Ultimate Thriller Box Set (128 page)

Just being a Wells was plenty enough reason to be a target. These mountain people had long memories, and Warren Wells had shafted a dozen men. In some cases, he’d also shafted their wives, in a crueler but less economically damaging way. Jacob had inherited miles of built-up resentment along with the numerous tracts of commercial property.

The driver of the green car could be anybody. Someone he knew in high school? Or someone who knew Joshua? Some people still confused him with his brother, and Joshua had made plenty of enemies. Joshua, though, had been smart enough to leave town and never look back.

It’s anybody. Not him
.

Jacob’s legs refused his command for them to move faster, and he could hardly muster the energy for another step. So he stopped, bent over slightly to catch his breath, and turned to the passenger side of the car. He reached out as if to open the door.

The Chevrolet groaned, its engine racing, and the rear wheels spun on the asphalt. The warm smell of rubber and burnt oil assaulted Jacob’s nose. The car rocketed away, its tires screaming and the rear end fishtailing. The back windshield was tinted, a small Rebel flag decal on its lower left corner. One brake light was broken and dangled by wires above the peeling chrome bumper. The car accelerated around the curve before he could read the muddied tag number, but its orange, green, and white color scheme indicated Tennessee plates.

The car careened up the valley, pistons whining in rage, moving much too fast for the winding road. The backfire echoed off the hills, fading as the car negotiated deeper into the country until it disappeared from hearing. In the sudden silence, Jacob felt the pounding of his pulse against his eardrums. Other sounds filled the void—birds in the forest, a small airplane lost against the sky, a distant dog barking in territorial defense.

Jacob crouched, limp from terror. A chill enveloped him. He pulled his jacket more tightly around him and stared at the road ahead, then back. He didn’t know where he was. How had he gotten out here on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere?

Not again
.

He hadn’t experienced a fugue state since his teens, when Joshua was playing his cruel tricks. The fugues were a protective mechanism, one of the shrinks had assured him. Nothing serious, certainly nothing that would put him in a rubber room. It was a reaction to extreme stress, that was all. Besides, that was long ago, and he didn’t black out anymore.

Except, if you were suffering periods of forgetfulness, you wouldn’t remember, would you?

Anything could have happened and you wouldn’t know it.

A sound arose from the back side of the hill, the whisper of wheels on asphalt.

Jacob expected the green Chevy to come screaming around the curve, headlights glittering like a murderer’s eyes, bumper bright in the sun. He had no strength to flee. He would only be able to stand and watch as its front grill loomed closer and then chewed him into its chrome jaws.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pray. But prayer was a ritual, a practiced art, not an escape hatch for the lapsed and faithless. The whisper grew louder, but without the accompanying growl of an overdriven engine. It wasn’t the Chevy.

He blinked as the pickup drove past. The vehicle slowed then backed up until it idled in the lane across from him. The driver’s-side window descended, but even before Jacob recognized the dark, tousled head topped with its ever-present gray wool toboggan, he read the logo on the door: Smalley Construction.

Chick Smalley blew a frayed rope of cigarette smoke into the air, then said, “Mr. Wells, what you doing out in these parts? You break down or something?”

Smalley had done some subcontracting work for M & W Ventures. He had plumbing and electrical licenses and could also do drywall or roofing when sober. He never missed a deadline but neither did he miss a chance to fly fish when the mood struck him. He never lied about his preferences. If the fish were biting, he’d call the boss and tell him to go to hell for the morning. He’d work three times as hard in the afternoon to make it up, and that reputation kept him busy enough to make all the living he seemed to desire.

“Hi, Chick,” Jacob said. He put his hands in his pockets so that Smalley wouldn’t see them trembling. “Did you pass a car a minute ago, a junker Chevy with tinted windows?”

“Nope,” Smalley said, looking in the ditch ahead as if expecting to see Jacob’s wrecked vehicle. “You get runned off the road? Flat tire?”

“I was just—” Just what the hell
was
he doing out here? He couldn’t explain the encounter with the Chevy and was afraid he’d sound like a lunatic if he tried. Already he doubted if the incident had even happened. But there were the skid marks, twin black snakes crawling away from him on the surface of the road.

“You’re looking rough, Mr. Wells. You need a ride back to town?”

A car came around the curve, another behind it. Traffic had returned to normal. Whatever strange spell had descended upon the valley had lifted. Jacob felt foolish standing on the side of the road and he’d lost his appetite for directionless wandering. He hurried across the lane and climbed into the passenger side of the pickup.

Smalley put the truck in gear. “Just dump that stuff in the floor,” he said, grinding out his cigarette and accelerating. Jacob pushed rags, a tape measure, a vial of plumber’s putty, a caulking gun, and some ragged outdoors magazines aside to make room, then clutched the dashboard in a spasm of dizziness. It must have been the tobacco smoke, a reminder of his recent tragedy. Smoke would forever bring a longing ache, and fire would always take him back to that hellish night.

“Shit, Mr. Wells, you look white as a Confederate ghost. Want me to take you to the hospital?”

“No,” Jacob yelled, more forcefully than he’d intended. “Take me ho—”

He had no home. The knowledge hit him like God’s fist. He looked out the window at the trees blurring past, the varying shades of green as the vegetation juiced itself in preparation for summer. This was a hostile planet, a land of pain and strangeness. You could buy pieces of it, hold up deeds and titles, but in the end all you had was the dirt above you, the dirt that busted through your coffin and filled your mouth and lungs. In the end, you didn’t own the land, it owned you, it sucked you under and crushed you and hugged you and smothered you with affection, its worms kissing you into slumber, its weight greater than the tonnage of guilt and fear and rage that you carried in your living flesh.

“Do you know where Ivy Terrace is?” he finally asked.

“Them apartments you built up on the west side?” Smalley peered at him as if deciding whether to go to the hospital after all.

“Yeah. Can you take me there?” He reached for his back pocket. “I’ll pay you, of course.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. Work is work and favors is favors. Remember that next time somebody else needs a hand.”

Jacob glanced in the side mirror, and for a moment thought he saw the green Chevy roaring up from behind. He wiped at his eyes.

“I heard about what happened,” Smalley said, keeping his eyes on the road as the clusters of neighboring houses grew denser. Jacob hadn’t realized how far he had walked. The sun had already started its downward slide toward afternoon.

“Hard to figure the ways of the Lord sometimes,” Smalley said. He reached to a stained and frayed work coat beside him and pushed it across the seat toward Jacob. “The way I figure, He did plenty of suffering up on the cross, so we all get to do a little in our turn.”

Jacob looked out the window, thinking of Mattie, remembering the way she had sat on his foot as a toddler and urged him to make it “giddy-up.” What did Smalley know about suffering? He didn’t have a family, or any responsibility. He had a fly rod in his shotgun rack and a truck bed full of scrap lumber and rusty tools. He had a nicotine habit and dirty nails.

Smalley fumbled in the folds of the coat, opening it so that Jacob could see the bottle. The amber liquid lay greasy and thick within the confines of the glass, rolling back and forth in waves with the motion of the truck. “But the Lord gave us means to ease our suffering. That’s a real blessing, you ask me.”

Jacob looked at the bottle, the slick brass cap, the brown label that suggested an easy afternoon on the plantation. He pictured himself showing up on Renee’s doorstep half-drunk, an excuse to launch into an abusive rage.

No, not half. Jacob hadn’t been half-drunk in over a decade.

“No, thanks,” he said, more to himself than Smalley.

“Suit yourself. Say, you got any work coming up?”

Jacob didn’t want to tell the man that M & W Ventures was done. Renee should be the first to know, followed by his partner. Maybe Donald would buy him out and keep the earth machines well fed, continue stacking bricks and laying pavement and raising monuments to progress and ego. Taking up the Wells mantle without benefit of the bloodline. “I’ve been out of touch,” he said.

“Yeah. I reckon so.”

They circled the back end of town, past the gray warehouses and boarded-up shops that lined the abandoned railroad. Jacob used to think of this section as a slum, acres and acres in need of a wrecking ball, an urban renewal project he had once calculated as a long-term investment. Turn the old textile mill into a mini-mall, charge outrageous rent for small shops whose proprietors could peddle “handcrafted” Appalachian baskets and quilts that were actually mass-produced by exploited labor in Taiwan. The consumer was only buying an emotion, after all. A mountain town back-street offered plenty of nostalgia for those who longed for better days that had never really existed.

For the first time, Jacob saw the beauty of the broken glass that sparkled in the dying sun. The ragweed that grew in clumps along the leaning chain-link fence had outlasted the concrete. The stinking brown creek, marred by oil runoff, carried away the dregs of growth. Here and there between the buildings, a honey locust made a reach for the sky, bristling with thorns and defiance.

Smalley shifted gears and turned up the hill onto a private drive. A wooden sign with a fieldstone base heralded “Ivy Terrace.” The sign was landscaped, ringed with pine straw and non-native pansies. Nestled among the hardwood trees on the ridge were the apartments that Jacob had helped develop. More of his false ego, a mock testament to the ephemeral nature of ambition.

And behind one of those doors was Renee. Another mock testament.

“Stop,” Jacob said.

Smalley glanced at him and eased in the clutch. When the truck slowed, Jacob pushed open the passenger door and eased to the ground. He reached in and pulled the bottle of liquor from its hiding place.

“A small blessing,” Jacob said.

“Don’t blame you none. Give me a holler if you got any work for me.”

“I’ll do that, Chick.”

“I’ll be praying for you.”

“It can’t hurt none.”

Nothing could hurt, not anymore. Smalley turned the truck around and headed back toward town. Jacob tucked the bottle inside his coat and headed for the shrubs that had been part of a landscaping scheme he had once designed, never realizing until now the type of concealment it provided. He found a gap in the rhododendrons and crawled among the twisted branches. The space had been used before. Empty beer bottles, a condom wrapper, a mottled, crushed French fries container, and a sprinkling of cigarette butts marked it as the territory of the transient. Jacob instantly felt at home.

He twisted the metal cap from the liquor bottle and toasted the distant sky, which was barely visible through the thick, waxy leaves. “To our mutual suffering,” he said.

The first taste was harsh and welcoming. The second was merely welcoming.

CHAPTER SIX

Renee cradled the phone against her ear. She’d chipped her fingernail polish opening a can of Tab. Sitting in an apartment she wasn’t paying for, talking of money, made her lightheaded. Despite the wealth Jacob had accumulated early in their marriage, this money seemed unreal, almost sickening. “It’s two million dollars, Kim.”

“Holy crud,” came her best friend’s voice from the speaker. Kim worked as a technician at the hospital, testing blood samples. The sound of hospital business occasionally came through in the background, doctors being paged, carts rattling by, the ringing of nurses’ bells.

“That doesn’t make up for it. Not a bit.”

“I know, honey. We’ve been through that. You don’t have any more tears left to cry.”

“I was the beneficiary. Jacob set it up that way. After Christine died, he insured the three of us for a million dollars each. Said that’s how his father always did it.”

“And you let him?”

“Well, it’s the kind of thing you don’t think about much. You can’t let it weigh on you, that tragedy might strike again. I figured we’d used up more than our share with Christine.”

“I know you guys are movers and shakers, but a million is a million, even with inflation. What are you guys going to do with the money?”

“That’s just it. He’s hiding from all this.”

“Forget about him for a minute. What do
you
want?”

Renee looked at the urn on the mantel. She didn’t want the ashes around as a constant reminder of The Tragedy. She carried around enough reminders inside her.

She’d hoped Jacob would pull himself together and get through his grieving process, decide with her what they should do with the ashes. It had been over two months and he still refused to have any contact with her. “I want Jake to be happy. That’s all that’s left for me, Kim.”

“Your parents gone?”

“Yeah, they left last week. Dad’s not doing too well. Said now he didn’t have any grandchildren to spoil. Mom helped, but I can’t talk to her about the heavy stuff.”

“Well, I’m here whenever you need me.”

Renee’s throat caught and the tears welled up without warning. She stuck a finger behind her glasses and brushed at her eyelashes. “I can’t do this much longer. I want Jake.”

“Didn’t he get weird after Christine?”

Renee’s chest clenched around her heart. “Yeah. He went AWOL, but I was so focused on Mattie that I hardly noticed.”