“Dead dad fuck around?” Stella asked. It was the closest to sympathy that Ledger had ever heard from her. “It always happens. I’ve buried three husbands, and surprise bastards turned up at two of the funerals.”
“No, I know all the family bastards,” Ledger said. “It’s just I have to settle a few of my dad’s… debts.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone and then the sound of more filing.
“Debts?” she said. “Or, you know,debts.”
“He double-dipped with Hell,” Ledger said. He might not knowexactlywhat Earl was, but it was definitely evil. “I need to sort it out.”
Stella sighed heavily. “Look, he’s probably just angry that you sniped him on the Elliot estate,” she said. “But I’ll ask around, make sure it’s nothing more than that.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t get too excited. You’re going to owe me. I hate talking to people.”
She hung up. Ledger sat there for a second, then glanced at his reflection in the mirror on the dresser. He could see why the kid down in reception had thought he might not belong there. Despite the nice clothes, he looked… haunted.
That was the word for it. His eyes were sunken and looked darker than normal, hardly blue at all, and more angles were scratched out on his already lean face. Bad enough to be back here, but now he’d been dragged back into Bell’s life… and death. It was like no matter how hard he ran or how far he went, Sutton County and all Bell’s victims would always be here waiting for him.
Ledger snorted and pushed himself up off the bed. That might be true, but haunted was better than haunting, and that’s what he’d be doing if he sat here and wallowed any longer. He grabbed his wallet and car keys from the dresser and his coat from the chair behind the door. The first two went in his pocket, and the last he slung over his shoulder.
The first person he called on his way across the parking lot was Hark. It rang out the first time, so he tried again. This time Hark picked up.
“Fuck off,” Hark spat, his voice thick and scratchy. Then he hung up.
Ledger called him back.
“What the fuck do you want?” Hark yelled at him this time. In the background, a woman spoke to him sharply, and Hark muttered something in return. Next time he spoke, his voice was lower andalmostnormal as he tried to brush the whole thing off. “Look, it didn’t have to happen like this. If you’d not shut me down, I wouldn’t have…” His voice faltered and broke. “I dreamed about it. Did you?”
“No,” Ledger lied. It was an underrated coping mechanism to just deny a problem existed. “And don’t try to play me. You owe me, Hark, and I know where you live.”
There was a moment of what felt like genuine shock on the other end of the line. “You can’t do that,” Hark said. “We don’t sell each other out. Those are the rules.”
“Unwritten rules,” Ledger said. “And I’ll be dead, so… You owe me. So next time I call, pick up, Hark.”
This time he hung up first.
He started to reach into his pocket for Wren’s card, but before he could, he saw the pickup parked in front of the motel reception. Wren slouched against the driver’s side door, coffee in one hand and legs crossed at the ankles. The leather jacket and jeans were the same, but he’d changed his T-shirt to a dark gray one splattered with a neon graffiti raccoon.
“Refreshments are only for guests,” Ledger said as he tucked his phone into his pocket alongside the business card.
Wren shrugged and took a drink. “It’s not like it’s an exclusive establishment,” he said. “I got a room last night.”
That statement felt awkward. It was probably only on Ledger’s side, as he wondered what it had cost to avoid sharing a bed with him. Wren had eaten chicken bones one step away from the trash last night. That did not suggest someone concerned with what people thought about him.
“You don’t need to keep an eye on me,” Ledger said. “I know what happens to people that try to ghost Hell.”
Wren raised a dark, straight brow. “Hell?” he said. “What do you think the boss is? The devil.”
“He’s evil,” Ledger said.
“Or maybe he just is what he is. The chickens don’t like the fox, but a fox still has to eat.”
“The difference between a fox and Earl,” Ledger said, “is that Earl’s evil.”
Wren snorted and shook his head. He pushed himself up off the pickup’s dusty door. “Threaten to take out one person’s bones to pay a debt and suddenly you’re canceled,” he mocked lightly. “It used to be that people cared about nuance.”
“I bet the people whose femurs were being used as collateral didn’t,” Ledger said. “I need to go back to Conroy’s house, get my car. Can you—”
