Caleb

Through the sliver of a swollen eye, I caught a smile slip between Hailey’s lips from across the room. I lit up like a Christmas tree, and as weird as that was, hopefully she’d mistake my buzz for 1st degree burns.

Strangely enough, Hailey looked relieved to see that I was still in one piece; her eyes were calm, enough to let me know nothing happened to her. I stared at her for a little while without saying much of anything. I didn’t really know what to say to anyone, but I didn’t have to for her to know that I was alright.

Marcus caught on to the moment and gently pushed Hailey aside, breaking my focus away from her. My sweat went cold when I found myself in his sightline. Marcus’ eyes were a mixture of worry and disappointment.

He tried to keep his anxiety-laced anger towards me hidden beneath a straight face. He was so pissed at the situation that he could only stand a couple seconds of eye contact with me. He didn’t need to blink for me know that I was in trouble. I’m always in trouble.

For every fine line that I’d put in his forehead, there were at least three hard knock lectures I had coming to me as soon as he had the chance to stand and deliver. Marcus had a tendency of running his mouth before he knew the full extent of a situation.

I already knew he thought he had the right to be angry, but he didn’t know the half of it. Arrogant prick. He hadn't been in the field. He hadn't seen anything more this morning then the end of his nose, and I wasn't in the mood for his bullshit.

I looked over at Cillian, hoping to find some understanding in his eyes, but he stared at the floor the second I turned in his direction. I guess the two of them had come to a consensus about me, without hearing a word of my side. Typical Evans family politics.

I caught Liam out of the corner of my eye and my blood pressure spiked. Him just being in the room wore down my composure to the point where I didn’t know if I could take it for too long.

Every now and again,I'd catch him grinning to himself, like he found something funny about the fact that I'd managed to survive as long as I had.I guess I hadn't spent enough time on the wrong end of attempted murder to even begin to understand why he'd leave me to suffocate like he did.

Earlier, I really thought he'd kill me over fighting him for Hailey. I still did. Life was a matter of black and white loyalty with Liam, and the second I turned Dad’s truck over into the dirt I'd chosen the wrong side. Like my father, I knew the kinds of things Liam was capable of given enough motivation. The blood between us was running thinner than thread, and he'd cut me loose the second he got the chance.

My legs numbed up when Liam’s focus shifted away from the grooves he'd carved in the kitchen table and over to me. He knew I was terrified of him. He sensed it like a butcher does when he leads an animal out onto the killing floor.

The officer standing next to me was the only buffer left between Liam, Hailey, and myself.I’d led the pigs right to the slaughterhouse and was ready to expose everything we’d done if it meant getting rid of Liam.

Though I’d been picked up by a cop it wasn’t the kind we were running from. My luck that morning wasn’t tarnished, just rusty.

“Would any of you boys mind explainin’ to me why in the hell I found Caleb half-barbequed and stranded out in the fields this mornin’?”

I smiled at Rusty’s sense of humor. After five years of familiarity between us I’d dropped the “sheriff” and called him by his nickname. The minute Marcus realized that Rusty was handcuff-free and unsuspecting of the federal mess we’d made for ourselves, the stiffness slipped right out of his spine.

“Jesus Russ, I mistook you for one of the other boys at the station. Ye' scared the hell outta me.”

“Do I look thirty years younger to you Marcus?” Rusty’s answers rolled right off his tobacco-colored tongue.

“Not a day over twenty five.”

Marcus’s flattery was sickening, and Rusty brushed it off.

“Stop talkin’ and give me a hand with your brother over here please. The kid needs to lie down. ”

Marcus crossed the room and helped me into my bunk. The forced gesture was probably the peak of his kindness towards me for the day. I hit the sheets and sunk into my mattress, feeling about as sore and shaken up as I used to when Dad took his fists to me.

The feeling was ugly familiar. My bruises were proof enough of successful genetics. I rolled over onto my stomach hoping to find a less painful position, and stained the sheets red from the glass cuts on my arms and legs.

I looked for Hailey in the room the second I got close to comfortable. She was standing off in what seemed like an impossible distance, looking flustered, but still as stubborn as she was when she pulled me out of Dad's truck. I was fine as long as Liam hadn’t laid a finger on her.

She needed to be cleaned up though. Both her and my brother were roughed up enough to make Rusty suspicious and I hoped to we could improvise an excuse before he started asking questions.

“I’m gunna have to call somebody about that truck. That’s a nasty accident ya’ll got yourselves into. I'm lucky I found Caleb when I did.”

Rusty leaned over and slapped me on the back, forgetting how sore I was. I heard Liam mulling around in the kitchen and looked over in time to see himsnatch a towel off the stove to wipe the blood and ash off his face. He sauntered over to deal with Rusty.

“Quite the hero this mornin’ aren’t ye’ Russ? I owe ye’ one for lookin’ after the runt.”

He was trying his best at being uncharacteristically pleasant—his smile was about as genuine as Sweet N’ Low in black coffee.

“All you owe me is a good explanation kid. You look like hell.”

Rusty studied the gashes on Liam's face through the bottoms of his bifocals and Liam turned his back to block out the sheriff’s curiosity.

“Afraid I don’t have much of a story for ye’ sir.”

Rusty brushed off Liam's brashness and pulled out his notepad to make record of the accident that needed to stay off the books. Liam spoke up before his pen hit the paper.

“From what I recall, I let Caleb drive the truck, his girlfriend took his attention off the road, and here we are. Victims of reckless young lovers.”

His dramatization of what had happened was so extreme that I bit into my pillow to keep from calling his bluff. I caught Hailey out of the corner of my eye turning dark red. Her pupils darted to the floor exactly as they had when I’d run into her at the station this morning. Her awkwardness was endearing.

"When did you get old enough to have a girl Caleb?" Rusty asked, eyebrows furrowing into a bush of grey-brown bristles in the center of his forehead.

The man looked like a grizzly; standing at least six feet tall, with a portly food lovin’ figure, and a tuft of silvery chestnut hair sprouting out of the center of his head. At points, I liked to pretend he was a surrogate grandfather to my brothers and I, but today he felt too much like a stranger.

"I'm 21 Russ. A guy's gotta partner up sometime."

Hailey bore her eyes into me from across the room. She was contemplating her plans for retaliation.

“Last time I checked you were too young to know how to drive!" Rusty guffawed. He liked teasing me almost as much as my brothers did in their spare time.

"Still is, apparently."

Cillian threw in his two cents and laughs ricocheted across the room.

“Who’s the unlucky lady?” Rusty pried, seemingly skeptical of our collectively invented story. Marcus walked over to fetch Hailey and led her over to Rusty by the small of her back.

“Lovely isn't she? Too good for him right?”

Marcus was enjoying himself for the first time that morning. He was happy as long as he had me to pick on. Rusty strolled over to Hailey, hands around his pork-belly-stretched utility belt and introduced himself like he was seventeen years old and fifty pounds lighter.

"Young lady, I apologize for not greetin’ you earlier, that man of yours is a handful. I’m Russell; call me Rusty."

Hailey timidly extended her hand, still adjusting to her assigned role in the larger fabric of a poorly planned lie.

“I'm Hailey. Hailey Anderson. Very nice to meet you.”

Rusty took her hand and leaned in to get a better look at her over the rim of his gold wire glasses.

"She's too pretty for you son'! She looks like wife material for a business tycoon, not a misfit like yourself. How'd she end up with you? You drug her?"

Rustybegan laughing so hard at his own sense of humor that his voice bellowed through the rafters.I shot up out of bed, reacting a little too rashly in response to the sheriff scratching the surface of the truth. Hailey spoke up before I was able to untangle my tongue.

“It was something in his kiss. He swept me off my feet like a black market sedative."

A smirk scrambled across Hailey's face. She was ruining me and was entirely pleased with her progress. My brothers were nervously amused by her sadistic sense of humor, but Rusty was stoic enough to put me on edge.

“Sounds like he stole your heart Ms. Hailey,” he said through a fading smile.

“Kidnapped is a better word.”

In less than thirty seconds, Hailey had derailed what was meant to be a harmless conversation. I had to get her to stop talking. That mouth of hers was a four-way ticket to prison if I couldn’t keep it in check.

“Babe, would you mind coming with me to the back room for a second?” I asked as politely as I could while trying to grab her by the wrist. She wrestled out of my grip.

“Whatcha’ got back there, Caleb? Chloroform? I'll take a rain check. I’m not into the heist foreplay.”

Mainly out of desperation, I took her face in my hands and kissed her, unsure of what specifically was driving me to act like a raving lunatic.

“You into that? PDA seems to turn you on.” I had to get better at resorting to words instead of irrational behavior—but once a guy always a guy. I pulled away from her and before she could get her hands on me, Rusty stepped in between the two of us.

"Cool it lovebirds. Kissin’ and fightin’ is fair game for another day but the both of ya’ll should get those cuts and bruises cleaned up before you give each other more than you already have. You have a first aid kit around here?”

Rusty wasn’t as amused by Hailey and my antics as I’d hoped he’d be. His eyes lingered on her for a couple seconds too long, enough to suggest that he’d picked up on something. I should have kissed her sooner.

“There’s a first aid kit in the back we can use. You comin’ Hailey?” I asked. She rolled her eyes and began following me reluctantly to the storage space behind the kitchen.

Rusty walked over to Liam to speak his mind. “Liam, take today as a lesson to start takin' better care of those kids. Don't let Caleb drive if he doesn't know what he's doin’, alright?"

"Yes, sir." Liam mocked an army salute.

"I'm not playin’ around son. Your brother nearly turned up dead, that young lady's been knocked around, and those scratches on you got on ya’ look angry.”

Liam laughed at Rusty’s concerns.

“We're alright Russ, don’t work yourself up over nothin’.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Rusty reach out and turn Liam towards the light so he could get a better look at his injuries.

“ ‘Nothin’ doesn’t look like this, boy. You been fightin? That girls’ got bruises on her that are too big to come from Caleb.”

Liam slapped Rusty’s hands away on impulse.

“Keep your questions to yourself old man. You’re walkin' in dangerous territory.”

Rusty flipped Liam around, twisted his arm behind his back and pulled out his gun from his holster pressing it hard into the back of his head.

“I've killed men over less respect than that.”

“Then pull the goddamn trigger and get it over with.”

Rusty tightened his grip around Liam’s arm until he flinched. Marcus and Cillian stood silent, paralyzed by their inability to interfere with the situation.

“You ain’t gettin’ out that easy kid. I’m just tryin’ to teach you some sense before I take you in. The boys at the big house won’t be so friendly.”

“On what charges old timer? Not wantin’ your charity?”

Rusty brought his weight down on Liam’s back and forced him onto his knees.

“Do you think I’m blind to what’s goin on here Liam?! There’s a warrant out from the Feds for the man who kidnapped Caleb’s sweetheart over there.”

Liam scoffed.

“You think I did it? Clear the fog outta your glasses. Caleb made this mess for himself.”

I’d anticipated Liam turning the tables on me; deception was what he did best.

“Put a leash on that tongue a yours’ or I’ll bust your jaw so bad you can’t talk. Caleb wouldn’t get mixed up in something like this unless he was forced to. I know him better than you think, boy.”

Liam rolled his eyes at Rusty and quickly found himself face down on the wood floor.

“Have all the attitude you want, son. Caleb may be the kid on the Wanted posters but you’ll be the one who takes the fall.”

Rusty pulled out a pair of handcuffs and locked the silver links around Liam’s wrists. Cillian and Marcus loosely tried to persuade Rusty to reconsider, but he had no intention of changing his mind.

My body had gone so numb that I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. I knew the second Rusty got to his radio, there’d be less than twenty minutes between the call and the local police knocking on our front door. Marcus pleaded with Rusty one last time before he hauled Liam outside.

“Russ, can you take off the cuffs while he’s still under our roof. That’s the least I’ll ask of you as and old friend.”

Rusty hesitated briefly, undid the cuffs, allowing Liam to leave the house with the imagined dignity of a free man. Rusty stopped steps short of the door and turned back to look at the three of us.

“Turn yourselves in boys. Fix this mess you’ve gotten into, take her down to the station, and let us get her home. Things are looking bad for you either way you choose.”

Rusty glanced directly at me before he slipped out of sight, and my heart dropped right out of my chest. Above all else, he was disappointed in me. That was the last expression I saw on his face before the slaughterhouse door slammed shut behind him.

The room settled into a broken silence that was offset by the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and the scuffling of shoes against the gravel outside. The footsteps stopped short, and the sudden uproar of bullets bursting out of a gun barrel scraped scars into my eardrums.

Two bodies thudded against the dust, and an unintelligible scream diminished into an eerie silence. Metal clicked against metal, and a second shot thundered into unprotected flesh.

Heavy red mist floated into the single beam of sunlight that peered into the living room. A combination of iron and blood sank down towards the soles of our shoes and onto the floor.

Trembling, Marcus stepped up to the front door and slowly slid it open. There was blood spattered all over the ground, trailing from a body lying limp and mangled beneath a relentless sun.

“Liam’s gone.” He turned back to face the four of us, eyes frantic and skin paler than a full moon.

“Rusty’s dead.”