Lola on Fire

by Rio Youers

  He pulled up beside Molly and worked the reins. Autumn flared her nostrils and champed, bumping against placid Poe.

  “Whoa, girl.”

  Molly grinned as Brody walked a few figure eights and hushed his horse, finally getting her under control.

  “What took you so long?” she said.

  * * *

  The river turned from gold to bronze, capped with silver where rocks broke the surface. The sun dropped slowly, like a hand bearing weight. A different light lined the horizon. It was beautiful. All of it.

  “I was talking to Mom,” Brody said.

  “Yeah? How’s she doing?”

  “She’s a little . . . emotional.” Brody couldn’t help but smile; this was not a word that had been used to describe their mom very often. “But she’ll be okay.”

  “We’ll all be okay.” Molly gazed across the open land. “We’ve got this.”

  Brody nodded. “We’ll one-inch punch it, right?”

  “Always.”

  Their credo, still, and they embodied it, appearing basic and harmless, but packed with interior power. The press, following the shoot-out at Dynasty Warehousing (the “Second Carver City Massacre,” some news outlets called it—the first being from 1993, also starring Jimmy Latzo) jumped on this: the David and Goliath angle. They knew only what Lola, Molly, and Brody had told the authorities, though, and Lola had insisted they keep everything low-key. Their line: they were victims and had acted in self-defense.

  This was corroborated by the 03:31 video in which Molly was tortured, and Renée Giordano shot to death. The assailants were masked, but there was enough evidence to damn them. Molly’s statement, for one. But also: the victims’ hair and blood was discovered in a basement room of Dynasty Warehousing, owned and operated by Jimmy Latzo; the original MP4 video file was dug out of the hard drive of Jimmy’s personal computer; forensic voice analysis matched Jimmy’s voice, despite his efforts to disguise it. As if this wasn’t enough, Renée’s partially dissolved remains were discovered in a barrel of sodium hydroxide at a hazardous waste facility (also owned by Jimmy Latzo) two miles from the warehouse.

  “Why you?” the FBI agent asked Molly after she had given her statement.

  “Jimmy Latzo was after my mom,” Molly replied truthfully. “I guess they’ve got history.”

  Lola downplayed this history, as well as any act of heroism.

  She said: “Jimmy was convinced I had something to do with what happened in 1993. I didn’t, of course, but I was forced into hiding—I changed my identity, my backstory. Jimmy is resourceful, though. He tracked my kids down, and after he sent that video . . . well, I went there to reason with him. Things turned bad.”

  “Eighteen dead?” the FBI agent said. “That’s not bad. That’s apocalyptic.”

  “They turned on each other,” Lola said. “Some of them wanted to let us go. Some of them didn’t. We did what we had to. No more. No less.”

  Certain evidence—a sawed-off shotgun with Brody’s prints all over it; Blair Mayo’s grisly corpse—invited further questioning, but the authorities were content not to dig too deeply. Some very bad people were dead. The victim’s accounts held up. File under “closed” and move on.

  There were no objections, no impassioned pursuit of the truth. A few of Jimmy’s high-rolling “friends,” business associates, and siblings came out of the woodwork, but they knew what Jimmy was about and were not at all surprised that his death came in a barrage of gunfire. They paid their respects and carried on as before.

  The press kept him alive, though, for as long as they were able. They glorified the information they’d been given and disinterred old stories and legends. Jimmy’s ignominy spread beyond the northeastern states. He had his fans, like any mobster or mass murderer (his subreddit had 32.6k subscribers) but the popular opinion was that the world was better off without him.

  At the opposite end of the good-and-evil spectrum, a service was held for Renée Giordano in her hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. It was gloriously attended.

  The Indianapolis Colts wore black armbands and observed a minute’s silence at their next home game.

  * * *

  In January 2020, a donation of $2,800 was made to the pediatric ward of Freewood Valley Hospital, under the name of Buddy’s Convenience Store. This was, give or take a few dollars, the amount Brody had stolen from Buddy’s cash register. He had hoped this act of goodwill would appease the universe and lessen the frequency of his nightmares. It didn’t.

  “How do you manage?” he’d asked his mom. This was shortly after getting out of the hospital, when he was still too sore for farmwork, and trapped with his thoughts for most of the day. “Do you shut yourself down and pretend it didn’t happen?”

  “It all comes down to balance,” Lola had replied, and made weights out of her hands. “You can’t let the darkness consume you. And you can’t smile stupidly and pretend everything is A-okay. You shoulder the bad, you draw on the good. That’s the only way to walk straight.”

  Janey had said something similar. “Make peace with what happened. You’re a good man, and you protect what you love.” Their relationship was one of the new lights in Brody’s life, and had come out of nowhere. Brody had been grooming Autumn, who was unsettled, stomping her hooves, when Janey—who still came Wednesdays and Fridays to help with the horses—stepped beside him, placed her hand over his, and gently guided the brush. “Long, easy strokes. That’s how she likes it.” Autumn settled, but Brody ran hot. It was the best he’d felt in quite some time.

  He didn’t tell Janey everything. There were details she didn’t need to know, and that he was doing his best to forget. They were like bugs, though. They got into small places. They buzzed and scratched. And they were always busier at night.

  There was blood in his dreams. Sometimes it was Jimmy’s, or Joey Cabrini’s (always accompanied by that pig-like grunting). Most of the time, though, it was Brody’s blood. In the worst of his nightmares, he kept getting back up. He’d be shot through the leg or chest, and up he’d pop. He’d take a bullet to the head and keep on ticking, fueled by something inside that refused to die.

  “I can’t stay down,” he’d said to Janey. She was curled into him, one hand on his chest. Three a.m. moonlight bled through a gap in the curtains. “I don’t know if it will ever end.”

  “It will,” Janey had replied, “if you get up stronger.”

  This brief and brilliant wisdom—get up stronger—complemented the “one-inch punch” philosophy. He carried both into his everyday and worked hard. The farm cradled him. It felt secure, a place from which to feed and grow. His days were spent spreading fertilizer, irrigating crops, spraying pesticides, tending the livestock. The work packed muscle onto his shoulders and arms.

  He frequented the Bald Eagle Shooting Range. His mom’s idea. “You won’t control your fear,” she’d said, “until you’ve bridled it.” She was right. Brody had hammered rounds into waves of gunmen, goons, and mobsters, until gradually they morphed into twelve-by-twelve targets. Paper squares with a series of concentric circles and a bright dot at the center.

  His arm got steadier, his aim truer.

  The nightmares dulled but didn’t stop.

  Evenings were spent with family, or with Janey. Sometimes the four of them would ride across the fading countryside, the wind chasing through their hair, until even their horses were breathless. They cooked together, streamed movies, cheered for the local baseball team. They slept on bedrolls beneath the endless sky, with coyotes prowling nearby and bull snakes hissing in the grass.

  Molly remained his light, without her having to shine it. She tackled her own nightmares with a fierce tenacity. Working on the farm helped (Molly loved those horses). She saw a therapist once a week. “Benign discussion,” she called it. Also, Butch Morgan’s son was tall and understanding, and in him she’d found a companion. They weren’t as far along the romance trail as Brody and Janey, but the look in Molly’s eye suggested she hoped t
hey soon would be.

  She and Brody had the same ghost. Not the bleeding, dripping characters that rattled their dreams, but a silent, forceful woman who haunted their waking hours.

  Blair.

  She lived in the corner of Molly’s eye. Molly would be in the barn, or maybe the kitchen, and would turn quickly, certain she’d seen Blair standing in the doorway with a pipe wrench in her hand. Other times, she lingered in the darkness beside Molly’s bed, only to disappear the moment Molly rolled over to look.

  Blair haunted Brody in a different way. She lived in his wallet.

  Her returning it had been an odd, unexpected gesture, and Brody thought about it often. Was it a genuine attempt at decency, or had she been mocking him—flaunting her absolute control? It was probably the latter, but Brody couldn’t shake the notion that Blair had wanted to show him something beyond her cunning and cruelty: a redemptive quality that so rarely surfaced. He had searched though the wallet while lying in his hospital bed, expecting to find a note folded to fingernail size and tucked deep into one of the pockets. It would read, Forgive me, or maybe even, Help me.

  There was no note.

  Brody searched for her online, looking for a history of neglect or humanity—a skeleton for his ghost. He found nothing beyond the marksperson and martial arts accolades. No mention of a family. No social media presence. The press made no special mention of her in the aftermath of the shooting. She was just another redshirt in the Jimmy Latzo script.

  Brody bought a new wallet. He filled it with a Nebraska driver’s license, a concealed handgun permit, a credit card with a manageable APR, and with money that he’d earned through hard work. He kept his old wallet, though, and looked through it every now and then, remembering the girl with the purple hair and $1,500 boots, who had blazed through his life like a rocket.

  * * *

  Renée had said that she believed Lola was some kind of superhero, and she was, in many ways, but at her core she was fractured and wonderful and wholly normal. She was also, perhaps, the last person to realize this.

  Lola held her children when they needed holding. She encouraged, comforted, and reassured them with a tenderness that was undeniably close to the surface. In these moments, it would be easy to believe she didn’t have traumas of her own, but Brody recognized the ghosts behind her eyes.

  She had told Brody that balance was the only way to walk straight, but sometimes she wavered, too.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Before riding out to meet Molly, Brody had walked into the kitchen to find Lola sitting at the table. Her cheeks were damp and she had a Kleenex balled in her fist.

  “Oh hey, sweetie.” She blinked her wet eyes. “I thought you were out.”

  “Leaving now.” He and Molly were meeting at the place they called Resurrection Lookout. A serene, untouched stretch of acreage, where it was natural to reflect on what was, and what might be. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I know you think I’m crying . . . and yes, I am, but . . .” She sighed, then managed a shaky smile. “Jesus, who am I kidding? I’ve actually cried a lot lately.”

  “I know.”

  “I think it’s a sign I’m turning into a normal person.”

  “You’ve always been a normal person.” Brody grabbed his hat from the kitchen countertop and placed it on his head. He hesitated for a moment—sometimes it was better to give his mom some space—but then took the seat opposite her at the table. “It’s just that everything else around you was messed up.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” She wiped her cheeks and looked at him. He saw no ghosts in her eyes now, only honesty and trust.

  “I know it’s true,” he said.

  The clock in the hallway ticked dutifully into the early evening, emphasizing the Nebraska quiet. Even the animals had settled. Lola breathed over her upper lip and glanced at her hands. Her knuckles were callused from her training (or was it her therapy?): striking a solid wooden post in the barn until it bowed and had to be supported.

  “I don’t ever want you to think I’m not happy,” she said, “or that I don’t want you and Molly here. It’s just . . . everything with Jimmy. I carried that weight for a long time, and now that it’s gone, it feels like a part of me has been chipped away. That’s a good thing, I know, but I still feel . . . less, somehow. Does that make any sense?”

  “I guess so,” Brody said. “You have a lot to unpack. We all do.”

  “It’s complicated, huh?”

  He reached across the table, took her callused hand, and squeezed. She looked at him gratefully and another tear flashed down her cheek.

  “To complicate matters further, I also feel . . . well, more. More fulfilled. More complete. I’m a full-time mom again, which is the best feeling in the world. But it comes with its own perils, because now I’m worried about you. Mom things. Are you going to fall off that horse and break your neck? Are you going to get Janey pregnant—”

  “Aw, Mom—”

  “Is Cal Morgan going to look after Molly, because if he doesn’t . . .” She trailed off, offering another weak smile. “I sometimes think it was easier being shot at. I know what to do about that, at least.”

  “Molly can look after herself.” Brody grinned, his eyes glimmering beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “And me? Well, I think I got all of the stupid out of my system.”

  “You better have.”

  “And these things you’re feeling . . . yeah, they’re scary. But they’re healthy, Mom. They’re normal.”

  “Normal,” Lola repeated. “That word again. You know, this is the first time I’ve ever had a normal life. I didn’t have one as a kid. I didn’t have one when I was working for Jimmy. And I didn’t have one when you were younger, because the threat was still out there. But here I am, in my early fifties, and my life is finally my own.”

  “It’s daunting,” Brody said.

  “It’s breathtaking.”

  The kitchen brightened as the late sun touched the window and ran across the floor.

  They said nothing else but held hands a moment longer.

  * * *

  Autumn bristled again but Brody gave the reins a tug and she settled quickly. He looked at Molly with one eyebrow raised: Not bad for a city boy.

  Molly winked. Her smile was as curved and radiant as the river.

  The minutes rolled by, and beautifully. They watched from their saddles as the sun splashed the horizon with warm paints and a thin moon appeared. Birds whistled. The crickets droned.

  “Sure beats the smokestacks in Tank Hill,” Molly said.

  “Beats everything,” Brody said.

  Raw, deeper color, and then it all began to ebb. Molly opened her arms as if to embrace it, keep a piece of it for herself. Brody did the same.

  “We’re almost there, sis,” he said.

  Their shadows were long and blended with the land.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing Lola on Fire was a rush, a wild ride. I traveled solo for the first few drafts, which is just the way I like it, then brought in a host of friends and good people for subsequent drafts. They each played a part and helped make the journey more enriching and fulfilling. Lola on Fire is the result of the miles we clocked together.

  To begin with, I had the best beta readers a novelist could hope for: Chris Ryall of IDW Publishing, and New York Times bestselling authors Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon. They offered their enthusiasm, as well as suggestions and constructive criticism. I’m so lucky to have had their knowledge and expertise to draw on, and even luckier to have them as friends.

  Joe Hill has supported my work in the past, and he was in my corner for Lola on Fire, too. Joe read a later (fourth or fifth) draft, then sent me a long email detailing the parts he liked, and the parts that still required a little TLC. It was exactly the email I needed. Applying Joe’s suggestions made Lola on Fire a stronger, better novel, and I’m incredibly grateful to him for it.

  Okay, I’ve name-checked
three New York Times bestsellers so far. May as well make it four: Michael Koryta read Lola on Fire while delayed at an airport, then announced on Twitter how much he enjoyed the book. That may seem like a relatively small thing, but that Tweet grabbed my future editor’s attention . . . and that, friends, is a big reason why this book is in your hands today. Thanks, Michael!

  I have one of the best agents in the business in Howard Morhaim, who took me under his wing when I didn’t have much to offer, and whose belief in me has never faltered. He cares about my work, he cares about my career, he cares about me. I consider him to be more than my agent. He’s also my friend. Thank you, Howard, for everything. Lola on Fire is as much your book as it is mine. We did this together.

  Also in the Morhaim Literary camp, my thanks to Megan Gelement, who makes everything so easy by being great at what she does, and a huge thank-you to Michael Prevett, who is representing Lola’s further fortunes in the sunny climes of Los Angeles.

  And, of course, Lola on Fire would be nothing without my brilliant editor, Jennifer Brehl, who brought this book to life with unwavering excitement and endless faith. Working with her has been every bit the rewarding, educational, and wonderful experience I knew it would be. A mere thank-you is not enough. Suffice to say, Jennifer has been one of my favorite editors for many years, but now she’s one of my favorite people, too. This giddy, dreamlike gratitude is extended to everyone at William Morrow. I’m so proud to be a part of the family.

  Finally, love and thanks to my spectacular wife, Emily, whose support is nothing short of staggering, and whose belief lights my way. And to our children, Lily and Charlie, who inspire and elevate me in every possible way.

  About the Author

  RIO YOUERS is the British Fantasy and Sunburst Award–nominated author of Westlake Soul and Halcyon. His thriller The Forgotten Girl was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. He is the writer of Sleeping Beauties, a comic book series based on the bestselling novel by Stephen King and Owen King. Rio lives in Ontario, Canada, with his wife and their two children.