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“Sure,” Libby says, but she sounds skeptical.
She never has wholly bought my bullshit.
Still, I flash her another smile while she disappears inside, then grab Blake’s arm and steer him toward the building, glaring at him.
“How about we not have this conversation in earshot of her?”
That asshole just smirks. “What? You afraid of her hearing that you actually damn well like her?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
We step through the half-broken door of what’s less a hospital and more like…I don’t even know what to call it.
Makes me think of the old medic’s tents set up on deployment more than a real hospital or doctor’s office. All the old equipment and supplies are scattered on tables on the far end of the large single room, one big slab of an operating table, rows of cots with old, mouse-eaten sheets still stained.
Blake and I move from bed to bed, checking the windowsills, under the mattresses, places where sick or injured people might’ve kept little journals or keepsakes that might be just what we need to put this place on the map.
Something more significant than a few antiques that might fetch a nice price at auction, but won’t do much else.
Blake glances at me now and then.
“You really do like her, don’t you?” he grumbles.
I straighten from feeling the bottom of a lumpy mattress to see if there’s anything stitched into it. Gold, even. Might be useful.
“Is it that obvious?” I ask, lifting my head and scanning the room. “She gets me going, yeah. Makes me want to be…” I search for words, shaking my head. “Better than I am, that’s for sure.”
“You really think you were that bad a guy?” my brother asks.
“Don’t know about bad, but maybe just…fuck.” I shrug, moving on to peer over the exam table and the racks of tattered bandages, old cloudy bottles with dried residue inside, ancient tools I don’t even want to think about being used on a human body. “I was focused on the wrong shit. Libby makes me focus on what’s right.”
“You talk different now, you know.”
I blink, squinting at him. “I do what now?”
Blake grins. “You sound more like me. Pure country. No more of that New York city slicker shit.”
I snort, rolling my eyes. “Shut up. Look, you can’t take the country out of the boy. You know that.”
“Yeah, well…”
There’s a pause, and then Blake mumbles something.
I frown, eyeing him.
“What was that?”
He clears his throat, pretends to cough, turning his head to muffle it against his shoulder and talking in a low mumble. “I said…itsgoodtohavemybrotherback.”
That’s how it comes out.
One long word.
Now it’s my turn to fake clear my throat, looking away, scrubbing a hand over the back of my neck.
My face feels warm.
It reminds me of why I keep going back to see him, Andrea, and Peace.
To be Uncle Holt, not just this drifter.
“Yeah, well,” I mutter, “it’s good to be back, Blake.”
We don’t say anything else after that, picking through everything.
I find what looks like an old doctor’s logbook. Ragged black leather, faded pages in a sort of weird pale green with thin blue lines printed in grids. Looks like names, notations of dosages, dates.
“Damn, man. Doc would have a field day with this old stuff,” Blake whispers.
I flip through. It dates as far back as the eighteen fifties.
This could be good.
Especially if we cross-check the names and come up with anyone famous like the legendary bandits.
I set it on a shelf carefully, mentally noting where it is. I don’t want to touch it any more in case the acid in my skin messes with the paper.
Just as I move over to check out some dried-up test tubes with a thin skim of flaky rust inside, a call comes from outside.
The kids.
I don’t even hear what they’re saying, don’t even think.
My heart nearly slams out of my chest, and I go rocketing toward the door. Blake’s ahead of me, off like a gunshot.
You don’t get between him and his little girl when she’s yelling.
Just as we bolt out, Libby comes leaping out of the horseshoe place with her ponytail bouncing.
The three of us stop and stare.
Andrea and Clark stand in the middle of a little fenced yard in front of the church, blinking at us like they’re wondering what the hell our problems are.
Brats.
They’re just fine, oblivious to scaring the living crap out of us.
Blake stops, wheezing, bending over and bracing his hands on his thighs. “Andrea? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Dad, calm down.” She rolls her eyes. “We found some stuff. Thought you might want to see it.”
Blake closes his eyes with a deep, long-suffering breath.
“The next time you start hollering like that,” he says, “you better be in trouble.”
Andrea arches a brow, pursing her lips and folding her arms with a sassy little switch of her hip. “I thought you told me to stay out of trouble. Now you’re telling me to get into it?”
