Chapter Fourteen
Cordell stared out the window as his brother drove the narrow highway, terrified of what they would find once they reached the homestead.
They hadn’t passed a town in hours or seen a house in fifty miles.
The terrain outside the pickup windows had flattened and become barren.
The wind howled, pelting the truck with dirt as the high desert stretched out endlessly ahead of them, filled with nothing but sagebrush in this desolate part of Wyoming.
With each mile, he felt revulsion at the thought of returning to the place where they had grown up. His only good memories were after they’d moved to Dry Gulch. Still, it had taken him a while to shake off the past. His nightmares had always been about Roger coming back to life.
“Maybe everything on the property blew away,” he said, glancing at Max. His brother drove with an intense look on his face as if he, too, was wishing that they were going anywhere but the old homestead.
“It’s still there,” Max said as if, like him, he could never get the image of the place out of his head.
“I just remember it being the windiest, coldest place in the state. Remember when Roger used to make us use the outhouse during blizzards. Said it was to see if we knew how to get back without getting lost and freezing to death. You know he was hoping we’d die out there.”
“Let’s not take a ride down memory lane, okay? We survived it, made a life for ourselves.”
Until now, Cordell thought but didn’t voice. There was no need to. They both knew what was ahead for them. “You know, living in fear for that many years, it’s bound to have done something to us.”
“You think?” Max scoffed. “You’re not that messed up.”
They rode in silence for a few miles before Cordell said, “I’m sorry that I made your life harder growing up. I always worried that I was like him, not the violent part, but the worthless part.”
“He was our so-called stepfather, not our blood, so you didn’t inherit anything from him,” Max said.
“But he was the only father I knew. You don’t think we could have picked up something from him?”
Reaching over, his brother squeezed his shoulder. “There is nothing about you that’s anything like Grimes. Nothing.” His voice broke. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?” His brother reached up and squeezed his hand.
He put his hand back on the wheel. “I swore I would never be like that sorry son of a—”
“You’re not, Max,” Cordell said. “You never could be.”
“I guess we’ll soon find out,” Max said under his breath as he braked for the turnoff to the old homestead.
Cordell swallowed the lump in this throat as his brother turned onto what looked like a dirt path through the high weeds.
“Max, you know we’re going to have to kill him, don’t you?
” he whispered as the wind howled louder and the sky seemed to darken around them as if a storm was blowing in. “That’s if he doesn’t kill us first.”
“He won’t kill us outright,” Max said without looking at him. “He’ll do what he always did, take his time so he can get as much enjoyment out of it as he can.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better.” He glanced ahead. He remembered the road down to the place being longer, but in no time at all, his brother was slowing again.
He held his breath as Max turned down the short, rutted dirt road filled with dried weeds. In the distance, the lone cluster of dilapidated buildings came into view on the horizon, sending a shudder through him.
What few trees had been planted years ago around the homestead were now misshapen like arthritic fingers.
Through the dark twisted branches, he caught sight of the house.
Wind and weather had stripped the structure of any color.
Now it matched the high desert dirt that formed dunes along its lea side.
Windows, dark with dirt and grime, peered out unseeing.
Max came over a rise, the house disappearing, and pulled off the road. Cutting the engine, he looked over at him for a moment before he reached in the back to pull out the weapons he’d brought. “I’m going up there alone to check things out and I’ll—”
“I’m going with you,” Cordell said.
His brother swore. “I’m trained for this. You aren’t.” He seemed to recognize Cordell’s expression because he sighed. “All right, but we do it my way.” He handed him an automatic rifle. “You ever shot one of these? I didn’t think so.” He pulled it back and handed him a hunting rifle.
Cordell didn’t object. He’d seen the damage a weapon like that could do. Also, he was familiar with the hunting rifle since it was his that he’d left behind when he’d gone to Florida. He began to load it as Max laid out his plan, surprised that his hands weren’t shaking.
He thought of only one thing. Josie. No matter what he had to do, she had to walk away from this today.
* * *
Roger Grimes couldn’t seem to shut up. All he’d done since the call to Max was talk about himself and how life had dealt him a bad set of cards. For a man set on revenge, he seemed more excited than vindictive, overly so. Josie wondered what he was on.
“No one’s ever cut me any slack,” the man said.
“My stepsons had it good compared to the way I was raised. My old man beat me daily. Beat my mother, too. We learned to keep our traps shut and just do as we were told. Didn’t want to even look sideways at him or you were going to get the back of his hand. ”
“That’s your excuse for the way you mistreated Max and Cordell?” she asked.
He made an ugly face, and she’d feared for a moment that she’d gone too far.
“Nothing wrong with a little discipline. Those boys had been spoiled by their mother. She was pretty enough but mealy-mouthed, if you know what I mean. No backbone, especially when it came to those boys of hers. I told her I’d straighten them out, but she was always crying and screaming for me not to hurt them. ”
Josie’s heart ached at what Max and Cordell must have gone through. “No wonder they ran away.”
“Is that what they told you?” He let out a bitter laugh.
“First their mother died. Clumsy woman fell and hit her head. Had to bury her down the road. I tried to spare Max and Cordell by telling them she ran off, but they turned me in to the cops for my effort.” He shook his head.
“After all I’d done for them, taking them and their mother in, giving them a home and feeding them. Ungrateful little—”
“Don’t tell me,” Josie said, not wanting to hear what he’d done to them. She couldn’t imagine how bad their lives had been with this man.
“How about what they did to me? Didn’t tell you that, did they?
” He was smiling at her, his smile more disturbing than his words.
“I was teaching Cordell what happens when he talks to the cops about me when his brother jumped me. Both of them jumped me, grabbed my baseball bat and knocked me clean out. Which explains why they’re still alive.
If they’d done a better job of dumping my body after they thought they’d killed me…
” He laughed. “Well, then we wouldn’t be here right now, and you wouldn’t have to pay the price for what them boys did. ”
She watched him rise to look out the window before checking his watch.
She could see storm clouds gathering, smell the coming rain.
She had no doubt that Cordell and Max were on their way.
Her heart broke at the thought that they would come, and this man would hurt them before he killed all of them.
Shifting a little, she felt the reassuring pinch of the gun. Bide your time, she warned herself. You’re going to get your chance.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Suddenly, Grimes turned to look at them. His eyes had grown darker, she noticed, as he said, “Change of plans.” He grabbed his phone and stepped away to bark out an order.
Heart dropping, Josie realized there were two of them.