Page 46 of Hell and Halos

He opens his mouth and I put up a hand. "Imma stop you right there, Mike. Because you got no say here."

His laugh comes out as a bellow. If we were inside somewhere, it would echo and I'd call it a guffaw. But we've only got the stars as our ceilin', so it's a bellow.

"You stupid motherfucker," he growls. "You think⁠—"

"Again," I say. Like I'm a patient man. "I'm gonna stop you here. Because whatever control you think you hold over me, it's gone, Mike. You got nothin'. I am as clean as a baby's bare ass."

"Clean? Motherfucker, you've got three dozen dead bodies buried out behind your damn clubhouse. Bones in the damn ground. And don't even fuckin' try me right now, because I've already called in forensics. I don't give a fuck what you've been doing, I'm done with your shit, you hear? You're gonna spend the rest of your short life in prison as someone's boy toy. They're gonna fuck you in the ass so hard, you'll end up likin' it. You've got twenty-four hours, if you're lucky, to say goodbye to your little girlfriend. How is she, by the way? How's that baby sister of yours doin' tonight?"

I hear that last part, but let it slide. Because the words that came just before it are the ones that matter.

The deadline I have been waitin' for this whole long month has arrived.

"Finally," I say. And that's when I notice that all of his men—nine, I was wrong about the count—have guns on me.

But I've got no control over that.

The only thing I control is what comes out of my mouth next.

Which is his lifeline.

Ya see, when you're dealin' with demons, you gotta give 'em a way out or else they take you down with 'em.

And we didn't set this whole thing up just to go down.

So we planned a way out for good ol' Mike here.

"I've got a message for your boss," I say.

He shakes his head and grunts. "Oh, is that right?"

"Yeah. The message is… this place belongs to us now." I point my finger at my windshield and let my arm make an arc across the black horizon. "All of it. And this comes straight from Cash Ashby. You see, at exactly four a.m. eastern time this morning, he called the debt, Mike."

His face screws up. "What? What the fuck are you talkin' about?"

But he knows what I'm talkin' about. At least as well as I know what I'm talkin' about. Which, admittedly, isn't much. Cash is the brain behind all this debt shit. I don't have any fuckin' clue what he's doin'. All I know is…

"He owns those oil wells now, Mike. Well, he might as well own them. He owns every piece of equipment that makes them produce. The land leases, he can finagle later. But the Bakken Operation," I make little air quotes around those words. "All that black money that's been payin' you all these years? It belongs to us now. And before you go yappin' and get all lippy about how I'm goin' to prison, and they're gonna fuck me in the ass, or how dead I am… I would just like you to know that I've got no idea what you're talkin' about."

Again, his expression changes. He can feel that trap now.

"There aren't no bodies out back of Badlands. And what is that, anyway? Badlands? You mean that abandoned place that went up in flames a few hours ago? That Badlands?"

A breath comes out of him.

"It's over," I tell him. "No one is goin' to prison."

I'm not lyin' about the bodies out back of Badlands. That pit was emptied over the weekend while I was in Jackson with Savannah. Diesel and the rest of the guys dug them all back up, covered themselves in all that blood-red dirt one more time, and hauled them out to the Ashby toaster.

They are nothing but dust now.

And yeah, Mike and his crew could call in dogs and they'd hit the scent of every body that used to be there.

But no body, no proof.

I didn't make that rule. That's just how it works.

What was there doesn't matter.