Page 110 of Brimstone Hollow

If only I hadn’t trustedhim.

Am I more angry with Dishman? Or myself?

“Hell. Fucking. No,” Bart says, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the kitchen. “Lady, you’re crazy if you think I’m gonna testify and—”

“He’ll do it,” Shepherd says suddenly, his cool, level gaze traveling from me to Bart. “You’ll do it. And if you do, everything I have besides Billy’s money is yours. If you won’t, I swear to Christ, I will burn all of this to the ground—the contacts, the farm location, everything I’ve built—and I will sure as hell take you along with it.”

“You’ll go right back to prison, old man!” Bart spits.

“You think I give a goddamn?” Shepherd says. Without warning, he slams his fist into the table. Madison jumps.

His brows knitted together, he stares me straight in the eye and says, “Do any of you think Iwantto be back here? In this… ruin of my life? We inherited this house from my granddaddy and we took care of it, put our hearts and souls into it. Me and Belinda. We had plans. Dreams. Our son was gonna be the first in our family to go to college. We were gonna be out of debt. Live a good life. Instead… what happened? I fucked up andall those Christmases and Easters, birthdays and—and funerals. I wasn’t here for any of it. And Belinda? She died… agonizing and slow and ugly and I wasn’t there to hold her like I fuckingpromised.”

He pauses, briefly, his jaw working as if holding back another coughing fit, and then he says, “Miss Gore, I stood in front of God and all those people andpromisedto take care of her and I didn’t and now she’sgone. And so’s the rest of my life. I don’t want to behere. In this house. I want to go back to prison. Only, I want to take care of my great-grandbaby first. It’s my last chance to do some good before I shuffle off. But thishouseis the last place I want to be. This is just a reminder of all my failures. All my sins.”

Bart’s big jaw clenches, the muscles in his thick neck and jaw working overtime.

Eventually he says, “Fine, old man. Fine. I’ll testify.”

Shepherd looks at me. His eyes are watery, almost cloudy. He looks wrung out. As if his heart’s still beating only by the sheer force of his will. He rubs his hand over the tabletop and then, in a whisper, says, “So, Annie Gore, do we have a deal?”

THIRTY-ONE

HEAT LIGHTNING FLASHES—BRILLIANT, SILVERYpurple—in the sky above what had once been Joel Shepherd’s fields. The Bronco spits gravel as I pull away. I glance at my watch. I still have at least an hour or so until Tina gets to town.

And then what? Would I have found and delivered that finger to Joel Shepherd? Or would I give it to the feds? Or maybe I’ll decide that it’s just not worth it. That Dishman’s a good man who made a bad choice and aren’t we all capable of that?

He saw the handwriting on the wall and, though the truth might have cost him his life, Daniel translated the message honestly…

That’s the story Will had told me my first night in Mount Zion. A story about a man who represented his people, who never backed down, never shied from the truth, even when it hurt him.

I breathe out a sigh as I drive, wondering whether it even matters. Thinking to myself that I’ve got no idea where this finger might be. I’ve already searched the church, after all. Granted, I was looking for a large book at the time, but I think I’d have noticed if I came across a man’s pointer digit. I could go back, make another search, but how would I get around the police presence? Despite Shepherd’s insistence that I’mbuddy-buddywith the cops, I doubt anyone besides Gavin would actually unlockthe doors for me and, even then, it’s a long shot. No, if I’m going to get in there, I’m going to need to be in and out quickly, before too many questions can be raised. Which means I need to know exactly where to look.

I pull onto the highway, thinking back through each room in the church. The sanctuary, the kitchen, the bathroom, the utility closet, the hallway, the office. If I were a crooked, drug-peddling, snake-handling preacher with a penchant for drama and a latent gambling addiction, where wouldIhide a finger?

After a few miles spent pointlessly racking my brain, I give up and simply call Will.

“A hiding place?” he responds, when I ask him about whether he’d ever seen Ezra secreting something away inside the church.

“Yeah,” I say. “It wouldn’t need to be very big. Can you think of anything like that?”

He grunts in frustration, straight into the receiver.

“I know this is hard, Will,” I say. “I just need to do this so I can—”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I can’t think of anything like that. Brother Ezra apparently had a lot of secrets. He wasn’t the man I thought he was and… no, I don’t know anything about it.”

He hangs up without another word and I blow out a lip trill of frustration, but, honestly, I can’t blame him. Realizing the man you look up to is a fraud can put you on edge.

I call Thelma instead.

“Miss Gore?” she answers. “Good Lord, I’d have thought you’d be halfway back to Louisville by now.”

I ask her about possible hiding places, whether she’s sure she never saw Ezra squirreling away anything small.

“Well, honey, I sure can’t think of anything like that. Shoot, I wish I knew. I hate that he was pulling the wool over all our eyes for so long. I feel awful about it. I never liked the snakes and I always thought he was a little too slick, but it comes with the territory a lot of the time. Every preacher seems to have his quirks, but I never thought he’d turn out to be such a wrong’un. Lord, I should’ve seen it.”

“No,” I say. “You couldn’t have known. Ezra King was good at what he did.”