He certainly noticed Neds—both heads of him. And the gun.
Since Left Ned was talking, I knew he was willing to bleed up the stranger a little more if that’s what it took to keep him out of the house.
“I’m looking for a doctor,” the stranger said. “Dr. Renault Case.”
“He doesn’t live here anymore,” Right Ned said calmly, everything about his voice the opposite of Left Ned’s. “If you need someone to take you to a town doctor, I’d be willing. But there’s no medical man here to help you.”
The stranger frowned, sending just a hint of lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. “You think I came here for help?”
I nodded toward his gut. “You are bleeding rather strongly.”
He looked down. An expression of surprise crossed his face and he shifted his wide fingers, letting a little more blood ooze out, as if just noticing how badly he was injured. If he was in pain—and he should be—he did not show it.
Shock, maybe. Or expensive drugs.
“I didn’t come here looking for help from Dr. Case,” he said, cinnamon gaze on me, just on me, and the sound of his blood falling with a softtip tip tipon my wooden floor. “I came here to warn him.”
“About what?” I asked.
He hesitated.
Left Ned spoke up. “Say it, or get walking.”
“His enemies are looking for him. For him and what he’s left behind on this property. I come offering protection.”
It was a dramatic sort of thing to say, and he had a nice, deep, dramatic sort of voice for it. Chills did that rolling thing over my arms.
But there was only one problem.
“He’s dead,” I said.
“What?”
“My father, Dr. Case, has been dead for years.”
That, more than anything, seemed to take the starch out of him. He exhaled, and it was a wet sound as he tried to get air back in his lungs. I almost reached over to prop him up, afraid he might just pass out and further mess up the clean of my kitchen floor.
He was a big man, but, like I said, I’m strong.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
I’d been twelve years old when the men from House Black, Defense, and House White, Medical, came to the farm. I’d hidden like my father had taught me, up in the rafters of the barn. I’d watched those men kill him. Kill my mother too. I’d watched them search our house and carry out boxes. I’d watched them pick up my parents’ bodies, put them in a black van, then use our garden hose to clean up the drive so not even a drop of their blood was left for me to cry over.
My brother had come home from studying the old skills—electrical tinkering, metalwork, analog and digital system repairs—out on the Burnbaums’ homestead about three months later. He’d found Mom and Dad gone, and me and Grandma trying to hold the place together. Right then, he’d started his crazy crusade for information and histories that had eventually made him unofficial head of House Brown.
The same crazy crusade that had left me alone on this farm for three years with an addle-minded grandmother, a two-headed farmhand, some impossible creatures, and the communication hub for the scattered, off-grid House Brown folk my brother promised to look after.
My brother might still be alive, but not my parents.
The image of their bodies being carried away flashed behind my eyes again.
“I’m very certain,” I whispered to the stranger.
“I . . .” He swallowed hard, shook his head. Didn’t look like that helped much. His words came out in a slur. “I thought . . . I should have known. Sooner. We thought . . . all our information. That he lived.”
“Neds,” I called.
The stranger’s eyes rolled up in his head and he folded like someone had punched him in the ribs. I put my hands out to catch him, got hold of his jacket shoulders and pivoted on my heels, throwing my weight to guide him down to the floor without knocking his head too badly.
