Page 19 of Lone Star

He wasn’tsoft.

When was the last time you hit somebody?a traitorous little voice asked in the back of his mind. He shoved it down and said, “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

“No,” Blue said. “Nothing better.”

The turn appeared up ahead, and Candy was grateful to flick on the blinker and be done with this conversation. Questioning himself was not his natural state of being, and it sucked.

He half-expected to pull up to blue lights and fluttering yellow tape. But when they braked in front of the house, all they found was moonlight gleaming dully off the blue tarp, and Colin standing with his bare arms folded tight against the chill. He at least wore a pair of work gloves, Candy noted with grudging approval. Hopefully he hadn’t gotten his damn prints and DNA all over the bodies before he’d pulled them on.

Candy killed the engine, climbed out, and pulled up short when he nearly ran into Colin, who’d come striding down the yard to meet him at the front of the truck.

As a general rule, Candy didn’t run into anyone taller or broader in the shoulder than himself. Mercy was the only one, but he only saw him a few times a year. In day-to-day life, Candy was the “big one.”

Or, at least, he had been. Colin was just a hairsbreadth taller, shoulders just a smidge wider, and the muscles of his chest and arms bulkier. It was that Remy Lécuyer DNA; the body of a man who could dredge full-grown bull gators up out of swamp muck and haul them over the side of a tiny, wallowing boat.

Colin lacked his half-brother’s spookier energy, though, most of the time. His life had been easier; his smiles came a little slower, but truer, less frenetic. Colin smiled like a joke was funny. Mercy smiled like it was so funny he wanted to hit the joke-teller with a ballpeen hammer and see if more jokes would come spilling out like candy from a piñata.

Tonight, the December breeze plastering his shirt to his chest, his dark eyes black and gleaming in the moonlight, his jaw clenched tight enough to cut glass, Colin looked more Mercy than himself.

“What the fuck?” he demanded, voice low, and rough, and channeling fear into fury.

Candy elected to let it slide. But he did say, “We’re not having this conversation out on the street. We’re gonna call Cantrell–”

“Who?”

“Keep your voice down. Agent Cantrell. The FBI agent assigned to the desert killings case.”

There was just enough moon and streetlight to make out the way Colin’s brows scaled his forehead. “You want to bring that guy to my house? You want to bring afedto myhouse?”

“What, you got another body in the garage?” Before he could answer, Candy put a hand on his shoulder, and not-so-gently steered him back up the yard, toward the tarp. “How bad is it?” he asked in an undertone. With this wind, and given the flatness of the street, the coldness of the night, voices would carry.

“There’s two corpses on my lawn, so pretty fucking bad.”

“What killed them, idiot?”

They reached the edge of the tarp and came to a halt. To Candy, used to seeing such things, the shape of two bodies beneath were unmistakable – if unusual, given the way the arms and legs were spread.

“Their throats are cut,” Colin said, grudgingly.

“Same as the others.” Candy cast a look down the street, checking house fronts. He didn’t see any lights on, but that didn’t mean anything. If you were peeking through your blinds, spying on the neighbors, you’d keep the lights off.

He crouched and lifted the edge of the tarp, just far enough to glimpse a battered work boot, equally weathered jeans, and to get a whiff of voided bladder and bowels. “What did the blood look like?”

“What?” Colin sounded irritated, on edge, distracted. When Candy glanced back, he saw that he was scrubbing his gloved hands through his hair, shoulders jacked up high and tight.

“The blood where their throats were cut. Did it run down their fronts, or down the sides of their necks?”

Colin lowered his arms, slowly. “The sides,” he said, and then, “fuck.”

They hadn’t been killed and dumped. They’d been killed right here, in Colin and Jenny’s yard.

“That’s just like the others, too,” Candy said, grimly.

~*~

Jenny murmured a quiet thanks when Michelle placed a steaming mug of tea in front of her. She wrapped both hands around it, and pulled it close, but made no move to drink it. Michelle was well-versed in the medicinal properties of having a hot drink in your hands; the drinking was irrelevant.

Michelle sat down across from her with her own mug. “Are you okay?” She’d asked that already, when she’d met Jenny coming in through the front door on a blast of cold air, but that had been automatic, and perfunctory. Now, it was alone, out from under Jinx’s watchful eye, in a safe place, at a familiar table, with tea and buttery lamplight. A person’s state ofokay, Michelle had learned over the years, could shift in just a few minutes. It was when you finally stopped managing the situation and sat down that it hit you like a sucker punch.

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