“She knows I know. I told her.” He drank. “It went badly.” Drank again, then quietly— “Because I’m adick.”
Dice snorted softly. “No arguments there.”
“Ain't that the truth,” Reed muttered, raising his glass in a half-toast that looked more like a small surrender to the inevitable.
The jukebox switched to something with an electric guitar. The afternoon light slanted through the gaps in the blinds, catching dust motes in its beam.
“So what's she gonna do?” Cole asked, breaking the weighted silence.
Judah's jaw tightened. “Don't know. Didn't get that far in the conversation.”
Billy wrapped an arm around Judah’s shoulders, grinning now. “Tell them the best part. Come on,tell them.”
Judah took a deep breath. “She kicked me out of my own bedroom.”
Billy's laugh cracked through the bar like a bullwhip. “And helistened!Our very own Pastor Beaumont, terror of the parish, slept in the guest room because a woman told him to.”
Reed whistled low. Cole shook his head, something like admiration in his eyes.
“You're in it deep,” Dice said, reaching for the bottle. She refilled Judah's glass without asking. “Never thought I'd see the day.”
Judah stared at the fresh pour; the bourbon gleamed like forbidden honey. He'd missed her. He hadn't let himself know that for years and now, sitting on this stool in this bar, he knew it clearly. He’d missedallof them.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
She waited.
“Danny.”
The name went through the room like weather. Reed went very still. Cole picked up his beer and held it without drinking. Billy, behind Judah's shoulder, said nothing — which was the loudest nothing he'd ever produced.
Dice's jaw moved. Once. “Okay,” she said.
“He came to me. Wanted to buy a girl out — a young one. Youngest I’d seen, I think. I don’t remember.” He ran a hand over his head. “They’re all young. I told him it’s not how it goes. That I just hold the books, I just do the numbers, I don’t — I can’t fucking save them, man. That he would have to pay their ten-year profit thrice over. He said he’d go to the cops if I didn’t help.” Judah closed his eyes. “So, I called Hargrove.”
Dice's hand froze on the bottle. Her eyes hardened to emeralds. “You called Hargrove.”
Judah nodded once, not meeting her gaze. “I didn't know what he'd do, exactly. I just knew he'd handle it.” The lie tasted sour in his mouth. He'd known. Of course he'd known.
Cole pushed his drink away, suddenly sober. “Jesus Christ, Judah.”
“Danny went missing three days later.” Reed's voice was flat, his face carefully blank. “Hunting accident, they said. Body never recovered.”
Cole frowned. “I thought he was in Shreveport?”
“Jesus fuck, Cole. Keep up. That’s what Shreveportis,”Reed said while Dice’s eyes stayed glued to Judah.
There was nothing he could say to make this better, but he wanted them to know what had actually happened. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. After ten years. Finally, a‘sorry’.
“Sorry doesn't bring Danny back,” Dice said, voice like a razor. She poured herself another drink, knuckles white around the bottle.
The silence in Randy's grew thick enough to slice. Judah felt their judgment like a physical weight, pressing down on shoulders already bent from the weight of last night's confession to Mercy.
Billy cleared his throat. “For what it's worth—”
“Don't,” Reed cut him off. “Don't make excuses for him.”
Judah raised his eyes to Dice's. “I'm not asking for forgiveness.”
