Chapter 8
eight
“You’re doing the knee thing again.”
River stilled his leg. It lasted all of three seconds before he started jiggling again.
X was going to let it go, but Brandt’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror, and he lifted a brow. His expression said everything.
Get him under control, or he’s going back to the ranch.
Brandt hadn’t been thrilled River insisted on joining him for another round of witness interviews, but he’d caved because keeping River close was better than letting him run wild and potentially hurt the investigation.
Then X got dragged along to be the voice of reason and keep River on the rails while Brandt worked.
But after witnessing the breakdown at the cabin, he wasn’t entirely sure he could do that. It should’ve been Boone. River listened to Boone.
“You good?” X asked.
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” X stretched his legs into the footwell as far as they’d go, which wasn’t far. “That’s why I’m here, ese. Somebody’s got to tell you when you’re about to do something terminally stupid.”
“Like walk into a biker bar looking for my sister while the whole Montana chapter’s hunting her?”
“Exactly like that.”
River almost smiled.
Carajo.
The knot that had been sitting in X’s gut since the cabin yesterday tightened.
This wasn’t River. This wasn’t the man who sang Tom Petty off-key and quoted Tombstone wrong on purpose.
You could throw anything at that man, and he’d catch it and lob back a joke, flash that grin.
X had watched him do it a hundred times. Watched him do it at funerals.
He wasn’t doing it now.
This whole trip was a mistake.
When Brandt showed up this morning with an update and mentioned he was going to The Dead Marshall to interview witnesses, River had been down the steps before he finished the sentence.
Gemma had caught River’s sleeve at the truck door.
Said something low. Whatever it was, it caused River to hesitate a beat before he shook her off and climbed in.
Gemma had stepped back with a bright little half-wave that hadn’t matched the angry set of her jaw.
X had almost told Brandt to bring her. She could get River to slow down without making it a fight—he’d watched her do it all week, one hand on his arm and the manic thing in him going quiet. Would’ve been useful, having that in the car.
He hadn’t said it. Damned if he knew why. He certainly didn’t feel equipped to handle River right now.
A few miles passed in silence, then Brandt broke it.
“River, help me understand your sister. The BOLO’s got her down as a victim, taken against her will.
But every read I’ve got on this says she walked out of that bar on her own two feet.
” A pause. “So which is she? A woman who got grabbed, or a woman who chose to run with the man who killed Rux Granger?”
River’s knee stopped bouncing. “I don’t know.”
Brandt glanced over his shoulder. “How do you not know your own sister?”
River turned to stare out the window. “She was fourteen when I left. I was eighteen, and I couldn’t get out of that house fast enough, so I enlisted, and I left her in it.
With him. Our bastard of a father. He was a mean drunk, but he was meaner when his bottle ran dry.
Then he’d start throwing fists, and I was his favorite punching bag.
”His thumb worked the seam of his jeans, back and forth.
“Our mom was long gone, so Rainey took care of him. Took care of us both. But I got to leave. She didn’t.
She was a kid, and I left her with the whole thing, drove off to basic, and told myself she’d manage.
Told myself she’d be safer without me there provoking him. ”
The pines thinned, opened onto a stripe of pasture, then closed around the road again.
“She lasted two years. Dropped out of school somewhere in there—no time for it, somebody had to keep the lights on and keep him from choking on his own puke. Two years of it getting worse, and then she ran. Sixteen years old, out the door with her guitar and whatever fit in a bag.” His jaw worked.
“Never went back. Not till he died. Came home just long enough to bury him and clean up the mess he left behind, and then she was gone again.”
X had known pieces of this. River mentioned his father sometimes, always in fragments, always with the armor up—jokes about the old man’s drinking, a shrug about the house falling apart around them.
He’d known it was bad, but he wasn’t prepared for how bad.
He’d grown up hard with a single mom who worked herself to death, but she’d loved him and made sure he knew it every day.
He couldn’t picture the childhood River was describing.
River exhaled in a hard rush. “Then I did my thing. Killed my best friend with a stupid goddamn prank because I couldn’t leave anything alone.
Eighteen months in Leavenworth, which was about seventeen years short of fair, and you know what she did?
Wrote me. Came when she could scrape the bus fare.
Sat behind the glass and told me she didn’t blame me.
And I sat there in my jumpsuit thinking, I shouldn’t get to have this. I shouldn’t get to have her.”
Mierda, he’s not okay, X thought, but kept his mouth shut.
“So right before they cut me loose, I sent her a letter.” River finally turned from the glass.
His eyes were wet, and he didn’t touch them.
“Told her to stop making herself small. Stop going quiet. Be loud. And then I told myself that counted—like a letter made up for anything—and I came here instead of going to find her. Pushed her off. Figured she’d built something good of her life and the last thing she needed was her felon brother dragging his darkness back into it.
That was nine years ago. That letter was the last time I talked to my sister.
Because facing her meant facing everything. So I didn’t.”
X put a hand on the back of River’s neck, the way Boone had at the cabin. River didn’t pull away. Just sat there shaking, jaw working.
“I’m not failing her again.” His voice was raw now, stripped to the studs.
“I’m walking into that bar, and I’m talking to every witness, every bartender, every drunk who was in there that night, until I find out what happened to her.
The Sons of Sin spot me, they spot me. At least she’ll know her brother finally came looking. ”
X kept his hand on River’s neck, felt the cords of muscle there pulled tight as fence wire.
He didn’t know what to say. Every instinct he had said to crack a joke, break the tension, pull River back from the ledge with something stupid and familiar.
But the joke would’ve landed like a brick in a grave, and they both knew it.
Brandt’s voice came from the front seat, quiet and even. “You’re not walking into that bar alone.”
“I wasn’t asking,” River said.
“I know.” Brandt didn’t look back. His eyes stayed on the road, watching the yellow line unspool under the tires.
“That’s why I’m telling you how it’s going to work.
You’re with me. You follow my lead. You don’t talk to anyone unless I tell you to.
And if the Sons of Sin are in there, you keep your mouth shut and let me handle it. ”
River’s jaw tightened, but he nodded once.
The truck slowed as Brandt turned off the highway onto a narrow county road. The pavement gave way to gravel, and the tires kicked up a dust cloud that hung behind them.
“Another thing,” Brandt said. “You don’t touch anyone. You don’t raise your voice. You don’t get within arm’s reach of a patch-holder. Understand?”
“Yes,” River said.
Brandt glanced in the rearview mirror, and his gaze caught X’s for just a second. “That goes for both of you.”
X held up his hands. “Don’t got to worry about me, vato. I don’t have a death wish.”
“Good.”
The Dead Marshall looked exactly the way a place called The Dead Marshall ought to look.
Weathered boards the color of old bone. A roof that sagged in the middle like a swaybacked horse.
The sign above the door hung crooked, its painted letters flaking, and the gravel lot was empty except for a pickup with a dented tailgate and a Harley parked near the side entrance.
X worried the silver ring on his right hand, spinning it once, twice. The knot in his gut pulled tighter.
Brandt parked the truck at the edge of the lot, angled toward the road like he was already planning the exit.
He killed the engine and sat for a long moment, scanning the building, the tree line, the empty highway behind them.
X watched his eyes move and tried to see what he was seeing.
Nothing moved. No music spilled from inside.
“We talk to the owner first.” Brandt’s voice was low, all business. “His name’s Lyle Ferris. He was behind the bar that night. You two stay back unless I signal.”
River was already reaching for the door handle. X caught his arm before he could pull it.
“Hey.” X waited until River looked at him. “You go in there cool, man. You hear me? You don’t start shit.”
River’s jaw worked, but something behind his eyes clicked back into place. Not the old happy, grinning River, but a version that might pass for sane.
“Yeah,” he said. “Got it.”
They got out. The air smelled like dust and pine, old beer and garbage gone too long in the heat. X fell in behind Brandt, matching his pace, keeping River between them.
The door was heavy, warped, and it stuck when Brandt shouldered it open.
Inside, the bar was dark and close, the only light coming from a few neon signs buzzing over the pool table and the weak sun pushing through dirty windows.
The place was mostly empty. Just a few old timers warming bar stools and some guys playing pool.
Lyle Ferris stood behind the bar, drying a glass with a rag that had seen better days. He was skinny and grizzled, and looked up with his one good eye when they came in. His face did something complicated before it settled into a smile.