Chapter 18
“Ithought you were visiting Tom alone.” The knot in her stomach was immediate. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
“I was supposed to.”
Cal wasn’t happy. His brother’s presence worried him; after having seen the easy, almost relaxed side of Cal all day, his sudden tension and the snap of his voice were obvious.
“Can’t we just drive by?” Or maybe they could turn around. The Roadster had come to a full stop, though the engine still idled.
“Land’s too flat. We’ve already been spotted,” Cal answered, dashing away her hope of avoiding his brother. “Rod would’ve posted a lookout.”
What was he doing at the farmhouse?
Cal started driving again, picking up speed. Dread pooled in her stomach. The yard was clear, except for the autos. A single milking cow in a fenced-in pen watched the Roadster as it turned down the short lane between the house and the road. The rutted tracks were muddy, freshly disturbed.
He rolled to a stop behind the maroon Buick. The engine clanked and hissed as he shifted in his seat.
“It’s too quiet,” he muttered. He brushed aside his trench coat, which he hadn’t taken off, not even in the diner, and settled a palm on the handle of a gun in his hip holster. Fern stared at it, pulse stuttering.
There was something wrong here.
“Stay by my side,” he said, then opened his door. He waited for her at the nose of the car, never turning his back on the house. The windows were blocked by drawn curtains. All of them.
The front door opened on squealing hinges, and a man stepped onto the porch. Vinny.
“What are you doing here, Vin?” Cal asked as he ambled toward the house. He kept his stride easy and relaxed.
Vinny’s small eyes watched Fern closely as he answered, “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”
“I had something to do,” Cal replied.
“Rod ain’t too happy.”
“What’s going on?”
Vinny finally tore his eyes from Fern’s face and focused on Cal. “Rod heard a rumor after you left and wanted to come check things out with you.”
Vinny blocked the front door, preventing them from entering the house. Animosity stirred between him and Cal. Fern did as she’d been instructed and stayed right at Cal’s side. Not even an inch separated her arm from his.
“What rumor?” he asked.
“Tom’s been selling our gin to Jacky’s runners. He’s planning to dump us and work for them.”
She didn’t know the rules of bootlegging, but if the rumor was true, the farmer had betrayed the Rosettis. She went cold, the silent house growing even more foreboding.
Cal’s tone stayed aloof. “How’s it been handled?”
Vinny’s eyebrow lifted. No smile, but the glimmer of amusement. It turned her stomach. “Everything’s jake now.”
Fern schooled her expression to match Cal’s passive one. Showing any kind of revulsion, any distress at all, would be a mistake. She breathed through her nose, trying to calm her racing heart.
Vinny had left the front door ajar, but it now swung wide.
Rodney appeared, practically hopping out onto the porch.
He wore just his shirtsleeves, and in his hand was a kitchen towel, embroidered with flowers.
He rubbed his hands with it, as if he’d been washing up, and then tossed it over his shoulder.
“Could’ve used your help,” he said to Cal, who ignored his brother’s complaint.
“What’d Tom tell you?”
“He sang, loud and clear.” Pride twisted his grin into something ugly. “Jacky’s been pressuring him for a while, and he caved. Fucking coward. He shoulda come to me. He shoulda been loyal.”
His voice rose with every sentence until he was shouting. As though arguing with someone. His cheeks were flushed, his shirt collar discolored by sweat. Pinkish-red splotches on the hand towel over his shoulder drew Fern’s attention.
A spear of ice drove straight into her gut. Like a slap across the cheek, the truth struck her.
“What about his wife and kid?” Cal asked as Rod’s unblinking eyes settled on Fern. Horror stewed hot in her throat and chest.
Rod shrugged a shoulder. “The kid’s not here.”
But Tom’s wife…
Breathe, Fern.
She looked inside the open front door at the bare-board floor and a corner of faded wallpaper. A pair of boots sat by the front door. A hat hung on a wire peg. A pogo stick leaned against the wall.
She sucked in a breath, startled as a hand darted into her side vision. Quick as a viper, Rod snatched the wilted daisy, forgotten behind her ear. He held it up, rolling it in between his fingers.
“Real sweet,” he said.
Cal didn’t react. He didn’t say anything at all about Young Acres or making a detour to see her.
“We loading up the crates that are here, then?” Cal said, half turning to look at the dilapidated barn. He sounded impatient. Unaffected. It was an act. It had to be.
Rod tossed the flower onto the dusty boards of the porch. “We’re waiting.”
“On what?”
Vinny cleared his throat and slipped back inside the house. Rod stared a little longer at Cal than necessary before answering.
“Tom squealed about a pickup going down tonight.”
Cal let out a long exhale. “We got enough men?”
“Vinny, Tink, and Francis. With you and me, that’ll be more than enough.”
Tonight? They were coming tonight, and they were going to lie in wait? Her vision swam. Rod’s hand came toward her face again, and she jerked her head back. He’d tried to hitch her chin, but she’d moved just out of his grasp. Cal laid his arm over Fern’s shoulder and nudged her closer to his side.
“Don’t look so scared, dollface,” Rod said. “You won’t break.”
He chuckled, his eyes lingering on her scars. His nostrils flared, and the shake of his head left no room for doubt as to his feelings on Cal’s choice to bring her here. But he turned around and went back inside, as if accepting Cal’s decision.
Finally, with Rod’s back turned, Fern chanced a look up at Cal. His deep brown eyes met hers, then shifted toward the open door. Go in, they said. He kept his arm draped over her shoulders and led them over the threshold.
Despite the almost oppressive summer heat outside, it was cold inside the farmhouse.
A chill streaked down her arms as they followed Rod into the kitchen.
Dust-covered linoleum peeled up at the doorframe, showing a worn wooden floor underneath.
Dishes filled the sink. A plate sat on the counter with food still on it.
Magnets on the refrigerator held newspaper clippings and a few drawings, done by a child.
Her heart cramped at the drawings, but it was the poorly mopped floor near the kitchen table that closed off her throat.
Dark brown streaks, tinged with pink, swirled into the rough stubble of the linoleum pattern. On the wall behind the table, a forgotten spray of blood.
“Where are Tink and Francis?” Cal asked.
Rod pulled out a chair and sat, unperturbed. “Putting the mister and missus in the ground.” He picked up a coffee mug and drank from it. “Hungry? There’s bacon.”
He’d made himself at home, helping himself to food while his men took care of two bloodied bodies.
Cal shook off the offer. “We’ll be upstairs.”
A whistle from behind pierced Fern’s ears. Vinny chuckled from where he stood within the kitchen entry, leaning against the doorframe.
Rod set down his mug and sat back, hooking an ankle over his opposite knee. “Now you’re on the trolley,” he said, winking at Vinny and grinning. “Get some rest with your moll, or whatever gets you ready for tonight.”
Vinny snorted with laughter. A flush lit her cheeks and ear tips. Cal ushered Fern from the kitchen, through another door that led to the back of the front hall. The stairs were narrow and steep, and as they took them to the second floor, the air turned stale and humid.
They entered the first room they came to upstairs, and Cal closed the door.
A bed, a trunk, a chair, and a desk were the only pieces of furniture.
Curtains of yellowed lace absorbed the setting sunlight.
A closet door stood open, showing a narrow space.
Dirty, patched overalls had been slung over the door, and a few flowered dresses hung on a bar inside.
On the desk was a small jewelry box, a brush, and a tube of lipstick.
Hands settled on her shoulders from behind. Fern spun and leapt away.
“Fern,” he started to say, but she held up her hands. She closed her eyes and breathed.
“They’re dead?” she whispered. She opened her eyes and stared up at Cal.
He nodded.
“You told me you were just going to talk to him.”
“I was.” He held her stare. “I had no idea Rod would come down here. That wasn’t the plan.”
Fern wrapped her arms around herself and went toward the window. Through the lace, she could see the cars parked haphazardly in the yard; the sagging roof of the barn; and beyond it, the black line of the road, flanked by acres upon acres of corn in every direction.
“We can’t stay,” she said, softer than before, worried her voice might carry.
The floorboard creaked behind her. Cal took off his coat and loosened his shirt collar. He tossed the long coat onto the unmade bed.
“We can’t leave,” he replied. “He’s already pissed I went to get you instead of coming here first.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “You would have helped him?”
Cal raked his fingers through his hair, the dark strands loose and tousled from the open car windows. Fern turned to face him, no longer afraid. Not of Cal. Though maybe that had been her biggest mistake of all. “Do you kill for him?”
He held her stare. His chest rose and fell with several breaths as the air between them stretched thin. “I have.”
The truth shouldn’t have sunk her heart the way it did. She’d known it, deep down, and yet, here it was. Confirmed.
“If it makes any difference, I don’t kill women.”
Did it make a difference? A life was a life, whether it belonged to a man or a woman.
“And I sure as hell don’t kill kids.”
The pogo stick and the drawings on the refrigerator flashed into her mind. Worry stroked down the back of her neck, then between her shoulder blades. “What happens if their child comes home?”
Cal looked out the window, and Fern could tell he didn’t want to answer.
“When the other men come…” she started to say, but Cal cut in.
“I don’t want you here for that. It’s too dangerous. There should be a root cellar or someplace you can—"
He broke off at a scuffling sound behind them. They whipped their attention toward the sound; it had come from the closet. Her heart streamed out a handful of beats. The sound didn’t come again. But it had been too substantial a noise to have been a mouse or a rat.
Cal held up his hand, signaling for quiet.
He drew his gun and approached the closet, Fern edging up behind him.
He pushed aside the dresses on hangers, revealing a knee wall, about three feet in height.
Cal crouched and felt along the wall while Fern held her breath.
His hand stilled; then, he dug his fingers into a well-concealed crevice and pulled, aiming his gun at the same time.
The board came down, revealing a crawl space. Tucked inside, a young boy, pale-faced and sweating, stared at Cal, mute with fear.