Page 151 of The Widow and the Wanted

He clears his throat.

“I seen the Aces that night.”

My heart stops. Okee’s head turns slightly.

“The night they say all that happened. I remember clear. They were at the Gemini. Drinking with me.”

A hush falls.

Everett rounds on him. “You remember no such thing.”

The man’s face sweats under his hat. “I do.”

Another man steps forward. Younger. Nervous. Good coat. “I saw ’em too,” he says.

More men shift.

A third says, “They were here.”

A fourth, “I can swear it.”

Okee’s mouth falls open and he cuts me a look.

Everett’s control cracks. “Lies,” he snaps. “Every one of you. Lying to protect your vices. Your debts. Your filthy little arrangements in that house.” Everett points toward Goldie. “You would believe them? You would believe bought men and whores over the word of a Christian man? Over the law? Over decency?”

The hymn singers falter.

Goldie closes the ledger. The sound carries.

“Mr. Everett,” she says, voice high and clear. “I do not care what god you believe in, nor what pew you warm with that lying hide on Sunday mornings.”

A stunned little gasp moves through the crowd.

Goldie lifts one hand toward the gray sky. “But may God or Zeus or anybody else up there strike me down where I stand if I am lying. May he split the sky and burn the whole damn Gemini to its painted bones.”

For one heartbeat, nothing happens. Then Everett bends double and vomits blood.

It comes out of him sudden and terrible, splattering dark across the wagon bench, the crate, his gloves. The sound of it is wet and wrong, and the whole street recoils like one creature.

Women scream.

A horse rears.

The hymn breaks apart.

Everett tries to straighten, but his knees buckle. One hand claws at his throat. Blood shines on his lips, his mustache, his chin. His eyes go wide, like his own body has betrayed him.

Someone cries, “God struck him!”

Another shouts, “He lied!”

“Punished!”

“The Lord’s judgment!”

“Zeus!” somebody yells, sounding half drunk and wholly terrified. “She called Zeus!”

Oh, hell.