Agent Holly knelt down beside Clayton. People were in the room now, EMTs, state police; Darby was there in uniform, and the deputy coroner was tending to Halford’s body. The edges of Clayton’s vision were blurred, but he could see his brother’s muddy work boots sticking out from underneath the white sheet the medics had laid over him. A stocky female EMT shined a penlight into one of Clayton’s eyes, and then the other. “Sheriff? Can you hear me? His pupils are reactive and I don’t see any outward trauma. I think he’s okay, but he’s most likely in shock.”
“Talk to me, Clayton,” Holly said. He was coming in clearer now.
“I . . .” Clayton tried to speak, but it felt like his mouth was packed with sawdust.
“It’s okay, Sheriff. You did good here.” Holly shooed the medic away and got right up in Clayton’s face. “He came here to kill you, Clayton. You have to understand you had no choice.”
“No, he . . .”
“Yes, he did,” Holly said. “He would have killed you, and that little girl you got working for you as a bonus. You know in your gut that’s the truth. He’d have killed you both, left you to rot, and whistled his way back up that mountain. You saved your life and hers.” Holly took Clayton by the chin and lifted his head to give him a view of Cricket through the shattered window. She was wrapped up in another one of the medic’s sheets, sitting on the bumper of the McFalls County ambulance. Mascara streaked down her face and she shivered regardless of the blazing afternoon sun. She would go home today. And that was good.
Holly stood and reached out a hand. Clayton, feeling his strength returning, took it and let Holly help him to his feet. Once he was up, Clayton leaned down and picked up his hat and gun. He put them both back where they belonged.
9.
Holly stepped over the twisted metal and broken glass and onto the street. Clayton followed. Both men squatted down at Halford’s covered body, sprawled lifeless on the sidewalk. Holly gripped the edge of the sheet to pull it back, but waited for the sheriff’s approval. Clayton nodded. Halford’s eyes were no different in death than they’d been in life. No colder. No blacker. No more absent of a soul than a man who could rest easy while another man burned alive, or a man who could hold a sawed-off scattergun to the head of an innocent girl. Clayton could hear the hornets screaming. He fought back the sudden rush of anxiety that peppered his peripheral vision with sunspots, and squeezed his eyes shut until the feeling of nausea began to fade. He thumbed his brother’s eyelids shut and put his gun hand on the dead man’s chest—a few inches above the three holes in his shirt—and offered an unspoken good-bye. Holly said nothing. Instead, he stood, offered his hand, and helped Clayton to his feet for a second time.
Cricket thought she was all out of tears until Clayton and Holly approached the ambulance. The paramedics backed off when they saw the men coming and began to repack unused supplies into their jump bag. The sheriff sat down next to Cricket on the bumper. She grabbed his arm through the sheet she was wrapped in and cried gently on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Sheriff. I didn’t know what to do. He came in so fast. I didn’t think he was . . . he was . . .”
“It’s okay, Cricket, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the one who should be sorry for dragging you into my family drama. It’s my fault. I almost got you killed.”
Cricket backed her face off his shoulder and caught his eyes. “You saved my life, Sheriff.”
“You’re damn right he did,” Holly chimed in. He had his cell phone to his ear and was holding one finger in the air as a signal to Clayton that he would be right back, and then he stepped off to the side of the ambulance to focus on his call.
“You did,” Cricket continued. “I know doing what you did must’ve been hard for you. Probably the hardest thing ever, but you did it and I’m alive because of it. I owe you my life.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
Cricket said something else, but Clayton didn’t hear it. Instead, he caught a familiar voice through the crowded street and focused on it. It was the voice of the one person he really needed to see.
“Kate,” he said, and stood to wave her over. She was standing behind the yellow caution tape, her face ghost-white. A couple of state police were giving her some resistance about entering the scene, but once she caught her husband’s eye, she barreled through them like a freight train.
“Let her in, she’s my—”
Kate knocked the words and the wind out of him with a crushing hug that pushed him back against the ambulance hard enough to rock it. A paramedic turned and opened his mouth with the intention of saying something but thought better of it once he saw Kate’s face. Clayton winced but hugged her back. She let him go and looked him over from head to toe to head again. “Oh my God, Clayton. Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m fine. Who called you?”
“No one called me. I was on my way here to meet you for my doctor’s appointment, and I saw all this. What the hell happened?”
“Halford’s dead.” He motioned to his brother’s enormous corpse. Darby, two paramedics, and the deputy coroner were all trying to help load it into a second ambulance. She looked to the men, then back to her husband, and all the remaining color in her face faded with the realization. “Did . . . you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, baby. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”