The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,103
seem suspicious to you? He’s laughing and drinking and rutting with teenage girls at his daughter’s funeral? When he gets called out, he turns on the crocodile tears and then goes out and does it again. Does that sound like he’s mourning his daughter? I think we’ve got a new suspect.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do, right? Clear Hannah? And now we’ve got another suspect—”
“He’s not a suspect. And don’t pretend that was about Hannah.”
“I’m telling you, he’s not acting normally—”
“Do you want me to tell you what that was about? Do you want me to say it?”
Jem finally looked up, and he was surprised to see tears in Tean’s eyes.
“You don’t know what that was about,” Jem said.
Tean just shook his head. “Just get in the truck.”
“I think we should talk to Becca.”
“She ran off when you picked a fight at a funeral, Jem. Nobody’s going to talk to us anymore, not after you attacked the dead woman’s father. Let’s go.”
The music had settled into something slower, softer. A fiddle wailed in the background. When the breeze shifted, it carried the smell of the fire away, and in its place came the smell of gravel dust and crushed grass.
On the highway, lights flashed, a horn blared, and someone screamed. It wasn’t a cry for help. It was a ululating, exultant cry, competing with the horn and the strobing lights to break the quiet darkness along the road. Jem looked at Tean, and they both set off at a jog toward the highway. Behind them, shouts and angry questions came from the people around the fire.
When they got to the cattle guard, Jem had to cover his eyes for a moment as the lights came on again. An engine rumbled, and diesel exhaust pooled around a big truck. The vehicle was parked perpendicular across the highway, pointed at the bonfire and the celebration. Someone was standing by the driver’s door, turning the lights on and off. Then glass shattered, and the peaty notes of whiskey mixed with the exhaust. Shards of the broken bottle spun across the blacktop, glittering when the lights came on again.
“Could you cut it out?” Jem said. “You’re giving me a migraine.”
The man’s laugh was deep, and it was followed by another of those long, victorious howls. Nudging Tean with his elbow, Jem guided both of them out of the path of the headlights, and then he blinked to clear his vision.
“You two stay over there,” the man said. Even with his night vision ruined, Jem could make out his general shape: big, with a military-style haircut. Then Jem noticed the shape of a rifle slung over his shoulder and what might have been a handgun at his waist. “We don’t want any misunderstandings tonight.”
“John Sievers?” Tean said.
“That’s right.” Another series of excited shouts. “The bitch is dead, the bitch is dead. Thank God that bitch is dead.”
“You need to go,” Jem said.
“It’s a free country, isn’t it? Besides, I’m here to celebrate. Aren’t we all here to celebrate?”
“You need to go,” Jem said. “Right now.”
Men and women from the celebration of life were approaching the road now, some of them staggering from drink, some of them already shouting insults and threats at Sievers. They seemed to recognize him in spite of the truck’s headlights, and—this was more interesting to Jem—they didn’t seem particularly surprised to see him.
“This is about to get ugly,” Jem said. “Nobody wants that. You did what you came here to do. You pissed on everything. You made your point. Just get in your truck and go.”
As though to underscore the point, a rock whistled out of the darkness. It hit the side of the truck with a metallic thump.
Sievers’s response was automatic. He unlimbered the rifle from his shoulder and fired. Men and women screamed, and the crowd broke up, racing back toward the fire in an uneven line. One man kept screaming, “I’m shot, I’m shot, he killed me!”
“Pussy,” Sievers said. He produced something from inside a jacket, and the movement of his hands suggested unscrewing a cap. He tossed his head back, and then he threw something. Glass shattered again—a miniature bottle, the kind they sold at Sinclairs and Conocos. Judging by the blast of cinnamon-infused booze, Jem thought it had probably been a Fireball. “No way I hit him,” Sievers said, almost conversational now. “At least the dead cunt had a backbone. This lot isn’t worth a wet fart.”
“Someone will have called the sheriff,” Tean said. “You