Four Summoners Tales Part 26

Zeke took a breath and decided not to fight her.They weren't used to having this many people downtown at once, and it would be hard for Savannah to find her friends in this throng without texting them.

"Just watch where you're going," he said.

They were half a block from the town hall when the first band began to play. People howled and applauded and groups of young people put their arms around each other and swayed together. Zeke figured there must have been six or seven hundred people-not exactly throngs, but a ma.s.sive gathering for Lansdale. Glancing around, he saw faces and the backs of heads, sweatshirts and T-shirts and jackets, and then a quick flash of yellow glimpsed between moving bodies.

Skyler?

"Daddy, I see Vanessa!" Savannah said, tugging his arm. "Can I go hang with those guys?"

"Just a second," he said, rising to the tips of his toes and moving around, trying to get another glimpse of that yellow flash, hoping to find that it had been Skyler's hat.

"They're just over there in front of the bookshop," Savannah said. "I have my phone. Can I just catch up with you in a bit?" There! Another glimpse of yellow.

He hesitated, turning toward Savannah and then glancing over at the little bookshop across the street, its windows dark, the closed sign on the door. A group of kids cl.u.s.tered on the sidewalk there and he thought he did recognize Vanessa amongst them.

"All right," he said. "But don't leave this block. I'll text you in-"

"Thanks, Daddy!" Savannah cried in triumph, waving at him as she pushed away through the crowd.

The band's first song ended. In the moment between the last chord that rolled out of the speaker system and the beginning of the audience's applause, Zeke heard the roar of car engines coming fast.

He turned and saw the headlights, frowned as he saw the pair of dust-coated, jacked-up pickup trucks with their blacked-out windows-

-began to shout as he saw the figures that crouched in the beds of the pickup trucks and the guns they held in their hands, a rainbow of multicolored festival lights gleaming off of the barrels and the truck hoods and the windshields.

The band charged into their second song, a country-rock anthem everyone in the crowd knew by heart, but people had already begun to shout, and when the first gunshot split the night and echoed off of the storefront windows, they began to scream.

"Savannah," Zeke barely whispered.And then he shouted her name.

Hurling himself through the crowd, shoving people aside, he caught sight of her at the edge of the lawn, nearly to the sidewalk. She'd raised her hand in a wave to her friends across the street but stood frozen there as she turned toward the roaring engines and the gunfire that erupted in the very same moment, silencing the music but not the screams.

Zeke had his arm outstretched, reaching for her, no more than five feet away when the bullet punched a hole through her chest. Her white denim jacket puffed out behind her, the fabric tugged by the exiting bullet.

Savannah staggered several steps backward but remained standing for a second or two, a sad, mystified expression on her face as a crimson stain began to soak into the pale blue cotton of her top.

He froze, fingers still outstretched, still reaching for her as she lifted her gaze to focus on him. Zeke was sure of that. Savannah saw him.

And then she crumpled to the street, bleeding, her mouth opening and closing as if she desperately wanted to speak, until at last her chest ceased its rise and fall and Savannah lay still.

By then the gunfire had stopped and the sound of engines had faded, but the screaming went on and on.

2 On a Monday morning, the first week of February, Zeke Prater stood in his east pasture and stared at a job only halfway done. He'd gotten the gate off of its hinges and sc.r.a.ped the h.e.l.l out of his knuckles in the process. The top hinge had rusted nearly all the way through, and over the weekend it had finally given way, the weight of it twisting the bottom hinge and wreaking havoc on the spring mechanism that swung the gate closed automatically. Of all of the hardware bolted into the wood, only the lock seemed in good working order.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," Zeke said with a sigh, stepping back and wiping the sweat from his forehead.

The dark red cotton sweater he'd worn this morning lay hanging over the pasture fence. Winter mornings had a special chill, even all the way down in Hidalgo County, but it had warmed up nicely. He'd worked at the hinges for half an hour before he'd managed to get the gate off. Now he had to remove the twisted hardware before he could install the new hinge set, and then he would see if the spring could be salvaged.

He turned and walked to his truck. His toolbox lay open in the flatbed of the F150 and he tossed the screwdriver into it.The drill case sat beside the toolbox, along with the new set of hinges. Zeke reached for the drill but paused as he noticed the blood dripping from his knuckles, surprised he had not felt it.

Swearing under his breath, he grabbed a rag from the toolbox and wrapped it around his right hand. As he leaned against the tailgate, he took a deep breath, trying to enjoy the feeling of the sun on his skin and the cool winter morning air. But he couldn't help glancing down at the rag, noticing the thirsty way the cloth absorbed his blood. He got lost in that moment, thinking of blood and fabric.

When he heard the sound of an engine he snapped his head up as if awoken from a trance, dropping his right hand-rag and all-to the b.u.t.t of the pistol hanging at his hip. A plume of dust rose from the road to the west, and he recognized the battered old Jeep coming his way. Even so, it took a few seconds for him to move his hand away from the gun.

The Jeep skidded to a halt in the dirt a dozen feet from his truck and the driver climbed out, smile beaming beneath the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. Lester Keegan had put fifty in his rearview mirror a couple of years past and never looked back. Wiry and tan, in his daily uniform of tan work pants and blue cotton b.u.t.ton-down shirt, he'd have looked every inch the working cowboy if not for the hat. Zeke had an eye for hats and he knew a custom job when he saw one. Lester might have owned the smallest of the five ranches surrounding Lansdale, but he had the most money and the expensive tastes to match. Oil had done that, two generations back, and the Keegans had never squandered their windfall.

"I'm a.s.suming there are still folks around here somewhere that you pay good money to do things like fix pasture gates," Lester said, surveying the scene with an eyebrow c.o.c.ked.

"Sometimes a fella likes to get his hands dirty," Zeke replied, checking his knuckles, satisfied to see that the bleeding had stopped.

"Seems to me I recall you saying you were too old for this sort of thing."

Zeke narrowed his eyes. Something in Lester's tone troubled him.They were in the habit of paying each other a visit now and then, sharing a beer or a coffee. Lester's wife, Anita, had taken an interest in Zeke's widower status years ago and had determined to do something about it. The Keegans had reached out to him many times in the past four months-since the night of the music festival-but he'd driven them away just as bluntly as he had everyone else, even though their own son, Josh, had been among the dead.

"If you're not too old to ride or to sink a fence post now and again, I guess I'm not too old to fix a d.a.m.n gate. I just turned forty-two, Lester.That don't make me old; it makes me lazy."

Lester took off his hat and ran his fingers around the soft brim. "Well, now-"