Page 77 of The Chain House

“Yeah,” Sam said, although he didn’t feel like eating anything.

“Good,” Givens said. “Because there’s a table set for two in there.” When Sam paused, confused, Givens said, “Last meal. Remember?”

Yeah, thought Sam, that’s right … steak and potatoes.

And he imagined Batise liked his steak rare.

CHAPTER38

TREVOR SLOWLY TURNED inside the circle of folding chairs, inside the old dining room of Sal Batise’s Freedom Ranch house.

Lizzie, standing in the doorway, arms folded, said, “See what I mean?”

He nodded, took it all in like any good raven would, feeling like a different man now after whatever catharsis had happened between the two of them and his nightmare memories inside the kitchen moments ago. But she was right. It was clear. Not only was this house still being used, but a meeting of sorts had taken place here, recently. By the smell of cigarette smoke in the air, very recently. And as she’d pointed out, showing him through the window, where two of the four panes of glass had been shattered, the tall grass all around the cabin looked trampled under tire tracks. Several. And if all the chairs in the circle had been full, that meant ten people had met here to discuss something. An empty Sprite can sat next to the legs of one chair, a spent cigarette butt resting on top. Twelve Coors bottles rested in various spots around the circle of chairs, all of them dead soldiers except for one that was open and nearly full. The cardboard case they’d come in had been discarded and partially stomped in the far corner.

If only Trevor could have been a fly on the wall for whatever meeting this had been. But on the heels of what was about to happen with Sal Batise, his own brother, in less than four hours now, this location where a secret meeting had recently taken place, inside the very house Sal used to live, was too much of a coincidence. Everything he remembered of his brother, from childhood up to the day Trevor had turned him in, was cloaked in manipulation and anger. But beyond all, revenge. His brother spoke of revenge so often that Little Tommy Batise had eventually bought into it, fallen prey to it, and had been brainwashed by The Collective. He was the repressed, he was the slighted and the downtrodden, and they’d all been convinced they would not rest until the elite world was gone. He could remember Sal preaching to his followers, in these very woods, about the Haves and the Have-Nots …

… because even when the Haves show kindness, it’s masked by pity and shame and disgust, and deep down they all secretly wish the guttersnipes would return to the gutters …

“And one day we’ll have our revenge,” Trevor said softly, to himself, using the same words his brother so often used, but he realized it all came back to revenge.

And Sal’s voice from the past again returned in full …

… and there will be an event to change it all, a trigger, and every chain we’ve forged in life, every chain that had been thrust upon us by a society who has never cared, will be broken … and the Breaker of Chains will …

“Trevor,” Lizzie said.

He turned to face her, saw she was holding a crumpled piece of paper.

“I found this on the floor.” She held it out to him.

He took it with caution, turned it over. The words written on it revealed a list of eight names. His gut told him they were all wealthy men and women.

“The fires,” Lizzie said.

Trevor nodded. Three of the eight names on the list had already fallen victim to arson in the past twelve hours, all around Twisted Tree and neighboring Ransom.

“He’s got something planned,” Trevor said of his brother.

“What?” Lizzie asked. “Class war?”

“Maybe,” he said, thinking of the fire he and Annie had set to the Kitchen House twenty years ago before trying to flee with the children. “But I think these fires are just a diversion for something bigger.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he said, holding up a hand to quiet her.

A vehicle had pulled up outside the house. Two car doors closed.

Out the window, Trevor saw two rough-looking men approaching the porch, one white and one Black. Both pulled handguns from their waistlines and seemed eager to get inside and see why there was an unknown car parked out front.

Trevor had the baseball bat, but it was no viable defense against real weapons held by two men who looked more than willing to use them.

A real Raven, he knew, would fly away.

He looked at Lizzie, who’d just removed her top and was standing in a bra and now stepping out of her shorts, quickly, one leg and then the other. “What are you doing?” Trevor whispered, just as the men’s footsteps pressed heavy on the floors in the other room.

CHAPTER39