The Other Brother (29 page)

Chapter 56

pia the mirror, Gabriel saw everything Isaiah did to his father. He was so sickened that his stomach heaved, threatening to regurgitate the dinner he'd eaten less than an hour prior. He pulled over to the shoulder of the road to calm his nerves.

Lightning opened a rupture in the bruised sky, and a riptide of thunder crashed across the land. Rain washed down the Xterra's windows, blurring the world beyond, and Gabriel wished he could be washed away, too, carried to a better place where he would not have to deal with a psychopath like Isaiah. Seeing Isaiah torture his father had shaken him to the marrow.

Gabriel looked at the shotgun on the floor beside him. He felt like a fool. Hunting deer and quail was one thing; hunting a man was something altogether different and required more fortitude than he possessed.

What did he know about murder? Isaiah had killed people. He was a hardened criminal and would slit someone's throat as casually as he would shake his hand.

Nothing in Gabriel's background had prepared him for this. He'd had a privileged childhood, had gone to Jack & Jill summer camps, top-flight private schools, and ski trips to Vail with college friends. He was a buppie, his survival instincts softened by dinners in posh restaurants, nights at the theater, cocktail hours with buppies like him, wine tastings, museum openings, golf outings, and jazz festivals. He was a man of culture and creature comforts, a businessman, an intellectual. He wasn't a fighter. Wasn't a killer.

He had to admit the truth: maybe he couldn't save his father. Isaiah had taken this situation to an unprecedented level of violence and terror, and Gabriel couldn't go there with him.

Massaging the bridge of his nose, he contemplated his cell phone. It was time to call the police. The professionals.

If I so much as smell a cop on my ass, Pops is gonna be cruisin'in that big Cadillac in the sky.

Isaiah had warned him about involving the police, and Gabriel believed he meant what he'd said. But what was his alternative?

As he considered what he would say to the police, the phone rang.

"Gabriel," Mom said. Her voice was firm. "Where are you?"

"I'm on 285. I pulled over to the side of the road for a little while."

"Why are you sitting on your behind? You said you were going to help your father."

Gabriel paused. "Mom, I think I'd be better off calling the police."

"You said you were going to bring your father back. Alive. You promised me ."

"Mom, I .. " He wiped his sweat-filmed forehead. "Listen, I'll just call the cops, okay?"

"You're giving up?"

"I didn't say that. You don't understand how dangerous Isaiah is, Mom. You have no idea."

Mom was quiet.

"You're right," she said. "Isaiah is dangerous. But I don't want anyone to get hurt, including your brother-but especially your father. If we call the police, Lord only knows what might happen to our family."

Gabriel mulled over her words. Although Isaiah was out of control, he was still family. Their flesh and blood. And though he had caused a lot of harm to them, Gabriel didn't really want to kill him. He wanted to get him away from his father, yes, and put him in prison for a long time, surely. But he didn't want to kill him. Killing him would be an absolute last resort.

He doubted the police would be as sympathetic. What was Isaiah to them? He was just another troublesome felon on the run from the law, who'd humiliated them by managing to elude capture for a week now. If Isaiah resisted arrest-and his volatile behavior suggested he would-it was almost a certainty that they would gun him down.

And Pops might die in the crossfire. It was the classic hostage situation that had filled a hundred Hollywood action movies.

If I so much as smell a cop on my ass ...

He hadn't told Mom about Isaiah's threat, but as she often did, she had an intuitive understanding of what was at stake.

"You're right," Gabriel said. "We can't risk calling the police."

"Thank the Lord you understand" Mom expelled a heavy sigh. "Where is Isaiah taking your father? Do you know?"

"He's going to the cabin."

"Do you know how to get there?"

"You know I do "

"Then what are you waiting for?"

Gabriel had to smile. He had never loved his mother more than he did at that moment. She'd given him just the proper dose of tough love to kick his ass in gear again.

"Thanks, Mom. Tell Dana I love her."

"You'll tell her yourself when you and your father get home safely," she said. "We're praying for you, baby."

"I appreciate that" Gabriel's gaze fell on the shotgun. "I'm going to need it."

Chapter 5 7

pon leaving the Georgia Mountain Parkway, Isaiah took a series of winding roads that carried him deeper into dense forest land. The storm clouds looked as though they had merged with the peaks of the mountain range, creating a womb of blackness.

He took a right turn onto a maple-shrouded, gravel driveway. A spacious log cabin with a wraparound porch stood at the end of a long, curving path: Pops's mountain home.

How many black men owned a crib in the mountains, of all places? You knew you had money to burn when you could afford some shit like this.

Isaiah had parked his Chevelle on the side of the cabin, underneath the boughs of a tree; the vehicle concealed it beneath a black car cover. Even though he'd been on the run, there was no way he was going to give up that whip. Purchased with money and credit he had stolen from Gabriel, it was like the spoils of war he read about in military history books.

He parked the van at the end of the driveway. He shut off the engine.

Behind him, Pops groaned. The old man's joints, bounced about by the rough ride, were likely as stiff as the wood of the cabin walls.

Isaiah pulled his Glock out of his hip holster. He climbed out of the van. Rain drizzled onto the canopy of trees, cold droplets running off the leaves and spattering his head. He turned his face skyward, parted his lips, and flicked out his tongue to sample a raindrop-something he loved to do as a kid-and got a thrill of pleasure from the sweet, woodsy taste.

Where he'd grown up in the hood, the rain had tasted like acid and pain.

As raindrops trickled down his cheeks, he looked around. Although other homes occupied these mountains, the cabin stood alone, smack dab in the middle of several picturesque acres of maples, elms, and pine. Other than the patter of the rain and the distant gurgle of thunder, the woods were completely quiet.

He walked around the perimeter of the house, checking for footprints in the mud, tamped-down grass, snapped branches, discarded cigarette butts, and other signs of intruders. The cops might be on to him, and he could ill afford to get careless, especially now, when he was so close to finishing.

He circled the entire cabin. Nothing was out of place.

Satisfied, he unlocked the front door. He stepped inside, holding the Glock with the muzzle aimed at the ceiling, finger on the trigger.

Weak gray light filtered through the partly opened wooden blinds but left much of the interior swathed in shadows. He tapped a wall switch, flooding the room with light from an ornate ceiling fan. The living room, kitchen, and dining area were empty, surfaces clean and devoid of clutter. The scent of lemon disinfectant hung in the cool air.

He moved into the short hallway and glanced in the three bedrooms. Vacant.

He walked inside the bedroom at the end of the hallway, went to the bed, and pulled up the bed skirt. His luggage lay exactly where he'd left it, hidden underneath.

He was safe. No one knew he was here.

His plan had worked perfectly.

He'd seen a talk show on TV, years ago, about teenagers who were drug addicts in spite of their parents' best efforts to convince them to just say no, and he remembered the story of a particularly clever white boy who used to hide his drugs in his parents' bedroom. In his parents' bedroom! Who would've thunk it?

Isaiah had been hiding out at the cabin all week. They had flashed his mug all over TV and the newspapers, but no one had ever thought to look for him at one of Pops's area properties. It was a childishly simple idea, and that was why it had worked.

Still, he had to take precautions. Gabriel, with their mysterious mirror-link thing, might have figured out where he was hiding and be stupid and send the po-po after him, in spite of Isaiah's warning.

The house, however, appeared to have been untouched since he'd left that morning. Holstering the gun, he returned to the van and slid open the side door.

Pops lay on his shoulder, facing the doorway. The blood streaming from his wounded lip had dyed his goatee a deep crimson.

Pops's gaze zeroed in on Isaiah's Glock.

"This isn't for you, Pops," Isaiah said. Relief passed over Pops's face. Isaiah added, "But it's for anyone who tries to stop me from doing what I want to do with you"

Screws of fear tightened Pops's face.

Isaiah hopped into the van. He gripped the edge of the duct tape covering his father's mouth and ripped it away, a fleshy, tearing sound.

Pops bleated like a kicked pig.

The fishhook hung from his bottom lip like a crude tribal piercing, dried blood congealing on the tip. His lip was swollen to an almost comical degree and beginning to turn purple.

Isaiah roughly yanked the hook out of his father's lip. Pops cried out.

"Be glad I didn't tear your lip to shreds with this thing," Isaiah said. He tossed the hook toward the back of the van. Fresh blood had begun to seep from his father's wound.

"Please, son," Pops said. His voice was slurred, ragged. "I'll do anything you want, pay you any money you want, just tell me what it is you want me to do °"

"Right now I want you to shut up. We'll get settled first, then talk. Cool?"

Without waiting for an agreement, Isaiah flipped his father onto his stomach. He removed a knife from a sheath he wore strapped to his calf. He cut the ropes binding his father's wrists and then freed his ankles.

"Get up," Isaiah said. He kicked his father's thigh with his Timberland. "Don't even think about running either, lest you wanna make my day. I'm like Dirty Harry with this motherfucker." He slipped the gun out of the holster and made a show of aiming it.

Pops slowly sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the van. He rubbed his bruised wrists tenderly and then touched his lip. A grimace contorted his face.

Isaiah jumped onto the driveway. "Let's go. We're heading inside."

Moving like a much older man, Pops slid off the van's floor and stood. Hunched over, he looked at the house in front of them.

"How'd you know about this place?" Pops asked.

"Research, Pops," he said. "You think I came to you not knowing anything about you and what you had? If you spend a little money, you can get all the dirt you want on somebody. And if you'd checked up on me, you would've known better than to let me into the family."

Humiliation reddened Pops's face. He was a proud man, and the most difficult thing for a proud man to accept was that he had made a foolish, easily preventable mistake.

Isaiah poked the Glock's snub-nosed muzzle into the small of Pops's back.

"Go on in," Isaiah said.

Pops trudged toward the house, dragging his feet as though they were weighed down with sandbags. Isaiah opened the front door and nudged his father inside.

"This way," Isaiah said. He directed his father down the hallway into one of the bedrooms.

It was a small, squarish room with ivory walls and a hardwood floor. Isaiah had shuttered the two windows that normally overlooked the forest beyond. He flicked a switch, releasing harsh white light from a conical ceiling fixture.

When Isaiah had arrived at the cabin, a twin bed had occupied the room, along with a wooden dresser and a desk. In preparation for Pops's visit, he had removed all the furniture, stacking the pieces in another bedroom. A wooden chair was one of only two items in the room. It sat in the center under the light, like a display in a museum of torture.

The other thing in there was a red toolbox, lying in the corner.

"What's this?" Pops asked. "I thought you wanted to go fishing."

Isaiah barked a laugh. "Come on, man. I put some poles and tackle in the van, stuff I found in the shed up here, but I was only fooling. I don't give a damn about fishing with you. The time for that happy father-son shit has long since passed"

"Then why'd you bring me here?" Pops warily eyed the chair.

"I'm going to kill you," Isaiah said. "But first I'm going to make you suffer for a while. Mama and I suffered for thirty years, you know. Least I can do is torture you for a few hours before I put you out of your misery. Mama would say that's fair, don't you think?"