Burn Down the Night (24 page)

I woke up quickly. Yanked up and out of a dream so fast I was sick to my stomach.

Something was wrong.

Before I even opened my eyes I knew Joan wasn't in bed with me, that when I reached over to check the sheets, they'd be cold. And I knew before I eased out of bed and checked the rest of the condo that she wouldn't be there. Her garbage-bag luggage and her phone—all gone.

I had known, despite the sex, despite the secrets we'd told each other, despite how badly I wanted her to stay, I had known in my gut she would leave.

It was the truth I didn't want to look too hard at. I liked pretending.

Standing in an empty and dark apartment that still somehow managed to smell like her, I realized how stupid it had been to think we would do this shit the normal way.

Some people had self-destruct buttons that had to be pushed. And I'd known that about her the second I saw her.

And I didn't know if my anger was so sharp because it felt like grief. Or my grief was so sharp because it felt like anger. But I was a mess of it. A seething, hurting, angry mess and I wanted to tear down the walls.

“Damn it!” I yelled and I didn't care if the neighbors heard me. I spun and put my fists down on the kitchen counter. Right on top of a piece of yellow notepaper with my name written across the top.

She'd written a note. A goddamn goodbye note.

Max

I'm sorry. Jennifer called. She got away from Lagan and she needs help. I've gone to get her. Thank you, Max. For everything. This week was the nicest week of my life, and no, I'm not joking. And no, I'm not just talking about the sex. You're a good man, Max Daniels. Better I think than you give yourself credit for. I hope so many things for you, Max. I hope you connect with your brother. And I hope you find a woman who treats you right.

And I hope you get that boat.

Signed,

Olivia (my real name)

PS: Tell Aunt Fern…shit. I don't know. Tell her I'm sorry I always disappoint her.

Jesus. I crumpled the note in my fist and fought the urge to send that fist through the drywall next to the sink. Gone. Just like that. And without even considering that anyone would help her. Fern. Eric.

Me.

The keys to her car were gone. But my phone was still plugged into the charger. I turned it on and called up the app that would track her. My gut in knots, I watched the circle spin over blank green space and then, all at once the screen was a map of Georgia and she was a blinking red dot traveling toward Atlanta on the I-75.

She was hours ahead of me.

I called her but I knew, even as it rang, that she wouldn't pick up. She'd left a note. Said her goodbyes. She was back to living her life on her own terms and all by herself. The ringing stopped and clicked over to voicemail.

“This is Joan. Leave a message.”

I hung up and called her again, imagining her in the car, trying to ignore the phone. She wouldn't put it on silent, she was hoping—always hoping—her sister might call.

“This is Joan. Leave a message.”

I hit redial. This time she answered on the second ring.

“Max.” Her voice was exasperated and sad and it wrapped around my stone-cold heart and squeezed it so hard I thought I might die. Right there. “Please. Don't do this.”

“Don't do what?” I asked.

“Make it harder.” Well, I liked that it was hard for her. That I wasn't alone feeling like my guts had been ripped out. I took a deep breath and pressed my fingers into my eyes.

“What the hell are you doing?” I turned and put my back to the fridge, letting the metal hold me up.

“Saving my sister.”

“What about the lawyer? The FBI? Bringing down Lagan?”

“All I want is to get my sister back. She's alone and she's scared and nothing else matters except that. You…get that, right? I mean, I know you do.”

I did and she knew it. I swore into the phone.

“You know,” she whispered. “I stayed up last night and I imagined what we would be like if we were different people.”

That made me laugh, even though I didn't want to. Even though nothing was funny.

“And what are we like as totally different people?”

“The same, sort of. Where it counts. But you're a mechanic—”

“And you're a nurse?”

“Sure. And we met at a bar. You were playing pool and I ruined your shot.”

“On purpose.”

“Maybe.” I could hear her smiling. I could see this story play out. “But I buy you a drink to apologize.”

“And I buy the next one.”

“I give you my number—”

“Fuck that. You come home with me.”

“Not Nurse Olivia. She's got rules about these things.”

“I'm not sure I like Nurse Olivia.”

“You love Nurse Olivia.”

Our laughter dried up as if our fantasy had revealed too much, and then I realized all of a sudden there was no too much. There was only now or never.

“Stop the car and wait for me. We'll go together.”

I heard the faint shudder of her breath and I imagined her crying. No, my Joan, she'd be holding those tears back. I imagined her biting her lip and doing everything she could not to cry.

Fuck. This hurt.

“You know as well as I do that there's a good chance this is a trap—”

“Joan—”

“Think about it, Max.”

“Stop the car.”

“Remember how you came back from Arizona?”

“Stop the fucking car.”

“We're so much alike that way, you know? Anything for our family. Anything. And if it isn't a trap, and she really did get free, there isn't room for you and for all the help my sister is going to need when this is over. I just…I don't have enough in me for that.”

“You're not getting it, baby,” I told her. “If you're not alone, it means you have me, too. It means I'm there to help you. Give you what I got. Feed you what I have.”

Now she was crying for real.

“Stop,” I said. “Baby, pull over and I will be there as fast as I can.”

“No, Max. No. I'm sorry. What you're saying…it sounds so good. It does. Like…like a dream, you know. But this is me and my sister and I've got to fix all the stuff I did wrong. Please, I'm begging you, Max. If you care for me at all, please don't call again.”

It took me a second to realize she'd hung up. That her silence had turned into a kind of buzzing phone silence.

It was all I could do to not put my phone through the wall.

This was the thing about me and Joan—I understood every word of what she'd said, like I'd said it myself. I understood how she felt like she didn't have enough of herself to give to her sister and to give to me. Either-or. One or the other.

And I totally understood that she wouldn't know how to trust me to be there for her. She didn't even understand how that would work, or what it would mean. To have someone at her back, holding her up when she wanted to fall down.

Because I didn't understand that, either, until she saved my life. Until she swallowed her pride and brought me to Aunt Fern.

I ran back into the bedroom and pulled on my clothes. I was wearing someone's hand-me-downs, Eric's, now that I put two and two together. The jeans were too big and so was the shirt, but my own bloodstained and torn stuff was long gone. I opened every drawer, making sure I didn't leave anything behind and in the bottom drawer there was my leather cut. The skull patch, faded and frayed against the cracked leather—laughing up at me. I flipped it over so I could see the president patch, covered—obliterated really—with dried, flakey blood. An ugly rust that covered the whole thing.

Joan's gun was there. She didn't even take her damn gun.

I grabbed the gun and slammed the door shut, leaving the cut in there.

Someone—some future owner of the condo, a cleaning lady, I don't know—would throw it out.

I tucked the gun in the back of my pants—its familiar weight was no longer comforting. Thrown off balance by the gun, I turned on my heel, turning my back on everything I'd ever known in my life, and headed out of the condo to find Joan.

Olivia. I grinned, thinking how well it suited her. She was such an Olivia.

First things first, I was going to need a car. Which meant talking to Fern. Shit, that was going to waste some precious time. I could boost one from the garage, maybe.

Nah. I discarded that thought from an old life I wanted no part of anymore.

I took the stairs down to Fern's condo, the scuff of my boots loud against the cement. I was on the landing when I heard the door to the floor beneath me push open and someone started taking the stairs in a great big hurry toward me.

Eric turned the corner at the landing and stopped.

There was something in his expression, some military “the shit has hit the fan” face that made my blood run cold.

“What's happened?” I asked.

“We got a problem. The FBI's informant is missing. Lagan moved out of the compound. He took the drugs and left a lot of bodies.”

“What?” The words fell down around me without making sense.

“Lagan has moved. He's gone. Joan—”

“Joan's gone, too.”

“What?”

“She got a call from her sister last night. Was gone by the time I got up.”

We stared at each other for one long, hard minute.

“Maybe Jennifer got out in the commotion,” I said, hoping with everything in my body that that was the case.

“You really believe that?” Eric asked.

“No. I think Joan's walking right into a trap.”

“Me too.”

So did Joan.

I stepped away from Eric and dialed Joan's number again. Voicemail.

“Listen to me, Joan. Listen. It's a trap. Stop the car. Lagan has Jennifer.” I hung up. Dialed again. Voicemail, again.

“Text her,” Eric said.

“Good idea.”

I texted the same thing I'd left in the message but it didn't go through. I looked back at the tracking app and the red dot was gone.

“I lost her!” I turned the phone to show Eric. “She's going through an area with no service. She's in the foothills there, spotty service all over the place.”

Shit. I felt like my head was going to explode.

“Why does Lagan want Joan?” Eric asked. “What's the angle?”

“He's a crazy asshole with a God complex and a vendetta against her because she tried to blow him up and scrapped his deal. Because he's sitting on millions of dollars worth of drugs with no distribu—”

Shit. Oh. Shit. Distribution. This was about the drugs.

This was about me.

I turned away from Eric and took a deep breath before texting Lagan. Playing it cool just in case I was wrong.

The good times begin when?

There was nothing. For heartbeat after heartbeat.

They start when you get here. Start driving toward Atlanta. Alone. Alert police or anyone else and Olivia and her sister will get a bullet in their heads. More instructions to come.

“What's going on?” Eric asked me, and I turned around, every wild and seething emotion on lockdown. Stone cold. That was me. And Eric saw it, his eyes flaring for just a minute.

“I'm going after her.”

“Alone?” Eric asked.

I didn't even bother answering that question and Eric didn't ask it again. I liked that about him. He would do the same thing in my position. “Stay in touch with your FBI guys. Call me with updates.” I gave him my cellphone number and he plugged it into his contacts.

“You know, maybe we're wrong,” Eric said. “Maybe Jennifer did get out in the commotion.”

“Maybe,” I lied, because I knew Lagan wasn't kidding around with that bullet in the brain. Just like he hadn't been kidding around with the pills.

“Is there anything else you need?”

“Yeah. A car.”

I turned off the highway onto a smaller road, heading toward Pickens, a town that according to all the signs was really excited about their azaleas. The road was a twisty thing and I kept my eyes peeled for South Glassy Mountain Road. I was exhausted and buzzing again from the energy drinks and coffee, and my heart was pounding against my ribs like it wanted to get out.

I had the address she'd given me on a piece of paper I kept checking like it might have changed in the seconds since I last checked it.

Jennifer. Jennifer was only a few minutes away.

I took another left and the mountains got more serious. Pickens was a blink and you'll miss it kind of place, and I left it in my rearview mirror.

My face felt hot and I realized I was crying. Floods of tears streamed down my face. I wasn't sobbing or trying to catch my breath. I was just…leaking.

Fucking Max. I brushed the tears off my face with the back of my hands. I wasn't going to miss him. There was nothing there to miss.

Except how good he made me feel. Except how, when looking at him, when talking to him…there'd been a sense of something more. A crack in the walls I lived behind. A glimpse of blue sky and green grass and sunlight.

That's why I was crying. Turning my back on that wasn't easy. Because that little glimpse of more—it had looked good. Like a life I might want someday.

But today was about Jennifer.

The longer I drove, the more certain I was that this was a trap. And part of me wanted to believe that was just my skepticism. Because really, what were the odds that she got out?

But the other part of me had built a life raft of faith and hope and dreams and wishes and I was clinging to it. Hard.

On the outside of town, I took the cutoff to the Glassy Lake Chapel, which looked like it was way out over a cliff. Gravel crunched under the tires as I rolled through a thicket of pine trees until finally I came to a stop at the end of the gravel parking area.

When I turned off the motor, the silence was thick. This was way out in the middle of nowhere. A stone church with a steeple was to my left and to my right there was nothing but woods.

I hurtled out of my car.

“Jennifer!” I yelled.

My voice echoed back to me. The air smelled like sunshine and cedar.

“Jennifer!” I yelled again. “Jennifer! I'm here! Where are you?”

I started running toward the church. The doors were locked, so I stepped into the grass along the side so I could peer into the windows. The old building had been modernized on one side. Lots of fancy weddings up here, probably.

But there was no one inside the church now. It was dark. Deserted.

“Jennifer!” I screamed and turned around, thinking maybe she was hiding in the woods.

She was standing behind me, in muddy and torn jeans and a sweatshirt splattered with blood. It had been the better part of a year since I'd seen her and she looked at once younger and older than I remembered. Her freckled face was pale. Her green eyes were narrowed. She was thin like a wire, too. So much thinner than she'd been.

“Hey,” she said, with that half-grin of hers and a wave. The same grin and wave she had given me every day I dropped her off at school. The same grin and wave she had given me from the top bunk in our room in the trailer.

“Oh thank God!” I sighed, weaving for a moment on suddenly unsteady feet. But I got it together and hurtled toward her, my arms aching to hug her.

“You shouldn't have come,” she said, dropping the grin and shaking her head at me like I had disappointed her. I stopped in my tracks.

“What?”
Shit. Oh. Shit.

“You know you shouldn't have come.”

“You called.”
Please. Please don't be true. Let me have the hope and faith and wishes.

“I didn't call. He did!” She jabbed her finger behind me, and I knew. I didn't have to turn to know Lagan was there, but I did it anyway.

“Hello, Olivia,” he said. I stared down the dark barrel of the gun he held on me. His white linen suit was a mess. Wrinkled and bloody. His hair, usually slicked back, flopped down over his eyes in a greasy curtain he kept smoothing back up over his forehead like it helped.

“What…are you doing?” I asked, scrambling for Plan B. God, that was my whole life wasn't it? Scrambling for Plan B.

“Recovering my assets,” he said, and stepped out of the shadows until the three of us were standing on the sunlit green lawn beside the church. The wind blew and I could smell Lagan—sour and foul. If deranged had a scent, this was it.

“You can let Jennifer go,” I said. “You wanted me. I'm here.”

Lagan's eyes filled with pity but he was silent. Shit. Things were bad when Lagan was silent.

“Let her go!” I screamed. “I'm here. You can shoot me. You can rape me. Take me to your new compound. I don't care. Let Jennifer—”

“Olivia.” Jennifer came to stand beside me, her arm around my waist, and I immediately clung to the sudden familiar comfort of my sister against me. I couldn't believe how much I'd missed it. I put my arm around her and we stood there, a solid front against Lagan's gun and insanity. “Just stop talking,” she whispered in my hair. “Don't egg him on.”

“Excellent advice,” Lagan nodded.

“What are we waiting for?”

“My real asset.”

Real asset. Real asset.

“Max,” I breathed, and I felt my knees buckle. Jennifer held me up. Kept me standing. This was about Max. About the drugs.

“He won't come for me,” I said. Lagan's eyes narrowed. “You think I'm lying but I'm not. He doesn't know where I am.”

“He will when I tell him.”

I forced myself to give him nothing. Not one thing. “He still won't come for me. He's left the MC behind. He's gone straight.”

He gave me a brief pitying look and I felt that raft of hope and faith and wishes splinter apart.

“He's on his way. He's been texting me all morning.”

“Fuck you!” I roared and shook off Jennifer's arms, charging Lagan. I could take his gun. Put a bullet in his head. End this forever.

But I didn't get close.

Casually, as if I were a door that needed to be shut, Lagan reached forward and smacked me across the face with the hand that held his gun. I staggered to the side and would have fallen on the ground if Jennifer hadn't grabbed me.

“Shut. Up.” Jennifer breathed in my hair. “Please. He's totally unhinged.”

Blood pooled in my mouth and I spat it on the ground. My heart sank into my feet and then lower. Right out of my body.

Max would come. Of course he would come. Because I meant more than his own freedom. His own life.

And that would be the end of him.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why didn't you just ask him to meet?”

“Because I have learned in the last few hours that no one can be trusted. That kindness and freedom are rewarded only with deceit and betrayal. Isn't that right, Jennifer?”

Jennifer nodded like her neck was broken, a shaky jerky thing.

“Who…who betrayed you?” I asked. I could feel Jennifer trembling against me and I didn't know if it was from fear or shock or anger.

“Gwen,” he said.

I had been right. The informant had been Gwen. Gwen, the old woman who recruited us into the camp. The motherly type who'd seemed so trustworthy and kind. “What happened?”

“She's been talking to the FBI, telling them our plans. She was going to bring them down on our heads.”

“He killed her,” Jennifer said. “Shot her in the head, right in front of everyone.”

“Because she deserved it!” he screamed, spittle flying, hair flopping.

“And then you made all those women and children take the pills!” Jennifer yelled back and I grabbed ahold of her sweatshirt; this time it was me pulling her back. “What did those children do to deserve that?”

“Better to have died in peace than to have their lives shattered by outsiders.”

“You don't even believe that!” Jennifer cried. “You just didn't want anyone alive to talk.”

Lagan lifted his eyebrows. “Perhaps that is something you should remember.”

“Jennifer,” I breathed. “Stop. We can't stop him like this.”

“You can't stop me at all,” Lagan said. “Didn't you learn that lesson already? You and your ridiculous bombs. You can't beat me. I have the power of the Lord on my side. What do you have, Olivia? What have you ever had? Give me your phone.”

I pulled it from my pocket and threw it. It landed in the grass a few feet from him. He rolled his eyes at my petty mutiny and stepped forward and smashed it with his foot.

I sucked in a breath at the sound of the screen cracking.

Now, there was no way I could warn Max. No way I could stop what was coming.

I had been a fool to believe I could.

Lagan walked behind us while Jennifer led me to a stone shed at the end of the clearing, nearly hidden beneath the trees. The wooden door was open. Outside the door was a pile of stakes and spades, shovels and lawnmower blades.

Everything we could have used as a weapon.

I remembered my gun in the drawer at the condo with a frantic fondness.

Lagan was a very thorough lunatic.

“In you get,” he said, waving the gun toward the door, and like docile little sheep, we did what he asked. The door shut behind us and I heard the scrape and click of a padlock. The shed was full of lawn equipment and smelled like grass and motor oil.

It was dark except for the small bit of sunlight streaming in through a high window.

I turned to face Jennifer, cataloging all the changes, the thinness and the fierceness.

“I'm sorry,” I breathed. “About Gwen and the kids.” She turned her face away, staring at the dust motes in the sunlight coming through that high window. “That must have been awful.”

“It was my fault.”

“Oh no,” I whispered, putting my hands on her shoulders, stroking her arms through her sweatshirt. Her hands were freezing cold and I held them between mine, trying to warm them up. “I know it can feel like that sometimes, but that was Lagan—”

“I was the informer.” Jennifer's eyes pierced right through me.

“You…what?” I must not have heard her right because there was no way my baby sister had been—

“I was the informer. I have been for a year.”

“Since before I left?”

“Since practically the moment we got there. I knew you thought we'd landed in some kind of happy commune, but I knew where we were. I knew what Lagan was. And there were kids—” She stopped, turning her head away, her throat working like she was swallowing back bile. “As soon as he started letting me go into town with Gwen on the supply runs, I contacted the FBI.”

God. She was so different. So changed. Where was my little sister? The girl I left behind in that compound was not the girl standing beside me. Woman, I guess. She was hard as nails. So hard, I felt soft compared to her.

“All that time,” I said. “Why didn't—?”

I couldn't even finish that sentence.
Why didn't you tell me the place was bad news? Why didn't you tell me you were an FBI informer? Why didn't you tell me you were no longer a child?

“Because I've been doing what you tell me all my life,” she said. “And I knew once you figured it out, you would want to leave. And I wasn't going to leave those kids. Not with Lagan.”

“You're so brave,” I said, feeling so cowardly.

“If I am, it's because you showed me how.” She pressed her forehead to mine and I sighed, feeling like I was being put back together in some way.

“I'm sorry I made you go there,” I breathed. “I'm sorry I left you there to do this alone.”

“Olivia,” Jennifer pulled me into her arms. Her hug was even different. Sharper. Harder. Ferocious. Like she knew how fragile we all were and how hard you had to hold on to keep things from falling apart. “Please stop blaming yourself for everything. You kept us alive and safe against impossible odds more times than I can count.”

“Well, I think the odds are no longer in our favor.”

“They never have been,” Jennifer said, smiling at me a little. “That's never stopped us before. When things get tough, we get tougher. Remember?”

“I remember,” I sighed like I was simply resigned to being tougher. Jennifer smiled and put her head on my shoulder and I hugged her to me. My hand, stroking her hair. This was familiar and beloved. And so, so missed. “I've missed you,” I whispered into her hair.

“I missed you, too. So much.”

“Have you searched this place for anything we could use as a weapon?”

“Yep. There's some fertilizer spray, but the container is empty.”

“Can we wiggle out the window?”

“Locked.”

“We could break the glass—”

“He's right outside, Olivia.”

“Yeah…I guess you're right.”

“There's two of us now,” she said. “So I figure our odds are improving.”

“True. And Max is coming.”

We made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the riding mower, and we sat there, with Jennifer's head on my shoulder, hands clasped for a long time.

“What's the story with this Max guy?”

I laughed. “You want to talk about my love life, now?”

Her head whipped up and she stared at me with her mouth open. “Love life?”

Oh Lord, I could feel myself blushing.

“Oh my God, are you in love with an outlaw biker? And you always gave me such a hard time about my boyfriends.” She squealed like the twenty-something she was underneath all the damage I'd brought down on her head.

“He's not my boyfriend and he's not a biker anymore.” I didn't think. “And I'm not…in…love.”

“So what are you in?”