and the last line of bruised sky as full night descended. She crossed a wide creek, then crested a final hill before the road flattened and the farm road snaked in from the right. She made the turn—tires drifting—and saw the fight from a distance, not sure exactly what it was: a car in the drive, figures moving in the slash of her lights. Two men were on the ground, Adrian fighting with a third. Fifty feet closer, she saw that fighting was the wrong word. Adrian swung again, and the man went down with Adrian on top, his fists rising and falling and slinging red. The ferocity of it was so extreme that even parked and close Elizabeth sat frozen. Adrian had no expression, the face beneath his fists so pulped and bloody, it barely looked human. She saw Crybaby, motionless, another man down and crawling. For a second more she sat transfixed, then spilled from the car, knowing only that someone would die if she didn’t do something.
“Adrian!” she yelled, but he didn’t react. “You’re killing him.” She caught an arm, but he ripped it free. “Adrian, stop!”
He didn’t, so she drew her weapon and struck his head hard enough to drop him in the dirt. “Stay down,” she said, then ran to Faircloth Jones and gently rolled him. “Oh, God.” He was unconscious and so white he looked bloodless. She found a pulse, but it was irregular and thin.
“What happened to him?”
Adrian dragged himself to his knees, head low as he stared at his hands, at the split knuckles and bits of teeth wedged under the skin.
“Adrian! What the hell happened?”
His gaze slid to the second guard, Olivet. He was on his belly, still crawling. Four feet away, Preston’s gun glinted in the dust. Adrian staggered to his feet and stepped on Olivet’s hand as it reached for the gun.
“He happened.” Adrian picked up the gun and pointed it at Preston. “William Preston.”
“That’s Preston? Jesus, Adrian. Why?”
“He was torturing Crybaby.”
“Torture? How? Wait. Never mind. No time for that. We need a hospital, and we need it now.” Elizabeth cradled the old man’s head. “It’s bad.” She leaned into his breath; could barely feel it on her cheek. “We need to go now.”
“Take him.”
Elizabeth looked at Preston. The face was broken a dozen different ways. Blood bubbled at his lips. He was unrecognizable. “What about him?”
“Call an ambulance. Let him die. I don’t care. He’s not riding with Crybaby.”
“Help me, then.” They got the old man in the backseat of Elizabeth’s car. His head lolled. He weighed less than a child. “Come with me.”
Olivet moved again, so Adrian put a foot on his neck. “I’m not finished here.”
“Adrian, please.”
“Go.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, but Faircloth needs a hospital, and he needs it now.”
“Go on, then.”
“We need to talk.”
“Fine. You know the old Texaco east of town? The one on Brambleberry Road?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me there.”
Elizabeth took a final look at the scene, at beams of yellow light and the two guards, down and broken. “Are they going to die?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Elizabeth struggled with the answer. Adrian seemed cold and untouchable and every bit a killer. He pointed the gun at Preston, and she hesitated: lawyer in the back, half-dead prison guard bubbling in the dust. Would Adrian do it? Pull the trigger? She honestly didn’t know.
“Time’s wasting, Liz.”
Shit.
He was right. Only the lawyer mattered. “Brambleberry Road,” she said. “Thirty minutes.”
Elizabeth reversed down the drive and sensed Adrian’s stillness as he watched her go. She braked at the tarmac and in a swirl of dust saw him dragging Olivet by the collar, over the gravel and into the gloom, heading for the same gray car.
She waited for a shot that didn’t come.
Behind her, the lawyer was dying.
* * *
Adrian propped Olivet against the front tire, just behind the burning lights. He was hurt, but nothing like Preston. That meant a broken orbital and bloody nose. Maybe a cracked rib, based on the way air whistled past his teeth. Adrian had seen worse, experienced worse. He put the muzzle against the guard’s heart and used just enough pressure to keep him upright. The man was crying.
“Please, don’t kill me.”
The words put an unfeeling twist on Adrian’s face. How many times had he begged, only to be cut again, beaten again? He thumbed the hammer and thought about blowing Olivet’s heart through an exit wound the size of a grapefruit.