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  Guilt, clawing inside him. For surviving it. Not being able to save them.

  “…Trask? Mr. Trask? Excuse me? Sir?”

  The funeral director spoke with the tone of someone who’d asked the question more than once. When he saw he’d gotten Eric’s attention, he gestured at the heap of earth that had been uncovered from the shroud of fake green grass.

  Time to finish this.

  Eric took a handful of earth and tossed it down. Dark, thick clods scattered over the gleaming cherry-wood coffin that Maureen, Otis’s sister-in-law, had selected. His brothers followed suit.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the guy with the greasy black hair and his thuggish pal stroll toward the access road where the mourners’ cars were all parked. Good. He wouldn’t have to wrangle Mace out of provoking them. He didn’t have the juice for that fight today.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Eric whispered to his brothers.

  “Oh yeah,” Mace agreed fervently.

  They wasted no time putting distance between themselves and the rhythmic shovelfuls of dirt hitting Otis’s coffin. They’d opted to park on the rough dirt road on the far side of the cemetery, far from the paved road where the mourners usually parked, for the purposes of a quick getaway. Why not avoid the stiff, awkward, socially mandated conversations from the get-go? They were doing everyone a favor by sparing them that necessity.

  They were so intent on their escape, the black granite obelisk that loomed suddenly before them took them by surprise. They all stopped in their tracks at the same moment.

  Shit. Of all the fucking gravestones to stumble across today. It had been so long since he’d seen it, he’d somehow forgotten it was even here.

  “Oh fuck.” Mace cleared his throat. “That’s just great. My cup runneth over.”

  They stood there like they’d all forgotten how to move, gazing at the list of names chiseled into the dark granite. Jeremiah Paley, ‘The Prophet,’ the charismatic leader of the survivalist compound where the three of them had grown up, topped the list. The rest of the adults that had died there followed him.

  Nine children were listed at the end, in order of age. Youngest last. Little Timothy Paley. Aged three years. Eric still remembered Timmy’s high, squeaky voice.

  The kids born up at GodsAcre had never had birth certificates. There were no documents to consult, no registries, no living adults with reliable information about the actual biological parentage or possible relatives of the smallest burned bodies.

  Only Eric, Mace and Anton could bear witness to the fact that those little ones had ever existed at all. No one else on earth remembered them.

  Those exclusive memories were a strange and heavy responsibility.

  So they had all been listed as Paleys. Eric, Anton and Mace had been Paleys, too, having become Jeremiah’s adopted sons after he had married their mother. They’d borne his name until Otis Trask adopted them, a year after the fire. When Otis had offered them his name, they’d jumped at the chance. A fresh start, not tethered to the past.

  A memory floated up from Eric’s mind as his eyes moved over the engraved inscription. Some church in town had got up a collection to buy a proper headstone for the victims of the fire and the minister had asked the three of them if there was anything special they wanted engraved on it.

  Without thinking, Eric had blurted out a fragment of Jeremiah’s favorite psalm. The Prophet had chanted it every time he got up in front of his congregation at GodsAcre.

  He trains my hands for war so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

  The Prophet never quite pulled that off, but it wasn’t from lack of trying. Jeremiah had been crazy as all fuck, but no one could doubt the old man’s commitment.

  “Hey, you! Paley boys! Come to pay your respects to your psycho killer dad?”

  They turned to see an older woman coming across the grass toward them. Her fuzzed gray hair was dragged back in an unkempt braid, and she wore a baggy sweat suit that had once been beige but was no longer. Her face looked caved in and her reddened eyes, sunk deep into bruised looking hollows, were wild and staring.

  “No, ma’am,” Eric said. “We’re here for Otis’s funeral. And our name is not Paley. We’re Trasks now. Legally. For twelve years now.”

  “I don’t give a shit what’s on your driver’s license.” Her loud voice was slurred. “I know the truth. You can’t bullshit me. I know what you are. You’re garbage.”

  Eric waited for a careful, measured moment before replying. “Know whatever you want, ma’am,” he said evenly. “And I’ll do the same. Good afternoon.”

  But they weren’t getting off that easy. The woman hustled toward them faster, a little unsteadily. Eric caught a scent of alcohol coming off her from yards away.

  “You have nerve, coming here. See that grave?” She pointed behind herself, at a small headstone to the side of them. “That’s my husband. My Malcolm. Do you know how he died? The Prophet’s Curse, that’s how. I put him in the ground and just a couple weeks later, the fucking bastard who murdered him gets buried right across from him.

  Now I have to look at your killer dad’s headstone every time I come to see Malcolm.”

  “He wasn’t our dad.” Mace’s voice was flat. “He was our jailor.”

  “Bullshit. Garbage. Otis couldn’t see the truth, but the rest of us did.”

  “Don’t worry,” Anton said. “We’ll be out of your face soon. We won’t be back.”

  “Bullshit. Liars. Just like the goddamn Prophet.” Foamy spit dotted her purplish lips as she staggered closer.

  Eric exchanged alarmed glances with his brothers. Jeremiah Paley’s combat training had wired them up for lethal self-defense, but they had no playbook for drunken, unhinged female senior citizens on the rampage. They were on uncharted ground.

  “Linda, that’s enough.” Wade Bristol’s gruff voice sounded from behind them.

  They turned to see the older man huffing up the slope, red faced. “You’re not making sense,” he scolded the woman. “These boys weren’t responsible for Malcolm’s death. They were just orphaned kids. Malcolm died of a stroke. You know that.”

  “Stroke, my ass! It was the curse!” Linda yelled. “Fourteen people in twelve days, Wade! And now Otis? He had a stroke, too! Just like Malcolm! It’s starting up again, see? Now their own goddamn foster father is dead. Just like all the others. There’s some fucking gratitude for you, eh?”

  “Linda, calm down. They didn’t have anything to do with—”

  “Garbage!” she yelled. “They’re garbage, and their fancy fucking suits can’t change that!”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Mace flicked an imaginary speck of lint from his lapel and adjusted his jacket on his broad shoulders. “Glad you like the threads at least.”

  “Shut up, Mace. You’re not helping.” Wade laid a soothing hand on Linda’s shoulder. “Linda, calm down. Try to—”

  “Go to hell.” She flung off his hand and lurched back, almost toppling over in the process. “All of you go to hell. Keep your murdering freak father company there.”

  They silently watched her totter down the grassy slope.

  “You’re not driving, are you, Linda?” Bristol called.

  She flipped him off without turning. “Fuck you, Wade.”

  Wade cleared his throat self-consciously as Linda retreated. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s nothing we haven’t heard before,” Eric replied.

  “Well, you shouldn’t have to hear it the day you put Otis in the ground.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Anton said. “At this point, we barely notice.”

  “Thanks for saving our asses, Chief Bristol,” Mace said. “Nick of time, too. Don’t know what we would have done. That dame woulda finished us.”

  The police chief gave him a quelling look. “Don’t be a smart-ass. I buried a friend today, too, Mace, so shut your damn trap.”

  Mace’s eyes went big and solemn. He made lip-zipping gesture.

/>   Chief Bristol cleared his throat again and stuck his hand in his pockets. “So, ah…I just came over here to make sure you boys knew about the reception.”

  They looked at him blankly.

  “Reception?” Eric repeated.

  Chief Bristol grunted. “Figured as much. Since you don’t answer calls and you came late to the funeral. And left before anyone could shake your hand or offer condolences.”

  “We don’t have a lot to say to people here,” Anton said. “What with one thing and another.”

  Bristol harrumphed. “That’s a real unfortunate attitude.”

  “I guess it is.” Anton’s voice was unapologetic.

  “Hmmph. Well.” Chief Bristol’s eyes went to Eric. “So I know we’ve had some tense moments in years past,” he said. “I sure hope you won’t hold it against me.”

  “I don’t, Chief,” Eric said. “It’s all good. Past and gone.”

  Bristol looked cautiously relieved. “Well, that’s fine, then. I think it would be a real good thing, a real appropriate thing, to go to that reception. For Otis’s sake.”

  “Maureen didn’t say anything about a reception,” Eric said.

  “Maureen didn’t organize it,” Bristol said. “There’s a buffet spread at the Corner Café. You should drop by. Show some respect for the people who respected Otis. I’m heading over there now. I expect to see you there.”

  Eric stared after the man retreating back. Bristol’s lecturing tone stuck in his craw, but he figured it came with the job. Otis had been a lecturer, too.

  But Otis had worn authority far better than most.

  They watched Bristol’s big, unwieldy body stomping across the grass toward his pickup. When the vehicle was lost to sight in the trees, they turned to each other.

  “Well, damn. That came out of nowhere,” Anton commented.

  “Yeah,” Mace agreed. “Reception? What the fuck? Who’s paying for it? Not Maureen, that’s sure, the cheapskate bitch. She’s still pissed that Otis left his house and land and truck to us instead of her two boys. She’ll never forgive him for doing that.”

  “This morning, I gave her back the money she fronted for the funeral expenses,” Eric said. “But she didn’t mention anything about a reception.”

  “Probably didn’t want us to come,” Anton said. “Did she spit in your eye?”

  Eric snorted. “Not until the check was in her purse.”

  Mace shook his head. “I’m not going to any goddamn reception, no matter what Chief Bristol says. I feel like hammered shit as it is. Why dial it up?”

  “Agreed,” Anton said. “I can only take this place in micro-doses. I blew over my safety limit a long time back.”

  Eric gave them a withering look. “Can’t handle a little fish-eye? Pussies.”

  “Say whatever you want,” Mason said. “You can’t shame us into this.”

  “Fine,” Eric said. “I’ll stop in alone. Just long enough to reimburse whoever paid for it. I don’t want to be indebted to anyone in this fucking place.”

  Mace snorted under his breath. “Why? We didn’t organize it. I wouldn’t voluntarily give the time of day to most of these people, much less cheese cubes and fruit skewers. After what all those pricks did to you seven years ago? Fuck ‘em all sideways.”

  “Not an issue,” Eric said, through his teeth. “Gone and forgotten.”

  “I doubt that the majority of the people at that reception will have forgotten it,” Anton said. “I heard you say ‘in and out and no drama.’ But if you keep engaging with these people, you’re going to generate some drama. It’s a mathematical certainty.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Eric said. “I’m just going in to write a check. That gesture works on drama like a fire extinguisher. Poof, and everybody’s smiling.”

  “You cynical bastard,” Anton said. “And if Demi Vaughan is there, or her acid-spitting dad? I saw him staring at you from the minute you walked into the funeral home. A check isn’t going to work on that guy’s drama. He hates you so damn hard.”

  The look on Eric’s face made Anton raise a cautious, soothing hand. “Easy,” he said gently. “I couldn’t help but notice that she was there. Right front and center. You noticed her, too. In a big, obvious way.”

  “That is a big affirmative,” Mace chimed in. “Obvious as all fuck.”

  “Not. Relevant.” Eric bit the words out through his teeth. “Ancient history.”

  Anton let out a sigh, a worried frown between his eyes. “If you say so.”

  But they didn’t move. Both his brothers just stood there, staring at him with those worried, searching eyes until he wanted to smack the living shit out of them both.

  “So?” he urged. “Get lost, you two. If you don’t have the balls to go with me, then stop lecturing and let me get this over with.”

  “Watch yourself.” Mace’s voice was grim. “Remember what happened when you last had dealings with these people. It didn’t end well. It almost destroyed you.”

  “It came out okay. I’m fine. She’s fine. We all survived. We’re different people now. Besides, she probably won’t even be there. I’ll just go say hello and thank you, write somebody a check and walk out. Clean slate. And we are done with this place.”

  “Okay,” Anton said. “Happy cleaning. See you back at the ranch.”

  His brothers strode off toward Anton’s gleaming Mercedes GLS. They got in and drove away without looking back at him. His brothers. Dragon-scale armored bad-asses. They always acted like they didn’t give a shit. Never let anyone see behind their masks.

  But he saw beneath it. Because he was just like them.

  Otis’s death had cut them all off at the knees. The old man had been like one of those volcanic granite monoliths that jutted up out of the turf like a preacher’s pulpit. Weathering the storms, never changing, never giving any ground. A touchstone, a landmark. The most solid, reliable one that he’d ever had, other than Anton and Mace.

  Otis hadn’t been afraid of them. That had been the biggest gift that anyone could have possibly given them. It might have saved their lives.

  He still remembered the day Otis had told them that the paperwork was ready if they wanted to take the Trask family name. He wanted to show his boys how a man stepped up and did the right thing. How he followed through on his word.

  That gesture had been a big deal for them. A new name. A fresh start as a Trask.

  Aw, shit. Thinking about that had messed him up. Now a big fist was squeezing his throat hard enough to crush it. The world had never felt particularly friendly to him, even at the best of times, but without Otis in it, it felt like a ticking bomb.

  Which was exactly how Shaw’s Crossing had seen him and his brothers.

  To be fair, the townspeople had good reason to think it. With the intensive combat training they’d had since early childhood, he and Mace and Anton were fully as dangerous as the suspicious residents of Shaw’s Crossing believed them to be. Probably more so.

  But only Otis ever knew it for a fact, and Otis never told.

  Old Jeremiah Paley had been a Vietnam vet. Delta Force. Trained to kill in every conceivable way. When he opened up GodsAcre to true believers, he trained the children who lived there for war. After the Scourge, they were to be the vanguard of virtue in the blasted aftermath. The army of the faithful. It was a great responsibility which required expertise in small arms, knives, hand to hand, marksmanship, strategy, explosives, military history, guerilla warfare tactics. Jeremiah had been a relentless teacher, and Eric, Anton and Mace had been his best students.

  Before he went entirely nuts. In that final, awful year when everything had gone to shit.

  Eric was surprised as he drove through the downtown area of Shaw’s Crossing on his way to the Corner Café to see how the business district had grown. It was trendy and touristy now. He parked his car a couple of blocks away from the café and strolled past a number of high-end shops, noticing sports gear, jewelry, crystal art, fancy housewa
res, a bookstore, an art gallery, coffee shops, a taco place. Sushi, even, for fuck’s sake. Marconi’s Corner Café diner used to be the only place downtown for food. If you could even call it food.

  The Corner Café looked different, too. Its decaying fifties era vertical neon CAFÉ sign was gone, replaced by a big carved, painted wooden sign. The big picture windows that fronted both sides of the street corner were lavishly decorated with grease-pencil color drawings. Autumn leaves, pumpkins, a witch on a broomstick.

  It wasn’t until he was right in front of the diner, in full sight of everyone crowded inside, that he focused on the words carved into the wooden sign.

  Demi’s Corner Café. The fuck?

  Wade Bristol was inside, leaning over a buffet table. His face brightened when he saw Eric. He beckoned with a big hand piled with mini-burgers heaped on a napkin.

  Benedict Vaughan saw him at the same moment, and choked on his wine. He grabbed a napkin from a napkin fan on the table, wiping his mouth, and flapped his hand at Eric in disgust. Shooing him off as if Eric were a raccoon knocking over garbage cans.

  That fucking settled that. Eric pushed the door open and walked in.

  Bristol lifted his glass to Eric. “Good to see you. Glad you decided to drop by. Anton and Mason chickened out, I take it?”

  “You didn’t tell me the Corner Café was Demi’s.” He could not control the accusatory tone that came out of his mouth.

  “I’m surprised that Otis didn’t tell you himself,” Bristol said. “He loved eating here. The food is good. Much better than Ricky’s ever was. Demi runs a tight ship. Great pie. And you need to talk to her anyhow.”

  “I do? Why?”

  “She was the one who found Otis the other morning at his house. She was at the ICU with him when I showed up. And she was with him when he passed. She’s also hosting this reception. All by herself. I just thought you should know.”

  Eric just stared at the police chief, his mind stalled out. “I, uh…didn’t know.”