Walk In the Fire

by Steph Post

  “You’re bleeding.”

  It was more than just blood, though. Even in the tenebrous light, he could see the bruising all along the left side of her face. The cut above her eye had been taped closed with thin strips of gauze, but the cut below was bare and slowly seeping blood in watery tendrils down her cheek. Ramey raised her fingers to her face and gently touched it.

  “Did it open up again?”

  Judah held her face gently in his hands.

  “You need a doctor.”

  Ramey dropped her hand back to his waist.

  “I need you.”

  He pulled her to him again with a trembling ferocity and pressed his face into her wet, matted hair. He could only whisper.

  “Are you back?”

  “I’m back. I was never gone. But yes, I’m back.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He released her and stepped back.

  “I thought. Jesus, I thought—”

  “We found him.”

  Judah shook his head.

  “No, I don’t understand. You left.”

  He could feel it now, rising up inside of him. The hurt, the anger, the shame. He had driven her away; he knew this. But yet here she was, standing before him, bloody and bruised. And he was merely broken.

  “Ramey, I don’t understand.”

  Ramey swallowed. It looked as if she were biting back a night’s worth of words, but her eyes softened and she dipped her head.

  “Judah, I’m sorry. It was the only thing I could think of. The only way that I could get away quickly. Without questions. Without having to convince you. There wasn’t any time and I knew I couldn’t get you to listen. We had to act fast.”

  It still didn’t make sense.

  “We?”

  Ramey wiped some of the blood off her cheek with the back of her hand.

  “Shelia and I. We found Weaver.”

  Judah took another step back from her.

  “What the hell?”

  “Shelia was telling the truth. She found out where Cassie was working up in Colston, at this little diner. I saw Stella, she was there, too. And so was Weaver.”

  “What?”

  Ramey held out her hand.

  “Just listen. Weaver was there, I’m sure, to kill them. We attacked him.”

  “You did what?”

  “Let me finish!”

  Judah clamped his mouth shut, but his mind was racing. What the hell had she done? What the hell had she done because of him? For him? Ramey waited another moment and then continued, speaking slower this time.

  “We attacked him. We tried to kill him, but I don’t think we did. We left him on the floor of the diner’s kitchen. He’s banged up worse than I am, at least I got a bullet in him, and Shelia stabbed him with a fork, but he was definitely still kicking when we ran.”

  Judah blinked.

  “She stabbed him with a fork?”

  A corner of Ramey’s lip curled up.

  “Yes, a fork. She stabbed him like a hunk of roast beef.”

  “Jesus.”

  He reached out and put his hands on Ramey’s shoulders.

  “But you’re okay?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m okay. Though, I can cross getting a boot in the stomach off my bucket list now.”

  She was grinning up at him, trying to make a joke, but Judah wasn’t laughing. Only one thing mattered to him now: he was going to kill Weaver. He was going to destroy him.

  “You think he’s headed this way?”

  The smile disappeared from her face.

  “Yes. I think Stella and Cassie are safe for now, I warned them as best I could, but he’s gotta still be coming for us. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. He’s in bad shape, but that’s not gonna stop him. I saw his eyes, Judah. He’s not going to stop until his body matches the state of his soul. He will hunt us all down until he’s in the ground himself.”

  Judah nodded.

  “Okay then.”

  A look of relief passed over Ramey’s face.

  “Okay then.”

  Judah frowned.

  “Ramey, what you did, all of it, was crazy and reckless and stupid and brave as hell. And I know it’s because of me.”

  Ramey tilted her head.

  “Don’t give yourself all the credit.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I just mean, I know what you risked. With us. With Weaver. I’m sorry. And I’m grateful.”

  He pulled her to him one final time. The rain was coming down harder again, and he blinked the water out of his eyes as he dug his fingers into her back.

  “I will make this right, Ramey. I will make this right. I promise.”

  Clive crammed his suitcase into the miniature backseat of the clown car and slammed the door shut. The candy apple red Chevy Aveo, dropped off that morning by a rental car company, was perfect. Just perfect. The exact type of failure-mobile he needed to announce his departure from Bradford County. Clive hadn’t even bothered to ask the slick joker who handed him the keys if there was any other car to choose from. He knew there wasn’t. Not for him, anyway.

  Clive had spent most of the morning on the phone with Lopez, trying to defend himself, but it hadn’t gotten him anywhere. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d only made things worse. If they could get any worse. Clive knew he would never get out of the records room now. He’d stay down in that tomb forever and grow as moldy as the carpet. Of this, Lopez had assured him. She would lock him down there and swallow the key herself. Lopez had been furious, shouting at him over the phone as she tore into a breakfast sandwich. Clive had been able to hear the wrapper crinkling between obscenities and bites. Lopez had already gone to Krenshaw and proposed the case and now she would have to go back and explain that, yet again, her agent had wasted time, money and resources, not to mention a company car. Clive had made her look like a fool and she was never going to forgive him. Never. When he had tried, nearly sputtering, to explain himself once more, to remind her of the evidence he had found—the land deals, the phosphate mine, the mismanaged crime scene—her cruel, sharp laughter had silenced him. On top of the absurdity of his delusions about a granny preacher mob boss, he was now claiming to have been threatened, and almost killed, by a posse of geezers spouting Old Testament gibberish. Lopez must have asked him at least twenty times: had he lost his goddamn mind?

  Clive opened the front door of the Aveo and shook his head in disgust. It was six hours back to Atlanta and he would be driving the whole way with his knees up around his ears. At least he would be leaving the wretched, scorched earth of backwoods Florida, and that was all that mattered. Even if he was skulking away with his tail between his legs, at least he was leaving the miserable place behind. Clive hoped the whole damn state would just fall into the ocean already. He wedged himself behind the steering wheel and cranked down the window by hand. Clive was just about to pull the door shut when he saw the glittering black Lincoln Navigator parked in the empty lot across the street. Its tinted driver’s side window slowly lowered and he was forced to behold the face of Sister Tulah Atwell one last time.

  She was smiling. Grinning wide, sickeningly wide, and she wasn’t wearing her eyepatch. The craggy divot where her eye should have been only intensified the grotesqueness of her smirk. He would never be able to forget Tulah’s face. Her nauseating smile would haunt him all of his days. Its image had settled in the bottom of his stomach like a slimy bezoar and he would never be rid of it. Sister Tulah. The woman who had beaten him. The woman who had ruined him. And knew it. And enjoyed it. Relished it. Clive turned away and started the car. He couldn’t stand to look at her a moment longer.

  Clive bounced over the crumbling threshold of The Pines’ parking lot and navigated his way out of downtown Kentsville, following the signs to the highway. The weight in his stomach grew heavier and heavier, even as he put distance between himself and Sister Tulah. When he braked at the crossroad for Highway 301, her bloated face flashed before his eyes and Clive took hi
s hands off the steering wheel. He needed to go north. Back to Atlanta, to his immaculate, climate-controlled apartment. To his twenty-four-hour gym and protein shakes, his double-espressos and wireless internet. To his shame, yes, but also to sanity. An F-250 pulled up behind him, its diesel engine rumbling, but Clive couldn’t seem to make himself turn. A long, loud honk came from the truck and Clive glanced up in the rearview mirror. A man in a rebel flag netter was giving him the finger. He pounded on the horn again, but Clive ignored him. He turned his attention back to the crossroads. A black SUV had pulled up at the stop sign opposite him. For a moment, he thought it was Sister Tulah, that she had taken a shortcut somehow, just to really see him off. But no, there was a man behind the wheel and a man in the passenger’s seat and both were wearing dark, wraparound sunglasses. Clive almost laughed. He shook his head and smacked his palms against the steering wheel. He didn’t care. There was one last possibility, one last shot, one last Hail Mary attempt to salvage the case, and he had to take it. He had to. Clive turned right and gunned the engine. Tulah’s bulldogs could follow him if they liked. He was heading south. Toward Silas.

  WEAVER WAS coming. Ramey could feel it in her bones. Before nightfall, it would all be settled. She ran her thumbs along the rim of the coffee cup cradled in her hands and continued to stare out the high picture window above the front door. From her vantage point at the top of the stairs, she could see halfway down the muddy driveway until it curved around to join with the main road. How many nights over the past three months had she had sat in this very spot, sometimes with a cup of coffee in her hand, sometimes a beer, whiskey, a cigarette, as she waited for Judah to come home alive.

  “How many cups is that?”

  Ramey rested the cup on her knees and turned as Judah sat down beside her on the top stair. She gave him an exhausted smile.

  “Three? Four? I started counting over once dawn broke.”

  Ramey wasn’t sure if she had slept at all. At some point, after the fight between Shelia and Benji, after the raucous arrival of Alvin and Gary, hopped up on cocaine and who knew what else, after the discussion and decision to stay put, wait it out, let Weaver come to them, Ramey had dragged herself up the stairs and fallen into bed. The night had been punctuated by the clicking of ejected shells and the slamming of magazines. Shotguns being racked over and over in apprehension and preparation. Bottles clinking. The back screen door clattering open and closed. At one point, Judah had collapsed beside her and murmured into her hair. Slung his arm over her bruised hip. Inhaled and exhaled alongside her.

  She started to hand the coffee cup to him, but Judah shook his head.

  “I lost count completely. At this point, I’m probably too jittery to shoot straight.”

  Judah rubbed at his bloodshot eyes and raked his fingers back through his disheveled hair. Ramey watched him for a moment before turning back to her vigil.

  “It’s going to come down to that, ain’t it?”

  Judah nodded wearily and Ramey sighed, resting her chin on her hand.

  “This is exactly what I didn’t want. A war on our doorstep.”

  She glanced down at the 12-gauge on the stair just beyond her feet.

  “I mean, Jesus Christ. Who are we, Judah? Who have we become?”

  Judah only shook his head and rested his hand on the small of her back. He knew. And she knew. There was no more running from it. There was no more trying to pretend otherwise. The line had been crossed. Perhaps they were simply, finally, becoming the people they had always been marked to be. Ramey kept her eyes on the window.

  “And there’s no going back, is there?”

  Judah’s voice was very quiet.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  And there it was. Ramey set her cup on the stair below her and sat up straight, working her shoulders out, as she pulled and tied her hair back. Shelia walked past the bottom of the stairs on her way from the living room to the kitchen and Ramey nodded to her.

  “Well, at least those two quit trying to kill each other.”

  Judah finally cracked a smile.

  “Yeah, at about three thirty in the morning I think. They might have started up again, but I haven’t heard any screeching or hollering yet.”

  When Shelia had first come through the front door last night, Ramey had been positive that Benji was going to strangle her. He went so far as to lunge at Shelia’s throat before Judah stepped in front of her and announced that, at least while she was in their house, Shelia was under his protection. Benji’s eyes had just about popped out of his skull, but there wasn’t much he could do. Shelia and Benji had spent most of the night glaring viciously at one other in seething silence, with an occasional bout of yelling and cursing thrown in for good measure.

  “Shelia did save my life, you know. With Weaver.”

  Judah glanced over at Ramey.

  “She’s still responsible for what happened to Benji.”

  He stood up and stretched.

  “But at this point, they can work it out for themselves as far as I’m concerned. I just don’t have time for—”

  “Judah.”

  Ramey jumped up and pointed toward the window. A lone red car was coming down the driveway. Benji called up from the living room.

  “Judah! There’s a car!”

  Judah turned to Ramey.

  “Weaver?”

  “I don’t know. That’s certainly not what he was driving before.”

  Judah called down the stairs.

  “Hold on! Just wait a second. Just, oh, for God’s sake.”

  Ramey watched the car roll to a stop and Special Agent Grant awkwardly squeeze his way out. She turned to Judah, her eyes wide, mouth open in disbelief. Judah shook his head as he bounded down the stairs.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Ramey charged after him and they nearly smacked into Gary, swinging around the corner from the kitchen.

  “Who the hell?”

  Judah pushed past him.

  “ATF. We’ll get him out of here. Just stay watching the back door.”

  Ramey cautiously stepped to the edge of the living room window and looked out. Agent Grant was standing by his car with an uncertain look on his face. Ramey turned around. Shelia and Benji were both craning their necks, trying to peer over her shoulder through the window. Ramey looked at Judah, standing by the couch, scratching his forehead with the barrel of his .45, and Alvin, now coming out of the bathroom with his fly unzipped and a shotgun gripped in each hand. Ramey took a deep breath, trying to calm down everyone else in the room as much as herself.

  “It’s okay. I can talk to him, I can get rid of him.”

  Judah frowned and looked past her, through the window. He flipped the .45 in his hand and held the grip out to her. Ramey eyed the gun, but shook her head. Judah pushed it toward her.

  “Are you crazy? Take it.”

  “Oh, and that won’t look suspicious? He’s ATF. I think he’d know if I was carrying a firearm out to greet him.”

  Ramey turned around to look out the window again. Agent Grant had started walking toward the house. Ramey put her hand on the doorknob.

  “Just give me a minute. I’ll take care of him.”

  Judah looked worried, but jerked his head toward the agent.

  “Do it.”

  CLIVE DIDN’T think the old men in the SUV had followed him after all, but he couldn’t be sure. He turned and looked anxiously over his shoulder, back down the driveway. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see the road, and that made him nervous. Clive shook his head; he had to get a grip on himself. Ramey Barrow was coming down the porch steps with a look on her face like she was about to spit nails, and he needed to be focused on her, not worried about the Meals on Wheels brigade rolling up behind him.

  Clive took his sunglasses off, trying to appear more personable, but raised his hand up against the glare of the midmorning sun. He did his best to smile.

  “Hello there, again.”

&nb
sp; For a moment, Clive thought Ramey was going to barrel right through him. Her arms were crossed, her head tilted down just enough so that her eyes had to slice up through the air at him. He almost took a step back, but she drew up short, cocked her hip out and threw her head to the side, her wild hair glinting with copper from the sun. Her voice was tight and clipped.

  “I thought Judah made things clear the other day.”

  Clive dropped his hand and turned slightly so that he wasn’t completely blinded by the sun. Ramey moved so that she was still standing close in front of him. Even though it was obvious that there were no other cars in the driveway save his own, Clive made a point of looking around the yard.

  “Is Judah around?”

  “No.”

  Clive turned back to her.

  “Is he up at the salvage yard?”

  Ramey’s teeth were biting into her bottom lip.

  “Yes.”

  Clive knew she was lying. He also knew that falling back on the bullshit routine wasn’t going to work this time. He needed her. He needed the Cannons. Clive put his hands on his hips and stared down at the scrubby tufts of grass at his feet.

  “Listen, Ramey. I’m not here to play games.”

  “Oh really? You just gonna stick to threats this time?”

  Clive looked up at her sharply.

  “No, I’m not here for that either.”

  She stuck out her chin defiantly.

  “Then what? You just got nothing better to do? Want to come up on the porch and play some checkers?”

  Clive smoothed down his tie, trying to figure out how to say what he needed to say. Finally, he just blurted it out in a rush.

  “Tulah. Is there anything you can give me on her? Anything at all?”

  Ramey laughed and shook her head.

  “Man, you’re like a dog with a bone.”

  Clive put out his hand.

  “No, listen, that’s not what…”

  She stepped close. Too close. Her eyes looked like they wanted to carve him up.