Preston pursed his lips, then nodded. “Aight.”
Bill eased the door open and whispered to Aaron. “Bring the lad forward.”
As Aaron moved into the lodge’s dark confines, Katie spoke to Bill out the corner of her mouth. “No police.”
“No police.”
No doubt the same thought ran through her grandfather’s mind that ran through hers. The word of Inspector Taylor was worth about the same as messy dogshit. He wasn’t to be trusted.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have negotiated so hard with him. But wasn’t that her responsibility? To get the best deal for their people that she could? She got the feeling the good-for-nothing inspector would have stitched them up no matter what the deal was. At least, that was what she told herself.
Aaron brought the lad forward, having to brace him as he eased into the doorway.
His family gasped and muttered curses under their breath. Even Preston shifted in his saddle.
Wesley had the good sense to turn his head to one side out of shame. One of the Wedge boys chuckled, and Wesley was quick to stamp on him. “You’ll shut your yap unless you want the same treatment, boy.”
Preston brought his eyes back up to his beaten boy’s face again. “Is anything serious? What I mean is, is there any serious damage?”
“Nothing a few weeks in bed won’t fix,” Bill said. “Nothing worse than you boys have suffered many times over the years.”
“Yes,” Wesley said. “But we deserved it.”
The fact he acknowledged Oliver had gone too far meant a great deal. It gained a nod from Preston, even if it wasn’t aimed directly at him.
“We’ve got to pay them back, Pa,” one of the Thornhill boys said. “We can’t let them get away with this. If they do, they’ll come after us the same way. Only next time, they’ll finish what they started with Luke and kill us.”
“Did I say you could speak?” Preston said.
His son quietened down and eased back onto his saddle. Katie could see from the looks on the others’ faces that they were thinking along the same lines.
“Sit down, lad,” Preston said to Luke. “You go get the rest you need.”
Aaron helped put Luke back inside.
Preston looked Bill in the eye. “You must know this can’t stand without punishment.”
Bill nodded. “Fair’s fair.”
“It looks like you’re going to have to be the mediator in all of this,” Preston said. “Wesley?”
The Wedge man looked Bill over and nodded. “You’ve got my vote.”
“So, Bill,” Preston said. “What do you think is fair?”
Bill scratched his chin. “An old man passing judgement on a young boy? Especially when the old man has done a great deal worse than the boy in question? Doesn’t sound right to me.”
Preston placed his hands on the pommel of his saddle. “I’ve got a good book waiting for me back home. None of us want to be here, Bill. Now grow some cajones and make a decision already.”
Bill held up his hands. “All right. The way I see it, the only fair thing is to beat Louisa the same way Luke was beaten.”
The Wedges exploded into cries of outrage. Wesley shook his head. “I understand the logic,” he said. “What was done to the Thornhill boy wasn’t right. But beating our girl the same way is wrong. Two wrongs don’t make a right, isn’t that what they say?”
“I have to agree,” Preston said. “Thornhills don’t beat innocent people. Especially little girls.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Bill said.
Wesley thought about it and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I do,” Katie said.
All eyes turned to her.
She didn’t know where the voice came from. She wasn’t even entirely sure what she was going to say next, only that it felt right somehow. Fair. Just.
She met each of their eyes. “If you won’t let Louisa get beaten that way, then it has to be Oliver.”
Cries from the Wedges again:
“We can’t let him get beaten!”
“What sort of family would we be to stand by and let that happen?”
Wesley was strangely quiet. He ignored the roar of disapproval at his back, a strange little quirked smile on his face. “I suppose that would be logical.”
His men turned dead silent.
One of his sons leaned forward. “You can’t be serious, Pa.”
“When I got my nephew back, what did you think I was going to do to him?” Wesley said. “Treat him with a chocolate bar? The boy deserves a hiding. A bloody good one, too.”
The Wedges shared a disconcerted look. Oliver’s humiliation would be theirs too.
“And who should do this beating?” Wesley said to Katie.
“It should be Luke. But as he’s unable to do it, it should be a person of his choosing.”
“And who might that be?” Wesley said, growing a little nervous as he glanced across at Preston.
“Any of my men would gladly do it,” Preston said. “I can hear them haggling for the honour now.”
“It’s not up to them,” Katie said. “It’s up to Luke.”
She turned and leaned inside the lodge’s dank confines at the boy. Beneath the bruises and bulbous swelling, she thought she made out a smile. He raised his finger, his arm shaking with the effort as he pointed at Katie.
Her stomach fell between her feet.
Wesley chuckled to himself with a “Woo hoo.” He rubbed his hands together with anticipation. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
34
Aaron dragged a flailing Oliver outside and planted his chair right between the two families so they all could enjoy front row seats.
“No!” Oliver screamed. “You can’t do this to me! You can’t!”
Katie was numb. The world moved about her, casting long streams of time-delayed ribbons behind them. She couldn’t believe what she was being asked to do.
Beat a man strapped to a chair in front of two cheering families that’d been fighting each other for centuries.
The world had gone mad.
“Grandfather, I can’t do this,” she said.
“Sure you can. Just think of it as having a fight… with someone strapped to a chair.”
Katie shook her head.
“Here, my girl.”
The world snapped into focus.
Wesley extended a riding crop to her. “There’s no need to cut your hands open, is there?”
His smile was warm and welcoming with not a hint of malice about it. Nothing like the mask a caring uncle should wear.
The men on the Preston side rushed to the tree line and gathered half a dozen sticks for Katie to choose from.
Now armed with a riding crop in one hand and a thick stick in the other, Katie stepped forward.
Oliver struggled against his bonds, eyes full of fury as she circled him. He screamed against the cloth jammed in his mouth and worked it free. He turned his head to his uncle. “You can’t be serious. You can’t seriously let this happen to me. I’m your nephew!”
“You’re lucky it’s this girl doing it,” Wesley said. “Her arms are much weaker than mine. What do you think I was going to do with you when I got you home? You’re getting off lightly, my lad.”
With no help from his uncle, Oliver turned to the rest of the Wedge family members. He met unsympathetic eyes and faces that refused to look at him and stared at the ground instead. He wasn’t going to get much help from those quarters. He didn’t even bother glancing over at the Preston family.
He turned his attention to Katie.
“Please, don’t do this,” he said.
“Sorry,” Katie said. “It’s only fair. And please know I’m not doing this out of any sense of enjoyment.” Well, okay, maybe a little.
“Wait,” one of Oliver’s cousins said. “We have to make allowances for the bullet he took. The Thornhill lad didn’t take a bullet.”
“He would have if we didn’t stop him,
” Bill said. “Right between the eyes.”
“Could have, but didn’t,” the loyal cousin insisted.
Wesley shrugged and looked over at Preston. “I leave it up to you.”
Preston considered the boy strapped to the chair and the circle of blood showing through his upper arm. “Sounds fair enough to me. Lay off his legs. My boy still has the use of his arms, after all.”
Wesley nodded his acceptance. “Agreed.”
Oliver peered between the two families as if seeing them for the first time. On his face, Katie witnessed his dawning realisation.
I’m not getting away with this.
And he began to cry.
Now it was Katie’s turn to administer justice. She felt the whip in one hand, the heavy stick in the other. She used the whip first and slapped him across the face with it. It made a satisfying crack sound. It must have stung, but it didn’t deliver the kind of blow he delivered to Luke. She dropped the riding crop and gripped the length of wood in both hands.
Katie raised it high and brought it down, smacking the boy across the arms. He gritted his teeth and screamed. He might have been related to a banshee by the way he was carrying on. Katie sped up the blows, striking him one after the other, beating him mercilessly. The stick snapped but she continued pummelling at him.
Katie refused to feel the blows and pictured herself back in these very same woods with her father, smacking the tree trunks with a stick as he moved through the foliage describing the edible plants around them.
She must have looked like a madwoman with the smile on her face.
A pair of cracks broke the spell, and she was suddenly back in the driveway before the lodge with an audience of fifty men around her. Her eyes fell to the bleeding, swollen mess still tied to the chair. The ropes were drenched with blood.
His blood.
A hole appeared in the gelatinous mess and words came from it. “Please. No more.”
She didn’t know how long she zoned out for, but long enough to inflict this kind of harm on someone. He didn’t look too dissimilar from Luke.
Beaten, bloody, and broken.
Katie dropped the blood-stained stick, panting from the exertion. Her muscles hurt.
The men in both families just stared at the broken mess that’d once been one of the favourite nephews of the Wedge gang. A couple looked about ready to lose their lunch.
“Enough?” Katie said.
Preston nodded his acceptance. Wesley wavered slightly before finally nodding.
Katie stepped back and put her hands on her head to expand her lungs and suck in as much oxygen as her body needed.
“I think we’re done here, don’t you?” Wesley said to Preston.
“I believe we are. Don’t forget your boy.”
The Wedges cut Oliver free and put him on his own saddle. He could hardly sit up straight so one of the others climbed on to hold him steady. He wavered side to side, bleeding over the horse and its mane as they trotted slowly up the driveway. The two families headed out side by side.
Side by side. And all it took was beating a young lad half to death.
Katie’s stomach clenched. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Vomit away,” Bill said. “I’m surprised you weren’t sick already. Strong stomach. I don’t think anyone expected you to take your beating duty so seriously.”
Camden handed his sister a glass of water. “That’s nothing. She used to beat me like that every weekend.”
Katie would have made a witty comeback but she would have been sick if she did. She gathered herself. “Beating a man is hard work.”
“It was a near-miss, all right,” Aaron said. “When the Thornhills turned up I thought we were doomed for sure.”
“We would have been if it wasn’t for Katie’s idea,” Bill said.
Just then, they heard the clip-clop of approaching horses. Two men rode while three dozen or more walked on foot.
“Well, look who it is,” Aaron said.
Inspector Taylor approached at the head of his police force. They came fully dressed for a riot.
“Perfect timing, Frank,” Bill said. “As usual.”
Inspector Taylor eyed the circle of blood on the driveway and the splatters that speckled Katie across the face and arms. “Did I miss anything?”
“You should know,” Bill said. “You were watching from the other end of the driveway.”
Inspector Taylor drew up in his saddle. “We came as soon as your man informed us something was afoot.”
Bill turned to Darryl, who rode the second horse. “How long were you waiting at the foot of the driveway?”
“About twenty minutes.”
Bill turned to Inspector Taylor, expression flat.
“I had to wait for my men to catch up,” Inspector Taylor said. “We weren’t going to be very effective if there were just a handful of us.”
“All without horses. All without weapons. Only shields. Why didn’t you bring them?”
Inspector Taylor swallowed. “We needed them for… other activities. It doesn’t matter. We came to your aid. So that’s one favour over.”
“No, Frank. That favour isn’t over. The next time we have trouble, we’ll bring it directly to your police station. Then we’ll see how fast you react.”
Inspector Taylor’s eyes bulged. “You wouldn’t!”
Bill cocked an eyebrow, daring the police officer to test him.
“Excuse me,” Gregory said. Unable to wait any longer, he climbed off his horse and approached the lodge. Hannah wrapped her arms around him.
Camden turned away. Uncomfortable with the raw emotions still swirling in his belly, it was the first time he wasn’t entirely put out by the scene. She might live forever in his mind as The One That Got Away, but sometimes the one that got away was a piranha that would consume you if you let it. He might not know it now, but Camden had a lucky escape.
And after the incidents the past few hours, Katie thought they all had.
35
Michael found Isaac sitting on a fallen tree, head bowed, with his hands clasped together in silent prayer. He looked up.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Michael said.
“You didn’t. I was expecting you.”
Michael didn’t know what to say to that. He handed Isaac a chipped plate of food. “I thought you might be hungry.”
Isaac took the plate with thanks and tucked into it. There was barely enough to feed a child, never mind a grown man. He offered it to Michael who shook his hand. He could say he’d eaten already but that would be a lie. He blocked the deep longing in the pit of his stomach. It didn’t matter. He’d been hungry many times in the past. He’d eat well later that night if everything went to plan.
Isaac tore into the potato and breathed the steam out in a billowing fan. “Are you still going ahead with it?”
He was referring to the next stage of his plan. Michael nodded.
“You know, I always envied you,” Isaac said. “Your ability to make complex plans and follow them to the letter. I think Quentin was jealous too. We all were.”
“A plan is only as good as the people there to carry it out.”
“Your humility too. Quentin used to get so angry when you wouldn’t let him act impulsively.”
Michael smiled at the memories. “It wasn’t part of the plan.”
Isaac smiled and looked up at him. The younger brother he never had. “You were the only one who could talk some sense into him.”
“Rarely.”
“No. He listened to you. If you hesitated, he took advantage. A lot of good plans failed because of his impatience.”
Michael cocked an eyebrow. “As a religious man, are you supposed to talk like that about illegal activities?”
“I suppose not. But I was young once. I can regret the things I did but I can’t change them. They’ll always be a part of me to my dying day.”
Isaac finished his meal and sat the plate to one side. “You know what
Quentin would do to this town.”
It was hard to know what Quentin would do in a given situation. That was what made him so effective. His unpredictability. The best the locals could hope for was if he decided to launch his operations so far from here that they would hardly touch this small out-of-the-way town. If he decided to stay, to make this the base of his operations…
There would be no rescuing it. Quentin was a whirlwind of crime and punishment. That was why they were so desperate to keep him under lock and key. Especially during times such as these.
“Quentin will do what Quentin does, and we’ll do what he tells us,” Michael said. “The way we’ve always done it.”
Isaac nodded. “The way we’ve always done.” His expression was hard to read. He got to his feet and dusted off his hands. “What if I have a new master now? A kinder master?”
“You mean God?”
“There’s no greater master in the universe.”
The topic had come to the subject Michael dreaded most. The one he had to speak with Isaac about.
“What does this religious change in you mean for the rest of us?” Michael said. “I need to know if you can help us with what we have planned.”
“I can’t.”
Michael suppressed the geyser of anger that spurted against his mind. “I need you to think again.”
“I have thought. A lot. I’ve given you my decision.”
Michael tried again. “We need your help.”
“I can’t give it.”
“Once you go down this route, there’s no turning back.”
Isaac smiled warmly and let out a breath through his nose. “I can’t help you with your plans. My faith won’t let me.”
It came to the greatest threat Michael could make, and it wasn’t an idle one. “Quentin’s going to be very disappointed in you.”
Even Isaac couldn’t keep himself from shuddering. They’d both seen what Quentin was capable of when he was disappointed.
“I don’t want to see that happen to you,” Michael said. “Please. Think again.”
“I can’t.”
“If you don’t help us, and he learns that fact, there will be no stopping him. You’ll have already made your decision without consulting him.”
Cut Off (Book 3): Cut Loose Page 12
