Page 6 of Blood Hymn

Not the generator. Under the generator. A truck door, a long way off, closed by somebody trying to close it quietly. Then nothing. Then, maybe a minute later, something that could be a boot on wet ground and could be a possum and could be nothing.

I look at Marcus. Marcus looks at the door.

He knows something I don't, and I see him decide to use it. His mouth opens and his chest fills. He's going to yell. Whatever’s out there is going to hear him, and I'm in a lit barn with my back to the door.

I take his knife off the tarp where I set it down, and I open his throat.

He doesn't yell. It's not the kind of cut you yell through. His hands come up and go to his neck. His eyes get very wide and very surprised, the way they always do, the way I've watched thirty men's eyes do, and I hold his wrist until the hands stop trying. Then I let go and stand up.

The name's gone. Whatever he knew, he took with him. I feel the mistake settle in my chest like a stone I'll carry for a while.

He said I'd get careless one day. He said the day I got careless would be the day something in me wanted something more than it wanted the work. He was right about that too.

There's blood on my hands to the wrist and the trough is by the stall, so I go to it. I put my hands in the water, watch the red come off in threads, and listen.

The door creaks.

I turn around with the water running off my fingers.

She's standing in the doorway with the dark behind her and the one bulb on her face. Small. Dark hair pulled back tight. A pistol in both hands, out in front, elbows locked but not stiff, front sight up, finger along the frame and not on the trigger, which means somebody taught her. Or she taught herself. Either way, she knows the difference. The gun is pointed at the middle of my chest, and it doesn't move.

She looks at Marcus on the tarp with his throat open.

She looks at the rope on the tailgate, the tape, the six blue coils in a row.

She looks at me.

I've seen a lot of people in a lot of doorways. I know what they do. They run, or they scream, or they freeze and then run. The body decides before the brain does, and the body always decides the same thing, because the body isn't stupid.

She doesn't run.

She doesn't scream.

She looks at me with her sister's face and she lowers the front sight one inch—one—and she says, "Marcus Sawyer."

It’s not a question.

I don't say anything. The water drips off my hands onto the dirt.

"He was on my list," she says.

CHAPTER 3

EVIE

He doesn't say anything.

That's the first thing I learn about Silas Cain. He stands there with river water running off his hands and a dead man at his feet, and he lets the silence do the asking. Most people can't stand the silence. Most people fill it. He just waits. The bulb hums, the generator coughs somewhere out back, and I understand that he's done this before. Not the killing, the waiting. And that he's better at it than I am.

I'm not going to be better at it than him. So I talk.

"Marcus Sawyer," I say again. "Cole Landry. Nate Douglas. Raymond Marsh. Malcolm Harlowe." I let the front sight drift down another inch. "Judah Harlowe."

Something moves in his face at the last one. Not much. A muscle in the jaw.

"That's my list," I say. "My sister wrote it. She's dead. I've got a folder in my truck that says how, and it isn't how the sheriff says." I nod at Marcus without taking my eyes off the man in front of me. "That one was first. You saved me a trip. I'd like to know why."

He looks at me for a long moment. He's got the kind of face that doesn't give you anything for free. It’s flat, with still, dark eyes that have already decided what I am and aren't going to tell me. Big through the shoulders. Blood on his shirt to the elbow, drying black. There's a scar through his left eyebrow and another one down the side of his neck that disappears into his collar. When he finally moves, it's to wipe his hands on his jeans, slowly, one at a time, like he's giving me the chance to shoot him and is curious whether I'll take it.