Page 120 of Brimstone Hollow

“But you know what,” Thelma says. “I find a Tupperware of cookies can get you in just about anywhere.”

“I’ll remember that,” I say.

“I’ll give you my recipe.”

She leans in closer and gives me an appraising look.

“They say you’ll live,” she says, her voice quavering slightly.

It’s the same thing they told me. I’ll live. Whether or not I’ll regain the use of my right hand remains in question.

“I’m so sorry about what happened,” she says.

“You didn’t have anything to do with this.”

She grimaces. “I’m afraid I did. I hear it was my Ambien that Will used to knock out poor Gavin.”

“Where is Gavin?” I ask. “The last I heard, they were taking him into surgery.”

“Yes, honey. He’s out now. He’s going to make it. They said the shot nicked his lung but he’s going to be all right.”

“Did they find Will?” I ask. “He ran away.”

“Yes,” she says. “He went right back into the parsonage. Officer Jeanine found him. He left a trail of blood.”

“I shot him,” I say. “I thought I did but I wasn’t sure.”

“Yes, honey, you did.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wish I didn’t have to but—”

She waves me off and says, “Well, he ain’t dead. Not even close. The shot grazed his hip, that’s all. Couple stitches and he’s gonna be fine. But, oh Lord, he was bleeding all over the carpet in the parsonage. We’ll never get the stains out. Anyhow, he ended up confessing everything to Jeanine. It was him dug up what we thought was Ezra’s grave, him that hid Nathaniel Nickels’s body. And him that convinced Roman Bradley to help Ezra fake his death. Lord… I wish I’d known.”

She sniffs. Behind her, the door opens again and Hollis squeezes into the room.

“I heard you tangled with a snake and lived,” he says. “So, I figured I’d come and see for myself. Damn, you look rough.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Hollis, you’ve got no manners at all,” Thelma says, swatting him. “That’s not how you talk to a lady.”

“She ain’t a lady,” he says. “She’s a PI. She can handle it. How you doing, kid? They got you on the strong stuff?”

I laugh and say, “I don’t think they even stock the strong stuff anymore.”

“I could bring you some pizza,” Hollis says.

“Maybe later,” I say. And now he looks more worried than before.

Thelma takes in a deep breath through her nose, then shakes her head gently and says, “You pulled apart a real nest of vipers, Miss Gore.”

And I think back to the start of all this. Everything that’s happened since. Everything that happened before I even arrived.

From Dean Griffon hearing about Ezra making a move on his girlfriend to Joel Shepherd siccing Nathaniel Nickels on both Billy Shepherd and Ezra King, and all of it going so sideways that Ezra felt compelled to useWill’s past relationship with Roman Bradley to blackmail the coroner into helping him fake his death. And that was only the start.

Since I got here, I’d had my brakes cut, dug up an empty coffin, found Ezra King in the church, witnessed a suicide, been hired by a convict to find a severed finger, and I’d topped it off by getting bitten by a snake, shooting a young minister, stanching a wound with a maxi pad, and nearly dying in the car of the cop who killed the man I’d been sent here to investigate.

“All in a day’s work, huh?” Hollis says, patting my shoulder.