He went silent and eased them to a halt along the roadside, approaching a trailer. There were two cars and three trucks sprawled half on the patchy front lawn like beached whales.
“Motherfucker,” Casey breathed. The far pickup was navy blue, and a good fifteen, twenty years old to judge by the headlights’ glaucoma. “Could that be the truck?”
“One way to know for sure.” Miah got out and pulled the rifle from behind his seat. Fuck, that wasn’t a good sign. Still, Casey secured the pistol at his own back and followed, jogging to keep up.
Miah wasn’t discreet. He circled the truck, boots crunching on the gravel shoulder. The bed was loaded with crap—a shitty old chair and cardboard boxes, trash bags that looked to be maybe stuffed with clothes, like somebody was planning on moving out, and in a hurry. Crouching, Miah inspected the plate, and Casey did the same. Though he couldn’t say it was a shock, he still got chills when he saw the dirt clinging to it, in the perfect outline to mark where a sticky length of duct tape had once been pressed.
Miah stared at it for a long breath, then murmured, “I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“Dude—”
He was up, striding toward the house. Casey dashed behind to catch up, just as the door to the trailer popped open.
A slender pale man of thirty or so stood on the threshold, keys dangling from one hand, an army green frame pack in the other. He had a narrow face and stood about Casey’s height. Bundled up and wearing a balaclava, he could easily have been taken for James Ware, if that was who you’d been expecting. He got one foot on the cinder block standing in for a front step and froze, eyes growing wide.
Miah kept on marching, the rifle swinging right along like an extension of his arm. “And just where the fuck do you think you’re off to?” he shouted.
“Fuck,” was all Chris Bean said before dropping his pack and hitting the dirt, running at full-tilt for Christ knew where, aimed at the badlands.
Miah was a dozen paces behind him and gaining. “You stop or I will fucking shoot you in the back!”
Casey got his own weapon drawn but kept the safety on. He hoped to hell Miah had the sense to have done the same.
He found out only seconds later that the answer was no.
The shot rang out in the still morning air, and an instant later Bean went loping off on long, splayed steps, one leg seeming to give out on him as he tumbled headlong into the scrub grass. Miah tackled him as he tried to stand, the impact of his body snapping through Bean’s and knocking his face against the earth.
Casey skidded to a halt beside them on pebbles and rocks.
Miah fisted Bean’s jacket at the shoulders, flipped him over, and slammed him against the ground so hard his head bounced back like whiplash. “Why?”
“I had to,” the guy gasped. His nose was bleeding from his first collision with the dirt, making his words gurgle. He looked about a breath from passing out, and not only on account of the flesh wound and the impact—his eyes were glazed and unfocused, chest rising and falling like mad, words slurred from more than a head injury, Casey bet. The guy was as fucking high as a kite.
“I had to,” Bean sputtered again. “They would’ve hurt my wife if I didn’t.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t even know. They never gave me names. They gave—” His chest jerked and he coughed, eyes growing hazy, drool slicking his lips.
“They gave you what?” Casey demanded. They needed answers before this cocksucker went into shock.
“Gave me money,” he wheezed. “First just to tell them—tell them where to start a fire. Which building. What time. Then they—then they made me do it.”
“Who?” Miah gave him another violent shake.
“Calm the fuck down,” Casey said. “You’re gonna knock him out.”
“I don’t know,” Bean said, sobbing now. “I don’t know. Just some guy, who worked for somebody else. No names.”
“And you said yes?” Miah hissed. “After every goddamn thing my father did for you? Every fucking chance he gave you to clean your ass up?”
“I didn’t—I didn’t know it was him.”
Miah’s expression sharpened, tense body stilling by a degree. “What?”
“I didn’t know, until it was already burning. I thought—I thought it was you. When he came in, he had his back to me. It was dark. He was wearing a black hat—he always wore a white one, before.”
Miah sank back on his heels slowly, eyes wide, tanned skin going pale.
“It was you they wanted,” the man wailed, then turned over, curling up on his side, racked by sobs. “I thought it was you I talked to when I called about the tractor. It was your name on the ad.” But not Miah’s number, apparently—probably just the office line. “By the time I realized, it was too late.”
Casey could only stare at his friend, feeling struck.
“Why me?” Miah asked, the rage gone from his voice.
“They said you were in the way. That’s all they told me, I swear. They said, ‘We need him out of the way.’”
“Out of the way of what?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. They just told me, ‘Get rid of him.’”
“What’d they give you? Fucking money?”
“I got busted for selling. They paid my bail. I was gonna get ten years, but they told me they’d get me off if I helped them out.”
That gave Casey pause. Who the fuck would have the power to make that promise? A crooked judge, a lawyer? Whoever’d brought the charges? What reason would anybody in such a position have to want Miah dead? Unless it had simply been an empty promise, used to manipulate this addled burnout . . .
“When they told me what they wanted in return,” Bean went on, “I said I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. But then they threatened to hurt my wife.” He began gasping, the sounds of a panic attack closing in.
“Who? Fucking who?” Miah shouted.
When the man didn’t answer, Miah shot to his feet and kicked him square in the ribs. Casey scrambled to standing and pulled him back while Bean wheezed and clutched his middle. “You can’t kill him.”
“Why the fuck not?” Miah bellowed, his entire body thrashing in Casey’s arms. “He meant to do the same to me! He fucking killed my dad!”
Casey managed to wrestle Miah to the dirt, pinning him on his belly as he swore and bucked. Bean was whimpering now, maybe even crying, voice growing fainter by the second, words sounding wet from more than tears, as though he were choking on something.
“You kill him,” Casey told Miah, right in his ear, “and we never find out who hired him, you got that? You kill him and the person who wanted you fucking dead walks away from all this. Now this motherfucker’s fucking choking or some shit, so I’m gonna let you up, and I’m gonna call nine-one-one, and you’re not gonna touch him, you got that? We’re gonna let the authorities take him, and they’ll get you some answers. But you do not fucking touch him, you understand me? Your mom needs you too fucking bad right now for you to mess this shit up.”
Miah went still. His face was jammed to one side, flushed red from the rage and the dust, equally. He didn’t reply, but Casey had no choice but to take his body language as a truce. He stood, eyeing Miah as he pulled his phone out and dialed the digits. Miah sat up, facing away from Casey and the man on the ground, and hugged his knees.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I need an ambulance, and the police. There’s a guy on the ground—he’s been shot and I think he’s on drugs. He tried to kill my friend,” Casey said, realizing with a chill that it wasn’t merely a fib to imply self-defense. It was true.