Shay rubbed his neck and dug his fingers down hard into the tendons. He looked away from Morgan and studied the cracked headlights of a Mustang as he talked.
“What did Macintosh tell you?” he asked. “That no one knows what happened to my brother? That’s a lie. Everyone knows. Everyone knew back then. It was just that Cutter’s Gap PD were so fucking useless that they couldn’t prove it. So this bastard killed my little brother and got away with it.”
His voice cracked, and he stopped for a second. He set his half-drunk mug of coffee down and walked over to the Mustang, the sleeve of his jersey pulled down over his hands as he buffed out a smudge on the paintwork.
It made Morgan uncomfortable, how fascinated he was with Shay’s obvious pain. He didn’t enjoy it, but it was hard to look away from.
“Mac said a lot of people came under suspicion at the time.”
Shay gave the hood one last buff and turned to Morgan, a bitter smile on his mouth. “You mean he said I was a suspect?”
Morgan shrugged his agreement.
“I was. Everyone was. One by one we were ruled out until his name was the only one in the hat.”
Morgan remembered that—not the name, it slipped out of his brain, but, “The teacher?”
“Deacon Hill,” Shay said. “That’s the man who killed my little brother, and I want to know your price to tell everyone in town that.”
It was the sort of question you should sleep on, but the answer was already on the tip of Morgan’s tongue.
“Your car,” he said.
For a second, as reluctance flashed over Shay’s face, Morgan thought the deal would be over before it really began. He didn’t know if he’d regret that or not. The money he needed, the guilt less so.
Then Shay set his jaw, any second thoughts firmly locked away, and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Do it, and the car’s yours.”
Shit.
Chapter Eleven
“OKAY!” THEnew school teacher, Ms. Kettler, singsonged merrily as she dusted off the last five-year-old after the stop, drop, and roll demonstration and herded the class back into a loose semicircle on the grass. Thirty pairs of wide, bright eyes stared up with rapt attention at Boyd and Danni, sweaty in their full fire gear in the middle of the afternoon. “So does anyone have any questions for the brave men and women from Cutter’s Gap Fire Department?”
Her enthusiasm made Danni roll her eyes slightly, but Boyd enjoyed it. Ms. Kettler was twenty-three, had just moved to town, and—for the first time since Boyd had enough seniority to be tapped for the fire awareness training days—she had no idea who Boyd was. Usually it was someone who’d taught him and Sammy back in the day. They always looked at him as though he were a ghost, an unwelcome reminder that bad things happened out of the blue.
Not Ms. Kettler, who was more interested in Danni.
The kids all thrust their hands into the air, but most of them were too excited to wait to be asked. They blurted their questions one after the other, voices tangled together.
“Did you always want to be a firefighter?”
“How can he be a fireman if he has to wear glasses?”
“Can girls do the same stuff as the boy firefighters?”
“Do you… do you… climb ladders every day?”
And one sharp little voice from somewhere in the middle. “Have you seen anyone burn to death?”
There was always one. It was usually a boy, but this time it was a skinny girl with pigtails and an intent, freckled face.
“Jessica.” Ms. Kettler clapped her hands together twice sharply to underline her raised voice. “That’s not an appropriate question. Now behave, or we’ll all go back inside and let the brave firefighters get back to work.”
The kids clammed up, lips puckered or folded between their teeth in exaggerated expressions of silence.
“Well, it’s our job to try and make sure no one gets hurt in a fire,” Boyd said. “That’s why we’re here to see you, so we can teach you how to be safe and how to help us. You all want to do that, right?”
All the kids nodded. A few clapped and yelped, “Yes,” in excitement. Then they glanced nervously at Ms. Kettler to see if they going to be dragged inside. She put her finger to her lips and arched an eyebrow, but she let them be.
