Seventeen
Dane heard the call the same time Rachel did.
Both were sitting in the belly of the sheriff’s department. They were two of several who heard what the men had to say.
“These men are sinners,” the man shouted, voice slightly distorted over the speakerphone. “Plain and true! Just like this town. Just like this county. Just like this state. Sinners, all sinners!”
Dane’s fists had already been balled. Now his fingers were eating into his palms. It wasn’t until Rachel silently covered one hand with her own that he loosened the tension. Her wedding band was cold against his skin.
“Then why take them? They were on their way to the prison,” Sheriff Rockwell said. “You’re the one who kept them from facing justice.”
The man on the other end of the phone call was fast to answer, like he’d rehearsed the whole thing beforehand.
“They represent corruption. A corruption that has taken over,” he said, voice still high and filled with unmistakable self-reverence. “And we, the Saviors of the South, represent the consequence to that corruption! The answer! We will show this town that this corruption will no longer be tolerated. These sinners will be the first of many demonstrations on how we will cleanse this place!”
Rachel’s hand tightened over Dane’s while he shared a look with the sheriff. Rockwell was a solid man who Dane had felt privileged to work alongside as his chief deputy for the past few years. He was fair, to the point and levelheaded. He was also a mean shot, and that didn’t count for nothing.
“But you didn’t just take prisoners,” the sheriff pointed out, “you also took two guards. Two good men through and through. What’s your plan with them?”
Dane held his breath. He knew Rachel was doing the same. One of those men was David Roberts. And he was one of the best of them.
That’s why Rachel had married him.
That’s why Dane was his best friend.
That’s why both were willing to do whatever it took to get him back.
“The men who protect sinners are no better than the sinners themselves,” the man answered.
Anger swelled in Dane’s chest but he kept his mouth closed. Popping off at an obviously unstable man wasn’t going to save David or the other guard. It wasn’t going to save the inmates they had been transporting, either. Good or bad, they’d undergone trials and received a sentence by their peers. Neither Dane, the sheriff nor the Saviors of the South had any room to change those sentences. Certainly not to make the decision of whether they should live or die.
And that’s really what the man on the phone was saying without saying it.
They aimed to kill the seven men they’d kidnapped that morning.
Dane knew it. The sheriff knew it. Even Rachel knew it.
She’d rushed to the department the moment she’d heard the transport van had been hit, ready to help in any way she could.
“I have money,” she’d told him. “Not a lot, but maybe we can exchange it.”
That had been before the call had come in. Before they’d realized the men didn’t want money at all. They wanted to be heard. They wanted attention. They wanted fame.
“I can’t just let you do what you want with them, no matter who they are,” Sheriff Rockwell said, stern. “So let’s find us a way to work this out where no one gets hurt.”
The man, who would later be known as Marcus the Martyr by his followers who found themselves in prison, laughed. Without realizing it, Dane locked that sound in his memory for life. It was cold and callous. It didn’t care about corruption, no matter how falsely perceived, and it didn’t care about justice. It, like the man, only cared about being louder than everyone else.
Marcus wanted violence.
Dane knew it the moment he heard the man laugh and then hang up the phone.
He’d later realize it was in that moment that he knew his best friend might not make it to see the next day, but at the time all he could feel was the deep need to do something.
So when the sheriff was done cursing at the dial tone, Dane straightened and felt his world settle on his shoulders.
“I have a plan.”
Seven years later Rachel Roberts surveyed the blacktop ahead of her with a pang of annoyance. It was an early Saturday morning and the Darby Middle School building was absolutely teasing her in the background. Between her and it stood the two reasons why she was sweating in her jeans instead of lounging in her pajamas, catching up on the backlog of television shows burning a hole in her DVR.
“Now, I know none of us want to be here, but we are and that’s that,” she started, making sure she split her narrowed stare between both boys equally. “I guess the two of you are at that age where you don’t know how ridiculous it is to call each other names in the school hallways or during class presentations, so instead of making you write long essays about compassion and being polite...”
Rachel motioned to the two buckets of chalk she’d found in the closet filled with art supplies in her classroom and the rectangle outlined in painter’s tape in the middle of the blacktop. The one she’d made right before spilling her coffee onto the grass next to it. The one she’d said a few harsh words over in the silence of the school’s empty front lawn.
Lonnie Hughes was the first to voice his concern. His scowl had only deepened since he’d hopped off his bike.
Lonnie was a thin twelve-year-old with tightly coiled black hair, dark, always-questioning eyes and a mouth more than ready to voice one of his many opinions. The latter was one of several reasons he was at the bottom of the school’s popularity totem pole. He talked too much, listened too little and had almost no filter. This, plus an ingrained aversion to authority figures, had earned him dismissive attitudes from most of the teachers. Rachel wasn’t one of them, though most of the staff had assured her that if she had more than one art class with the boy she’d think differently.
The boy standing next to him, however, was completely opposite in that respect. Teachers and students alike seemed to love Jude Carrington. Even for a seventh-grader, he had charm and was clever enough to know when to speak, what to say and how to hide all the devious things most kids that age did. His hair was a shock of red, his skin was covered in freckles, and he wore thick-framed glasses. Yet, according to Mrs. Fletcher, who had him in her homeroom, he seemed to be the leader of the seventh-grade class. Instead of being the stereotypical outcast from an ’80s movie, he was Mr. Popular. With a side of bully when it came to Lonnie.
Which was why Rachel wasn’t shocked