Chapter Six
They came at dawn.
Burial heard the engines first—three cars, moving too fast for a residential street, cutting their headlights as they approached. He was positioned at the second-floor window, watching the road through a gap in the boards, counting shadows as they emerged.
Seven men. Thibodaux in front, his skull still bandaged from the vase Diane had shattered on it five days ago.
The debt collector moved with the heavy confidence of a man who'd spent fifteen years making people afraid. Baseball bat in one hand. Two enforcers flanking him. Four more spreading out to cover the exits.
They didn't know the building.
That was going to cost them.
"Crossroad." Burial's voice was barely a whisper into his phone. "They're in position. Seven total. Thibodaux's taking the front."
"Copy. Hollow and Levee are covering the back. I've got the side entrance."
"Wait for my signal."
Burial moved through the darkness with the silent ease of a man who'd spent a decade navigating buildings exactly like this one. The funeral home's layout was burned into his mind—every corridor, every doorway, every chokepoint where the architecture would work in their favor.
He paused at the top of the stairs, listening.
The front door splintered inward.
"Find the bitch!" Thibodaux's voice echoed through the empty building. "She's here somewhere. Check every room."
Footsteps scattered. Men spreading out, moving through the ground floor, opening doors and kicking through debris. They were loud. Careless. Confident in their numbers and their violence.
They had no idea what was waiting for them.
Burial descended the stairs in silence, positioning himself at the junction where the main corridor split into three viewing rooms. The hallway was narrow—built for pallbearers carrying caskets, not enforcers swinging baseball bats. Two men couldn't walk abreast without touching shoulders.
Perfect.
The first collector came around the corner at a jog, flashlight sweeping. Burial stepped out of the shadows and drove his knife into the man's throat before he could make a sound.
The body dropped. Blood pooled on worn carpet.
Burial moved.
The second collector was three steps behind the first. He saw his partner fall and opened his mouth to shout—but Burial was already there, one hand clamping over his jaw, the knife finding the soft space below his ribs.
Two down. Five to go.
"What the hell—" A voice from the main corridor. "Martinez? Reyes?"
No answer would come.
Burial pressed himself into a doorway and waited.
The next collector was smarter. He came around the corner with his weapon up, eyes scanning, moving with the caution of a man who'd finally realized something was wrong.
Not smart enough.
Hollow materialized from the shadows behind him, one massive arm wrapping around the collector's throat. The man's weapon clattered to the floor. His feet kicked uselessly against the carpet.
Then he went still.
Three down.
Gunfire erupted from the back of the building—Levee engaging the two who'd gone for the rear exit. The sound was thunder in the enclosed space, echoing off walls that had been built to contain grief, not violence.
Burial moved toward the front, where Thibodaux and his remaining men were finally understanding what they'd walked into.
"It's a trap!" One of the collectors, backing toward the door. "They've got the whole place—"
Crossroad stepped through the front entrance behind him.
The collector spun, raising his weapon, but Crossroad was faster. Two shots. The man crumpled.
Four down.
Thibodaux turned, his face twisted with rage. The baseball bat that had broken so many bones swung toward Crossroad's skull—
Burial hit him from the side.
They crashed through a doorway into the main viewing room, Thibodaux's bulk carrying them both into a display of empty casket stands. Metal shrieked against tile. The baseball bat clattered away into the darkness.
Thibodaux was bigger. Stronger. Had fifteen years of violence behind every punch he threw.
But Burial had spent ten years in rooms exactly like this one.
He knew how the space worked. Where the light fell. Where the shadows gathered. How to use the narrow paths between casket displays to neutralize a bigger man's reach.
Thibodaux swung wild. Burial ducked, came up inside his guard, and drove an elbow into his kidney.
The debt collector grunted, staggering. His hand closed on a casket stand and he swung it like a club—metal whistling through the air where Burial's head had been a heartbeat before.
"You think you can stop this?" Thibodaux's voice was ragged with pain and fury. "Raymond's got twenty men. Kill me, he sends twenty more. Kill them, he burns this whole neighborhood to the ground."
"Then we'll bury the ashes."
Burial moved.
The fight became a brutal exchange in the darkness—fists and elbows and the sharp crack of bone against bone. Thibodaux landed a punch that split Burial's lip. Burial responded with a knee to the gut that doubled the bigger man over.
They crashed into another display, sending casket stands tumbling. Thibodaux's hand found Burial's throat and squeezed.
Black spots danced at the edges of Burial's vision. He could feel his air supply closing, could feel the strength in those thick fingers that had broken so many others.
But Burial had been in dark places before.
He stopped fighting the grip. Instead, he drove his thumb into Thibodaux's eye.
The scream that tore from the debt collector's throat was inhuman. His grip loosened—just for a second—and Burial twisted free, gasping for air.
Thibodaux lurched back, one hand pressed to his ruined eye, the other groping blindly for a weapon. He found a casket stand and raised it overhead, ready to bring it down on Burial's skull.
He never got the chance.
Burial's knife took him in the chest.
Not the heart—not yet. The blade slid between ribs, puncturing lung, and Thibodaux's swing died mid-arc. The casket stand clattered to the floor. The big man's mouth opened, closed, opened again.
Blood bubbled on his lips.
"The florist," Burial said quietly. "The one whose wrist you were going to break. The one whose shop you destroyed. The one you were going to drag out of this building and make an example of."
Thibodaux tried to speak. Only a wet gurgle emerged.
"She's mine." Burial twisted the knife. "And you should never have touched what's mine."
He pulled the blade free and watched Mike Thibodaux, Raymond Hebert's chief debt collector, collapse onto the floor of a viewing room in a closed funeral home.
The man who'd broken bones for fifteen years ended up the same way everyone ended up eventually.
Horizontal. Silent. Done.
Burial stood over the body, breathing hard, blood dripping from his split lip. Around him, the viewing room was a wreck—casket stands scattered, displays overturned, the peaceful architecture of grief transformed into a killing ground.
Outside the room, the last of the gunfire faded.
"Burial." Hollow's voice, flat and calm. "Building's clear. All seven down."
Seven bodies. A funeral home's worth of death.
Raymond Hebert's operation had just lost its heavy hand.
Burial wiped his knife clean on Thibodaux's shirt and sheathed it. Then he walked out of the viewing room and down the corridor toward the workroom where he'd left Diane.
The door was closed. He knocked—two quick raps—and waited.
It opened.
Diane stood in the doorway, her hands still damp from working with flowers. Behind her, on the counter, sat a completed funeral arrangement. White roses. Baby's breath. Cream ribbon tied in a perfect bow.
She'd been building it while he killed a man in the next room.
"Is it over?" Her voice was steady, but her eyes searched his face, cataloging the blood, the bruises, the split lip.
"For now."
"And the man with the baseball bat?"
"He's done hurting people."
Diane nodded slowly. She didn't ask for details. Didn't demand to know what had happened in the viewing room, what sounds she might have heard through the walls, what had turned the soft-voiced gravedigger into whatever he'd become in the darkness.
Instead, she stepped forward and touched his face.
Her fingers were cool against his split lip, gentle despite the calluses. Burial went still, his whole body suddenly aware of her in a way that had nothing to do with violence.
"You're hurt."
"I've been hurt worse."
"That's not comforting." But her mouth curved, just slightly. "The arrangement's finished. Mrs. Delacroix's mother will have her flowers."
"Good."
"What happens now?"
Burial looked past her, at the arrangement she'd built while chaos raged around her. The white roses she'd salvaged, the baby's breath Crossroad had sourced from a florist in Clarksdale, the cream ribbon that matched exactly what Mrs. Delacroix's daughter had requested two weeks ago.
She'd done the thing that mattered.
Even with violence shaking the walls, even with men dying in the building around her, she'd done the thing that mattered.
"Now we deliver the flowers," he said. "And then we move."
"Move where?"
"The compound." He took her hand, led her past the viewing room where Thibodaux's body still lay cooling, past the brothers who were already beginning the grim work of cleanup.
"It's not safe here anymore. Raymond's going to know what happened by noon, and when he finds out his chief collector is dead, he's going to burn Greenville looking for you. "
"So you're taking me to your clubhouse."
"I'm taking you somewhere I can protect you."
Diane stopped walking. Her hand tightened on his.
"Is that the only reason?"
Burial looked at her—really looked. At the woman who'd thrown a vase at a man twice her size. Who'd kept building funeral arrangements while a war raged around her. Who'd mapped Raymond's operation from years of flower deliveries and never once asked for anything in return.
"No," he said honestly. "It's not the only reason."
Something softened in her expression. Not quite a smile, but close.
"Okay," she said. "Let's go to your compound."
They walked out of the funeral home into the gray light of dawn, leaving seven bodies and a completed funeral arrangement behind them.
Crossroad had the van running, ready to take the flowers to First Baptist before the service began.
The brothers were already dispersing, evidence disappearing into the Delta the way evidence had been disappearing for as long as anyone could remember.
Burial helped Diane onto his bike and felt her arms wrap around his waist.
Behind them, a building full of dead men waited for the kind of cleanup the parish had taught him to do. Ahead, the compound waited with its converted cotton gin and its brothers and its strange safety.
Raymond Hebert's operation was bleeding. Thibodaux was dead. And the woman who built funeral arrangements was holding onto Burial like he was the only solid thing in a world that had gone sideways.
They were moving to the compound.