Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

“Can I ask you a question before we go any further?” she said. “Do you really believe you can go up against a guy like Wyatt Dixon?”

“It’s what’s under the hood that counts,” he said. “I’ll let you have a test drive upstairs.”

He worked his thumb deeper into the muscle of her arm, inching his fingers up on her shoulder, kneading the flesh along her collarbone, his mouth coming closer to hers.

Her reaction was not emotional, nor could it be described as vengeful. She didn’t consider it of much consequence and wondered that either man could have expected a different outcome.

“What do you say, babycakes?” Caspian asked.

“Say about what?”

“Going upstairs. You’ve got beautiful arms,” he said. “If the Venus de Milo had arms, they’d look like yours.”

“That’s a great come-on line. If I ever go trans, I think I’ll give it a try.”

“Are we on or not?” Jack Boyd said.

“You sure you guys want to do this?” she asked.

“Say the word,” Caspian said.

“What the fuck,” she replied.

“You won’t regret it,” Caspian said.

“But you will,” she said.

She ripped her elbow into Jack Boyd’s face and drove her fist between Caspian’s eyes. Then she pulled her blackjack from her side pocket and whipped it across the back of Boyd’s head and backstroked it across Caspian’s jaw, knocking the spittle from his mouth. She hit him on the collarbone and the points of his shoulders and shoved him through the open French doors onto the floor. Behind her, she heard Jack Boyd trying to rise to his feet. “Run,” she said.

“Do what?” Jack Boyd replied, barely supporting himself on the back of a chair. She brought the blackjack down on top of his hand. He cradled his arm against his chest, the color draining from his face.

“Run! Don’t come back. You’re finished here.”

She stepped toward him. He bolted through the yard, looking back once, knocking the concrete bowl of a birdbath off its pedestal. She turned to Caspian Younger and slid a pair of needle-nosed pliers from her back pocket. He was sitting up on the floor, pressing his palm against his mouth, looking at the thick red smear on his hand. She got down on one knee. “Do you know what I’m about to do to you?” she asked.

“I don’t know where Surrette is,” he said.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Start what?”

“Pulling off your parts.”

“Please. I didn’t have a choice. He’s not human. You may think he is, but he’s not. He’s what he says he is.”

“So what is he?”

“I don’t know.”

She bent down closer to him, the pliers extended in front of her. His eyes were tightly shut. There are always lines, she heard a voice say.

He was probably telling the truth, she told herself. If he gave up Surrette, the feds would take him off the board, and no matter how the legal implications played out, Caspian Younger would be free of the man who had probably extorted him for years.

There was a problem, and it didn’t have to do with Surrette. Caspian had said he didn’t know where his father was. This was after his father had left him a note of endearment, one that should have made him conclude he was of some value to someone. Would he have brought a teenage girl onto the property, with the intent of debauching her, if he had no idea of his father’s whereabouts or the approximate time of his return?

She touched the point of the pliers to his cheek, just below his eye. “Where did your father go? You do not want to give me the wrong answer.”

“He has a place on Sweathouse Creek. He goes there because it reminds him of growing up in East Kentucky. Clouds of fog in the hollows and all that hillbilly crap he’s so fond of.”