say, but my voice is a tiny thing in this warehouse of noise. No one hears me. No one stops. They drag him away.

Hands hook under my armpits and pull me up. I stagger to my feet. Tarrish stands before me, grinning toothlessly.

“Yahoo! You did it.” He claps me on the back. “Come on,” he says, nodding me ahead. “Prentice wants to see ya.”

“Prentice?” All I want to do is curl into a ball and wish this all away, but men nudge me forward and Tarrish parts the crowd. The men who lost glare at me angrily while those that won pat me on the back. I want no part in this. I just want out.

But then we pass a table in a corner. A man is being held down while several others secure his hand to a wooden block. A burly man lifts a giant meat cleaver. I look away, but I can’t avoid the sound of crunching bone and the tortured scream.

Is that how they pay their debts? With body parts?

My legs go weak. Abel takes me under the arm and helps me forward.

We leave the warehouse through a side door, and the hallway is blissfully quiet. Tarrish whistles merrily, but at least the awful noises of the warehouse are drowned out. They lead me through a door and into a smaller office. A giant guard with a large gun stops us.

“Hey, Frank. Prentice wanted to see tonight’s winner,” Tarrish says.

The guard nods and steps back.

We step into a dim office lit by electric lamps with red and green bulbs, making the room awash in muddy colors. Bookshelves cover the back walls, stacked with games and puzzles—wooden boxes, brightly colored cubes, metal rings looped impossibly through each other. A long desk waits at the far end with Prentice sitting at its center. But my eyes are drawn to the man standing at his right.

Gabe.

“I thought you said this was a story about Arn. Neither of these idiots is Arn.” I stare hard at Auntie. “Is this all made up? How can you possibly know every angle of this story? It’s Mama’s story and yet you tell it like it’s your own. You weren’t even awake for half of it.”

Auntie’s mouth quirks as if she’s been waiting for this all along and I’ve only been smart enough now to ask it.

“Janine and I spent decades together. She told me every angle of this story, in and out. And, the parts I don’t know for sure, I make up.”

“I knew it!” I exclaim. “You’re making this up!”

“Not the parts that matter.” She swats at the air. “A good storyteller knows when to embellish and when to cut.”

“It’s a good story,” Doc adds. “Made up or not.”

Auntie winks with her good eye. “Thankee.”

“Don’t change the subject,” I say, adjusting myself on the Jeep seat. My arm still throbs, but the story really is helping. “Where’s Arn? You know, the person you said you’d tell me about?”

Auntie puckers her toothless mouth. “One of them
is
Arn, puddin’.”

I shake my head. “You said their names were Gabe and Tommy.”

“Arnold was a middle name,” she says.

“Since when?”

“Since forever,” Auntie says, crossing her arms.

“So which one is it?” I ask, still not sure I believe it.

Auntie wags a finger at me. “I save the best secrets for last.”

“That’s no fair.” I pout. “Tell the story right.”

“What’s my job?” she asks. “To keep your mind off the pain?”

I shrug. “Yeah.”

“Well, then shut up and let me do it.” She gropes for a water bottle. “My throat’s as dry as a dead whore’s—”

“Auntie!” I point to Doc. “His first words might not’ve made lawless gunman blush.”

Doc laughs. “I’ve heard every cuss and then some. Benders have dirty mouths.” He stretches his arms and leans back against the driver’s seat. “How’re you feeling?”

I take a moment to consider. “Better. I think I can manage if we want to get going.”

Doc eyes the angle of the sun. “It’s mid-afternoon now. Better to wait until dark if we’re gonna take on Ms. Nessa.”

“Ethan and Clay might not have until dark.” I sit up, arming sweat of my brow. My head spins when I’m upright and my arm kills me, but at least I got my senses back.

Doc watches me carefully. “If we barrel in there like this, we’ll all be killed, Clay and Ethan included.”

I won’t admit he’s right. We don’t have time to waste, and I’m already angry for getting myself into this predicament in the first place. Waiting just makes it worse.

“Besides,” Doc says, setting back into the seat, “I want to hear the rest of the story.”

“They both die. The end,” I say bitterly before I can stop myself.

Auntie stiffens. I sometimes forget my mama and Arn were her family, even if they weren’t related by blood. She loved them both, and this story is her way of keeping them alive.

“Sorry,” I say. “Blame the scorpion.”

“You get a pass,” Auntie says. “For now.”

I nod. “I’ll be good. Finish the story.”

Auntie sniffs. “We’ve come to the part I’ve only heard from your mother once long ago. I don’t think she liked to speak of it. Once was enough.”

“It was that bad?” I ask, letting my imagination run wild. “But they survived this. We know that much.”

Bell shakes her head. “Oh no, dear. Not all of them.”

I stare slack-jawed at Gabe. When he sees me, he skirts the desk and takes me in his arms. “Are you okay?” he whispers in my hair. “When I lost you, I was devastated. I came to Prentice—”

“Don’t keep the girl all to yourself, Gabriel,” Prentice says, standing up.

Gabe draws back and lets me go. “Sorry, Prentice. She’s had quite a shock.” Gabe looks me over.

I can’t imagine what I must look like.

“She?” Tarrish the announcer asks.

“Yes,” Prentice says, coming around the desk to stand before me. “Not a bender, as I am sure you assumed. Did you check?”

Tarrish drops his head.

“No,” Prentice says dismissively. “You wouldn’t have offered her up for the game if you’d known she was a girl. That,” he says, turning to lock Tarrish in a cold glare, “that is why you are in charge of the
Brown
district.”

Tarrish bows his head, but his eyes burn.

“Get out,” Prentice says.

Tarrish doesn’t argue. He and his men bow and walk out. I have a feeling they’ll take their frustration out on someone in the warehouse.

“So,” Prentice says, gazing into my face with a smug smile. “We have a puzzler on our hands. Did you do puzzles in the hospital?”

I meet Prentice’s gaze, but then drop it like it burns. “Sometimes.”

He chuckles. “Our usual contestants are farmers or townies who haven’t had a day of education in their lives. Well, other than how to slaughter pigs or bury their own shit.” Prentice sniffs. “Not an educated lady like you.” He grips my chin and tilts my face toward the light. “Pity you’re ruined.”

My face burns with his comment, but I say nothing.

Gabe shoots me a worried look. “Prentice, she’s had it rough. Maybe I should take her ba—”

Prentice cuts him off with a wave of his hand. “She’s won her first round. That means she competes tonight.”

Gabe’s jaw drops. “But you said it yourself, she’s a girl. They don’t compete.”

Prentice leans back on his desk, pondering this coolly. “But this girl did, and she did so very well. Last time we used that puzzle, both contestants were sent to the hallway.”

Gabe looks between me and Prentice. “She’s a Breeder. She’s worth much more than a simple contestant in a game.”

Prentice toys with one of the puzzles on his desk, turning colored rows on a cube. “Gabriel, do you know how I maintain my fortune? How I’m able to barter for the medicine you need so badly?”

Gabe swallows hard. “Gambling.”

“And how do I get people to gamble?” Prentice’s tone is like a bored teacher.

“You host the games and set the stakes. You give people something to look forward to. Something to spend their money on.”

“Very good,” Prentice says, condescendingly. “You said yourself people aren’t coming here anymore. They’re all going to Albuquerque. We need to give them a reason to detour. And what’s better than a woman puzzler? No, a
clever
woman puzzler?” Prentice raises one thin eyebrow.

Gabe shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t know!” Prentice shouts, striking the table. “Nothing is as interesting as a woman. Think how the men will bet if they think they might get the chance to take her into the hallway?”

Gabe pales. “You can’t be serious.”

Prentice pouts his lip and puts a hand to his chest. “As serious as a seizure.”

Gabe presses his lips together angrily.

“What if I won’t play?” I ask.

Prentice gives me a thin smile. “If you won’t play, then you forfeit. You’ll face the hallway after tonight’s games as a loser.”

“Prentice, no,” Gabe whispers.

“What happens in the hallway?” I ask, even though all of me is screaming just to shut up.
Shut up!

Prentice’s smile widens. He snaps his fingers and his guard strides in. “Show our winner the hallway.”

Gabe starts to protest, but Prentice silences him with a look. The beefy guard grabs my arm and starts pulling.

“I don’t need to see it,” I say to Prentice as the guard yanks me away. Prentice smiles and flicks his hand to the guard, gesturing to keep going. “I don’t want to see it!”

The guard keeps pulling.

My heart begins to pound as we enter the dim hallway. Is this the hallway he was talking about or another one? Is something waiting for me around the bend? My whole body trembles.

“Please,” I whisper, but the guard either doesn’t hear me or ignores me.

When we turn another corner, I know we’re here.

Torches line the walls, illuminating a long, dank hallway. The smell hits me first. Blood. Then I see it on the floor in puddles and splattered on the wall. Even the ceiling has brown splatters.

At intervals down the hallway, bloody implements lie in puddles: a rock, a crowbar, a piece of rusted rebar, a shard of glass glinting red in the torchlight.

“Who…?” I ask. Though I can’t form any more words. At the end, I see a lump on the concrete. A hand stretches out for help that never came. The old man. The one who attacked me.

The guard drags me toward the body.

“I’ve seen enough!”

He doesn’t care. He drags me. My legs go weak, so he picks me up by the waist and carries me.

The smell of blood is cloying. His boots slosh through red puddles and splash my feet. I’ll be dappled in blood when we leave here.

Cut, smashed, and gouged, he’s almost unrecognizable. The whole crowd must’ve beaten him. And judging by the blood starting at the end of the hallway, it went on for a while.

I close my eyes. If only I could
un
see.

How could they? He was just an old man. A very frightened old man.

The guard must feel sorry for me. Either that or he doesn’t want to linger around the mangled body either. He walks us back toward Prentice’s office.