Chapter Twenty-One
~ Ransom ~
The sheriff’s department built their interrogation room with all the warmth and grace of a medieval oubliette.
Two-way glass, cinder block walls painted a migraine shade of white, a single table bolted to the linoleum, and lighting that could make a saint look like he’d just strangled a busload of kittens.
If you ever doubted that cops were sadists, five minutes in here would cure you.
I stood behind the mirror, nails biting into the meat of my palms. Every muscle in my body was wound up tight, from the balls of my feet to the hinge of my jaw. My reflection stared back at me, red-eyed and wild, like some fucked-up spirit haunting the department.
Floyd stood beside me, good hand in his jacket pocket, the other cradled up in a sling.
His face was still a roadmap of old and new bruises; the butterfly bandage above his left eyebrow was nearly as white as the wall.
He watched the scene inside with a surgeon’s detachment, but I knew him.
Under the surface, he was barely keeping it together.
Billy Rawlins sat on the far side of the table, wrists cuffed in front of him, sweating rivers into a county-issued jumpsuit.
Kid had always looked more animal than human—a bear in the body of a teenager—but today he looked like someone had turned the thermostat up to broil.
His hair was slicked to his skull. His skin shone with terror.
Deputy Latham ran the show, his voice just loud enough to make it through the glass.
“Let’s start from the top,” he said. “You broke into Inked Rebellion on January twenty-sixth. You spray-painted the wall, smashed the display case, set fire to the back room, and then attacked Sheriff Hardesty when he responded to the scene.”
Billy slumped lower, eyes flicking up and away, a dance I recognized from every kid who’d ever gotten caught stealing cigarettes or hotwiring a tractor for a joyride. But this wasn’t shoplifting. This was blood.
Latham leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Why don’t you tell me what happened next?”
Billy looked at the cuffs, as if he could Houdini his way out if he just glared hard enough. Then he spoke. “It was supposed to be just a scare job. Smash and grab, make that McKenzie guy freak out, maybe get him to leave town for a while.”
Latham raised an eyebrow. “Who put you up to it?”
For a second, Billy looked at the mirror. Looked right through me. I felt it, like a punch to the gut. His eyes were bottomless. Then he swallowed and said, “Vivian Hardesty.”
The sound hit me so hard my knees went loose. Vivian. Floyd’s ex-wife, my nemesis, the woman who’d tried to turn Floyd’s heart into a trophy case for her own broken dreams. The same woman who’d wept at his hospital bed, pretending to care.
Floyd’s whole body went still. I could feel the heat radiating off him, could see the pulse at his temple hammering away. If I hadn’t been there, he might’ve put his fist through the mirror.
Billy kept going. “She said it was a business thing. Said the town’d be better off without the freak show on Main. She gave me cash, five hundred up front, the rest after. Told me exactly when to hit the place so the cops would be busy with the DUI checkpoint at the county line.”
Latham didn’t flinch. “And the fire?”
“Wasn’t supposed to be real.” Billy’s voice cracked. “She gave me smoke bombs, told me to just make a mess. The gas can was for show, but then—then it got out of hand. When the Sheriff showed up, I freaked. I didn’t mean to hurt him, I swear. I just wanted to get out.”
I saw it play out in my mind: Floyd on the ground, blood in his hair, the smell of burnt plastic thick enough to choke a man. I felt my stomach twist into a double knot, my vision narrowing to a single red thread.
Billy was still talking. “She said if anything went wrong, I should run. Hide out at the trailer for a week, then she’d get me out of town. She promised me—” His voice died in his throat.
Latham didn’t let him off. “Promised you what?”
Billy stared at the table. “Promised she’d get my dad’s record wiped. Said she had pull. Said if I did this, she’d make sure we got a fresh start.”
My hands were trembling. I pressed them flat against the wall to stop it, but the rage just climbed higher, a tsunami in my chest. I wanted to rip the glass out of the frame, storm the room, drag Billy up by the scruff and make him repeat every word so there could never be any doubt.
Instead, I clenched my fists until something snapped. Pain shot through my palm, hot and immediate. When I looked down, there was a spider-web of cracks spreading from the base of my thumb across the drywall. A neat little crater where my knuckle had struck.
Floyd’s hand landed on my shoulder. Not gentle. Not soft. Just there, as if to say: Don’t. Not yet. His fingers squeezed once, an anchor in the storm.
Inside the room, Latham was stone-faced. “You understand you’re looking at real time for this, Billy. This isn’t juvie. This is assault, arson, conspiracy—serious charges. Are you sure about what you’re saying?”
Billy nodded, but it was the nod of a man who’s already fallen off the cliff and is just waiting for the ground. “I’ll sign whatever you want. I’ll tell the judge. I just—I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to get out.”
Latham pushed a paper toward him. “Write it all down.”
Billy did. The pen hovered above the page for a second before he started, and then the words came in a scrawl, like he was desperate to purge it from his system.
I turned to Floyd. The old cop mask was up, but the eyes gave him away. “You think he’s telling the truth?”
Floyd didn’t blink. “She’s been trying to mess with me for years. But this—” He shook his head, a humorless smile dragging at the corners of his mouth. “She actually did it.”
For a minute, neither of us said anything. The sound of Billy’s pen, frantic and scratchy, was the only thing in the room.
Then Floyd asked, “You okay?”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t find the words. I just stared through the glass, at the boy who’d nearly killed the man I loved, and at the world that would rather destroy you than let you breathe in peace.
Billy finished writing. Latham read it over, then left the room to photocopy it. Billy sagged in his chair, head hanging like a man on death row.
I let go of the wall. My palm was bleeding, little dots of red welling up between the calluses. Floyd took a handkerchief from his back pocket, folded it, and pressed it into my hand. His touch was brisk but careful.
“You want to confront her?” he asked, voice so low I almost missed it.
I looked at him. The anger was still there, but it was outgunned by something else—exhaustion, betrayal, the hollowing-out that comes when you finally see the rot under the paint.
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
He nodded, and together we watched Billy’s world collapse under the weight of a truth nobody would have believed yesterday.
On the other side of the glass, Latham returned with the paperwork. Billy signed, his hand shaking. Then he looked at the mirror again, and I realized he knew I was there the whole time.
He mouthed something, just a whisper. I’m sorry.
Maybe he meant it. Maybe he didn’t. It didn’t change a thing.
I turned away from the mirror and let Floyd lead me out. My legs felt numb, like I’d been running in place for a year. In the hallway, the lights were colder, the air thinner.
Floyd stopped, squared his shoulders, and for a second I thought he’d say something soft. Instead, he just looked at me, the color rising in his face, and said: “We’re going to burn her down. You know that, right?”
I smiled, sharp as a razor. “Yeah. I do.”
We headed for his office. There was a war coming, and for once, I wasn’t alone on the front line.
An hour later, Floyd’s office looked less like the command center of a small-town sheriff and more like a bunker on the losing end of a siege. The blinds were snapped shut, blotting out the cold sunlight.
The desk was covered in reports, coffee mugs, and a yellow legal pad where he’d scrawled the words “CONFLICT OF INTEREST—NO” in letters that could be read from orbit.
Even the bulletins on the wall seemed to have picked up the vibe, curling away from their thumbtacks like they didn’t want to be seen here.
He sat behind the desk, cradling his busted arm, the other hand tracing circles on the battered oak.
His voice was clinical, but every so often it would hitch, like he had to push the words through a clogged drain.
“Billy’s statement and the recording from the interrogation are enough to get a warrant.
And there’s physical evidence—cash traced back to her, emails, burner phone records.
Latham’s already drawing up the paperwork. ”
I paced, fingers drumming on the back of a visitor’s chair. “You can’t do it yourself.”
He looked up, a flicker of shame and rage in his eyes. “Not even if I wanted to. County protocol: immediate family, spouses, exes—anything where there’s potential bias, you’re out.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t drive the getaway car.”
He smiled, but it was all teeth and no humor. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
A knock on the door, then Latham poked his head in, holding a printout in one hand and a matte-black holster in the other. “Boss, we’re set. Miller and Daniels are rolling up now. You want the arrest done quiet or you want to make a show of it?”
Floyd looked to me. “Up to you.”
I thought about it. I wanted a show. I wanted Vivian dragged out screaming, neighbors on their lawns, the whole town rubbernecking while she finally saw what it felt like to be ruined. But there was still the part of me that wanted the job done clean, for Floyd’s sake if not my own.
I said, “Just do it fast. No warning.”
Latham grinned, a shark’s grin. “Copy that.” He left, already barking orders into his radio.