races, but it was a start. He’d also fed Dylan to the dogs when the time came.
The heartbeat of happiness stopped. Immediately.
“I tell you what,” Rabbit said with that crooked grin and his dark eyes. “You don’t come down off that mountain of yours very often, do you?”
“You’ve been looking for me?”
“Fuck. No one needs to look for Dylan Daniels, we just need to wait for him to show his face—” Rabbit blanched a little in the strange light. The guy always had been a little squeamish.
And his face was exactly why Dylan didn’t come down off his mountain.
“What do you want, Rabbit?”
“I need you to talk to your brother.”
Dylan laughed and began to roll up his window.
“Hear me out,” Rabbit said, putting his hand over the escalating glass. Dylan could ignore the guy’s hand. Close the window on it and drag the guy behind him for as long as it took for Rabbit to pull himself free.
And once upon a time that was exactly what he would have done.
He lifted his finger from the window button.
“I haven’t talked to my brother in years.” Nine to be exact. He remembered the day in absolute clarity. “If the club is having trouble with how Max is leading it—”
“He’s gonna get us all killed.”
Dylan shook his head.
“You don’t believe me?” Rabbit asked, those dark eyes getting sly. Mean.
“No,” he said. “I believe you. There’s just nothing I can do to help you. Max has been trying to get himself killed since the day he was born.”
Dylan rolled up the window and roared away, leaving Rabbit and the past in his rearview mirror.
ANNIE
When I was little, Smith had a dog. A pretty shepherd with one blue eye and one dark one. And that dog loved dead things. If there was a rabbit or a squirrel or a bird that died somewhere on the property, Queenie would find that thing and roll around in it. She’d roll around in it in ecstasy. Like her dog life was made. And then she’d eat it.
She’d eat the dead thing.
And then she’d throw it up and then, if Smith wasn’t around to shout her name in the serious threatening way he had, she’d roll around in that.
On Friday morning I couldn’t tell if I was Queenie, or the dead thing she’d rolled around in, eaten, and thrown up.
That’s how bad I felt.
I made my way, hours past dawn, in the bright, sticky heat of the day toward the field, unsure if I was going to be able to work. Or if I would even really survive the day.
Stepping across the bridge, I caught sight of the tractor in the far corner where it had broken down yesterday.
Shit. I’d forgotten.
I was supposed to ask Ben if he could fix it.
Ben.
Forget it. Forget all of it. I turned around, ready to head back to my trailer, where I could pull the blankets up over my head and die in peace.
But there, like he’d been summoned. Standing on the bridge, in a gray tee shirt and a pair of khaki pants, toolbox in hand. Like a regular guy. Just a regular guy who’d never planned to kill two men and accidentally killed a little girl, was Ben.
He looked old. And frail. His skin was nearly gray. White around his mouth.
He was a sick old man who’d been kind to me. Very kind.
And I was scared of him.
I couldn’t stop myself from stepping back. Reeling back, actually, I was so startled. So off balance.
And all I could think of was this guy tying two men to a chair, leaving them helpless, and then starting a fire for them to die in.
Did you know about the girl? The question surged, angry and righteous, to my lips—but I swallowed it back, where it smoldered in my belly.
Was Dylan somehow related to the little girl? Was that how this man fucked up his life?
“Hey, girly,” Ben said. He was smiling. Actually smiling. And it somehow made him even more menacing. “You all right?”
“Hung over,” I said, grateful for the rock-star sunglasses so he couldn’t really see my eyes.
“I like your hair.”
I’d forgotten. I lifted my hand to my hair, which felt unbelievably dry and stiff. Like a head full of hay. “Tiffany thought it would be a good idea.”
“It’s better than the black.”
I was silent. Lost and shaky in the hangover and what I knew about him. What I thought about him now and what I’d thought about him yesterday morning.