by Tessa Bailey
“Today?” her mother asked too fast, so fast, clasping her hands beneath her chin. “Today, Sage?”
She nodded. “Okay, Mama.”
* * *
The town of Sibley was divided into two halves. Rich and poor.
Augustine “Augie” Scott lived smack in the middle.
Once, while picking up cigarettes for her father at the tobacconist, Sage had overheard two stock boys debating Augie’s reasons for building his massive, four-story house smack on the dividing line. It’s so he can keep an eye on both sides. See which one is coming for him next. Sage had logged those words away, not really grasping their meaning at the time. But as she’d got older, they’d begun making sense.
Augie was the private owner of a large salt mine. One of the biggest in the state. If he didn’t employ a person’s father, he found a way to own them some other way. Sage’s daddy was a miner, and he’d been one a few years before Augie opened the doors on the company. The rumors regarding how exactly Augie had pooled enough resources to start Scott Explorations had led to seemingly endless speculation, until one of the most vocal critics had ended up slumped over the wheel of his pickup truck, a bullet hole clean through his head. No one had talked about Augie’s rise to the top much after that. They’d simply accepted.
If Sage had learned one thing while navigating Sibley life as a teenager and young woman, it was that life was full of necessary evils. When she was fourteen, she’d let the school bus driver look beneath her skirt once a week so he would change his route, meeting her at the end of her street, so the students wouldn’t laugh as they drove past her house. More often than not, her father would be passed out on the lawn, her mother weeping and wringing her hands on the porch. She’d wanted to slug that bus driver right between the eyes, but she’d decided the laughter was worse than the man leering at her worn panties.
Necessary evil. And Augie was the worst one.
Her parents had a past with Augie. One that Sage had latched on to, like a rope from a rescue ship. Seeing the loophole and, in turn, her ticket out of Sibley so clearly, Sage hadn’t taken the time to wonder what grabbing that shiny ring meant about her character. How using that lifeline had made her an opportunist. A deserter of her own family.
As she stood in the very same spot she’d stood five years earlier, evening darkening the sky, those weaknesses in herself were all she thought about. She was on the sidewalk outside Augie’s estate, staring up at the giant, sweeping American flag he flew from the roof. A few yards away lay a wrought iron gate and a Call button. Already, she could feel electronic eyes on her. Someone watching from inside, maybe even laughing. He’d very likely known the moment she’d got to town, because the man didn’t like surprises.
Allowing herself some time to stall before meeting Augie, she’d cleared out the tiny, abandoned cottage on her parents’ property. The small structure had served as staff quarters, once upon a time, when moneyed people had owned the house. She’d stumbled on it at age nine, and over the years, it had gone from playhouse to…home. Sage had stacked crates and dragged her thin, ratty mattress across the backyard and started sleeping there. Away from the stench of liquor and the screaming fights. Her cottage still needed some cobwebs cleared away, but she would get to that later.
Right after she met with the devil and struck a second deal.
Pasting a serene expression onto her face—the one she usually reserved for nervous brides or prickly mothers-in-law—Sage marched to the buzzer and pressed it. She refused to show alarm when the gate clicked open immediately, instead holding her chin up as she closed it behind her and glided toward the front door. It opened before she even reached it, Augie leaning against the frame, a coffee mug in his hand.
“Would you look at that?” His eyes were hard, but somehow they still twinkled with amusement. “Sage Alexander. West Coast life has done you good.”
“Thank you.” She stopped at the foot of the steps, guilt licking her insides. “Me being away hasn’t done my father good, though.”
No reaction. “Why don’t you come inside and we’ll talk about it.”
“I’d rather stay out here…”
He was already gone, his unhurried footsteps echoing inside the foyer, growing fainter as she stood there trying to calm the disquiet in her blood. I could do it again. I could walk right out of this yard, get back on the bus, and forget everything in this town. She knew what would happen, though. Knew her parents would suffer for those actions again, and Sage wouldn’t shirk her responsibilities this time. As a daughter. As a good person.
Reminding herself that Belmont’s shirt was waiting for her back in the cottage, Sage nodded and followed Augie inside, leaving the door open on purpose. She’d only been in the house once before, but nothing had changed, as far as she could tell. Only the barest muted light came in through the windows. Gleaming dark wood, antiques, statues, paintings, furniture that looked totally uncomfortable. Expensive without a hint of practicality. But it was clean. So clean. She remembered envying that about the house during her first visit.
Augie’s office was located in the back and he’d left the door ajar, a greenish light glowing from the Tiffany lamp she knew sat on the right corner of his desk. Sage walked inside and took a seat in a leather wingback, shaking her head when Augie held up a bottle of bourbon. It was clear he got a kick out of asking if she wanted alcohol and that smugness gave Sage the desire to throw him off-kilter. She might never shake the identity of that poor Alexander girl, but she’d developed a backbone while living in California. While driving with the Clarksons. “My mother called me crying, begging me to come home.”
The bourbon bottle froze on its descent to the mini bar, before being plonked down hard. “Your mother made her bed. If she finds it lumpy now, that’s none of my concern.”
“You’ve made it your concern. You always have.” Sage heard the note of distress in her voice and reined it in, knowing Augie would pounce on any sign of weakness. “It’s a little clichéd, don’t you think?”
He lifted the tumbler of liquor to his lips with a flourish. “Do explain.”
“Making a man suffer thirty years later, just because the girl chose him.” She didn’t take any satisfaction from his flinch. There was none to be had in the room. “Time should have made you more accepting. But you’ve ground him down under your thumb instead. Are you really willing to kill him? Working him to death when it would be so easy just to let him be?”
Augie licked his lips of excess bourbon and smacked them together. “The short answer is yes. And that’s all I’m required to give.” He dropped into his chair. “But you didn’t come all the way back to Sibley to criticize me, did you, little Sage Alexander?”
She cursed the flush of indignation rising in her cheeks. Augie hated her. It was there in his hard gaze now, just as it always had been. She was the representation of her parents’ marriage. The proof that they’d chosen to start a life together and leave him—the third member of their young trio—in the dust. Sage had allowed Augie to use her as a pawn, taking his money and going to California. A move that had hurt her parents in more ways than one. They’d lost a daughter and a caretaker. Her father had suffered the indignation of another man funding his daughter’s freedom and he’d hit the bottle twice as hard.
Taking advantage of a necessary evil had left her fragile parents vulnerable. This slow, brazen murder of her father would be on her head, unless she could stop it.
“I came here to take his place,” Sage said, clear as a bell.
Augie lost a fair amount of his smug smile. “You’ve come to take your father’s place in the mines.” Not a question. She thought he might go on staring at her forever, but a rumble began in his chest, turning into a full-fledged laugh. “You won’t last a day.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Until that moment, she hadn’t allowed fear to enter the equation. Leaving Belmont had been enough to contend with. But now, with her fate resting in the devil’s hands, a col
d shiver snaked up her spine. “He has two months until retirement. If…when…I make it to that day, you sign the paperwork for his pension and leave my family be.”
“So they can drink themselves to death?” Augie spat, surging to his feet.
“If that’s their choice.”
His disgust was palpable, like she’d splashed him with holy water. The inner joke made her think of Peggy. Peggy would have said something like that. Don’t lose your cool now.
“Do we have a deal or not?” Sage asked.
Augie’s superior air returned in a blink. “You know, your father has one of the hardest jobs, little Sage.”
Her stomach lining turned to lead. “He has the hardest job because you gave it to him after I left. You put him in a younger man’s position, when he should be doing the light lifting until retirement rolls around. Like the rest of the men his age.”
He didn’t bother denying it. “You’re prepared to operate a drilling rig?” He lifted a gray eyebrow. “Underground.”
“As long as I get the proper training.” She stood and extended her hand. “Yes.”
When they shook hands, Augie squeezed tight enough for Sage to feel her bones grind together, but she refused to flinch. She knew what it meant. He wasn’t going to take it any easier on her because she was a woman.
The hint of excitement in his eyes said he might even go harder.
A vision of Belmont caught her unaware. He walked into the mine’s darkness, looking back at her over his broad shoulder. Reassuringly, like always. But in the dreaded, moving image that had recurred over the last couple weeks, he emerged more withdrawn and haunted than ever, having faced his greatest fear: dark, enclosed spaces. Or worse, he never came back out at all.
Sage had never felt more alone than in that moment, but she’d never felt more justified in facing the upcoming test by herself.
“I’ll report for work in the morning.”
She turned and left the office on shaky legs.
Chapter Five
Belmont woke up in a cold sweat.
He was immediately inundated by the roar of Sage’s train pulling away, so it took him a moment to remember where he’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t the first time in his life that had happened. The end of high school had brought inescapable change. There was nothing he loathed more than having his routine taken away, which was why the road trip had been so hard at the outset. Before Sage.
An ache spearing into his throat, Belmont sat up, swiping the perspiration from his upper lip. He’d seen the inside of many strange motel rooms while trying to adjust at eighteen. What now? Where do I belong? Where have I ever belonged? Questions that had been easy to drown out by hiding behind a screen of chemicals. The people who partook of the same medication hadn’t seemed to belong anywhere, either. They were spooks that only came out at night, prowling along the street with one purpose. Forgetting. Stopping the flight of doubt from taxiing down the runways of their brains.
Yes, a lot of mornings had started with piecing together the night before in those days. Until one morning, when he’d woken to the world pitching and rocking beneath him. Not in a bad way. It had been the ocean waves beneath the boat where he’d passed out. Something about the constant rhythm had appealed to him. It was the never-ending routine he was lacking. Sure, the tide might change, but it always resumed, and the waves never stopped. There was nothing more constant than the moon, and it compelled the water to dance at certain times of the day. That surety made him feel less adrift.
Forgoing college—a move that surprised no one—Belmont had gotten a job on a local fishing charter in San Diego, but was quickly lured away by marine salvage. Retrieving long-forgotten valuables from the ocean floor had given him a sense of purpose. Finding things that were lost, the way he’d been lost in the ground.
That boat waited for him now, moored to a harbor dock in San Diego, which he’d paid for through the beginning of January. His crew was taking on side jobs until he returned. They depended on him, though. He’d been on the verge of turning Clarkson Salvage into a universally respected name, but…that life seemed so far removed from the present. From now. When he stood on the deck, it was Sage he thought about. It was Sage’s happiness he wanted to provide.
Sage.
Belmont shook off the blackness that winked in front of his eyes and dove on Sage’s scrapbook, finally remembering why he’d woken with a sense of urgency. A hum was building in the back of his mind, getting louder and louder, compelling him to open the book. So he did.
And his heart tried to rip straight out of his chest. Everything Sage touched turned to magic, didn’t it? Such detail. Her fingers had been right there, smoothing lace swatches and gluing sleek feathers. Even the way she cut pictures out of magazines was unique, with little zigzag patterns in the corners or fringe trimmed into the bottom. Every page had a different theme, all designed around a church, although the church wasn’t pictured, merely written in her artistic hand. He could imagine her searching church interiors on the Internet and planning a wedding to bring them to life. Some of the locations were in Cincinnati, Iowa, and New Mexico, places they’d stopped during the road trip.
Belmont forced himself to continue turning the pages, even though he simply wanted to bury his face in the scrapbook and hunt for her scent. Anything to feel closer to her. But he kept going, some intuition spurring him on.
When he came to the final page, he knew why. Knew why her leaving behind the scrapbook had seemed odd, when she’d clearly planned every detail of her escape from him down to the T. The way she’d found the perfect train station, ten miles from a major hub, so he couldn’t track her. The way she’d waited until the last minute to drop the ax. It was entirely possible he was grasping at straws, but maybe leaving the scrapbook in the Suburban was her signal to him that she was in trouble. His fingers traced the small string of pearls she’d used to outline the magazine cutout of a wedding dress. Such attention was paid to every aspect of the page, reiterating how out of Sage’s character it was to be forgetful.
That was enough for Belmont to keep going, to keep scrutinizing.
Belmont started to go back to the beginning for a closer look, but the final page felt thicker than the others. It was stuck to another one. A prickle went up his neck as he carefully pried the pages apart, very conscious that his blunt, work-worn fingers could wreck the delicate handiwork. He finally got them separated and released a pent-up breath…but he quickly sucked the oxygen back in when the page was laid flat.
There was no mistaking the difference between this design and the others. It was…dark. Everything on the page was black and brown. Harsh. Even the handwriting where she’d written the name of the church was blunt and uneven, as if she’d written it in the pitch black. Had she? Had his Sage worked on this part of her book while they were sleeping?
A torn-up sound left Belmont, his fingertip shaking as he outlined the crude brown strip of muslin, a dead, pressed flower, the scrapes of a coal pencil that depicted the steeple of a church. First Baptist Church of Sibley. Sibley. Where was that? He thought of that hint of the South that occasionally slipped into Sage’s speech and gained his feet, going out to the Suburban long enough to retrieve his luggage, along with the laptop.
Damn, he’d spent so much time resenting the electronic device with its never-ending need for updates and charging, but he was grateful as hell to have it now. He’d watched Sage and Peggy and Aaron’s fingers fly around the keyboard often enough that he could use it effectively and he thanked God for that, too.
As soon as he got the laptop booted, he opened a search engine and typed in the name of the church. When the search returned not only a Louisiana address, but a picture of First Baptist, relief hit him like a two by four. It was an exact outline of the one Sage had drawn in the scrapbook.
Belmont didn’t bother checking out. He showered, dressed, and went to find Sage.
* * *
Oh boy. It would really stink to die on Christ
mas Day.
Not that there were any presents to open or cards to receive anyway. No popcorn to string or hot chocolate to stir over the stove. What was she really missing? If she were back in California, she would most likely be sleeping late, snuggling into her pillow. She never actually slept when sleeping late. The pleasure was derived from knowing she could. That she would wake up to a clean apartment and be able to pick that day’s attire from her dress collection. Not a huge collection, just about twelve. Her favorite had always been the light beige one with the pattern of bluebirds.
The memory of the soft material billowing around her in the San Diego breeze made the stiff, heavy coveralls she wore even more unbearable. There was no California sunshine down in the mine, only black, stagnant air and the cloying scent of gasoline and dust. She could feel it settling on her skin and caking, could feel the granules of dirt slipping beneath her safety mask and making themselves at home while they scraped her flesh raw.
Beneath her, the huge machine juddered and coughed, the buzz so loud, she wore earplugs to protect her hearing. Instead she listened to her back teeth jar against one another, heard the sweat beads forming in her hair, the coughs build in her throat. She was being forced to live inside her head when she wanted the exact opposite.
She’d trained yesterday from morning until nightfall and signed liability forms that were almost enough to make her throw up, but she’d done it all with the knowledge she’d have Christmas off. At the very least, she would have a small reprieve. A chance to wrap her mind around the risks she’d acknowledged and would be taking for two months.
But there had been no break. Augie hadn’t met his production quota during the week, which meant everyone had been brought in for a full nine to five, including Sage. Now she stared into the darkness, the shaking machine illuminated only by the light attached to her helmet and the rapidly dimming industrial one hanging from the overhead crossbar. Her arms burned. The muscles ached so badly, she wondered how she managed to operate the controls, to keep the giant, churning piece of metal steady as it broke through the earth.
