Chapter 8 #2
“Afternoon, gents.” His voice wasn’t exactly friendly. “What can I get you?”
Brandt laid his badge on the bar.
Lyle glanced at it. “Marshal.”
“I need to ask you about Friday night.”
“I figured.”
“Rux Granger. Evander Cole. The woman.” Brandt’s voice was quiet. “Tell me what happened.”
Lyle wiped a glass. Set it down and reached for another.
“Man came in. Sat at the end of the bar. Had a dog. Woman came in later with a guitar and asked to play for tips. Said she ran out of gas, and I told her she wouldn’t get far on just tips since the nearest gas station is fifteen miles down the mountain.
She looked tired, you know? Plum worn out.
So I told her to play a set and offered her the gas can I keep for my generator as payment.
She started playing, and, gotta say, she was good.
Everyone stopped to listen. Rux and two of his boys walked in about halfway through her second song.
” He paused. Squinted at the glass. “Cole went for Rux. No warning. Just crossed the room and put him on the ground. Stabbed him with Rux’s own knife.
Then he grabbed the woman and dragged her out the back.
The other two went after them. Truck was gone by the time they hit the parking lot. ”
“That’s the story you gave county,” Brandt said.
“That’s what happened.”
“Then explain this.” Brandt leaned forward. “If Cole attacked without provocation and dragged the woman out against her will, why did she take her guitar? It was in the case when she came in. It was in the case when she left. A woman being abducted doesn’t stop to collect her belongings.”
Lyle stared at him, stone-faced, like he didn’t understand the question. But his gaze shifted to the men playing pool.
Yeah, he knew exactly what happened. He was just too afraid or too smart to talk about it.
X glanced at the pool players.
Fuck.
Sons of Sin. They weren’t wearing cuts, but they were definitely part of the club. Probably sent to make sure Lyle and all the other witnesses kept backing their version of events.
“So you just watched?” River growled. “A room full of people and you—what, wiped your glasses while three bikers cornered a woman? While a man who just stabbed someone dragged her out the back? And nobody moved? Nobody picked up a goddamn phone for twenty-two minutes?”
“River.” X stepped in front of him.
River didn't hear him. He'd rounded on the room now, on the pool table, the bikers gone still.
“She weighs a buck twenty soaking wet. She plays guitar for gas money.” His voice climbed, cracking at the edges.
“And every one of you sat here and let it happen and then got your story straight for the police.
That's what I'm hearing. You all decided together what you saw.”
Lyle’s good eye narrowed. “Who the hell’s this?”
“Nobody.” X got a hand on him. Both hands, one on his shoulder and one flat on his chest, turning him, putting his own body between River and the bar. “My buddy’s just real invested in true crime.”
River opened his mouth again, but X squeezed his shoulder.
“Cállate,” he hissed. Then he gave Lyle the easy smile that got him out of most of the trouble he’d gotten into in his life. “Can I ask about the bar’s name?” He motioned to the sign over the door. “It’s spelled wrong. Right Marshal? Only supposed to have one L.”
Brandt stared at him like he thought X had lost his mind, but answered, “Yes, two Ls make it a name, not a law enforcement title.”
“Been wrong for damn near a hundred and forty years, Marshal-with-one-L. Don’t see a reason to fix it now.
” Lyle looked at River a beat longer, and his expression slammed closed like a till drawer.
He set the glass down, and when he spoke again it was to Brandt, flatter than before.
“And like I said. I told the county deputies what I saw. You asking again now’s not changing any damn thing. ”
Brandt nodded, picked up his badge, and started for the door. “Thank you for your time.”
“What?” River demanded. “That’s it? You’re just—”
Brandt shot him a shut the fuck up glare with his uncanny blue eyes, then swung back to the bar.
“I do have one more question, if you don’t mind?
The 911 call came in after midnight from your bar’s landline.
But according to three witnesses, the altercation happened somewhere between 11:35 and 11:45.
That’s twenty-two minutes between a man bleeding out on your floor and someone picking up the phone. Why the delay?”
“Place was chaos. Took a minute to get to the phone.”
“Twenty-two minutes is more than a minute, Mr. Ferris.”
“I don’t clock these things, Marshal. Someone called when someone called.”
River exploded. “He’s fucking lying!”
X caught him around the chest and hauled him backward off his feet, boots scraping over the warped floorboards. River thrashed, all elbows and fury, and X had to lock his arms tight just to keep him from breaking free and launching himself at Lyle.
“Let me go,” River snarled.
“Not a chance, pendejo.”
The whole bar had gone quiet. The old-timers stared. The men near the pool table straightened and set their cues down, leaving their hands loose at their sides to reach for concealed weapons
This place was a power keg
And River was determined to be the match.
Brandt hadn’t moved from the bar. He stood with one hand flat on the wood, the other loose at his side, and his eyes were on Lyle. Not on River. Not on the men by the pool table. On Lyle, who was watching the pool table with his good eye.
“Get him outside,” Brandt said, and his voice was calm, almost bored. “Now.”
X didn’t need to be told twice. He shoved River through the door and into the gravel lot, and the sunlight hit them both like a slap.
River stumbled, caught himself on the hood of the SUV, and stood there heaving, his hands braced on the metal, his head hanging between his shoulders.
“What the hell was that?” X rounded on him, his own pulse hammering. “You trying to get us shot? Because that’s how you get us shot.”
“He’s lying.” River’s voice was wrecked. “You heard him. You heard the way he talked about her. Like she was nothing. Like she was just some girl who wandered in off the highway and got what she got.”
“Yeah, he was lying. Badly. But starting a bar fight with a room full of bikers while a federal marshal is trying to build a case won’t help Rainey. Getting yourself killed won’t help her.”
River pushed off the SUV and turned. His face was wet, his eyes red-rimmed, and there was a wildness in them that made X’s stomach drop.
X had seen that look before. Not on River, but on men with nothing left to lose, men about to make a choice that ended in gunfire or handcuffs or both. It hollowed out his stomach and filled the space with ice water.
“River.” He kept his voice low, even, the same tone he used with spooked horses and feral dogs. “Look at me, man. I’m right here.”
River’s chest heaved. His hands hung at his sides, opening and closing, and the tendons in his forearms stood out like cables under strain.
His eyes kept cutting toward the bar’s front door like he was calculating how fast he’d have to move to get back inside, how many steps to Lyle, whether the pool players would clear their holsters before he got his hands on the old man’s throat.
“Don’t do it,” X said. He stepped into River’s line of sight, blocking the door. “Whatever you’re planning right now, it’s not worth it.”
“You don’t know what I’m planning.”
“I know you’re not breathing. I know your hands are shaking. I know you want to go back in there and beat the truth out of a seventy-year-old man in front of a room full of Sons of Sin.” X folded his arms. “That’s not a plan. That’s a funeral.”
River’s jaw worked. A muscle jumped beneath his eye. For a second, X thought he was going to swing, but then the fight drained out of him. He tipped his head back until he was staring at the pale wash of sky above the pines. His breath came out in a long, ragged stream.
“I can’t do this.” His voice cracked. “I can’t stand here while some liar in a bar pretends my sister doesn’t matter.”
“I know.” X moved closer, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. “But you’re not doing it alone. Brandt’s in there right now doing his marshal thing. And you’re out here with me, not getting shot. That’s a win, pendejo. Take it.”
River let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t come from somewhere so broken. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and held them there, his whole body trembling with the effort of keeping himself together.
They stood there in silence until Brandt shoved out of the bar and strode across the lot, his expression like a storm cloud. He didn’t speak again until they were back in the SUV and peeling out of the lot.
“What happened?” River demanded.
“We have a body.”
River’s complexion went the color of milk. “Rainey—”
“No,” Brandt said quickly, and his expression softened. “Sorry. A witness that was going to come forward and contradict the official statement. “Marshals went to collect him and found him dead in a motel room.”
X spun his ring around on his finger. “They’re cleaning house.”
“Yeah.” Brandt returned his attention to the road. “Which means they’re closer to finding her.”