“What did you do?”
“Let’s just say that I needed to make a statement that I could get past your security. Don’t worry. Your niece is fine. I had my people hold back. But things could’ve been worse. You know that, right? I expect to have my money on Monday.”
And then the phone clicked dead.
51
Jason called Chase as soon as he got off the phone with Cade. She came at once and helped console Nola, who appeared to be in shock. Jason grabbed his pistol and walked out the front door.
“Mr. Rich, where are you going?” one of the guards asked.
But Jason didn’t answer. He heard the officer shuffling behind him and saying something over a handheld device, but he paid him no mind. His thoughts were racing, and he was on the verge of hyperventilating.
I’m a lawyer, for God’s sake. I am not James freaking Bond. I don’t know the first thing about negotiating with a drug dealer. I’m a personal injury lawyer. An ambulance chaser. I settle cases for money. I shouldn’t be trying a capital murder case, but at least that’s something a lawyer can do. But taking on Tyson Cade? I can barely even shoot a gun.
What in the literal fuck am I doing?
He stopped in the middle of the street and howled at the sky. Then he put his hands on his knees and tried to regain his breath.
“Mr. Rich?” It was the same guard’s voice, but Jason again ignored him.
No, he thought, imagining Niecy lying on a hospital gurney. Then again at the bottom of Lake Guntersville with Nola right next to her. He saw Tyson Cade rolling up next to him in his Mustang and sneering.
No. No. No.
He kept walking. Across the street and into the front yard of a run-down house that he hadn’t been in since he was a teenager. As he approached the door, he saw a plume of smoke rising behind the dilapidated structure. Without hesitation, he walked around back and saw a bonfire of burning junk and three men standing around the inferno.
When he was a kid, his parents hadn’t had much to do with the neighbors who weren’t on the “lake side,” but Jason and Chase had played with all the kids in the cove. Jason couldn’t say he ever liked the Tonidandels. Truth be known, he was scared to death of them. Once, when Jason and Chase were being picked on by a group of teenage boys who’d wandered into the cove on a ski boat, the Tonidandel brothers had beaten the bullies up so bad that one of them had permanent scars on his face and another was in the hospital for two weeks with internal bleeding. The sheriff had been sent out, but Grandma Tonidandel had said that all her boys were doing was defending themselves and their property. No charges were brought, and Jason had heard his father say, “Even the sheriff is scared of those crazy bastards.”
“What are you doing?” Jason asked, making eye contact with each brother and gesturing toward the fire.
“You’ve been away from Marshall County too long, Jason,” the tallest of the three said with a chuckle as he threw a sack on the blaze. “We just taking out the trash.”
Jason remembered how his own father would sometimes burn their trash in the yard if there was too much.
“What’s on your mind, Jason?” the big man asked.
“I’m in trouble, Satch.”
Satchel Shames Tonidandel was not only the biggest but, according to Chase, the meanest of the brothers. He stood well over six feet three inches tall and weighed north of 250 pounds. He had curly brown hair with streaks of gray and a full salt-and-pepper beard. If Jason remembered right, Satch should be around forty-five years old. Massive biceps protruded from the white T-shirt he was wearing, but the physical feature that struck Jason was the man’s slit-like eyes. Mean, unforgiving.
“We know. Chase filled us in.” He chewed on a toothpick, and his two brothers stood behind him. In the background, the fire blazed on. “Cade.”
“He roughed up my niece tonight in Birmingham. She’s nineteen. Put her in the hospital. I’ve got to go bring her home.” For a long few seconds, the only sound was that of timber crackling. “Will you boys help me?” Jason continued. “I’ll pay . . . I just need someone on my side who knows how to play Cade’s game.”
Satch peered at his brothers, who had now stepped up to either side of him. Then he squinted at Jason with his snake eyes glowing in the light of the fire.
“We’re in.”
52
By the time they reached St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham, Niecy was being discharged. She had a purple bruise on her forehead and another below her right eye. A sling also covered her left arm.