Just where he’d always been meant to end up. The one debt that Bell had gone to his grave owing.
Ledger laughed, a thick, strangled noise that took too long to stop. That hurt nearly as much as struggling did.
Now he had no choice but to lie there and wait. He counted in his head to try and keep track, but the sludginess in his brain made it difficult. After either fifteen or fuck-knew minutes later, the trap door opened, letting sunlight into the basement in a single narrow beam that threw into stark relief how miserable and dank the place was.
Booted feet came into view as Syder started down the stairs.
Ledger instinctively tensed against the restraints, even though he knew it would do no good. The pointless rattle of the cuffs made his stomach sink.
“I wouldn’t bother,” Syder said as he stepped down onto the rough-poured concrete floor of the basement. “Even if you managed to free yourself, how far do you think you’d get?”
It was a good point, Ledger supposed. He turned his head and hunched his shoulder up to wipe his mouth. It wasn’t much as far as making himself look respectable went, but it was something.
“Aren’t you dead yet?” he asked.
Syder smiled thinly and reached into his jacket. He got out the ever-present packet of mints and tore it open.
“You really want to wish for that?” he asked. “Who’s going to come looking for you, Ledger? Dehydration is a bad way to die. I’d rather take the knife myself.”
It was another good point.
There was a folding chair propped up against the wall. Syder grabbed it and dragged it over the floor. He gave it a flick to open it and sat down with a grunt. Heavy breathing and the crunch of the mint were the only sounds until…
“I suppose you have some questions,” Syder said.
Ledger dropped his head back to rest on the table. He stared at the cable strung over the old floorboards to power the single bare bulb that swung overhead. After a second, he glanced toward the bar of light that shone through from upstairs.
Sunlight.
“What time is it?” he asked.
There was a pause. It probably wasn’t where Syder had expected Ledger’s priorities to be.
“What does it matter?”
Ledger angled his head to look at him. “I just want to know.”
Syder checked his watch. “It’s tomorrow,” he said. “Nearly four.”
“Fuck,” Ledger said. He ran his tongue around the sticky inside of his dry mouth. “How hard did you hit me?”
“Not hard enough,” Syder said. “It was the drugs that put you out. You’d be surprised what you can get access to when you have stage three lung cancer. I didn’t think it would knock you out for this long, though. But it gave me time to get everything arranged.”
Shit. Ledger tried to remember what time the equinox was tonight. He had looked it up, but his mind was too slow and scattered for him to come up with the answer right away.
It had been nearly midnight… just before that, he thought.
“I already told you,” Ledger said. “Bell never had a third hideout.”
Syder grimaced, lips pulled tight across his teeth, and leaned forward. He blurred into two overlapping figures as he moved. “You’re not asking why I’m doing this?”
Ledger squinted to try and correct the double vision. “You asked about a third location,” he said. “You shouldn’t have known about the lake house. I worked out that you were Bell’s lackey from there.”
“I was his partner.”
Ledger laughed at him. Fury twisted Syder’s face, and he lunged out of his seat. The folding chair went flying backward and hit the wall. Syder grabbed Ledger’s face and dug his fingers into his jaw.
“You little shit,” he said, the peppermint not enough to cover the smell of something gone sour in his throat. “If it wasn’t for me, your dad would have been nothing. Nothing. You think some fucking redneck cornhusker was smart enough to do what we did? To avoid getting caught? I’m the only reason that Bell didn’t get caught years before he did.”
