Page 31 of Fire
Evan’s eyes go huge. “Do you know that dude?”
“His name is Dwight Brennan, and I fucking hate him.” I look at Evan. “I have a feeling I’m going hate him even more after your story.”
“I guess he’d been threatening to unalive me for a while because he didn’t like the fact he had a gay neighbor. Then there was some incident of mistaken identity that led Brennan to think it was me and Johnny who were hooking up instead of me and Hayden, and they sent Cash to kill me.”
That lines up with what I know about Johnny Devon being culled. “What a fucking soap opera.”
“Wait till I tell you about the next episode,” he says, as he starts petting Delilah more rapidly. “Right before finals, I found out Hayden had a girlfriend the whole time we’d been messing around. I’d grabbed Delilah and headed for the cabin so I could be miserable in private and not give in to the ‘it’s no big deal; we can still see each other’ texts he kept sending me.
“I studied for exams and wrote papers. One night, I woke up to the lake house on fire with a biker thug’s hand over my mouth telling me that the Reivers knew I was gay and they’d sent him to kill me. He described a pretty gory picture of what they would have done to me if it had been anyone but him who paid me a visit and that he was doing me a huge favor by just burning down the house and letting me escape with Delilah.”
As much as I hate the picture of Evan going through that, I know too well what Brennan and the Reivers crew he liked to hang with would have done to Evan if they’d caught up with him.
“Cash told me I couldn’t report it or even tell my parents because if they filed a police or insurance report, the Reivers might kill them and my little sisters.”
That tracks, too.
“I just kept lying. I didn’t know who poured gasoline through the house or who’d lit the rags that started the fire. The fire marshals didn’t have enough proof to charge me, but they warned my parents that my pyromania was probably the first sign of psychopathy.”
“Your parents believed them?”
The look of pure hurt on Evan’s face looks as fresh as it must have been when he was an eighteen-year-old who needed his parents to back him up.
“It’s nothing they hadn’t worried about before the fire. I’d always been a high-strung kid. Painfully shy, it was also hard for me to keep my emotions in check.” He grimaces. “I was always the kid whose birthday party invitation got lost in the mail. My younger sisters were both more like them—popular and self-assured. The children they didn’t have to feel guilty about being ashamed of. I think it was a relief when they finally had an excuse to distance themselves from me.”
“They kicked you out?”
“The way upper-middle-class families who are concerned about gossip do it.”
Since my social status growing up had been trailer trash, my face must show my confusion.
“When I came home from being interrogated, my bags were packed. On the way to the airport, my dad explained they couldn’t trust me to stay in the house with my little sisters and not light the house on fire, so they were sending me to Chicago to finish school, and I should not expect to return home.”
I want to find his parents right now and have a very long talk with them.
Evan’s fist clenches. “I was so angry and had no one to talk to about it. I went to a small private college, and the gossip about me being a pyromaniac, or worse, spread, and the other students treated me like my major was serial killing with a minor in body dismemberment.
“Probably not the healthiest coping method, but Cash became a focus on who I could direct my anger. When I started writing all those articles, he was the face of every Reiver I wrote about until he and Johnny showed up in Chicago and asked me to be a part of bringing down the Reivers.”
He lets out a long sigh. “Now, he might be dead. Along with Cyrus and Barry.”
My phone rings, and I go to hang up, but then I see it’s Eli calling. I pick up, and he updates me that the situation with Cash hasn’t changed, but he has one piece of positive news.
Once I hang up with Eli, I lead with the good news. “Cyrus made it. He has a bad concussion and had to have surgery on his arm, but he’s in stable condition and expected to make a full recovery.”
Evan slumps in relief and puts his head in his hands. He looks up with a cautious hope in his eyes. “And Barry?”
I shake my head. “He died from the impact of the crash.”
His face crumples. “He died because of me. Because I insisted on covering Freedom Festival in person, even though you told me it was a stupid security risk.”
I swerve to the side of the road and put the car in park. “Hey,” I say. He doesn’t look at me. “Hey,” I repeat, and gently cup his bruised face and turn it so he has to look at me.
“What happened to Barry is not your fault. Patriots Now is responsible for his death and for Cyrus nearly dying.”
“But—”
“No. You were a pawn in a sick game Patriots Now is playing.”
