Chapter 38 - The Sister’s Final Demand
"The house," I whispered, the word tasting like ash on my tongue. "They burned it."
"They didn't burn it," Julian said, standing up stiffly, his joints cracking like dry twigs. "The foundation collapsed when the siphon opened. The gas lines into the furnace sheared off at the main meter. The spark from the drill did the rest."
"Arthur," Constance whispered, her hand trembling as she pointed toward the burning ridge above. "Arthur was on the ladder."
Julian didn't answer. He looked at me, then down at the steel box lying in the mud between my knees.
"The bonds are safe," I said, my voice hardening. "The records of the payments to Arthur. The bill of sale Clara signed with Aegis Meridian. Everything is in here."
"It doesn't matter unless you can get to the county seat before eight o'clock tomorrow morning," a voice called out from the darkness of the old rail bed.
I snapped my head toward the sound.
Stepping out from behind the rusted carcass of an abandoned freight car was a figure wrapped in an emergency foil blanket, her designer boots caked in thick black mud, her hair singed on one side and hanging in matted clumps around her shoulders.
Clara.
She was holding a small, silver .38 revolver in her right hand. The barrel was wavering, shaking violently with the tremors running through her entire body, but it was pointed directly at my face.
"Give me the box, Maeve," Clara said, her voice shaking with a terrifying mixture of tears and cold, calculating greed. "Give it to me, or I swear to God I'll leave you down here with the rest of the trash."
"Where is Dad, Clara?" I asked, not moving an inch.
Clara’s lip curled into a sneer, but her eyes darted toward the burning glow above the trees. "He was too slow. He always was too slow. He thought if we took your house, we could just live on the equity and pay the minimums. He didn't understand that the people I borrowed from don't want monthly payments. They want the capital. All of it."
"You killed your own father?" Constance said, her voice rising with an icy, majestic fury that even the gun couldn't silence. "You left him in the cellar to burn?"
"He wasn't my father!" Clara screamed, stepping closer, the foil blanket rustling around her like dried corn husks. "He was a pathetic clerk who spent forty years pretending he owned a mountain! You made me live in his shadow, Constance! You gave Maeve the house! You gave her the deed! You left me with nothing but a mother who drank herself to death and a stack of unpaid debts!"
"I gave Maeve the deed because she was the only one who didn't come to my door with her hand out!" Constance snapped, taking a step forward despite the mud. "You sold your soul to loan sharks, Clara! And now you're standing in a ditch with a gun that doesn't have the hammer back!"
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Clara’s eyes flickered down to the revolver in her hand.
In that half-second of hesitation, Julian moved.
