One more crime to end it, I whisper to myself.
“Something’s wrong,” Ever murmurs, as we step over holes in the grass.
I set my attention on the lawn around me and feel it: a thick unease. From opposite sides of the bonfires blazing around the yard, men eye each other distrustfully.
“Fuck you, then,” shouts a bearded man in a rattlesnake jacket, lunging for a man with a cross tattooed on his neck. Two other Sons of Liberty grab the first and hold him back.
The long-haired man leading us snickers. “You picked a dicey time to be here. We got a faction of them country boys from up north here, tryna’ to work out a truce.”
“Truce?” Ever ventures. “What, you got a mutual enemy or something?”
He grins wide, showing off a silver tooth. “Nah. A common need. We been fightin’ over territory for years, but these days our supply chain ain’t been the most stable, you feel me? We need options.” He shakes his head. “But them pig-fuckers ’bout overstayed they welcome.”
Ever and I glance at each other as we snake around one of the bonfires, sparks drifting near our faces. His fingers brush mine and I take his hand. Into the belly of the beast.
Inside the compound is a whole new world, as methodical and organized as the outside was chaotic. The large kitchen we enter runs like a well-oiled machine, leather-jacketed men moving stacks of money and rubber-band-bound bags of weed, pills, and powder across tables, riffing numbers and instructions to one another.
“Wait here,” our long-haired Son says, and takes off. As soon as his back’s turned, Ever nods.
“Be fast,” he whispers, sliding the papers out of his jacket. “Find somewhere to hide it, but don’t make it too obvious. And don’t get caught.”
I nod, heart in my throat. This was always part of the plan: where I step up, and Ever acts as a distraction.
I keep my head down and slip out of the kitchen into a hallway where more people mill. I’d like to hide Renard’s deed in as incriminating a spot as possible, a place the deputies will surely look when Ever and I call in our tip. I just have no idea where that is.
Count of Monte Cristo. I can do that—play a part like the Count, suffer indignities for the sake of triumph in the end. I loosen my gait, stumbling a little down the hall, and start opening doors. Most are empty bedrooms, but in one I find a man stretched out on a futon. The moment I swing open the door, he jerks up and grabs the handgun at his side, pointing it at me.
“Oh.” I slur, speaking slow despite my pounding heart. “This isn’t the bathroom.”
The man’s eyes are dilated, black pupils eating the white. He stares at me, the barrel of the gun shaking.
“Nah,” he says finally, “it’s not,” and collapses back onto the couch, gun slumping to the floor.
I shut the door quietly and press my back to the wall, heart thumping so hard I actually do feel high.Keep going. Everything is riding on this.
A door at the end of the hall opens and a man in a wifebeater walks out, dripping with sweat, sucking in a deep breath before turning the corner. I straighten. Behind him I’d glimpsed a staircase descending into the dark. If I was Jebediah Ray, that’s where I’d keep my most incriminating things—hidden in the bowels of my house.
I check to make sure no one’s watching and slip inside.
The smell of ammonia is so overpowering I gag and almost turn back. I press a hand over my mouth, forcing myself down the stairs. A large basement stretches before me. Lining the walls are black plastic shelves, the kind you assemble yourself, filled with liters of fluorescent-coloredchemicals, stacks of plastic bags, zip ties, and gram scales. In the center of the room are four islands with stove tops, the burners covered in black-bottomed pots. Thankfully, there’s no one else here.
I creep closer to read the labels on the liters, despite the fact that I know I need to plant the deed and get out. It’s just—this is where the Sons cook. There are no windows, the only light from bulbs hanging from the ceiling, so the place is dim and suffocating. How hot it must get in the daytime, in the thick bayou heat, with all the burners going. Like Hell on earth.
Footsteps shake the ceiling, rustling loose dust that rains down, and I snap out of my morbid fascination. There’s a desk scattered with papers in the farthest corner. I beeline to it. If I hide Renard’s deed in this cookroom, among those papers, the deputies will surely find it, right? Out of all the rooms in this place, this is where crime is most evident, most concentrated. It will be a magnet for the cops. I feel a strange urge to kiss the deed before filing it away: the potential key to our freedom.
Heavy footsteps pound the floor above me—the sound of people running. The hairs on my arms rise. I shove the deed into a pile of papers, making sure it’s covered, and whirl away. I need to get back to Ever as fast as I can.
But my feet catch on something and I fall hard to my knees on the concrete. Muffling a sob, I kick at whatever tripped me, shaking it off my feet, then look to see what it was. An upturned cardboard box. Felled by cardboard.
I don’t know where it comes from, but from one second to the next, the rage is there. I’m in this basement, risking my life to avoid prison, just because I happened to kill the man who tried to rape me—rapeme. The injustice of it makes me choke, and suddenly I’m kicking the boxes, over and over, hot tears spilling down my cheeks.
The boxes slide over the floor, pinwheeling as I kick them, and asmall white paper pokes out. I seize it, eager to have something to tear. Then I freeze.
It’s the kind of paper you’d find on a notepad, blank except for an address printed at the bottom: 300 Old Highway 1, Bottom Springs, Louisiana 70357. I know that address. Everyone in Bottom Springs knows that address.
Blanchard Hospital.
I stare at the boxes. They’re stealing drugs from Blanchard. That’s how they’re getting their hands on the oxycodone and other painkillers—they’re stealing from doctors and patients, from people who need it, only to turn around and feed other people’s sicknesses. No wonder the long-haired Son said their supply chain had grown unstable. It couldn’t be easy to keep up such large-scale theft under authorities’ noses.
