Burn Down the Night

by M. O'Keefe

  I had the address she’d given me on a piece of paper I kept checking like it might have changed in the seconds since I last checked it.

  Jennifer. Jennifer was only a few minutes away.

  I took another left and the mountains got more serious. Pickens was a blink and you’ll miss it kind of place, and I left it in my rearview mirror.

  My face felt hot and I realized I was crying. Floods of tears streamed down my face. I wasn’t sobbing or trying to catch my breath. I was just…leaking.

  Fucking Max. I brushed the tears off my face with the back of my hands. I wasn’t going to miss him. There was nothing there to miss.

  Except how good he made me feel. Except how, when looking at him, when talking to him…there’d been a sense of something more. A crack in the walls I lived behind. A glimpse of blue sky and green grass and sunlight.

  That’s why I was crying. Turning my back on that wasn’t easy. Because that little glimpse of more—it had looked good. Like a life I might want someday.

  But today was about Jennifer.

  The longer I drove, the more certain I was that this was a trap. And part of me wanted to believe that was just my skepticism. Because really, what were the odds that she got out?

  But the other part of me had built a life raft of faith and hope and dreams and wishes and I was clinging to it. Hard.

  On the outside of town, I took the cutoff to the Glassy Lake Chapel, which looked like it was way out over a cliff. Gravel crunched under the tires as I rolled through a thicket of pine trees until finally I came to a stop at the end of the gravel parking area.

  When I turned off the motor, the silence was thick. This was way out in the middle of nowhere. A stone church with a steeple was to my left and to my right there was nothing but woods.

  I hurtled out of my car.

  “Jennifer!” I yelled.

  My voice echoed back to me. The air smelled like sunshine and cedar.

  “Jennifer!” I yelled again. “Jennifer! I’m here! Where are you?”

  I started running toward the church. The doors were locked, so I stepped into the grass along the side so I could peer into the windows. The old building had been modernized on one side. Lots of fancy weddings up here, probably.

  But there was no one inside the church now. It was dark. Deserted.

  “Jennifer!” I screamed and turned around, thinking maybe she was hiding in the woods.

  She was standing behind me, in muddy and torn jeans and a sweatshirt splattered with blood. It had been the better part of a year since I’d seen her and she looked at once younger and older than I remembered. Her freckled face was pale. Her green eyes were narrowed. She was thin like a wire, too. So much thinner than she’d been.

  “Hey,” she said, with that half-grin of hers and a wave. The same grin and wave she had given me every day I dropped her off at school. The same grin and wave she had given me from the top bunk in our room in the trailer.

  “Oh thank God!” I sighed, weaving for a moment on suddenly unsteady feet. But I got it together and hurtled toward her, my arms aching to hug her.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she said, dropping the grin and shaking her head at me like I had disappointed her. I stopped in my tracks.

  “What?” Shit. Oh. Shit.

  “You know you shouldn’t have come.”

  “You called.” Please. Please don’t be true. Let me have the hope and faith and wishes.

  “I didn’t call. He did!” She jabbed her finger behind me, and I knew. I didn’t have to turn to know Lagan was there, but I did it anyway.

  “Hello, Olivia,” he said. I stared down the dark barrel of the gun he held on me. His white linen suit was a mess. Wrinkled and bloody. His hair, usually slicked back, flopped down over his eyes in a greasy curtain he kept smoothing back up over his forehead like it helped.

  “What…are you doing?” I asked, scrambling for Plan B. God, that was my whole life wasn’t it? Scrambling for Plan B.

  “Recovering my assets,” he said, and stepped out of the shadows until the three of us were standing on the sunlit green lawn beside the church. The wind blew and I could smell Lagan—sour and foul. If deranged had a scent, this was it.

  “You can let Jennifer go,” I said. “You wanted me. I’m here.”

  Lagan’s eyes filled with pity but he was silent. Shit. Things were bad when Lagan was silent.

  “Let her go!” I screamed. “I’m here. You can shoot me. You can rape me. Take me to your new compound. I don’t care. Let Jennifer—”

  “Olivia.” Jennifer came to stand beside me, her arm around my waist, and I immediately clung to the sudden familiar comfort of my sister against me. I couldn’t believe how much I’d missed it. I put my arm around her and we stood there, a solid front against Lagan’s gun and insanity. “Just stop talking,” she whispered in my hair. “Don’t egg him on.”

  “Excellent advice,” Lagan nodded.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “My real asset.”

  Real asset. Real asset.

  “Max,” I breathed, and I felt my knees buckle. Jennifer held me up. Kept me standing. This was about Max. About the drugs.

  “He won’t come for me,” I said. Lagan’s eyes narrowed. “You think I’m lying but I’m not. He doesn’t know where I am.”

  “He will when I tell him.”

  I forced myself to give him nothing. Not one thing. “He still won’t come for me. He’s left the MC behind. He’s gone straight.”

  He gave me a brief pitying look and I felt that raft of hope and faith and wishes splinter apart.

  “He’s on his way. He’s been texting me all morning.”

  “Fuck you!” I roared and shook off Jennifer’s arms, charging Lagan. I could take his gun. Put a bullet in his head. End this forever.

  But I didn’t get close.

  Casually, as if I were a door that needed to be shut, Lagan reached forward and smacked me across the face with the hand that held his gun. I staggered to the side and would have fallen on the ground if Jennifer hadn’t grabbed me.

  “Shut. Up.” Jennifer breathed in my hair. “Please. He’s totally unhinged.”

  Blood pooled in my mouth and I spat it on the ground. My heart sank into my feet and then lower. Right out of my body.

  Max would come. Of course he would come. Because I meant more than his own freedom. His own life.

  And that would be the end of him.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just ask him to meet?”

  “Because I have learned in the last few hours that no one can be trusted. That kindness and freedom are rewarded only with deceit and betrayal. Isn’t that right, Jennifer?”

  Jennifer nodded like her neck was broken, a shaky jerky thing.

  “Who…who betrayed you?” I asked. I could feel Jennifer trembling against me and I didn’t know if it was from fear or shock or anger.

  “Gwen,” he said.

  I had been right. The informant had been Gwen. Gwen, the old woman who recruited us into the camp. The motherly type who’d seemed so trustworthy and kind. “What happened?”

  “She’s been talking to the FBI, telling them our plans. She was going to bring them down on our heads.”

  “He killed her,” Jennifer said. “Shot her in the head, right in front of everyone.”

  “Because she deserved it!” he screamed, spittle flying, hair flopping.

  “And then you made all those women and children take the pills!” Jennifer yelled back and I grabbed ahold of her sweatshirt; this time it was me pulling her back. “What did those children do to deserve that?”

  “Better to have died in peace than to have their lives shattered by outsiders.”

  “You don’t even believe that!” Jennifer cried. “You just didn’t want anyone alive to talk.”

  Lagan lifted his eyebrows. “Perhaps that is something you should remember.”

  “Jennifer,” I breathed. “Stop. We can’t
stop him like this.”

  “You can’t stop me at all,” Lagan said. “Didn’t you learn that lesson already? You and your ridiculous bombs. You can’t beat me. I have the power of the Lord on my side. What do you have, Olivia? What have you ever had? Give me your phone.”

  I pulled it from my pocket and threw it. It landed in the grass a few feet from him. He rolled his eyes at my petty mutiny and stepped forward and smashed it with his foot.

  I sucked in a breath at the sound of the screen cracking.

  Now, there was no way I could warn Max. No way I could stop what was coming.

  I had been a fool to believe I could.

  —

  Lagan walked behind us while Jennifer led me to a stone shed at the end of the clearing, nearly hidden beneath the trees. The wooden door was open. Outside the door was a pile of stakes and spades, shovels and lawnmower blades.

  Everything we could have used as a weapon.

  I remembered my gun in the drawer at the condo with a frantic fondness.

  Lagan was a very thorough lunatic.

  “In you get,” he said, waving the gun toward the door, and like docile little sheep, we did what he asked. The door shut behind us and I heard the scrape and click of a padlock. The shed was full of lawn equipment and smelled like grass and motor oil.

  It was dark except for the small bit of sunlight streaming in through a high window.

  I turned to face Jennifer, cataloging all the changes, the thinness and the fierceness.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “About Gwen and the kids.” She turned her face away, staring at the dust motes in the sunlight coming through that high window. “That must have been awful.”

  “It was my fault.”

  “Oh no,” I whispered, putting my hands on her shoulders, stroking her arms through her sweatshirt. Her hands were freezing cold and I held them between mine, trying to warm them up. “I know it can feel like that sometimes, but that was Lagan—”

  “I was the informer.” Jennifer’s eyes pierced right through me.

  “You…what?” I must not have heard her right because there was no way my baby sister had been—

  “I was the informer. I have been for a year.”

  “Since before I left?”

  “Since practically the moment we got there. I knew you thought we’d landed in some kind of happy commune, but I knew where we were. I knew what Lagan was. And there were kids—” She stopped, turning her head away, her throat working like she was swallowing back bile. “As soon as he started letting me go into town with Gwen on the supply runs, I contacted the FBI.”

  God. She was so different. So changed. Where was my little sister? The girl I left behind in that compound was not the girl standing beside me. Woman, I guess. She was hard as nails. So hard, I felt soft compared to her.

  “All that time,” I said. “Why didn’t—?”

  I couldn’t even finish that sentence. Why didn’t you tell me the place was bad news? Why didn’t you tell me you were an FBI informer? Why didn’t you tell me you were no longer a child?

  “Because I’ve been doing what you tell me all my life,” she said. “And I knew once you figured it out, you would want to leave. And I wasn’t going to leave those kids. Not with Lagan.”

  “You’re so brave,” I said, feeling so cowardly.

  “If I am, it’s because you showed me how.” She pressed her forehead to mine and I sighed, feeling like I was being put back together in some way.

  “I’m sorry I made you go there,” I breathed. “I’m sorry I left you there to do this alone.”

  “Olivia,” Jennifer pulled me into her arms. Her hug was even different. Sharper. Harder. Ferocious. Like she knew how fragile we all were and how hard you had to hold on to keep things from falling apart. “Please stop blaming yourself for everything. You kept us alive and safe against impossible odds more times than I can count.”

  “Well, I think the odds are no longer in our favor.”

  “They never have been,” Jennifer said, smiling at me a little. “That’s never stopped us before. When things get tough, we get tougher. Remember?”

  “I remember,” I sighed like I was simply resigned to being tougher. Jennifer smiled and put her head on my shoulder and I hugged her to me. My hand, stroking her hair. This was familiar and beloved. And so, so missed. “I’ve missed you,” I whispered into her hair.

  “I missed you, too. So much.”

  “Have you searched this place for anything we could use as a weapon?”

  “Yep. There’s some fertilizer spray, but the container is empty.”

  “Can we wiggle out the window?”

  “Locked.”

  “We could break the glass—”

  “He’s right outside, Olivia.”

  “Yeah…I guess you’re right.”

  “There’s two of us now,” she said. “So I figure our odds are improving.”

  “True. And Max is coming.”

  We made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the riding mower, and we sat there, with Jennifer’s head on my shoulder, hands clasped for a long time.

  “What’s the story with this Max guy?”

  I laughed. “You want to talk about my love life, now?”

  Her head whipped up and she stared at me with her mouth open. “Love life?”

  Oh Lord, I could feel myself blushing.

  “Oh my God, are you in love with an outlaw biker? And you always gave me such a hard time about my boyfriends.” She squealed like the twenty-something she was underneath all the damage I’d brought down on her head.

  “He’s not my boyfriend and he’s not a biker anymore.” I didn’t think. “And I’m not…in…love.”

  “So what are you in?”

  I’m in trust. Like. Care.

  All the shit I’d warned Max not to feel for me. All the things I didn’t want to feel for him.

  I felt every unbearable inch of it.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t quite know what to call it.”

  “Is he really going to come for you?”

  “Yes,” I said, for better or worse, Max was coming for me. “And hopefully he’ll bring Aunt Fern’s boyfriend with him. And perhaps a small army of FBI agents and local law enforcement.”

  “Hold on now, Aunt Fern has a boyfriend?”

  “I know, right?”

  I explained Eric and what I’d been planning to do before she called me.

  Jennifer nodded. “I managed to get a call to my contact before everything fell apart. I warned her that things were going south. So…maybe this isn’t as bad as it looks?”

  She looked up at me as if wanting confirmation on this hope. Like she was asking me if it was okay to believe that we would be all right. And I’d been answering this question the same way our entire lives together. Taking her doubt and giving her my hope.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think we’re going to be okay,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  And now, for the first time in my life, we both had hope. Between the two of us, there was enough to go around.

  I don’t know how long we sat like that. Long enough that the sun coming through the high window had shifted and cooled. My stomach growled.

  “Man,” Jennifer sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a big bowl of Aunt Fern’s tuna and grapes.”

  I laughed, like she wanted me to. “There was some in the fridge when I left. Not even Max would eat it.”

  “Fish and fruit, so delicious—”

  The scrape of the lock interrupted her, and we both went silent, staring at the door. It opened and we blinked into the late-day sunshine.

  “Let’s go, girls. Max just drove up.”

  Jennifer and I shared one slightly frantic look as we climbed down from the riding mower. “That doesn’t sound like he showed up with an army,” she breathed.

  I took her hand again and squeezed it, hopi
ng she could feel my hope and confidence.

  And none of my fear and doubt.

  We would have to be our own army. Which was okay. We’d done it before.

  Max

  I slammed the door shut on the SUV Eric had loaned me. The sound sent birds squawking from bushes. Beside me was Joan’s Buick. I looked in the windows and saw her purse. The garbage bags in the back. The front seat littered with coffee cups. I imagined her driving up here, the wind in her face, screaming lyrics to country music songs that reminded her of her sister.

  Knowing, or at least suspecting she’d been driving into a trap.

  My hands were fists at my side and I could have smashed the steel of that old car with the force of my rage.

  I had been here before. More times than I could count.

  Not to this stone church on a cliff, but standing up with a gun in the back of my pants, waiting to shoot or be shot.

  These were the minutes before someone died—and I knew them well.

  Eric had called a few times while I’d been on the road. The FBI were still looking for their informer and cleaning up the mess in the camp that Lagan had left behind.

  Seven dead. One woman and two men shot in the head. Two kids and two adult women poisoned.

  The body count was only going to go up.

  Yeah, I’d been here before. But never quite like this.

  Because Joan’s life was on the line, too. And outside of Dylan, I’d never cared so much for anyone. And somehow Lagan knew it.

  I was vulnerable, gun at my back and everything. I was so fucking vulnerable.

  “Hello?” I yelled.

  “Max.” It was Lagan coming from the tree line. I couldn’t see him because the shadows were deep and dark up on this mountainside, and it took a while before he stepped out into the silent clearing. Jennifer and Joan were walking arm and arm in front of him. Lagan had his hand in the back of Joan’s shirt and his gun pointed at the back of her head.

  She needs a coat, I thought.

  It was cold up here in the hills. Night was coming fast and she looked like she was freezing. Next to her had to be Jennifer. She looked like a taller, younger version of Joan.

  But the two of them had it locked down tight. Whatever freak-out was happening in their heads, they weren’t showing it.