two incredible uncles. And Alex’s life was all the better for it.
Until today. When his life came to a heartbreaking end.
Both brothers dropped everything as soon as Molly called them. They drove together straight to the high school, their truck rattling along at over a hundred miles per hour. They were hoping for the best.…
But had prepared themselves for the worst.
The doctors and sheriff’s department are treating Alex’s death as an accident. At least for now. Just two kids being kids, messing with shit they shouldn’t have been.
But it was an accident that didn’t have to happen.
And somebody is going to pay.
Their destination soon comes into sight: a cluster of low-slung wood and metal buildings that seem to shimmer in the still-scorching desert heat. Hank surveys the area with a pair of forest-green binoculars.
“Don’t see anyone on patrol. Maybe we can sneak up on him after all.”
Stevie shakes his head.
“That bastard knows we’re coming.”
The Jeep comes to a stop in front of a rusty padlocked gate on the perimeter of the property, dotted with dry shrubs and scraggly trees. At the end of a short driveway sits a tumbledown little shack.
The man they’ve come for lives inside.
Stuffing his Glock 19 into his belt behind his back, Stevie steps out of the Jeep first—and the blistering desert air hits him like a semi. Instantly he’s flooded with memories of the nighttime covert ops he ran in Desert Storm. But that was a distant land, where more than two decades earlier he served with honor and distinction.
Tonight, he’s in Scurry County, Texas. He doesn’t have an elite squad to back him up. Only his jumpy little brother.
And the stakes aren’t just higher. They’re personal.
“Lay a hand on my gate, Rourke, I’ll blow it clean off.”
Old Abe McKinley is standing on his farmhouse porch, shakily aiming a giant wood-handled Colt Anaconda. With his wild mane of white hair and blackened teeth, he either looks awful for seventy-five, or like total shit for sixty.
But Stevie doesn’t scare easy—or back down.
“I want to talk to you, Abe. Nothing more.”
“Then tell your baby brother to be smart. And put down his toy.”
“If you tell your folks to do the same.”
Abe snorts. Not a chance.
Stevie shrugs. Worth a try. “Then at least tell ’em,” he says, “to quit pretending to hide.”
After a reluctant nod from the old man, Hank tosses his pump-action Remington back into the Jeep. Simultaneously, fourteen of McKinley’s goons, hidden all around the compound, slowly step out of the shadows. Some were crouched behind bushes. Others, trees. A few were lying prone in the knee-high grass that covers most of McKinley’s two dozen acres.
Each man is wearing full hunting camo and a ski mask, and clutching a semiautomatic weapon.
Stevie was right. The bastard sure did know they’d be coming around here.
“Now, then.” Stevie clears his throat. “As I was saying—”
“Sorry to hear about your sister’s boy.” McKinley interrupts. Not one for small talk. He spits a thick squirt of tobacco juice into the dirt. “Tragedy.”
Stevie swallows his rage at the intentional sign of complete disrespect. “You sound real cut up about it. About losing a first-time customer.”
McKinley betrays nothing. “I don’t know what you mean by that. If you’re implying I had anything to do with—”
Hank’s the one who interrupts now. Can’t keep his cool like his brother.
“You got four counties hooked on the crystal you cook!” he shouts, taking a step forward. McKinley’s men raise their guns, but Hank doesn’t flinch.
“You’re the biggest player from here to Lubbock, and everybody knows it. Means one of y’all”—Hank glares at each of the armed men, one by one, their fingers tickling their triggers—“sold our nephew the shit that killed him. Put a live grenade in the hand of a child!”
McKinley just snarls. Then turns and starts heading back inside his house.
“Stevie, Hank, thanks for stopping by. But don’t do it again. Or I’ll bury you out back with the dogs.”
Like a shot from a rifle—crack!—the screen door slams shut behind him.
4 minutes, 45 seconds
Tomorrow marks ten weeks to the day my son Alex died before my eyes.
I can’t believe it. It feels like barely ten minutes.
I can still remember so clearly the pair of fresh-faced paramedics who rushed into the hallway and lifted him onto a gurney. I remember the breakneck ambulance ride to the county hospital, all those machines he was hooked up to, clicking and beeping, me clutching his clammy hand, urging him to hang on to his life just as tight.