Bloodlines

68

“I SAID, BRING HIM TO ME, YOU MORONS!”

Eric stood slowly. In the past twenty minutes or so, we had probably given him the biggest workout he’d had in twenty years. As Ian hauled Ethan up between them, Eric shined his flashlight beam over the ground. “There!” he shouted. “What the fuck is that?”

He picked up an object that I couldn’t make out from where I stood.

They brought Ethan to the edge of the grave where Mitch sat.

Eric tossed something shiny down before Mitch.

“A tape recorder?” Mitch said, outraged. “Eric, get rid of it.”

Eric stomped on it with a heavy booted heel, then picked it up and made as if to hurl it away.

“No,” Mitch said. “In the grave.”

I heard it hit with a splash.

“You don’t have shit, do you?” Mitch said.

Ethan, still out of breath from his struggle with Eric, smiled. “Risk it, if you think I don’t.”

Mitch stared at him, rubbing his ankle. “I might.”

He turned to Ian. “Shoot him in the kneecap.”

One flashlight, I told myself, and shouted, from behind a tombstone, “Bad bet, Yeager.”

“Irene!” Ethan shouted. “No!”

“Get her! Get that bitch! No, Ian, give me your gun first.”

As usual, his troops needed direction, and while he shouted orders, I ran like hell, ducking and dodging behind marble monuments and concrete vaults, and then in and around the equipment.

Eric had that one flashlight, which might be why he caught up with me first, but he was tired from his previous battles, and I was able to land a hard kick on his knee before he had a good grip on me. He let loose and gave a howl of pain as he stumbled to the ground. Before he could get up again, I was set upon by Ian, who handed me a little payback before hauling me to my feet and over to Mitch. Eric slowly limped after us.

Ian left me next to Ethan. Mitch Yeager looked between us. “You know, until just now, I thought the love story was just one more lie.” Ethan put an arm around my shoulders. He was shaking. Or I was.

“Separate them. Stand her up by the grave,” Mitch commanded, indicating the one I had pushed him into earlier.

When they had done so, Mitch said, “Thanks to you, I have had a trying evening, Ms. Kelly.” He paused, then smiled. “Do you hear that sound?”

It was faint, but distinct. A helicopter.

“I’m going to leave, and take the smart boy with me, because something tells me his sense of self-preservation is stronger than yours. He has guts, but he’s not so caught up in sacrifice as you are, is he? His generation is ultimately more pragmatic. They don’t see the sense in struggling. If there is an easy way, they take it.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said.

“Oh no. I’ll offer him an easy way out of this mess you’ve obviously lured him into, and he’ll take it.” He paused again, listening to the helicopter coming closer. “I wonder if you have the locket at all?”

“Your gamble,” I said.

“Your loss,” he said. “Shoot her.”

I saw what Ethan was going to do just a moment before he moved.

“No!” I shouted, but he stepped in front of me.

I waited for the sound of gunfire. Instead, I heard, “Which one of us do you want to do it?”

The helicopter was roaring closer now. In the distance, I thought I heard sirens.

Too late. Too late.

“God damn it,” Mitch said, and raised the gun he held.

I bent slightly to the side to hook my ankle around Ethan’s, to try to move him out of harm’s way, but like the sirens, I was too late. Mitch fired.

I felt the jolt of Ethan’s reaction as he was hit. He pitched backward, and I was helpless to stop my own backward fall into the grave as his weight came against me.

I landed hard, splashing foul water everywhere. Ethan landed on top of me. The double impact knocked the wind out of me. For a moment, I could not breathe or seem to catch my breath.

Beneath my back, I felt ooze. My hands, still painfully trapped behind me, and something hard-the tape recorder?-digging into my back.

Ethan’s blood, wet and warm, began to soak from his back onto my chest. Mitch Yeager looked down on us and raised his pistol again.

I heard someone shout in panic, “Uncle Mitch!”

A sudden great noise and light filled the grave from overhead. A wind that stirred dirt and water into a spray that forced me to close my eyes.

There was noise, and more noise, a clamor that only increased and made no sense from my world of the grave.

Ethan was dying.

I didn’t even care that Mitch was escaping.

I don’t know how long it was, exactly, before I realized that Mitch’s helicopter was shouting orders at the Yeagers. And claiming to be the police.