Holding Smoke Page 18

  “Benji! Get back in the truck and get it in gear. Ramey, Shelia, over the gate, now!”

  He reached for Ramey, but she was still bent over the control box. He grabbed her shoulder, dragging her to her feet, but she struggled away from him.

  “Can you get this open?”

  “What? Ramey, the gate’s still stuck.”

  She was on the ground again, gripping the box’s cover and trying to pry it loose.

  “Can you—”

  Ramey barely had time to snatch her fingers back as Elrod knocked Judah aside and smashed his boot into the control box. The plastic cover cracked and Judah tore it off and slung it over his shoulder. In the darkness, he could just make out a circuit board and a tangle of wires. Ramey plunged her hands into the knot, trying to rip it apart, until Elrod shoved his open pocketknife in her hand. Judah went back to the gate and wrapped his fists around the bars again. He watched Ramey slash through the wires and heard a faint click as the electromagnetic clamps released. The gate slid back with ease. They were through.

  “Go, go, go!”

  The noises behind Judah were growing louder, the lights brighter, but Shelia and Elrod were racing past him, piling into the horse trailer, Dinah with Calypso right behind them. Judah hauled Ramey to her feet and pushed her ahead of him, slipping and sliding up the metal ramp. He crammed in beside her and spun around in time to see three security guards, guns in hand, flashlights streaking in all directions, one with a slobbering German Shepard straining at its leash. They were yelling, ordering them to stop, threatening to shoot, but Levi was raising the ramp, roaring for Benji to drive, and then the truck lurched forward, tires squealing and grinding, and just as Judah locked the ramp in place, Levi leapt onto the trailer’s back bumper.

  Judah was terrified they were going to hear gunshots next, but there was only the snapping of the dog, off its leash, but without a hope of catching up to them as Benji floored it down Appleton Lane. Levi had hooked his forearms over the edge of the raised ramp when he jumped and Judah grabbed his brother, holding fast. As they sped by, Judah could see the estate lit up like the Fourth of July. He couldn’t hear anything over the chaos behind him—Calypso bucking, the others cursing as they tried to get out of the horse’s way—but when they flashed by the front gate, Judah glimpsed two SUVs pulling away from the house. Judah wasn’t worried, though; by the time they made it down the long driveway and past the gatehouse, the truck, trailer, and Calypso would be long gone. Judah gripped his brother’s sweaty arms as Benji swerved left onto the highway and then immediately turned right down the first of many back roads that would take them far away from Brandywine Farms. Levi coughed, catching his breath, and met Judah’s eyes. He was grinning wildly, half out of his mind, and Judah was grinning right back.

  11

  Sister Tulah couldn’t sleep. She absently toyed with the ropy gray braid slung over her shoulder as she stood in her terry cloth slippers and contemplated the cross on the wall. She felt laden, elephantine, her body sagging beneath her long, calico nightgown, her eyelids drooping at the corners. She could feel the pits above her cheekbones, the skin thin, crinkled like the underside of a mollusk. Tulah reached up and carefully touched the cavity where her left eye once had been. She probed the shriveled flap and brought her fingers away moist. Tulah grunted, shuffled a few paces on the creaking floorboards, and folded her arms. The wooden cross on the wall was small, no bigger than her hand, but it was bearing down on her tonight.

  Easter, Tulah’s mother, had hung the cross in her bedroom when she was a little girl and told her to look at it every night before closing her eyes to sleep. Otherwise, Satan might think he had a way into her heart and snatch her up at the witching hour. Easter would stand in the wedge of light spilling from the open doorway, her eyes roving from corner to corner of Tulah’s bare, claustrophobic room, her mouth pinching every time she perceived one of the demons that floated always on the ether. Tulah would draw the quilt up to her chin and watch her mother’s face as she inventoried the devils for the night. Tulah was too afraid to look herself, but would stare, riveted, at Easter’s face, trying to add up the numbers. Finally, Easter would rest her hand on the serpentine brass door handle and sigh. Every night, the same sigh, until Tulah was too old for her mother to send her off to bed. Easter would frown at Tulah with only the deepest of pity and then sternly tell her daughter to look at the cross. “Look at the cross until you can’t look no more and then don’t open your eyes again once you close them.” Easter would nod her head firmly, as if instructing Tulah on hoeing the tomato rows or baking a layered cake. God would protect her, but only if she put the work in first, Easter would remind her, and then the door would close and lock. Tulah would stare until her eyes burned, until the day her grandfather told her in confidence that she was marked to lead his church, until the night her grandmother took her into further confidence and revealed it was all a load of horseshit.

  Sister Tulah pursed her lips and ruminated on the cross. Her naked shins and ankles were cold, rimed like plucked chicken skin, but she had no desire to go back to bed. She knew she would only sit up against the mound of bulging feather pillows and fixate on the cross from there. Ever since she was sixteen and Bithiah, her father’s mother, had taken her aside and begun to teach her about Attar—about the True God hiding behind the veil, buried in the pages of the Bible beneath the fire and brimstone, the begots and shall nots—the cross had lost its dominion over Tulah. By the time she was in her thirties, and had been initiated into The Order—trekked through the Forest of Anat and stood in front of the Sacred Wall, made the Descent and passed her first Recompense—the thought of the cross’ power over her had seemed laughable. Still, she kept it, mounted on the wall of her bedroom, the very same bedroom she had cowered in as a child, the room she had slept in all of her life. The cross was the broken glass in her shoe, the nettles in her bed, the sackcloth and barbed wire taut against her skin. It did not keep her mindful of her faith, but of her mortality. She was powerful, but not Almighty. And even God had fists shaken at him, had Satan rattle the dice in his face from time to time.

  Tulah’s eye wandered to the emptiness around the cross, spiraling out to the cobwebbed corners of the room. It was Felton keeping her up tonight. Felton who had kept her awake for the past two nights, though she’d not seen hide nor hair of him since she’d stormed away, unsatisfied, from his little ragtag campsite in the woods. Sisters Tulah’s face flamed. Her woods. Her land. She had seen the van come and go once, barely scraping down the path that wasn’t meant to be a road, churning up dirt and leaves and brush, but there had been no sign of her errant nephew. Tulah had wasted precious hours, time she should have spent on more important matters, trying to ferret out the motivation behind Felton’s homecoming. It was clear he had no intention of resuming his old duties, of cleaning the church and presiding over menial tasks, and Tulah wouldn’t have allowed him had he asked. She’d chewed over the possibility that he was plotting to blackmail her, but she had seen no indication of this course, either. Sister Tulah uncrossed her arms and rested her hands on her hips as she searched the wall for answers. What was he was doing, down there in his camper, and what was he thinking? Most importantly, what did he want?

  She was drawn back to the cross, crouched like a spider, waiting for an answer. A wicked grin slowly dilated across her lips. She had none to give, but she still had fangs. She still had every way of finding a pressure point and grinding it down to the raw end of the nerve. And with Felton, there was no need to hunt it out. She knew Felton’s heart, if not his current state of mind, and she wasn’t afraid to rip it out of his chest and toss it in front of the pulpit, still wet and quivering, if need be. Tulah turned her back on the cross and lumbered toward her bed. It was time to chasten her dearest nephew. It was time to plan a reckoning.

  *

  Dinah yanked the irritating pins out of her updo, combed her hair out over her shoulders, and let her face sink down into he
r cupped palms. The Cannon brothers would not stop arguing. Dinah raised her head, gritted her teeth, and swung her legs, banging them against the stack of splintery wooden pallets she was perched upon. She tried to catch the eye of Ramey, cigarette in hand, leaning against one of the support posts on the opposite side of the barn. Ramey had either long since learned to tune the boys out or had something heavy weighing on her mind. Dinah had overheard Ramey complaining about handing her 9mm over to Judah since her skintight dress didn’t give her much of a place to stash a gun. Dinah hoped for a glance her way in a moment of solidarity against the boys, but Ramey only flicked her cigarette and stared down at the fluttering ash as if scrying for a sign.

  Dinah wished Shelia or Elrod had stayed, but it’d been the smarter move to send Shelia home, as she was the only one of the group who could have been identified as having any real connection to the heist. She’d been the only one seen near the stable. Shelia didn’t seem to like Dinah any more than Ramey did, but she wasn’t above small talk, either. Elrod would’ve been able to lighten the mood, but he’d been worried about leaving his girlfriend alone for too long, and not just because she was pregnant. Maizie was already jealous of Elrod spending a night away from her and was the type of woman whose first instinct was to do something stupid when things didn’t go her way. Dinah had agreed with Elrod that he needed to be back at home, keeping Maizie happy. And quiet.

  Dinah kicked her heels loudly again, thinking one of the Cannons might take the hint, or at least notice her long enough to stop and take a breath, but she was invisible to them. The three brothers were standing in the middle of the derelict barn, lit only by the early rays of the approaching dawn filtering down through the cracks in the rafters and an ancient kerosene lamp Dinah had dug out of the detritus in the tack room. Calypso, finally calm, was in the single stall next to the stacked bales of moldering hay and blissfully tuning everything out. Dinah only wished she could do the same.

  Judah kicked at a tumbleweed of baling wire, sending up a small puff of dust. He’d already booted it across the filthy dirt floor of the barn a half dozen times in his pacing.

  “I mean, your one, and only, stupid, easy job was the damn gate. As soon as you realized it wasn’t working, you should’ve climbed it and checked the other side. You had all that time while we were taking care of everything else. So, I’m going to ask again. What the hell were you doing?”

  There was a malicious sneer on Levi’s lips and boredom in his eyes. It was obvious he enjoyed goading Judah. And was uncomfortable with silence. Every time it seemed there was nothing left to rehash, Levi started up again. Dinah should have thought to hide away a pint of whiskey when she’d scoped out and secured the dilapidated barn out on the Marion County line. Liquor usually made men like the Cannons quiet. Or at least drinking would have given them something else to do besides bicker.

  Levi grunted and stuck his foot out to trap the ball of wire.

  “I was doing my one, only, stupid job. We wasn’t supposed to open the gate ’til Shelia flashed the damn Boy Scout signal. Maybe butterfingers over here should’ve typed in the code right.”

  Leaning awkwardly on his cane just a little ways apart from them, Benji covered his face and groaned.

  “You mean the code that ain’t work? How’s that my fault?”

  Dinah expected them to all turn to her again—she’d already gotten an earful about both the gate code and the security alarm, though she’d finally convinced them that if it was anyone’s fault it was Katerina’s—but they didn’t even bother. Apparently, blaming her wasn’t as much of a priority as their petty sibling rivalry.

  “Least I didn’t trip the alarm. We could’ve gotten the gate down easy, gotten out of there clean, but no. You were about as quiet as an elephant marching through a mine field.”

  “At least I was doing something.”

  “Yeah, to almost get us caught.”

  Levi and Judah were getting a little too close, their fists curling up just a little too fast, and Benji must have seen it, too. He stumped forward, though Dinah caught the grimace of pain on his already tortured face. She’d watched him trying to move the gate alongside everyone else.

  “Jesus, neither of you could see what the other was doing. Let it go already.”

  Levi backed away from Judah and swung his rancor fully on Benji.

  “Whose side you even on here, little brother? It ain’t exactly like you was doing much. You and that cane there.”

  “You kidding me?”

  Benji wobbled, stabbing in the air with his cane.

  “Who drove the truck? Who found all those back roads and got us out of there? You couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag if you tried. And, you know, if that code had worked, we wouldn’t have needed you for nothing. In fact, when it comes down to dividing this ransom money—”

  “How many marbles you lost, boy? We only let you come along ’cause we felt sorry for the cripple. Anything you make off this is pure charity.”

  Benji and Levi started yelling over one another and Dinah thought she was about to lose it herself. She locked her elbows and dug her nails into the mushy edge of the rotted pallet. At least Judah was walking away now, stalking over to Ramey, who only seemed to brush him aside. Dinah watched out of the corner of her eye as Judah put his hand on Ramey’s arm and she shrugged him away, her head still down. Dinah couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from the expression on their faces—Ramey scowling into the dirt, Judah obviously concerned, trying to touch her again as she pulled away—it couldn’t be good.

  Dinah’s attention ping-ponged between Levi and Benji, fighting loudly, and Judah and Ramey, fighting in whispers. Finally, Ramey stomped out her cigarette and put her hands flat against Judah’s chest. From where Dinah was sitting, it didn’t look like a comforting gesture, but rather one of resignation, and when Judah tried to grip her elbows to pull her closer, she backed away. For all the anguish written on both their faces, Dinah couldn’t help but find them beautiful. The long line of Ramey’s neck and the sharp angle of Judah’s jaw catching in the kerosene glow. It was really such a shame. Ramey glanced over her shoulder as Levi and Benji dropped her name into the mix, and then her eyes swept the barn until they found hers. Dinah tried to smile, but even with the distance and the shadows, Dinah could make out nothing but contempt in return. Ramey said something to Judah, her chin dipped low, her lips curled back in a snarl, and then spun away from him. She stormed out into the early, pearled light, and Dinah heard the squeal and slam of a truck door, but, thankfully, no engine roar or peel of tires. Hopefully, Ramey had just disappeared to sulk.

  Judah moved to go after her, but stopped short of the barn door and threw his hands up in frustration. He brought them down onto his head and pulled at his hair, rubbed his neck, before turning back to his brothers. He snapped at them, raking the coals of the senseless fight, stoking it back to flame. The din grew and grew and finally Dinah couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Enough! Jesus H. Christ, why can’t y’all shut the hell up for five goddamn minutes?”

  Dinah hadn’t expected a reaction, let alone stunned silence. Benji stopped in mid-sentence and all three gawked at her in surprise. They must have completely forgotten she was even there. Dinah slid off the pallets, facing them down. Levi lumbered over to her with a menacing strut, his arms swinging at his sides like anvils.

  “How’s about we shut up once we get paid? You’re running this show, ain’t you? Holding all the cards? Well, where’s your friend, huh? The one who’s supposed to pick up this pain-in-my-ass horse and handle the ransom? Or is that something else you managed to screw up?”

  Dinah refused to be intimated by Levi; she stood her ground as he strutted in front of her while Judah and Benji hung back and watched. It was obvious they were of the same mind as their brother, even if they wouldn’t have stated it in quite the same way. Dinah slipped her phone out of her pocket and checked the time on the screen. 7:15. She
held the phone out so Levi could see it.

  “Luis said he’d be here at eight. Eight a.m. Is it eight a.m.?”

  Levi’s eyes narrowed. He looked as if he was about to slap the cellphone out of her hand, so she quickly dropped her arm.

  “How we even know he’s coming?”

  “Because I called him right after I put Calypso in the stall. You were standing right there. Right there, next to me.”

  Dinah pointed across the barn.

  “And you heard me call Katerina, telling her the job was done. Again, we were standing right there.”

  Levi grunted, but didn’t back away. She wished Judah or Benji would intervene, but they were only cautiously watching the exchange. Dinah crossed her arms high over her chest. If they wanted to be assholes, she could play at it, too.

  “And do you really think I want to spend any more time than I got to holed up in this shit-stinking barn? You three could argue with a fence post and each come away convinced you’d changed its mind. And, I swear, it sounds like a damn henhouse in here the way y’all are carrying on. I’m about to run out and buy you each a bottle of Midol and a pint of Häagen-Dazs. Got any requests for flavors?”

  She eyed each one in turn until Benji sputtered out a laugh. For a tense moment, Dinah was sure Levi was going to take a swing at her, but then Judah followed Benji and Levi turned on them.

  “Oh, so that’s funny? You know what ain’t funny, that alarm going off…”

  Their attention circled back to one another and the ceaseless argument resumed. Dinah groaned. Fighting Levi would almost be better than having to listen to him. She glanced at the time on her cellphone again. Not much longer. Thank God, not much longer at all.