The Lonesome Young (2 page)

“Give or take? Give or
take
? Are you insane?” I was shouting, but I didn’t care. “Somebody could have been hurt, Ethan. You promised Pa—”

Ethan’s harsh bark of laughter shut me up. He was still staring at the fire, still not meeting my eyes.

“Somebody could have been hurt? Look closer, Mickey. They’ve pulled at least five bodies out of that fire,” Ethan said.

My gut clenched. “Five? You—are they yours?”

But he was shaking his head. “This isn’t my place. At least four of them aren’t from around here, but there’s a rumor that a local was in there. Somebody took advantage of my vacation behind bars to move into my territory. Now we’re going to find out who.”

He stood up fast as a rattlesnake strike and grabbed my arm. “You won’t want to mention any of it to Pa.”

I yanked my arm out of his grasp. “Don’t tell me what to do. You did this, didn’t you? To destroy the competition. Only out of jail since yesterday—”

“And I’m not about to go back. So shut your damn mouth. Or are you planning to put me in the hospital like you did those boys at school?”

He waited a beat, as if judging whether he’d unleashed something darker than irritation, but I’d learned my lesson. I kept a white-knuckled hold on my self-control these days, because if I didn’t, I was afraid I’d go too far. If I let the rage loose, I might hurt somebody beyond reason or understanding. Beyond repair or redemption.

They might not end up in the hospital this time—they might end up dead.

“Don’t push me, Ethan,” I finally said, with what I thought was admirable calm. “You might not like what happens.”

“Welcome to my life. I don’t know how to do anything else
but
push, baby brother,” he said.

When I didn’t reply, he shrugged, dismissing me, and headed off toward Pa.

I followed him, wondering why it had taken Pa so long to get here, when he’d been at the same barbecue as the rest of us. The answer became clear when another man stepped out of the passenger side of Pa’s sheriff car.

This guy was no deputy. He stood ramrod straight like he had a stick shoved up his ass, and the suit he wore fit him perfectly and probably cost more than my bike. Nobody held themselves like that around here unless they were ex-military or blue-blood horse folk who’d had lessons on posture fed to them on silver spoons along with everything else in their lives.

Ethan stopped dead so abruptly I almost ran into him. “What the hell is old lady Whitfield’s son doing here?”

“That’s Richard Whitfield? Are you sure?”

Ethan shot me a scornful look. “I’ve met him before, when Pa used to drag me along to county fairs and crap like that before you came along.”

I caught the unspoken accusation. Ethan and Jeb blamed my mom for taking Pa away from their mom, even though Pa hadn’t even met my mother until a year after he’d divorced theirs. They also blamed me for taking Pa’s attention away from them and their sister, and there was probably some truth to that. In the early days, Pa had just wanted to get as far away from Anna Mae as possible, although he’d tried to stay in touch with the boys and his daughter, my half sister, Caroline.

Caro’d gone a little wild in her teens, though, and now she was a single mom to two sweet, angelic little girls who looked like their fathers. Their two
different
fathers, neither of whom had been seen or heard from after knocking Caro up. We didn’t see much of Caro, either, these days. A twinge of guilt ran through me at the thought.

Pa must feel like a failure sometimes. He was the sheriff, but his daughter was an unwed mother living on welfare, and his two oldest boys were running drugs with their mother. No wonder he’d lost his mind when I’d had my . . .
incident
 . . . at school.

My steps slowed down as we got close. My father was not happy to see us, if the scowl on his face was any clue.

“What are you two doing here? This is a crime scene,” he snapped. “Out of here, now.”

He moved his stocky body as if to block us from Whitfield, but it was too late. The man’s gaze flashed from Pa to Ethan to me, burning holes of contempt along the way. He pointed at me.

“Another Rhodale in the litter, Sheriff? When is this one going to end up in jail?” His voice was like a whiplash.

Ethan laughed in his face. “Louisville not work out for you? We heard you had to tuck your tail between your legs and run home to live with your
mommy
.”

I had a moment to wonder why Ethan would be so knowledgeable about what the Whitfields were up to before Pa knocked him back with a hard shove to the shoulder.

“Why don’t you get out of here? Mr. Whitfield is here to identify the body of one of his employees, not to get in a pissing match,” Pa said, shooting a hard stare at me when neither of the other two were looking.

That stare was the “Mickey, I know you’re the youngest, but please do something with your brothers” expression he’d given me since we were all kids rolling around in the dirt together. I hadn’t seen it since the
incident
, so he must have been desperate.

Somehow, with Ethan, any ordinary conversation or disagreement could instantly turn into a dangerous brawl. He’d sent my brother Jeb and me to the hospital at least a half-dozen times between us. Finally, when Ethan was sixteen and attending my eleventh birthday party, I’d lost my temper and broken his nose after he’d smashed my cake. It had taken several minutes for them to calm me down and peel me off him, but he’d been too big for me to really hurt him after I’d gotten in that one good shot to his nose.

My mom had cried, drunk half a bottle of wine, and made me write an essay on the evils of violence. Then she’d called Anna Mae and told her Ethan was banned from our house.

Peculiarly enough, that also had been the first time Ethan had ever shown me any respect. And now? Now people painted me with the same brush they painted him:

Just another violent, dangerous, worthless Rhodale, in spite of our father’s job as sheriff. Some reputations were harder to shed than others. And, after all, I
had
put two guys in the hospital not so long ago.

But I’d do it again.

There was a shout from one of the firefighters.

“Ethan, Mick, you should go. Let my guys and the firefighters do their jobs,” Pa said, moving subtly so he was standing between Whitfield and my hot-tempered brother.

“I’ve heard about you,” Whitfield said, pointing now at Ethan. “Your stellar rise in the criminal underworld. Your time in jail.”

“I think you’ve been watching too many
Godfather
movies, Mr. Whitfield,” Pa said. “This is Kentucky. We don’t have a criminal underworld. Ethan had a spot of trouble, but—”

Ethan viciously shook off my restraining hand. “Don’t apologize for me, Pa, especially not to this asshole. What was his
employee
doing at a known drug-cooking location? Are you turning to crystal after you bombed in Louisville, Whitfield?”

Whitfield’s face contorted and I thought he was going to throw the first punch, but after a few tense moments he exhaled and backed down.

“Maybe you should keep a better grip on this lowlife son of yours before he ends up right back in the cage he weaseled his way out of,” he told Pa. “Now, are you going to direct me to the body or not?”

He stalked off toward the fire trucks, where, I now saw, a row of plastic-sheet-covered bodies had been laid out, waiting for the ambulances or the medical examiner to pick them up. I swallowed, hard, past the lump that was suddenly lodged in my throat.

Ethan snarled something under his breath, but he headed the other way, toward his bike.

“Five dead bodies, and I’m pretty sure one of them was Caleb Stuart,” Pa said grimly, as he watched his eldest son stalk off. “The other four I’ve never seen before, although one of them was too badly burned for me to be sure. We’ll have to wait for ID.”

“Caleb? One of the—the bodies?” Caleb had been a year ahead of me in school. He was a good guy. We’d played football . . . and now he was gone?

“He went to work for the Whitfields this summer on the ranch,” I said after a moment, making the connection.

“Yeah. I’m not sure if Richard Whitfield even notices the faces of the hired hands, but their foreman had gone to the airport or something, so I got stuck asking that asshole to come out,” Pa said. “Now get out of here. Make sure your brother goes too, and takes his idiot friends with him. Tell him that if I see a single civilian on this scene after the next three minutes, I’ll have one of my deputies arrest him for obstruction.”

He turned and took a long look at the fire. “That trailer is probably going to blow again, and the explosion could kill even more people if we’re not careful. Who the hell knows what kind of chemicals are in the back where the flames are just reaching now?”

Without another glance at me or at Ethan, Pa took off after Whitfield, leaving me yet again to be the go-between in his weak-willed attempts to control Ethan. The anger caught in my throat dropped down and took up residence in my gut.

I wanted off this merry-go-round.

We’d had months of peace while Ethan had been locked up, especially after I’d finished my required hours of community service. I hadn’t minded the community part of the gig—I’d always gone with Mom to her various causes and events, anyway—but the service part had been cleaning up the side of the highway. Long hours out in the fierce Kentucky summer sunshine hadn’t done much for my mood or my patience, which had been the opposite of what the asshole judge had planned.

“Maybe this will wear you out, so you can stay out of trouble,”
he’d said, peering at me over his half-glasses and sneering. I’d heard later that his sister’s nephew had been best friends with one of the guys I’d hurt. Nepotism was alive and well in Whitfield County, and it had jumped up and kicked me in the nuts.

In spite of that, it had been a fairly peaceful summer. While Ethan had been in jail, Jeb had played at being the big boss, but he didn’t have the brains or the balls to take Ethan’s place, and everybody, including Jeb, knew it. Pa had never been able to stand up to Anna Mae, either, but she’d been unusually quiet with Ethan away. Plotting, probably, like a spider in her hillbilly lair.

I headed toward Ethan, picturing his reaction to being threatened with arrest by his own father. Maybe he’d freak out completely, and I’d get to punch him after all, so the evening wouldn’t be a
total
loss.

Just then, a Chevy rolled up and parked. The truck from the side of the road, I realized. A man I didn’t know jumped out and ran past me toward the fire, and when I turned back toward the truck, the girl who’d silently stared at me before was doing it again.

All thoughts of Ethan and arrests scattered, and I stared stupidly back at her.

Beautiful.

Shouts from behind me snapped me out of it, as the emergency personnel kicked it up another notch in their efforts. The fire roared like a wild, living thing and the heat was intense now, even this far away. If county legend was true and Rhodales all did end up in hell, this was a damn good preview.

And yet there
she
was—looking like a lost angel with her blond hair whipping in the hot wind.

My brother and his goons fired up their bikes, and I ran toward her.

“We have to get out of here. That trailer is going to blow,” I told her. “Get back in your truck and follow me out.”

I was three strides past her when I glanced back and realized she hadn’t moved. I turned around.

“Did you hear me?”

Her cool gaze was like ice shivering over the exposed surfaces of my skin as she studied me. Judged me, maybe.

Dismissed me.

She shrugged—the slightest of movement of her shoulders. Suddenly I wanted to shout at her, or shake her, or throw her in the truck and drive away with her.

I did none of those things.

“My father is the sheriff, and he said anybody who isn’t out of here inside of three minutes will be arrested,” I said, as calmly as I could. “That was two minutes ago.”

She raised one delicate eyebrow. “Then I guess he’ll have to arrest me, because Pete just headed toward the fire and I’m not leaving him.”

CHAPTER 3

Victoria

H
e was gorgeous: tall, dark, and definitely dangerous. The gleam in his bright blue eyes told me he wasn’t used to anybody defying him, and his sculpted cheekbones and long, lean body told me that most girls wouldn’t want to even try. But I wasn’t about to leave Pete there, so he’d have to get over it Waves of dark hair brushed the collar of his leather jacket when he turned his head, and suddenly I knew that this was the boy from the motorcycle. I started to say something—what, exactly, I didn’t know—but then he grabbed my arm, and I instinctively shoved him away, pushing against a shoulder that was all hard muscle. He immediately let go of my arm and took a half-step back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, but it’s not safe here. You need to leave,
now
,” he said, glancing at the fire and then at me.

“I’ll leave when Pete is ready to go,” I said.

I started to turn away, and the jerk had the nerve to pick me up by the waist and start walking toward the truck. I pushed at the steel band of an arm that was still holding me pinned to his body, but it was like trying to move a thousand-pound horse who’d decided to lean on me while I brushed him.

“Let. Me. Go,” I gritted out from between clenched teeth.

“That trailer might blow up again, and you could get hurt, and then some of these folks would have to waste time taking care of you instead of stopping the fire,” he said, and I could hear the exasperation in his voice. “Is that what you want?”

When he put it like that, it sounded reasonable. “Fine. Let me down.”

He stopped and put me down, but stood staring at me as if he didn’t really believe I meant what I’d said. Suspicion or confusion drew his eyebrows together, and I caught myself wanting to reach up and touch his face. Smooth out the lines of distrust in his forehead. What was the matter with me?