Jill Sorenson - Set The Dark On Fire

Luke took the seat next to him. “Did you read him the Miranda?”

“Yes,” Garrett said. “Although I can’t be certain a kid with a mouth like that understands the right to remain silent.”

Luke kept his focus on Dylan, refusing to let Garrett’s sarcasm affect him. “Did you get a job on the construction site at Los Coyotes?”

Dylan frowned, as if he hadn’t anticipated that particular question. “Yeah. I started yesterday.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Did you see Bull Ryan?”

“Only for a second, when I first got there.”

“Not before you left?”

He hesitated. “No. I went to the office to say goodbye, but he was already talking to someone else.”

“Who?”

He glanced at Shay. “Jesse.”

“Did you listen in?”

The corner of his mouth tipped up. “I might’ve heard some stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Money trouble. Woman trouble.” He gave an insouciant shrug. “Whatever.”

“Was the conversation friendly?”

“Not really. But it wasn’t, like, antagonistic. Just your typical Jesse Ryan bullshit.”

“What does that mean?”

“That he got what he wanted without much resistance.”

Luke’s eyes went to Shay’s, clearly reading Dylan’s implication that she was also something Jesse had had without much resistance. “A loan?”

“I guess,” he replied. “Why are we talking about him anyway?”

Instead of answering, Luke looked at Garrett, who slid a clear plastic bag across the surface of the table. Inside, there was a hunting knife with a blade that folded down, making it easy to carry or conceal in the palm of a hand.

When she saw it, Shay’s heart broke for her brother a little bit more.

Their dad hadn’t been big on macho gifts, being a consummate pacifist who disdained material things, but he’d given that knife to Dylan on his tenth birthday. He hadn’t been big on family vacations either, but damned if he hadn’t taken her and Dylan to the Kern River that year, just weeks before she left for college.

“Every man should know how to clean a fish,” he’d said, handing Dylan the shiny new knife. He’d been standing on the wet rocks along the riverbank, blond hair glinting in the late-day sun, holding a flopping trout on a short line.

Remembering the look of wonder in Dylan’s eyes as he turned the knife in his hands, she now felt tears burn in her own. At the time, she’d been jealous of their easy male camaraderie. What she wouldn’t give now for a dozen more moments like that.

Damn you, Daddy. Why’d you leave?

“Any particular reason you were carrying this?” Luke asked.

Dylan rolled his shoulders and winced, straining against the uncomfortable position. “Let’s get real. You know what I did. I know what I did. You want me to sign something, fine. Take off these frigging cuffs and I’ll sign whatever you want me to.”

Luke’s brows rose. “You will?”

“No,” Shay said, fear twisting her insides. “He won’t sign anything. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Dylan-”

Her brother ignored her. “I’m guilty, okay? I used the knife to commit a crime and I’d do it again. I enjoyed it. And that stupid jock deserved it. I’d rather have blown up his engine, that would have been cool, or busted out the taillights-”

“Hang on,” Luke said, holding a hand up. “You would have busted out whose taillights?”

“Chad’s,” he said, looking at the faces around him in confusion. “That’s why you picked me up, right? Because I slashed his tires.”

Shay let out a slow, pent-up breath. She wanted to slide under the table and crumple into a little heap of relief.

“You slashed Chad Pinter’s tires,” Luke repeated, leaning back in his chair.

“Yeah. What’d you think? That I killed somebody?”

“This is crazy,” Garrett muttered, standing. “I can’t believe you’re buying this. The other day I caught him out on the rez with a backpack full of stuff to make pipe bombs. He’s a menace to society.”

Shay gasped. One glance at Dylan, whose face was pale with guilt, told her Garrett spoke the truth.

“Sit down, Garrett,” Luke returned, his tone mild but his eyes intense.

The CB radio at the deputy’s thick waist sounded, saving him from having to comply. It was the dispatch operator, phoning in a vandalism complaint from Chuck Pinter. After Garrett responded with a 10-4, the room fell into a charged silence.

“I’ll take care of it,” Luke said.

Garrett recognized the statement for what it was: a curt dismissal.

The deputy didn’t reply to the rebuke, but he was in many ways a devious man, a plotter rather than a protester. Shay knew Luke was going to have nothing but trouble from him for the rest of their working days.

With a stiff nod, Garrett tossed the keys to his handcuffs on the table and left.

Luke watched him go, contemplating Garrett’s perversity with narrowed eyes. Once the deputy was out of sight, Luke turned back to Dylan. “You saw him on Los Coyotes?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

Dylan gulped. “Sunday. And that pipe bomb stuff was just an experiment. Like a science project. I wouldn’t use it to hurt anyone.”

Shay knew her little brother had issues, but she’d never imagined he would put his life in danger by messing around with homemade explosives.

“Did he hit you?” Luke asked.

Dylan rubbed the side of his mouth against the fabric of his T-shirt. “No. He tackled me from behind and the ground said hello to my face.”

“Has he ever hit you?”

When he paused, Shay wished a thousand miseries on Garrett Snell. “No,” he said, and she knew he was lying.

So did Luke, but he didn’t press further. Instead, he opened the evidence bag and let the knife slide out, unfolding the handle and examining the blade. He must have been satisfied with what he saw, because he stood and unlocked the cuffs at Dylan’s wrists. “I have to take that vandalism call,” he said, excusing himself.

“What the hell happened?” Dylan asked after Luke was out of earshot.

“Somebody scalped Bull Ryan.”

His face went white beneath the layers of grime, making the dried blood on his chin stand out in harsh relief. “Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit.”

If she’d had any doubts about her brother’s innocence, they were erased by the stunned expression he wore. Dylan often hid his feelings from her, and he wasn’t always honest, but there was no artifice in his reaction to Bull’s death.

She rose to her feet, grabbing a tiny plastic cup from the receptacle and filling it from the water cooler. “Here,” she said, and he downed it in one gulp.

“More?”

“Yeah.”

Shay was relieved that he hadn’t been involved in whatever had gone down on the construction site, and thankful that he seemed relatively unharmed, but she was still furious with him for making pipe bombs. And slashing Chad’s tires.

How could he pull such a lame-brained stunt? And why now, when he was so close to graduation?

Too angry to speak, she crossed her arms over her chest and waited for Luke to get off the phone. “The Pinters aren’t sure they want to press charges,” he said. “They’d like to meet us at the café to discuss the situation. I said I would mediate.”

Shay almost wilted with relief. She sent Luke a silent thank you, because she knew how lucky Dylan was to get a chance to make amends. “Are you going to confiscate that?” she asked, looking down at the knife on the table.

Luke hesitated. “I wouldn’t recommend he bring it to school again. If Chad’s car had been in the school parking lot, instead of across the street, your brother would be on his way to juvenile hall right now.”