Walk In the Fire Read online

  “Listen to me, Mr. Grant. Here is all I know. I walked into my church and found a man I had never seen before. This man turned out to be Sherwood Cannon. I asked him his business. He spoke to me threateningly. I asked him to leave and he attacked me. I fell unconscious. When I awoke, the church was filled with smoke and flames and my nephew, Brother Felton, was pulling me to my feet. No, I did not see the body of Sherwood Cannon. No, I did not see or hear any of the gunshots or see any of the members of the Scorpions. No, I don’t know why the fire was set or if it was a hate crime and I don’t care. I lost my eye. I lost most of my church. I nearly lost my life. That is all I know. If you want to poke around, find out more information for your little ATF book report, you’re going to have to ask someone else. Do you understand me?”

  Clive slid the notebook back into his pocket and stood up. He nodded to Sister Tulah.

  “I understand. I suppose that’s all, then.”

  Tulah didn’t bother to stand up.

  “Yes, that is all.”

  Clive stepped away from the desk and smoothed his tie again.

  “Well. Thank you for your time.”

  Sister Tulah leaned back in her chair and looked Clive up and down pointedly.

  “Let me also give you a piece of advice, special agent. People around here don’t take too kindly to folks coming in, sticking their noses where they shouldn’t and asking questions. Stirring things up unnecessarily. If I were you, I’d write your report and skedaddle back to where you belong. There’s nothing here for you.”

  “SO, THAT’S it.”

  Judah crossed his arms and leaned back against the porch railing. He was talking mainly to Ramey, who was mirroring him by leaning against the side of the house, in between the front door and the window box spilling over with geraniums. Benji had stumped his way to the swing on the other side of the window, but Judah had largely ignored him as he tersely related the events from the night before. He was watching Ramey’s downturned face as she listened while tracing a crack in one of the peeling porch boards with the toe of her bare foot. She nodded slowly.

  “What about the body? The funeral?”

  From the slightly swaying porch swing, Benji snapped at her.

  “Do you gotta be so goddamn practical all the time?”

  Judah’s instinct was to turn on his brother, but he knew Benji was hurting. He had only just now found out about Lesser. Judah kept his eyes on Ramey, unable to look at Benji’s already ruined face, at the angry, puckered scars now slick with tears.

  “I guess his aunt is taking care of everything. She’s coming down from Jacksonville today and she made it pretty clear that she doesn’t want any of us involved.”

  Benji sniveled and wiped his nose on the shoulder of his T-shirt.

  “Figures.”

  “As far as she, or anyone else, knows, it was a drive-by shooting. That’s how Jedidiah called it in and I think the cops went for it. Right now, it’s probably best just to stick with that story.”

  Ramey nodded again and looked up at him. He could see her working through the event in her head, what the repercussions were going to be, the problems, and what to do next. Benji was right, Ramey was practical, but Judah needed that right now. He wasn’t sure if she had cried yet for Lesser or not. He had fallen asleep with her still downstairs in the kitchen and hadn’t seen her face when she had finally slipped into bed beside him. Judah had been turned away from her and he’d stayed that way.

  “So this guy, this old man at the store. Jedidiah. He’s working for Nash.”

  “Yes.”

  Benji coughed loudly and then snorted.

  “And he sure as hell ain’t working for us no more. Or, excuse me, for you. You, Judah Cannon.”

  Judah kept his eyes on Ramey and widened them in question. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. Judah pulled his keys out of his pocket, but Benji was on him before he could make a move.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Judah finally turned to Benji and sighed. He pushed himself away from the porch railing.

  “I think Ramey and I need to go for a drive.”

  Benji’s face was still wet in places, but he had stopped openly crying. He jammed the crutches under his arms and hauled himself up.

  “Oh, no.”

  Benji leaned toward him, wobbling.

  “No way. This is your fault. You’re not gonna do this to me and then just leave me out of it.”

  Ramey’s voice was quiet but firm.

  “That’s not fair, Benji.”

  Benji stumped forward and looked back and forth between Judah and Ramey.

  “Tough titty. Life ain’t fair. Who knew?”

  Judah was trying to be patient with his brother, but he could feel the weight of everything pressing down, threating to crush him. To suffocate him. It was all too overwhelming: Benji’s accusations, Ramey’s disapproving silences, Lesser’s face. He couldn’t seem to get the image of Lesser’s bloody, dirty face out of his mind. The dull cast of his eye. Judah took a deep breath, doing his best to keep his voice level and the rise of anger at the back of his throat in check.

  “Don’t do this, Benji.”

  “Don’t do what? Put this on you?”

  Benji spat a thick clot over the railing of the porch.

  “He was just a kid. He was my friend. I taught him to take apart an engine. I talked to him about girls. School. You came along and used him. Out of nowhere, he’s suddenly looking up to you like you’re something. Somebody. And you just used him. You’re no better than Daddy was.”

  Ramey’s voice cracked like a whip.

  “Benji, shut up.”

  Benji swung on his crutches toward Ramey.

  “And you…”

  “What? What now?”

  Ramey jumped in front of Benji with her hands on her hips and a threat on her face. Judah knew she’d been dealing with the brunt of Benji’s moods for the past few months, but he had never seen her this confrontational toward him. She turned and shot Judah a look over her shoulder and he realized she was not so much venting frustration as taking control of an otherwise volatile situation. Everything about his relationship with Benji had changed since he had gotten out of the hospital. He wasn’t sure exactly if it was the guilt still chewing away at him or his growing disappointment in his younger brother. He needed Benji to be on board with him. He needed him to step up, be a Cannon, even if he was still hobbling around and popping pain pills like Tic-Tacs. Benji had always been exempt, protected. He’d been too nice and good-natured for Sherwood and Levi to ever pressure him into risky situations. To ever beat him down in a parking lot. While Judah had been stewing in prison, taking the rap for the Cannon family, Benji had been free of it all, chasing girls, working on cars, doing whatever he wanted. Benji was right: life wasn’t fair. It hadn’t been fair then and, despite Benji’s condition, Judah didn’t think it was fair now. He and Ramey were sacrificing. Benji should be, too.

  Ramey looked from Judah back to Benji and then stepped away, putting her hands up. They all stood together in awkward silence until finally Judah spoke.

  “We can’t be at each other’s throats like this.”

  Ramey turned to him, arms crossed now, but back to focusing on the problem.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Well, we know that Nash is against us, right?”

  “No shit.”

  Judah ignored Benji as Ramey nodded along with him.

  “Right. But do we know why?”

  “He wasn’t just Sherwood’s man out in Putnam County. He’s running drugs on the side.”

  Ramey frowned.

  “But I think a lot of the guys are. That Lonnie screw-up you sent Alvin and Gary after last night, for instance. Even Sherwood looked the other way on that.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think Nash is just pushing weed on school kids. He’s part of a bigger operation.”

  Benji piped up again.

  “He tell you t
hat?”

  Judah begrudgingly glanced at Benji.

  “He made it pretty clear that he wanted to use our infrastructure. I told him no. That’s when the shooting started.”

  Ramey bit her lip and tilted her head.

  “It doesn’t make sense, though. Is he just a stupid hothead? If he wanted to use our network, why ruin his chances by doing what he did last night? Why not back off, try to feel you out, negotiate or whatever?”

  Benji sat back on the porch swing with a heavy thud.

  “There’s Ramey, thinking all rational again.”

  Judah shook his head.

  “I said want, not need. I’m not sure that he wasn’t going to try to shoot me one way or the other, to tell you the truth. I think he was two-timing Sherwood all along. Or, at least he’s working for someone else now.”

  Ramey jerked her head up.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know. He mentioned somebody named Weaver. That name ring a bell?”

  Both Ramey and Benji gave him blank expressions. Judah’s mouth twisted into a frown. He’d been hoping that one of them had at least heard the name before.

  “I asked Jedidiah and he looked at me cross-eyed. Either he was covering, or he honestly didn’t know. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  They were all quiet for a moment. Judah looked down at his hands. He rubbed at the calluses on his palm, trying to think. Finally, Ramey huffed. He looked up to see her blowing strands of hair out of her face. It was another bright, scorching day, but a small breeze had picked up over the past hour.

  “So, that’s where we’re at?”

  Judah met her eyes. Since they had made the decision to stay in Silas, it seemed like they were still only dodging bullets, facing down one issue after another. Taking care of Benji. Untangling Sherwood’s network. Dealing with the bookies and enforcers. The consequences. The repercussions. He had told Ramey that they were all just steps toward the end goal: getting out. That everything they were doing was so they could have a shot at having a life together. A normal, possibly happy life together and one where they wouldn’t have to always be on the run.

  He had believed it. Judah thought Ramey had believed it. But it was quicksand; the more Judah worked to pull them out, the faster they were dragged back under. And now this with Lesser. Sherwood wouldn’t have let it happen. Sherwood wouldn’t have been caught off guard. Judah had spent the night staring into the darkness, wondering over and over. Could he really keep trying to balance on the edge of a razor? Could he really keep telling himself that there was hope?

  Judah studied Ramey’s face. He wished he knew what she was thinking. He had thought about grabbing her hand while she poured him a cup of coffee earlier and putting it to her straight—did she still have faith in him? Judah hadn’t said a word, though. He already knew her answer. He had made her a promise. Judah knew she expected him to keep it.

  “That’s where we’re at. That’s the question we’ve now got to answer. Who the hell is Weaver?”

  “SO, I told her, I says right there, with my shorts in one hand, my pants in the other, standing right on her front porch, bare ass as the day I was born for all the world to see, I says, if you think you’re getting a dime of child support from me, then you’re barking up the wrong tree, lady. What do you think of that?”

  Shelia tugged at her bottled-blond ponytail, tied up high with a leopard print scrunchie, and popped her eyes wide. Her mascara kept getting gunky on her and making her eyes water. She picked up the empty plastic cup on the edge of the high top table and rattled what was left of the ice.

  “That’s something, Harry. You want another sea breeze?”

  Harry peered into the empty cup Shelia was still holding and stuck the gummy end of a cigar into the corner of his mouth.

  “You sure there’s actually vodka in these things?”

  Shelia shrugged and snapped her gum.

  “They’re only a dollar fifty on happy hour. You want a double?”

  Harry scratched his bristly mustache and frowned.

  “What’s that gonna cost me, three dollars?”

  “Well now, I never was very good at math.”

  Shelia winked and headed back to the bar, taking the plastic cup with her. She slung it in the trashcan behind the bar and rang in a double. Mike, the bartender who was busy flexing for a pug-faced blonde across the bar who looked like she had just left cheerleader practice, rolled his eyes and shot Shelia a dirty look when he heard the ticket print. Shelia blew him a kiss and then made sure to give the perky co-ed a pointed onceover. The girl looked away in discomfort and Shelia smiled to herself. She turned to her reflection in the bar mirror and adjusted her see-through tank top, screen printed with three purple palm trees that drew the eyes just where they needed to be. She straightened her denim mini-skirt, but tried not to look down at her scuffed Keds. They only reminded her of the endless hours she was clocking as a cocktail waitress at The Salty Dog.

  Shelia picked up the sea breeze, now in a slightly larger plastic cup, and sauntered back to the row of high tops cutting through the smoky haze in the center of bar. She slid the drink over to Harry, the only customer she had at four o’clock in the afternoon, but turned away before he could start telling yet another story about one of his ex-wives. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a slice of blasting sunlight as Frank came stomping through the door. Shelia wandered over to the end of the bar where she usually hung out and waited for her uncle to come over and bitch at her about something.

  Shelia didn’t think she had spoken more than four words to Frank since she had been old enough to wear a training bra. She had always remembered him as a slick jerk, the kind of asshole who got off on telling perverted jokes around kids and flashing a wad of cash in a gold money clip whenever he got the chance. Now that Shelia thought about it, he hadn’t changed much over the past thirty years, only grown a paunch and acquired a pair of gold-rimmed aviator glasses that made his already creepy, heavy-lidded eyes even creepier. He had lost half his hair, but wore what was left in a straggling, greasy ponytail. Sometimes Shelia couldn’t believe that she was actually in Daytona Beach, in Frank’s shithole of a bar, trying to make a buck.

  And lay low. After the shootout and fire at that crazy preacher lady’s church, she and Slim Jim didn’t have too many options. It had been Tiny, Legs and Ratface who’d been caught, tearing down the highway away from the scene, Tiny and Legs both spattered with blood and Ratface still reeking of gasoline from the Molotov cocktail he’d launched through the church’s window. Of all things, they’d been pulled over by a state trooper for speeding, though it didn’t take long for them to be arrested for everything that had gone down at the church. In his panic to get away, Slim Jim had managed to flood his engine, putting him about a mile behind the others. He had told Shelia that he was sure his bike acting up would be the thing that did him in, but it turned out to have been his saving grace. He’d seen the flashing lights up ahead, pulling the others over, and been able to turn around in time.

  When Slim Jim showed up at her trailer, sweating, out of breath, gunpowder still on his hands, Tiny’s blood on his leather vest and neck, she hadn’t even asked for the whole story. She had opened the rattling screen door, tossed him a roll of paper towels and begun to pack a bag. He’d been too out of sorts to make a decision, too busy standing around in shock, so she’d taken matters into her own hands. She was getting the hell out of Bradford County and Slim Jim was welcome to come along. When he started blubbering about Jack and Toadie, about the club, she’d given him a quick choice: stay and wait for the cops to show up or get his skinny ass in her car. They had managed to skip town before the sun set.

  Ending up at her uncle’s bar three counties away wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind, but Shelia had learned long ago that beggars had no place being choosers. Not if they wanted to stay alive or out of jail. After some convincing, Frank had agreed to let her and Slim Jim stay at the Sundaze, one of the two rat trap
motels he owned along with The Salty Dog. After even more convincing, Frank had hired Shelia at his bar and taken Slim Jim on as a maintenance worker for the motels, paying them both under the table, of course. Shelia knew Slim Jim was less than thrilled about the arrangement, but it gave them a place to hide out and jobs without paperwork. As far as Shelia was concerned, if Slim Jim didn’t like it, he didn’t have to stay. Shelia was a cat; she knew she’d land on her feet anywhere and it was Slim Jim’s skin she was saving, not her own, after all.

  Frank swaggered over and rested his hairy knuckles on the edge of the bar. As always, he was standing too close and reeked of Brut cologne.

  “Not exactly banging in here, huh?”

  Shelia inched away from him.

  “It’s Sunday afternoon. What kinda high rollers were you expecting?”

  Frank turned around so that he could survey the bar with her. Harry was busy chewing on his cigar and checking his phone. The blonde had been joined by a brunette who couldn’t bother to put a shirt on over her bikini top, but they were the only ones sitting at the bar. The girls were snickering over their Smirnoff Ices and the sportscasters on the fuzzy TV were droning on about the race, but otherwise The Salty Dog was as silent as a tomb. Frank scratched at a large mole on the back of his sunburned neck.

  “Well, you could at least have some music playing. Turn the lights down some. It’s as bright as a damn grocery store in here. You think this type of atmosphere makes people want to come in and drink?”

  Shelia shrugged.

  “I think if people want a drink, they’re gonna come in regardless of the lighting.”

  Frank gave her a disgusted look. He turned down the lights and the room became bathed in the neon glare from the beer signs hanging behind the bar and along the back wall. The two girls looked uneasily around them, as if just now realizing what a dive they’d wandered into. Frank shoved a CD into the sound system and turned the volume up. He grinned at Shelia.

  “See, ain’t that better? Atmosphere. It feels like a bar now, not a damn hospital.”