Chapter 34 #2
He took one step forward.
“Let her go, Ransom.”
“Call them off first.”
“Let her go, you know I can't call them off. I don't control them.” Jem's voice dropped. “I'll walk out with you myself. Just you and me. Let her go, and I'll give you whatever you need to get clear of this.”
Ransom looked at him. Ransom's grip didn't loosen on Theda's arm. The pistol stayed steady against her temple, and his eyes stayed fixed on Jem as nothing else in the clearing existed.
Jem kept his hands open and visible at his sides. He took another slow step forward.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “For what Pa made you into. I never said that to you. I should have.”
Something flickered across Ransom's face.
“Don't,” Ransom said. “Don’t come another step closer, or she dies.”
“I watched him take it out on you first. Before he ever got to me.” Jem kept his voice low and even, the way he'd talk to a spooked horse. “I never thanked you for that either.”
“Shut up, Josiah.”
“I never agreed with what you did with it.” Jem held his gaze.
“Never agreed with the gang, the jobs, any of it. You know that. We fought about it more than we ever agreed on anything.” He took a breath.
“But you're still my brother. You're the one who put food in my hands when there wasn't any.
You're the one who taught me how to ride before I was tall enough to reach the stirrup without help.”
Ransom's jaw worked. The hand holding the pistol trembled, just slightly, a small tremor that hadn't been there a moment ago.
“Stop talking,” Ransom said. His voice wavered, ever so slightly. “Just stop.”
“I'm not going to stop.” Jem took another step. Close enough now that he could see the strain pulling at the corners of Ransom's eyes, the sleeplessness, the four years of running written into every line of his face. “Let her go, Ransom. Let her go, and we'll talk. Just the two of us, like always.”
“I'm not going to jail.” Ransom's voice cracked on the word jail, just slightly, just enough that Jem heard the fear underneath the threat. “I won't do it. You understand me? I'd rather…”
“You'd rather what?” Jem kept moving slowly, each step measured so it wouldn't look like a threat. “Die in some pass in the mountains? Is that the plan? Because that's where this ends if you don't let her go. You know that.”
Past Ransom's shoulder, at the edge of the tree line, Jem caught a flash of movement.
Leland, low and quick, working his way around through the brush.
Phineas was a few yards behind him, moving with the same careful patience, both of them staying just outside the reach of Ransom's peripheral vision.
Jem's heart hammered against his cracked ribs.
He couldn't let Ransom turn his head. Not for one second.
“These things end, Ransom.” He kept his eyes locked on his brother's face, refusing to let his attention drift even a fraction toward the tree line.
“All of it. The running, the jobs, all of it.
You can't outrun it forever. I know you think you can.
I know that's what you've told yourself every single time something like this happened before. But it's not true. It was never true.”
“You don't know anything about what I can do.”
“I know you,” Jem said. “Better than anyone left alive. I know you better than you know yourself most days.” He let that sit a moment. “And I know you don't want to hurt her. You want to hurt me.”
Ransom's eyes shone, though his jaw stayed clenched hard.
“You don't know what I've become,” he said quietly.
“Maybe not.” Jem held both hands open, palms up, slow and unthreatening. “So show me differently. Let her go.”
Leland was almost in position now. Ten more feet. Jem could see Phineas circling wide on the other side, coming up behind the rock outcropping that would put him within reach.
He kept his eyes on Ransom's face. Like, there was nothing in the world he was watching except his brother.
“Let her go,” he said again, softer this time. “Please.”
Jem's chest ached.
“All I ever wanted,” he said, “was a brother who saw me. Not someone to mold into the next version of himself. Just…me.” His voice caught slightly.
There was no use hiding it now. “Every job, every scheme, every time you said this one's the last one, I kept hoping you'd finally see what I wanted for my life instead of what you wanted for it.”
Ransom's mouth opened slightly. No sound came out.
“I wanted to matter to you the way you mattered to me,” Jem said. “And no matter what I did, leaving, staying, doing everything you asked of me for years, it was never enough to make you stop and ask what I actually wanted. Not once.”
Ransom stood frozen. The pistol remained at Theda's temple, but his hand had gone slack, the trembling more pronounced now, his eyes fixed on Jem with an expression that looked almost like he cared about what he was saying.
For one full second, nobody in the clearing moved. A strange silence settled over everyone. Then Leland broke from the trees.
He came in low and fast; he hit Ransom square in the side before Ransom realized what was happening.
Phineas hit just a second after. Theda was shoved off to the side.
The impact sent all three of them sprawling, Ransom, Leland, and Theda, torn loose from Ransom's grip and thrown clear, landing hard in the dirt several feet away.
The pistol went off as it fell. The shot cracked into the dirt, harmless, and then the gun was skittering away across the cold ground.
“Theda!” Jem yelled as he surged forward. She was already pushing herself up, breathless but moving.
Jem turned toward the fight instead.
Leland had Ransom pinned for exactly as long as it took Ransom to buck him off with desperate strength. They rolled in the dirt, trading blows, Leland's fist connecting hard with Ransom's jaw, Ransom twisting and driving an elbow back that caught Leland across the cheekbone.
Phineas was up and moving as Jem came close enough to join them.
Before Jem could, Phineas came in from the side grabbing Ransom's arm, wrenching it back, and for a moment the three of them were a single tangled mass in the dirt.
Fists and elbows paired with grunted curses, none of them gaining clean ground on the other.
Jem threw himself into it without thinking, without calculating the cost to his ribs, every part of him focused on one single purpose.
This had to end. Ransom’s reign had to stop, no matter what.
Ransom fought hard, but three against one in the dirt didn't leave much room for him to maneuver. Leland had his arm pinned again, this time for good, and Phineas drove a knee into his back hard enough to knock the fight out of him.
Jem got a hand on his brother's wrist and held it there, pressing it flat against the frozen ground until Ransom finally stopped straining against it.
For a moment, none of them moved as if they couldn’t believe that they’d finally done it, that it was over.