Page 17 of Hell and Halos

CHAPTER 5

Mercy.

Don't think about it.

Cash drives and I load the shotguns.

We got five long guns and I'm workin' through 'em one by one. Can't shoot more than one at a time, that's just physics, but havin' them loaded matters because you don't always get to pick which one's in your hands when it starts.

Three handguns from Cash's desk drawer—already loaded—sit between us in the console between the truck seats, and a fourth, found in the glovebox, slides back and forth across the dashboard like a pack of cigarettes, waitin' patient for me to slip a mag in.

Neither of us talks.

I shove shells into the first Remington, thumbin' them home one after another, the brass clickin' against the loading gate as the truck bounces hard over the dirt road that cuts across the acres from the house toward the creek. The ruts are so deep that the headlights jump and stutter across the scrub, throwin' shadows that look like runnin' animals until they're not.

Cash is white-knucklin' the wheel, his jaw set like he's bitin' down on somethin' he can't swallow and can't spit out.

I rack the Remington, set it between my knees, grab the last one.

Eastern Montana in late fall at night is just shapes. The hills out here aren't hills, they're craggy, broken teeth that ride the ridge line, bitten off by wind, and time, and whatever geological meanness put them there in the first place. And there's just enough moon to make them look like a threat.

Shell. Shell. Shell. Shell. I shove 'em in.

Cash takes a hard left without warnin' and I slam shoulder-first into the passenger door, and a shotgun swings wide across my lap. Three empty ammo boxes and the handgun slide off the dashboard. The gun lands in my lap like fate, the ammo boxes land on the floor next to my boots.

Cash doesn't apologize. Doesn't even look over. He just corrects the wheel, and the truck bites into the new rut, and we keep goin'.

I finish loadin' the last shotgun. Rack it. Set it barrel-down in the footwell.

Mercy.

Don't think about it.

I shuffle through the open glovebox for the loaded mag Cash said was in there, find it, shove it into place with a satisfyin' click, and say, "Done."

What's next? We're about five minutes out and I can't have idle hands or I'll go crazy.

I pick up my phone to text Savannah. Cash and I were in such a hurry, I didn't even update her.

Mike's text comes in first.

It's a voice memo. I press play.

"I know all your secrets, Legion Kane. I know exactly where your bodies are buried. You best call me back in the next sixty seconds."

"Who the fuck?" Cash asks, not even sparin' a glance in my direction.

"Never mind," I say, gripping the bar above the window to steady myself as Cash takes the truck off road. "I'll deal with him later. Just drive faster."

He does. He guns it and the truck hits rut after rut as we ascend a srcubby hill, then, like something out of a dream, we crest it and the silo comes into view, lit up and glowin' with last summer's fairy lights.

First thing I notice is… there's no car here. No truck, no motorcycle, no horse.

Nothin'.

It feels wrong immediately.

Cash turns sharp, barely avoiding a tree stump, sliding his way into a sideways parkin’ job outside the silo door. I'm out before the truck even stops. Shotgun in hand, stormin' the door.