“You’re bluffing.”
“One of us is.”
“I never bluff,” he says. “It’s why I’m about to walk out of here, past you and past whoever your friend outside is, and get the gun out of Bo’s ear and go get on that plane waiting for me. After that, you’ll never see me again.”
He smiles.
“But if I don’t make one phone call before I do,” he says, “you’ll never see your girlfriend or your grandma again.”
“You’re bluffing,” I say this time, hoping to God that he is.
“Are you willing to bet their lives that I am, Silas?”
Because of the impasse we’ve reached, I am thinking about taking out my gun with one hand and my phone with another, and finding out for myself.
Instead, I ask: “You know what happened to your sons tonight?”
Another smile. “I still have friends in law enforcement,” he says. “So I know about them, and know about poor Nash Hader and his deathbed statement, so to speak. Another reason why I’m afraid this has to be goodbye.”
I wonder if Jake is wondering what’s taking me so long. I keep trying to read Briar Crockett as if we’re across a poker table from each other.
“Go ahead and make your call,” I say. “I can’t risk it.”
“Not calling my bluff, Silas?”
“Guess not,” I say. “You win.”
Briar says, “I always do.”
But when he reaches into the top drawer of the desk, he doesn’t come out with a phone, he comes out with a gun that I see has a pearl handle.
My gun is in my hand faster.
I shoot Briar Crockett in the right shoulder, exactly where I was aiming, before he can get off a shot, the pearl-handled revolver falling out of his hand as he falls back in his big, leather-backed chair.
“Still got the quickest release around,” I say as I hear the sirens outside, and then Jake is coming through the door and I’m already on my phone hearing Tay tell me that she and EJ are just fine, thanks for asking.
Then I feel as if I might just be laughing and crying with relief all at the same time and getting a look from Jake as if the whole night has finally caught up with me.
“Silas,” Tay says, “are you okay?”
“Now I am,” I tell her.
PART FOUR
ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN
THE NEXT SPRING
TAYLOR AND I are on the front porch again tonight.
She’s long since moved back into her own house. But we’re spending almost as much time together as when she was living here with EJ and me, hanging out every chance we can the way we did when we were kids, sometimes even looking for excuses to do that.
And maybe we are feeling like kids again despite how both of our grown-up selves are smart enough to know that we’re more than friends now, even though neither one of us is sure where this might be going—if it will ever go further than this—but we’re willing to give it room to breathe, and time.
I know I have time.
But not all the time in the world, because I’m going to have to decide, and soon, if I want to give it another shot with the Steelers.
