Devil's Cut

by J. R. Ward

  "He was not business savvy, for sure." Jeff got to his feet and stretched, his back cracking. "If you don't mind, I'm going to take a shower and go to bed so I can get up and take a shower and go back down to headquarters."

  "As chair of the board, I'll be doing the same."

  "Listen, it could be worse. We could not have paid off all the trustees with the money I gave you so that they'd vote the way we need them to. Best two and a half million I ever spent, getting those country-club idiots off my back so I can save your company. Second move was firing all those senior vice presidents. If three times are a charm, my next decision is going to be epic."

  Lizzie glanced at the guy. "Let's hope it's not wasted choosing between two conditioners in your shower. You don't want to blow that kind of firepower on Pantene versus L'Oreal."

  Jeff regarded her for a moment. "I really like you, you know that." He looked at Lane. "You don't deserve her, just to be clear."

  "As if I am not fully aware of this."

  As the Bradford Bourbon Company's new CEO got up and ambled off down the hall, Lane took Lizzie's hand and searched for the right words. "I want to say something."

  "Okay." When he didn't go any further, she gave him a squeeze. "And that would be?"

  "I wish I knew what it was. That's my problem. I want to reassure you everything's going to be okay, and it's like...if I could only find the precise combination of words, they will defuse the bomb, you know? Put the pin back in this grenade. But that's just crap, isn't it."

  "I'm not leaving you."

  "You sure about that?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "Thank you." He let himself fall back so he was lying on the runner and looking up at the crown molding on the ceiling's edges. "You know, I've never done this before."

  "Tried to turn around a company?"

  "Laid here." He lifted his head and smiled at her. "Also never saved a company. But at least I have Jeff's help on that one."

  Lizzie stretched out beside him and the two of them stayed like that for the longest time, like two gingerbread men on a cookie sheet, arms and legs out straight, feet lolling to the sides, shoulders and hips flat.

  "I guess we should go back to bed," he murmured as he listened to the house creak. "I mean, it's pretty stupid to be just lying out here in the hall on the carpet. Especially considering we have that nice, far more socially acceptable bed, oh, about twenty feet away. Although granted, we would have to open a door to get to it, and that will require a lot of energy."

  "Or we could just screw it and stay here. Who's going to care?"

  "I love you." As she laughed a little, he sensed the tension between them because of its current absence. "I'm glad you're here with me."

  "So you know what this is like?"

  "The seventh ring of Hell?" When she laughed again, he twisted to the side and kissed her. "Wait, I know. You're going to tell me this is like being on a beach. Without the sand. The ocean. The sun...okay, so this is not like being at Wianno."

  "This is having meatloaf for breakfast."

  Lane popped his brows. "Wow, and I thought my Cape Cod metaphor was a left fielder."

  "We're accomplishing the same thing as being in bed, right? I mean our stomachs don't recognize the difference between having meatloaf at seven in the morning or seven at night."

  "I think my brother Max would argue that depends on how much tequila you've had the evening before, but I'm kind of splitting hairs here."

  "You get my point, though. We're off our feet, relaxed and pretty comfortable. Does it really matter that we're out in the hall? I mean, who's coming with a clipboard and a list to check off that we're not in our room? Ohhhh, you get a demerit because--"

  "Have I mentioned how much I love you lately?"

  "I'm not sure. How about you tell me again--"

  When the muffled sound of a ringing phone cut her off, Lizzie went quiet.

  "Shit, that's my cell." Lane jumped to his feet. "Miss Aurora."

  --

  Twenty minutes later, Lane squinted and leaned into the Rolls-Royce's windshield as he pulled in to the White Snake's parking lot.

  Most of the vehicles in the bar's spots were trucks, but there were a couple of motorcycles, and as he parked the Phantom between two Fords, he saw Max's Harley right in front. Opening his door, Lane was about to get out when the bar's entrance was thrown wide and three big-and-burly's pulled a Richard Pford and stumbled onto the walkway. They noticed the Rolls immediately and started talking among themselves--like they were of half a mind to try to steal it.

  Lane reached across to the glove compartment and took out the handgun kept in there.

  When he stood up from behind the wheel, he tucked the weapon into the small of his back. Then he locked the Phantom, its Spirit of Ecstasy disappearing into the hood.

  "That your car?" one of the three-hundred pounders asked him.

  "Just an Uber."

  "What?"

  As he brushed past them, they were sweating so much alcohol out of their pores, he nearly got a contact high. And fortunately for them, they let him go on about his business.

  Inside, the White Snake was your standard-issue beer-bucket dive, the redneck hangout sporting Coors and Bud neon signs on its rough wood walls, and seventies-era carriage-house chairs around tables that looked like they had been rescued from the bottom of a bog. Given that it was two a.m., there were only fifteen people in the place, but they were hardies who had been drinking since happy hour at five--in other words, they appeared to be only two functioning brain cells away from a coma.

  Unfortunately for the clientele's livers, the bartender, who was like a bearded Jabba the Hutt, was still throwing the hooch behind a beat-up stretch of countertop, his meaty hands refreshing those pitchers with pulls of golden-bodied, white-froth-topped domestics.

  Yup, this was definitely a fuck-craft-beers establishment. And as the piped-in music registered, Lane thought of The Blues Brothers movie, where the woman in the honky-tonk bar says of its music, "We got both kinds. We got Country and Western."

  Looking through the dim, smoke-filled air, it was clear that the no-smoking laws were being ignored--either that, or someone had spontaneously combusted thanks to the hot wings.

  Where the hell was he, Lane thought. That SOB was--

  In the back corner, an argument exploded between two men, the pair of them standing up and knocking their chairs over, a woman leaping out of the way--and yet somehow being quick thinking enough to take the beer pitcher with her.

  But at least it wasn't Max: Neither of them had a beard.

  Lane walked through the place, trying to be discreet. Except no one paid him any mind, and he didn't find his brother.

  Heading back over to the bartender, he had to wait as a couple of Coors were drained from the tap and handed off to a pair of women who stared at Lane like they were hoping to be chosen for a school kickball team.

  He ignored them and nodded at Jabba. "I'm here for my brother."

  "Do I look like I know you or your kin?"

  "He's tall, bearded, tattooed?" Yeah, like that cut through the other candidates. "And he rides a Harley."

  Annnnd that was going to help, too. Although in Lane's defense, it was two o'clock in the goddamn morning, and he wasn't thinking much more clearly than anyone else in the joint.

  "Check in the back if you don't see 'im." The bartender nodded his head to the side. "Go past the bathrooms and down that hall."

  "Thank you."

  Lane walked all the way to the rear and proceeded past the women's room, which had a broken sign, and the men's room, which had a broken door, to a barely lit storage area so choked with crap, it could have been on episode of Hoarders.

  He was about to take his brother's name and give it an f-bomb workout when he heard the moan.

  From behind the stacks of extra chairs and tables.

  Following the sound, Lane looked around the barrier of cheap wood and chipped varnish--

  --
and got a gander at his brother braced like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian man, arms out and feet spread, with a woman on her knees in front of him.

  "Christ, Max, what are you doing?"

  His brother snapped his lolling head up. "Oh, hey, Lane."

  Like they'd unexpectedly met in the middle of a shopping mall or something.

  The blond just continued working on things, her halter top and blue jeans covering at least some of what would have gotten her arrested--although this lewd sex act in a public place could well have led to handcuffs, clothes or no clothes.

  Please let him not have paid for this, Lane thought.

  "Come on," he muttered as he turned away, "let's go."

  "I won't be long."

  "What the hell, Max!" Lane went back around to the far side of the tables and chairs--because there was no way he was having a conversation with the guy while watching all that. "You called me to come get you."

  "I'm drunk."

  "No shit--"

  A man with a handlebar mustache, arms like an ape, and faded military tattoos came tooling into the storage area like he'd been told someone had said something bad about his momma in this land of discarded junk.

  "Reggie! Where you at, Reggie!"

  Oh, dear God, please let that blond's name be Agnes. Colleen. Callahan--anything but Reggie.

  "I know you back here, girl." The guy stopped short as he noticed Lane. "Hey, you seen a blond--"

  Reggie came out from behind the tables and chairs, making like she hadn't just been doing anything even remotely blow-ish or job'y. "Baby, I was just--"

  Naturally, Max emerged zipping up his fly.

  Holy. Jealous. Former. Marine.

  Reggie's BF, or whoever he was to her, went for Max like the dumbass was an intruder in a private home, but Max was ready for it. As fists flew, big bodies slammed into things, toppling stacks of furniture, knocking over empty kegs and crates of glasses, crushing debris on the floor.

  Lane had to admit that the two of them were far better at the fighting than he and Richard had been. These guys were professionals, not amateurs, and Reggie--just like the woman who had deftly saved a pitcher out in the bar proper--knew exactly where to stand so she avoided the churning men. She even took a cell phone out of her back pocket, turned the camera on herself, and checked her lipstick.

  I don't have time for this, Lane thought.

  Just as the boyfriend slammed Max back into a door, Lane took the gun out of his waistband and went across to the altercation.

  Placing the muzzle at the boyfriend's temple, he said, "Let him go. Right now."

  And didn't that put everything on a freeze frame.

  "I got this," Max slurred. "I'm winning this--"

  "Shut the hell up." Lane focused on the Marine. "I'll get him out of here and you won't have to worry about him ever coming back. Ever. In return, you let us walk."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Then I'll blow your head off. Trust me, after the week I've had, it will be the least dramatic thing I've had to deal with."

  "I'm telling you, I had him."

  As Lane punched the Phantom's accelerator and sped him and his idiot brother the hell away from the White Snake's den of ridiculousness, he didn't bother replying to that. Then again, there wasn't much to argue with in the passenger seat. Next to him, Max was slumped against his door, with the only thing keeping him upright being the belt that cut across his chest.

  "I'm serious, Lane...."

  The words drifted off into an exhale that was part curse, part snore. And so help him God, Lane was ready to open that door and let the bastard fall out onto the side of the damn road. He was so sick of cleaning other people's messes up--and more than that, there was important shit going on, all kinds of things that were a helluva lot more critical than a drunken bar fight.

  Plus, hello, in the last two nights, he'd taken a gun out twice and gotten into a physical altercation himself. He did not like the trend. He wasn't Maxwell, goddamn it.

  "How'm I get the bike?" Max asked.

  "We'll go back tomorrow. See if it's still here."

  "Don't tell Edward 'bout this, 'kay?"

  As if they were still kids, and this was another of Max's stunts.

  "Edward is not going to care," Lane snapped. "He's too busy rotting in jail to worry about you as a grown-ass man getting into a fight in a frickin' bar because some woman you don't know and don't care about is giving you head."

  "Okay, let's not blow this out of proportion." Max looked over. "Blow--get it?"

  "What the hell are you doing, Max? Seriously, how old are you--"

  "Like you haven't been in similar situations--"

  "Not anymore. I grew the hell up."

  As they stopped talking over each other, Lane came up to a three-way stoplight and put his left blinker on. In front of them was a housing development of million-dollar homes, the new colonials and brick Georgian-like houses clustered around man-made ponds with fountains that were under-lit. The property had previously been one of the grand old farms, back when Charlemont hadn't had suburbs.

  If he hit the gas and plowed through the intersection, he and Max and the Rolls would end up in a lake.

  Maybe it would sober Max up.

  Tempting.

  In the end, though, when the light turned green, he made the turn onto the four-laner that had been the city's main thoroughfare before the highway system had come along. There were no other cars out, and soon enough, he came up to the first of the strip malls of little shops and restaurants. Then there was a larger Kroger parking lot and a bank and a library branch.

  "When are you leaving town?" Lane demanded as he came up to another red light.

  "Trying to get rid of me so soon?"

  "I just figured you'd be going." Lane glanced over. "You never stay put."

  "Well, I can't stay here."

  "Oh, yeah? You want to tell me why?" When there was only silence, Lane smiled grimly. "So I learned something today."

  "What was that?" Max pushed himself upright like he was hoping the greater verticality would help clear his beer-brain. "Hopefully it was useful information."

  "It appears that Edward couldn't have killed Father." Lane looked over again. "He didn't do it."

  Max seemed to keep things cool, that bearded face not changing its expression, those eyes staying focused on the road ahead. "How you figure that? And he confessed, didn't he--"

  As the light turned green, Lane wrenched the wheel and shot the Rolls into the parking lot of a BBQ place. Then he hit the brakes hard enough to jerk the seat belts and threw the engine into park.

  "What the hell, Lane! You want to get us killed--"

  Lane spun around. "Be honest with me."

  Those pale gray eyes narrowed. But did not meet his own. "About what."

  "Edward and Father and the murder. You were there, weren't you. You were part of it." As Max refused to answer, Lane wanted to grab the guy and shake him. "I know you and Edward met before Father was killed. A couple of days before, someone saw the two of you on the far side of the Ohio. You must have planned things then--or was Edward trying to talk you out of it?"

  Max's big body shifted in the seat and he pulled at the seat belt. "I got to go--"

  "You can't let Edward take the fall for this." Lane snagged the guy's arm, because he was worried Max was going to bolt. "Edward shouldn't have to clean up this mess--it's not like when we were kids. This is not a beating he's volunteering to take for you when you more than deserve one. It's life in prison, Max. If you did it, you need to man up."

  "Can we just go back," the guy muttered as he fumbled with the belt's release.

  "Why--so you can pull a runner in the middle of the night again? You're a coward. I don't know how you live with yourself--"

  "Says the man who's spent a decade distinguishing himself by who he's been fucking. I can read headlines, you realize. Yale taught me that much."

  Lane opened his mouth to hit that jab back a
s hard as he could, but then he stopped. "You know, for the first time, I feel like I'm really seeing you for who you are. And it's nothing I respect."

  He popped the locks on the doors. "Go. I'm done with you--but know this. I'm going to get Edward out of jail, whether he wants me to or not--and even if it means you're in that fucking cell as his replacement."

  Max released his seat belt and gripped the door handle.

  But instead of opening things up and falling out face-first onto the pavement, he just sat there.

  After an eternity, he whispered, "I can't keep going like this."

  "Damn right you can't." Lane banged the dashboard with his fist. "Come on, Max. Just tell me the truth. We can handle anything. We can get you a good attorney, and we can fight it--"

  Max put his head in his hands and began to weep.

  At first, Lane was so stunned, he just stared across the leather seats at his brother. He had never seen Max break down like this, the sobs wracking the man's strong body, the misery so manifest, he contorted in on himself as if he were struck by blows.

  Lane reached over and gripped Max's shoulder. "It's okay--"

  The words came fast, pushed out by great emotion: "Edward didn't kill his father...oh, God, he didn't kill him...."

  "I know." Lane's voice got rough. "I know, Max. I know he didn't do it."

  Max threw his head back and wiped his face with his broad palms. "He didn't kill...."

  "It's okay, Max. Just tell me what happened."

  The silence that followed was so long, if Lane hadn't seen his brother's chest pumping up and down, he might have thought the guy had passed out with his eyes open.

  Just when Lane couldn't stand it any longer, Max repeated, "Edward didn't kill his father."

  "I know he didn't." For godsakes, they were going around in circles here. "I know it wasn't Edward--"

  Max let out a hollow laugh. "You don't understand. He didn't kill his father...he killed ours."

  --

  After Max heard the words come out of his mouth, he closed his eyes and tried to reconnect with his buzz. Floaty, spacey, and not-giving-a-fuck had been much better than what he was feeling now--and damn it, he was so sick and fucking tired of swimming in this cesspool of sadness and grief he'd been thrown into three years ago.

  "I'm sorry," Lane said in a falsely reasonable tone. "What did you say?"

  "Edward didn't kill his father."

  "You shouldn't--Max, you shouldn't throw around something like that."