(Do Not Read Back Up Copy)

Chapter XV

Caleb

I guess I owe God a favor.

One round from shotgun to spine takes three seconds to send a guy like me halfway to heaven. Seven came and went, and there was no bullet in my back, just a little girl in my arms, sobbing a stain into my dirty white t-shirt.

I whipped my head around in the dark and the cracks between the window boards lit up in a headlight sunrise. Thirty minutes and a phone call was enough to bring out the pigs.

They’re quick when you threaten em’, slow when you need help. Funny thing was, everybody under our roof needed a hand, but we were past the point of asking and Anderson wasn’t coming to talk.

I guess bad news is fast on its feet. The cops were quick to the trigger. Before any of us could get our heads around what was happening, two bullets shattered the wood from the outside and sent a thousand splinters flying our way, each one catching the light off the cop car high beams like dust in the sun.

On any other night in any other place it would’ve been beautiful, but there was nothing beautiful about this place anymore.

I stood there in the dark, no more than a couple feet away from what was left of my family, trying to figure out why I was still breathing, while bullets broke through the window boards. The four of us knew what was coming, A quick shutter and twang of the heartstrings and all that numbness we’d gotten so good at pretending we felt, leaked down the inside of our jeans.

The room got so loud I went deaf to the gunfire. I stopped hearing anything at all besides the goddamn buzzing in my ears. Don’t know if I had Liam to blame for shooting some of my hearing away or the uniforms outside, but the quiet didn't take away the fear.

I couldn't breathe because of it, and I kept having this feeling that it would get under my skin and split me into pieces if I didn't do something to stop it. But I froze up again. Like the same goddamn kid who pissed himself every time his father took off his belt. That’s the man I was now. That's what I boiled down to after 20 years, still less than nothing.

But if there’s any comfort in that truth, it was scrawled all over my brothers faces, each of em' gray and empty in the half-dark. We were all the same men then, wearing our broken masks while we soaked through our clothes.

About a half a minute into the shootout, some big shot FBI guy called out a ceasefire over the police radios. Don't know why I could hear his voice as clear as I did but it was good to know some sound was getting through.

But after he'd finished screaming at his dogs and muzzled their teeth, silence fell down on top of us again, and it covered the whole 50 acres of our place until that crash, oneI'm not gonna forget, broke everything into pieces.

Cillian’s shotgun hit the floor. He'd never dropped a weapon in his life. Wasn’t like him to be careless. Wasn’t like him to miss an easyshot either. I turned back to where he’d been standing and saw Liam alone—his face twisted up worse than the barbed wire he’d left tangled around the room.

He looked at me straight, pupils wider than I'd ever seen em', and choked up all of a sudden. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the dark space on the floor near his feet.

I couldn’t make out what he was looking at—wasn’t sure if I wanted to—but I stood there for a long time, staring at what I hoped was nothing, waiting for the helicopter searchlights to clear out the shadows.

Red and blue lights spilled over the floorboards and Cillian was lying there, looking like he’d fallen five stories from his feet to the ground, sprawled out and squirming. I thought he was messing around. Faking being gunned down like he used to when we were kids.