The Valley: A Lee Harden Novel, page 5
Sam had seen a lot of mean, screwed up people in his life. But there was something about this guy that set off instinctive warning bells in his head. It was like the guy knew he was untouchable. Like he was confident that if things went bad, he’d be on the winning side.
Standing so close to him now, Sam could see that Bran’s confidence was not bravado. He knew something Sam didn’t. There was a danger here that Sam wasn’t seeing.
Tread carefully, Sam warned himself, wondering if he’d made a mistake by acting too casual.
But then Bran’s eyes shot off to something over Sam’s shoulder, and a worried voice hollered out, “Bran! Kat! I’m coming!”
It was Ted, sounding like he was in a hurry to get there.
“Let’s all just take a few deep breaths! Sorry for making you wait!”
Slowly, humanity crept back into Bran’s face, and when it was fully there again, it left Sam feeling queasy and strange. As Bran relaxed and took a step back, Sam allowed himself a quick glance over his shoulder. Ted was front and center, hustling along with Bea at his side, Lee and Marie trailing…
A frown crossed over Sam’s eyes as they darted around. Where the hell was Abe?
It took him about two seconds before he made eye contact with Lee and got a stern, hush-hush look from that one eye.
But of course. Abe had squirreled around somewhere and probably had his rifle trained on Bran’s nose.
Ted and Bea stopped, more or less abreast of Sam, looking terrified and out of breath. Lee and Marie hung back a few paces, close to the engine block with Jones.
“Ted,” Bran crooned, drawing out the name like they were longtime pals. And then he got serious again. “Mind telling me what the fuck’s going on here?”
Ted held out a staying hand, as though Bran was a bull that might charge him. Sam noted that the fingers trembled. Good God. How had this guy become the leader of the settlement?
“Look. Bran. We’re very close, okay? If you can just give us a little more time—or better yet, if you can convince Colin to open the dam, then—”
“Christ,” Bran spat. “No, he’s not gonna open the fuckin’ dam, and don’t ask again. But that’s not what I’m asking you about right now.” Bran had his gaze clamped onto Ted’s like a bulldog on a jugular and stabbed a finger so close to Sam that it nearly touched his nose. “I wanna know who the fuck these guys are.”
Sam only did what he did next because he knew Abe would splash the man’s brains if it came down to it. He gently pushed the finger out of his face and said, “Oh, I already introduced myself. I’m Sam. That’s okay. I’m bad with names too.”
Bran turned a face on Sam that looked for all the world like lightning would come shooting out of his pupils. Sam couldn’t tell if it was his nonchalance, his words, or the fact that he’d pushed Bran’s finger away.
But Bran didn’t burst. Got right up to the edge, it looked like—if the redness along his scalp and the protruding vein in his temple were any indicator—but then spoke quietly. “Who’s this kid’s boss?”
Lee let out a sigh and shuffled around Ted and Bea. “Yeah, that’s me,” he said, like a parent that’s been called out for their unruly child. He made no effort to hide his limp. He didn’t stand tall and imposing as he could when he wanted to, but rather approached with a bit of a slouch, eyes on the ground in front of him.
Lee stopped when he was shoulder to shoulder with Sam, then drew himself up with a grunt and looked tiredly at Bran. “Has he done something wrong?”
Bran’s eyes narrowed, and Sam could see all kinds of calculations zipping around in that guy’s brain, trying to make sense of Lee. Sam almost felt bad for him. To the freshly-introduced, Lee could seem like a jumble of contradictions. He was battered and scarred up and missing bits of himself, and yet he projected the attitude of a man completely confident in his body. His musculature wasn’t pronounced, but you could see the hard edges of it, and it didn’t take a genius to know that Lee could exert mean amounts of force on a fleshy target if he chose to. He acted all good-humored and friendly, but you only needed to make eye contact with him for a few seconds to know that he could turn that off like a switch.
But Bran was savvy. He took Lee’s measure, and instantly knew what he was dealing with.
He sniffed and tilted his head back, peering at Lee. “I have no clue who you are. But…” Bran lifted two fingers and waggled them at Lee in an I-see-you gesture. “I know what you are.”
Lee smiled back, but with much less genuine feeling. “I’m a traveling merchant. Name’s Jackson, but you can call me Jax.”
The girl—and she was a girl, Sam realized; she couldn’t possibly be more than fifteen or sixteen, judging by her eyes—let out a protracted hiss, and then spoke in a rough, husky voice: “Dark mode.”
Sam had no idea what the hell that meant, but Bran obviously did, because his hand shot up, palm to Kat, silencing her. “Not now, Kat.”
Lee pulled his head back. “Sure wish I knew what y’all were talking about.”
“Oh, it don’t matter anyhow,” Bran said, taking a step back from Lee. Sam watched his eyes stray from Lee’s and go ranging all over. And he realized what Bran was looking for. “So, where’s your other guy, Jax?”
Lee sighed, but didn’t otherwise respond.
Bran waved a dismissive hand at the truck, eyes still searching. “Three helmets in there,” he said, then nodded at Sam and Jones. “Two helmets on your boys here. So where’s your fifth guy?”
“Well, I’ll be honest,” Lee said. “I don’t really know where he is, exactly. But I do know that there’s only eight ounces of finger pressure between a bullet and your brain, so you do with that what you will.”
“Huh,” was all Bran replied.
Sam guessed Bran never did spot Abe, because he gave up after a moment and his gaze skipped across all of them and landed back on Ted. The expression on his face was one of rueful disbelief. And maybe a bit of warning.
“This really how you want to play this one, Ted?”
Ted took a halting step forward. “Hey, whoa. It’s not like that, okay? We’ll have Colin’s payment. We just need a little more time.”
“And this was your plan to get more time?” Bran asked, almost sounding disappointed in Ted. “Hire some outside guns?”
“No,” Ted said quickly. “That’s not it at all.”
“Camperland’s done.”
The words came out of Bran so flat and understated that, for a moment, everyone was silent. Even the residents that presumably had the inside track on things seemed a bit confused by that.
Ted frowned like he was trying to piece it together. And when he did, his face blanched. “Done? Like…done done?”
Bran surprised Sam by wincing and glancing away. “Well, they didn’t leave me a whole lotta options, Ted.” Eyes sad, almost plaintive. “Is that what you’re doing to me right now?”
Ted swallowed and shook his head. “I’m not doing anything to you, Bran.”
Bran chewed on that for a moment. Nothing but the sound of the wind. Then Bran nodded. “Alright then.”
“Alright?”
But Bran just tapped Kat on the shoulder and they both turned back to their ATV.
Ted skittered forward a few steps. “Alright, like, everything’s cool now?”
“No, Ted,” Bran called over his shoulder. “Everything is not cool.”
“Shit,” Ted hissed. “You’re not gonna call them, are you?”
Bran swung into the driver’s seat. Slumped back and regarded Ted over the steering wheel. “Three days, Ted. I’ll be back in three days. You know what I want. Please have it ready.” His face clouding over, Bran yanked the ATV into gear. “I don’t wanna do to you what I did to them.”
And with that, Bran gunned out a rapid turn, stirring up dust, and disappeared into it.
Chapter 5
Lee watched the ATV until it crested a rise and disappeared over the other side.
At this point in Lee’s life, he’d been a lot of places, and dealt with a lot of bad men. Sometimes he’d been the bad man, depending on your perspective. He’d been shot up a bit. Blown up. Stabbed. Burned. Mauled. Pretty much all the ways you could wreck your body going toe to toe with things that wanted to kill you.
You’d think by now he’d be the coolest cucumber in the pickle patch. But God, were his guts torqued up. Pulse hitting hard enough to feel it in his throat. Mouth dry. Shoulders tense.
It wasn’t just fear, though. Lee wasn’t immune to fear—nobody was. But fear of death didn’t hold the edge that it used to for him. That old blade had been notched and dulled from years of hard use. It’d become a blunt instrument, and easy for him to ignore.
And yet his body still dumped adrenaline into his system for other reasons. More than any other factor, it was the tension of restrained desire. It was a twitchy horse, locked into the starting blocks, and just wanting to run. It was knowing he shouldn’t be the one to strike first, and trembling as he prayed for the other to do it, do it, do it!
It was his body gearing up for yet another fight to the death.
Which was great—when there was an actual fight.
But when there wasn’t, that dump of potent brain chemicals would just sit and simmer, with no outlet. They had to be worked out slowly with deep breaths, and shaking hands, and twitching calf muscles.
He fucking hated it. Wished that he could just be stoic and calm. Sure, he presented that on the outside. But he just wished he could feel it on the inside.
Now he was going to have a headache.
“Well,” Lee gruffed, then spat off to the side. “They seem nice.”
Ted twisted to look at him, his face blank.
Lee just shrugged. “I mean, he wasn’t a dick about it. Although, I dunno about the young woman.”
Something strange crossed over Ted’s face. “Don’t let her age fool you. She’s dangerous.”
“That’s why I said I don’t know about her.”
“Bran’s dangerous too.”
“Maybe. But he doesn’t want to hurt you. The girl does.”
“They both work for Colin Horner,” Ted said, as though changing the subject.
“And Colin Horner wants five hundred pounds of feed corn,” Lee recalled from their meeting. “Of which you are far short, correct?”
Beside Ted, the woman with the scar on her face who had been in the lookout bristled and cinched closer to him. “You told them?”
“Yes, I told them,” Ted snapped. Then, to Lee: “Five hundred pounds short.”
“Oh dear,” Jones quipped from off to the side.
“Ah.” Lee tilted his head back, working the aching fingers of his left hand. Three years ago, he’d made a brave but ultimately stupid decision, and gone running after a primal that was trying to carry a wounded woman away. That was the “brave” part. But he’d only had his pistol. And that was the stupid part. The primal had latched onto his wrist. It had received a 9mm to the brainstem, and Lee had received severed tendons and a hand that didn’t quite work right anymore.
All for nothing, as it turned out. The woman had died anyway.
That was a long time ago. Back on the East Coast. Back when he’d been Major Lee Harden, and his name had meant something.
He dragged his good eye over to Ted. “Just gonna hazard a guess here, but I’m assuming you’re not going to magically come up with five hundred pounds of corn in three days, are you?”
“Is magical corn one of the things you sell?” Ted let out a desperate titter, then choked it off and cleared his throat. “No.”
The sound of a heavy thunk drew Lee’s attention to the truck. Abe, sweating profusely and looking like he’d just completed a hard run, had slapped his Mk-12 Designated Marksman Rifle on the hood of the truck and was now glaring at Ted.
“So did you actually have a plan to deal with this problem of yours?” Abe’s tone gave no quarter. Abe was not the best at being gentle with his words. But then again, nobody had ever accused Lee himself of being terribly diplomatic.
“We were figuring it out,” the woman beside Ted answered sharply.
“I’m sorry,” Abe snapped back, stepping forward with his hands on his hips. “Who are you again? Besides the woman that pointed a rifle at me when I first got here?”
“Name’s Bea,” she stated, as though her name were a throwing knife.
“Well, good for you, Bea and Ted,” Abe growled. “I’m so glad you were figuring it out, but now your time’s up.”
Bea’s eyes widened and her teeth flashed. “You came here—” she spun to Ted. “—we don’t have to listen to this bullshit.”
Ted stood there, looking at them thoughtfully.
“Ted!” Bea pressed.
He held up a hand. “Now, hold on a minute, Bea.”
“These guys are nothing but trouble!” she spat.
“Aw,” Jones said, hurt.
“They’ve been here for ten minutes and they already got Bran and Kat all pissed!” She whirled on Sam. “Like I told them not to!”
Marie sniffed loudly and leaned against the hood of the truck. “And how do you think that would have gone without us here?”
Bea blinked rapidly like Marie’s words were a bit of sand in her eyes. “That’s a stupid rhetorical question, lady. All I know is that we were fine, and then you showed up, and now we’ve got three days before all unholy hell gets unleashed on us.”
“Right,” Lee said loudly, clapping his hands, and forcing everyone’s eyes to him. “You’ve got three days, and we’re here. Those are the facts. So, what happens in three days? That’s really up to you.” He smiled and leaned in, lowering his voice. “But if I were you, I’d think about maybe asking us how we might be able to help.”
Bea drew her head back. “What? Is this your schtick? Show up to random places and cause problems, then sell the solution?”
“Seems like you had this problem before we got here.”
“Ted!” Bea said again.
But Ted just looked right at Lee, without a breath of guile in his face, and said, “How can you help?”
“What a great question,” Lee said. “Marie?”
Still lazing on the side of the truck, Marie said it like a bored fast-food clerk reading a menu: “Weapons, ammunition, training, consulting.”
Silence.
A wave of realization. Not just over Bea and Ted, but over all of the onlookers slowly inching closer to hear the exchange. The realization that, regardless of whose fault the problem was, these strangers were a solution. Possibly the only solution they were ever going to get.
“What do you want for all that?” Bea asked, her voice much quieter now.
It was Ted that answered: “For now, they want a place to stay.” He gave her a cautious sidelong glance, but Bea remained focused on them.
A shadow of disbelief crossed over her eyes. “So, you’re gonna give us weapons, ammunition, training, and consulting, and all you want in return is a crash pad?”
Lee gave a facial shrug. “That a problem for you?”
Bea whirled on Ted. “Well, who the hell are they gonna…” she trailed off, answering her own question, and apparently not liking it.
Ted gave her a pleading look. “I’m sorry, Bea. I was going to talk to you about it first, but then all this happened.”
“Really?” Bea’s eyes sparked. “You’re gonna put a buncha strangers in with me? What the hell, Ted?”
“You’re the only one in the Redoubt with room, ever since…” he cut himself off and swallowed, waving his hand in front of his face. “I’d put them up at my place, but I can barely move around in there as it is with all the crap we have in storage.”
Bea looked like she might start shaking with rage.
Sam leaned in. “I promise we’re housebroken. And we won’t chew your shoes.” He made an X across the front of his plate carrier. “Cross my heart.”
Lee inspected his teammate’s face and frowned. Was he imagining things, or was Sam a little sweet on this lady?
Sam’s sense of humor did nothing to douse Bea’s anger. She started to open her mouth, but really, Lee wasn’t in the mood for more arguing—that post-adrenaline headache was already coming on.
“Actually,” he said, jumping in before Bea could get started on whatever tirade she had brewing. “Nothing’s for sure and certain just yet.” Lee jerked his head towards his team. “We still need to talk amongst ourselves and decide if we really do wanna stick around here and help.”
Ted’s eyes went a little wider and his mouth popped open. He struggled to make sounds with it for a few seconds, and then finally managed, “You still have to decide? I thought it was already decided. Why the hell have you been arguing this whole time if you haven’t even decided?”
Lee squinted at Ted. “Well, frankly, Ted, we haven’t decided because we’ve been arguing this whole time.”
Ted’s face screwed up. “What does that even mean?”
Lee sidled up closer to him. “Let me put it to you like this, Ted. How bad a community wants our help is a big indicator of how successful we’re going to be. And so far? I can’t say with much certainty that anyone besides you actually wants us to be here.”
Ted considered this for a long moment. Once or twice, his eyes jagged in Bea’s direction with a definite note of resentment.
Lee didn’t want to build any bad blood between the people of this settlement, so he put on another smile and gave Ted a pat on the shoulder. “Just give us a few minutes, Ted. We’ll work everything out.”
Chapter 6
Lee slammed the door to the truck. Everyone else was already in their seats, doing a great job of avoiding eye contact with the people outside of the vehicle. And there were quite a few at this point.
Bea and Ted had retreated. But the rest of the denizens of the Redoubt had now relaxed a good bit and come sauntering out into the open, where they now lounged in the shade and stared at the newcomers like they’d never considered that staring at others might make them uncomfortable.
