Page 86 of The Evening Wolves

“No, Ree. It wasn’t. You were trying to do the right thing, what you thought was right. I’m trying to do the right thing.”

“No, you’re not! You’re giving up, and I don’t know why because never in my life have I known you to be a coward!” The phone dinged again. “And turn that fucking phone off!”

John stared at him, the seconds ticking past into minutes. And then he laughed. He pushed a hand through his hair, shook his head, and said, “I’ve always been a coward, Ree. You, of all people, ought to know.”

He took a step toward the closet. Emery stood and moved into his path. He was shaking. His legs felt wet and rubbery.

“Move, please,” John said. And then, “Move.”

Emery stepped aside.

John opened the closet. He rifled through the clothes and emerged with a windbreaker with the Wahredua PD logo. As he worked it off the hanger, his phone began to ring. He looked at it, dismissed the call, and went back to the windbreaker.

A moment later, the phone began to ring again.

John dismissed the call.

The phone rang a third time. John’s cheeks reddened, and after dismissing the call a third time, he fumbled with the phone for a moment. It didn’t ring again.

Emery watched all of it. When his own phone buzzed, it felt like a nightmare, but he slowly worked it out of his pocket. Gray Dulac’s name flashed on the screen. He slid his thumb across the screen to accept the call and placed it on speaker.

“He’s gone,” Dulac said. “He escaped. They found the deputy who was supposed to be guarding him in the fucking bathroom, a scalpel halfway through his throat.”

Emery’s head felt like it was packed with cotton, but his brain still managed to make the connection. “Vermilya.”

“They’ve got no fucking clue how long ago he disappeared. He could be anywhere by this point.” Frustration tightened Dulac’s voice. “He had to have help.”

And that was it, Emery knew. The end. The last thread snipped.

“There you go,” John said as he picked up the stack of clothes. He shouldered past Emery to get to the door. “That’s it, then.”

19

Emery said something to Dulac—he wasn’t sure what—and the call disconnected. The sound of John’s fading footsteps moved away from him. The house was silent. We were yelling, Emery thought. They’ll all have heard. They’ll all feel uncomfortable. Colt will have heard. That last thought threatened to break a dam inside him, and so Emery started to move because if he moved, he had a chance of holding everything together.

He shut the drawers. He picked up the empty hangers and returned them to the closet, and then he shut the closet door. John’s wet towel lay on the floor, so he hung it in the bathroom. His hands were still shaking, so he pressed them against his thighs. The last of the shower’s humidity fogged an arc at the top of the mirror.

Leaving the bedroom, Emery made his way downstairs. When he passed through the living room, Colt sat on the couch, his eyes red. Jem sat next to him, rubbing his back, and he followed Emery with an unreadable look. Tean stood in the opening to the kitchen, a towel wrapped around one hand. His eyes followed Emery too. Emery ignored the silent questions. He grabbed his coat from the hall closet and let himself out into the garage.

The cold felt like a crack across the cheek, tightening flushed skin, sharp in his mouth and nostrils. The Mustang was still here, which meant John hadn’t run away again. Emery hit the button to raise the garage door, and as it rattled up, he found the snow shovel and the ice melt. The driveway was already clear, but the sidewalks needed work. The ice melt would be last. He set to work the shovel and realized, a few seconds later, he’d forgotten gloves.

It didn’t matter. He worked as the cold crept into him, shoveling until his face was numb, until his hands ached, until his knuckles felt arthritic and swollen, and the rest of his body was hot and covered in sweat. The snow had melted and refrozen into ice, and he thought the word was sintered. It broke under the shovel into chunks, and he flung them into the street. The only sound was the scrape of the shovel over concrete, and the shattering of ice against the pavement. Constellations of sound. Sometimes, when the ice broke, tiny crystals feathered against his face, and he could feel them melt.

When he got to the edge of their property, his back was killing him, and the pain in his hands had become something that belonged to someone else. He leaned on the shovel for a while, breathing hard and still, somehow, unable to catch his breath. Broken ribs. That was what broken ribs could feel like, that sharp pain when you tried to take a full breath. But his ribs were fine. It was John who was hurt. And Colt. His son, bruised and bloodied, refusing to speak.

He grabbed the shovel and slammed it against the ground, again and again, swinging it like a baseball bat, each blow flattening the aluminum blade, the shock traveling up his arms. The cold made everything feel like it was happening far off. He was aware of the sound he was making—choked, guttural, animal. And then it was over, his chest heaving, his body screaming at him, the world white and spinning as he caught himself and dragged himself upright.

Sometime later, when he looked up, Tean was sitting on the porch. The doctor was bundled in winter gear, and his glasses caught the afternoon sun and held wicks of yellow flame. Emery tried to think through his options, but he was too tired. He slogged to the porch, dragging the ruined shovel behind him, and dropped onto the step next to Tean. His breath was heavy and syncopated; he couldn’t hear the doc’s at all.

Without saying anything, Tean reached over and turned Emery’s hands so that he could inspect them. A couple of blisters had formed and split, but the sting wasn’t noticeable under the cold. Tean took a second set of gloves out of his pocket and held them out, and Emery dragged them on. A hat next, and he put that on too. Then Tean passed him a heat pack. Emery shook his head.

“Either you use that or we’re going inside,” Tean said.

“Are you going to make me?”

“Of course not. I’ll call Shaw.”

Emery snapped the heat pack to activate it, and then he held it between his hands. It didn’t take long for the pack to warm, and as the heat worked its way through the gloves, Emery’s hands began to throb with a bone-deep ache.

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