Page 91 of The Knucklebone Brothers

My hands stopped. The rope went slack. I turned my head just enough to see him out of the corner of my eye.

"If Hester gets wind I'm runnin' my mouth, she'll string me up by my own entrails," he said, shovin' his hands deep into his pockets.

"She'll do that anyway," I grunted, finally facin' him fully. "She just usually waits 'til after supper."

A grim smile touched his lips. "A man's gotta eat." He kicked at a loose piece of gravel, his gaze driftin' toward the dense wall of fog. "She had me over last night. To her place."

The air between us grew thicker and colder. "For what?"

Knox's eyes found mine, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of genuine fear in them. "For plannin'."

My jaw tightened. "Plannin' what?"

He looked at me, a long, hard look that said he was about to hand me a lit stick of dynamite. "Rory."

The fog seemed to press in, the silence stretchin' thin and sharp.

"She laid it all out for me," Knox went on, his voice droppin' lower. "The whole goddamn thing. What she's gonna do."

My voice was a low growl, barely recognizable as my own. "What?"

He finally said it, the words were small and ugly in the vast, damp quiet. "She's gonna kill her."

And just like that, everything went still. The world stopped. The fog, the trees, the sound of my own breath. It all just... stopped. A coldness spread through my chest, a slow, creepin' ice that had nothin' to do with the October air. I didn't move. I didn't speak. I just stood there, a statue in the mist, feelin' the first stirrings of a storm that was gonna wash this whole holler in blood.

I stared at Knox, my mind already racing, trying to piece together a defense, a countermove, a goddamn anything.

"I didn't tell Mav, “He said, his voice low.

"Why?"

"Because you know your brother."

And I did. I knew him like I knew the back of my own hand. Knew every scar, every twitch, every dark thought that passed behind his eyes.

"He'd go straight to her," I finished for him.

"Exactly."

"And?"

"And Hester would know somebody talked. Then we'd have two problems instead of one." He looked away toward the dense, impenetrable wall of fog. "I don't wanna interfere with family business."

Then he looked back at me, and for a second, the hard, cynical shell of him cracked. "But I like the girl."

I felt the corner of my own mouth twitch. "Yeah."

His humor vanished as quickly as it came. "I don't want to watch that woman butcher her," he said, his voice grim. "She had it all planned out. Said Rory doesn't belong here. Said her presence is a sickness. Said the Holler doesn't accept outsiders."

He took a step closer, his voice droppin' even lower. "And then she said she'd take care of it herself."

The words hung in the air, ugly and final. "She had everything laid out," Knox went on, lookin' out at the holler. "You don't want me sayin' it."

"Tell me."

He turned back to me. "Blood's gonna be spilled."

This wasn't a threat. It was a forecast. A goddamn guarantee.