His shirt is half-untucked. His hair is every direction at once. He's been driving since the middle of the night and it shows on him.
We pull our bikes into a line fifty feet from him. Engines cut.
The cicadas are loud in the heat. The sun is high enough now to come down hard.
Todd turns and sees the five of us. The rifle comes up to his shoulder, but it's wavering. He's drunk enough that the barrel can't hold still.
"Hadley!" His voice cracks. "Hadley, you come out here and talk to me right now!"
Phantom steps off his bike with his hands open at his sides. He walks five paces forward of the gate and stops.
His voice carries across the gravel. "Boy. Put the rifle down. We don't want to shoot you."
Todd's barrel jerks toward Phantom's chest. "Where's Hadley!"
Phantom keeps his hands open. "She's not comin' out here, son."
Todd takes a step forward. The rifle is shaking against his shoulder. "She has to come out here. I drove all the way from Houston. She owes me?—"
Phantom's voice goes quieter. "She doesn't owe you a goddamn thing."
I start to step forward off my bike.
Phantom doesn't turn his head but his hand comes up flat against the air between us, palm out. "Stay back, brother. This one's mine."
I stay back.
Phantom takes two more paces toward Todd. He's twenty feet from the man now. The rifle is still up, but Phantom's coming on slow enough that Todd's drunk brain can't decide whether to fire.
His hands stay open at his sides. "Son. Listen to me."
Todd's eyes are too wide. The bottle in his other hand sloshes. "Garrett was my best friend. I have a right to talk to her?—"
Phantom doesn't break stride. "Garrett told his mama to keep you away from her. Did you forget Mama Cross toldHadley? We all know now. We know what you were to Garrett. We know what you wanted from his wife."
"That's a lie." Todd's chest is heaving now. "Mama Cross has been confused since Garrett?—"
Phantom's eyes don't waver. "She isn't confused."
Todd sways. The rifle barrel dips and comes back up.
Phantom drops his voice another notch. "Son. You got a phone call yesterday after you got fired. Or a text. Somebody told you Hadley was at the ranch. Somebody told you to come up here today. Didn't they?"
Why didn't I think of this?
Todd is an idiot, sure, but Hartley isn't.
Todd is nothing more than a fucking pawn.
Todd's face changes. The drunk haze breaks across his eyes for one moment and underneath it there's something that looks like confusion. The hand holding the bottle drops six inches. "How do you?—"
Phantom doesn't move. The patience of a man who has already won. "Because we got a man on our property who knows the work you've been doin', knows you've been runnin' fraud through Bell Insurance for six years. He's the man who turned you in to your boss. Your job's gone because of him. And the person who texted you last night to come up here today wasn't on your side. He was usin' the fact you'd just been fired. He knew you'd come straight here."
Todd's mouth works around nothing. "He said Hadley?—"
Phantom's voice goes the soft kind that's worse than yelling. "He used you, son."
Todd stares at Phantom across the twenty feet of gravel.
