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That hit her funny bone, hard. Lily laughed until her eyes filled with hot tears, and let them lead her on inside.
CHAPTER23
It had started to rain. Hard, half frozen, dripping steadily into the neck of his jacket. His boots were drenched, his feet so cold, he couldn’t feel them. Bruno pried up another shovelful of rocks and dirt, and flung it up onto the heap of slop which had once been the pile of earth, and was now threatening to ooze right back down into the hole from whence it had come. His shoulders burned, the blisters on his hands stung, gloves or no gloves. He wiped sweat off his face with his jacket sleeve, realizing too late that there was mud smeared all over it.
Davy worked alongside him, wrapped in his usual silence. Just monosyllabic grunts when speech was necessary, which where Davy was concerned was rare. Amazing, that such a verbally challenged dude had managed to court and marry such a smart, pretty woman as Margot McCloud. And father her children, too. The mind boggled.
All in all, after having worked for ten hours, since five o’clock that morning, with brief pauses for sandwiches, power bars and water, Bruno was starting to half hope that the mysterious attackers would put in an appearance. Anything at all, would be a nice break from what he was doing, even a pitched gun battle. The hole was waist deep, which was as deep as it would go. They’d hit bedrock a while back, and had started digging laterally. It was nine feet wide, almost as long, and still no sign of the pissed upon bones. And it was filling with water. He’d have to dive for the skeletons soon. Search by Braille, with a snorkel. Tony was probably spinning in his own grave. He imagined Tony’s rough voice.Four feet to the right, jerk-offs!
“Give me the shovel. You go guard. I’ll dig.” It was Kev, water-logged and stoic. He hoisted the rifle, offering it to Bruno. “Go on.”
Bruno drove the shovel into the soil, feeling the metal ring against stone. The shock vibrated through his body. He leaned on the shovel, and checked his watch. “I’ve only been at it for forty minutes,” he said. “You took a two hour turn already. Come back in an hour and twenty.”
“I asked Tam about your bruises,” Kev said. “She said you looked like shit. Get the fuck out of that hole, and take the gun.”
Bruno met his adopted brother’s eyes. “I’m fine. I’d rather dig.”
The silence was charged. Then, amazingly, Davy spoke up.
“Well, now. Isn’t that just touching as all hell.” His gravely voice dripped irony like a row of icicles.
Kev’s gaze slashed over to his older brother. “What?”
Davy flung his shovelful of mud insultingly close to Kev’s boots. Kev let himself be spattered to the knees without flinching. He stared down at his oldest brother, waiting for an answer.
Davy straightened, taking his time to shake out stiffened muscles. “It warms me to the cockles of my heart when you coddle him like that.”
Bruno’s jaw dropped, but Kev beat him to it. “Coddle?” Kev snarled. “What the fuck? The kid’s been fighting for his life!”
“That’s just what I mean,” Davy said. “The kid. Poor little Bruno who never had a father.”
“What?” Bruno burst out. “What does my father or lack thereof have to do with anything?”
But both men ignored him, too busy staring each other down.“That’s not coddling?” Davy asked. “Having a hissy fit when you got Sean’s call? Having a tantrum in Tam’s kitchen? Cutting short your trip to come rushing home for this smart-assed, ungrateful punk?”
Bruno sucked in air. “Who are you calling a punk?”
Still, both men acted like he wasn’t there. Davy stared up out of the hole without even budging his piercing gaze from his brother’s. It looked all the more weirdly bright from his mud-daubed face.
Sean slogged up over the rise, looking as happy to be there as all the rest of them. He frowned. “Aren’t you supposed to be covering the back slope? We can’t get sloppy. Those fuckers will slaughter us.”
Kev jerked his chin in Davy’s direction. “I’m waiting to hear what his problem is.”
Sean took in Davy’s expression. “Oh, shit. Now?”
“Now,” Kev said.
Davy drove his shovel into the ground, with the vibe of a vampire hunter planting a stake in the heart of the undead. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for the last few hours. I have a theory, now.”
“Let’s hear it,” Kev said.
Davy arched back, staring at the sky. “When Margot was pregnant with Jeannie, there was this album she played to calm her down when she had morning sickness.”
“Yeah?” Bruno prodded. “And this tender domestic detail is relevant to this situation exactly how?”
“You shut up,” Davy said to him. “I’m not talking to you.”
“Oh,” he muttered. “Sorry! I forgot. I’m just that insignificant, ungrateful, coddled punk.”
