The Darkest Corner (Gravediggers #1)(7)

"What the hell kind of person shoots a casket?" Elias asked the other boy, who stared back at him wide-eyed, his hands raised. 

"I . . . I don't know," the boy answered.

"I think that was a rhetorical question," Deacon said, binding the boy's hands behind his back with a zip-tie he'd pulled out of his pocket, and then making sure the other one wasn't in danger of bleeding to death before tying him up too. It didn't look like the bullet had hit anything major, so he left him where he was and pulled out his phone to call the local cops.

Axel and Colin had gone inside to check on the homeowners, and they were back out within a couple of minutes.

"They're alive," Axel said. "Tied up and sitting in the bathtub."

"Bloody lucky," Dante said.

"For us or them?" Elias asked.

"Both."

Deacon disconnected the phone. "Cops are on the way."

"Anyone want to look inside the casket and see if our new teammate is still among the living?" Elias said it jokingly, like he did most things, but they all knew if anything happened to The Gravediggers' newest recruit, Eve Winter would make them wish they were all dead.

Axel hopped into the back of the van. "I don't suppose anyone has a casket key?"

"There's one in the toolbox behind the driver's seat," Deacon said. "Tess keeps an extra there in case of an emergency."

"I can't imagine many people understand the true meaning of a casket emergency," Elias said.

"Yet, here we are," Deacon responded dryly, checking his watch. They might have another five minutes before the cops showed up. They needed to move quickly.

Axel found the key and shone his flashlight at the tiny hole at the other end of the casket, where the key was supposed to be inserted. It worked like a crank, and he spun it several times to loosen the lid.

They all gathered around and used their flashlights. And then Axel very carefully opened the top half of the casket where the bullet had gone in, and they all peered inside.

"This never stops being creepy as shit," Elias said. "Pale motherfucker. He looks dead to me."

"He's supposed to look dead," Deacon said. "He'll get some color back once the serum starts to work. Speaking of the serum, go ahead and administer it to him. I don't like how long he's been underground."

"I don't see where the bullet entered the casket," Dante said.

"Thank God for hardwood," Axel said, using the casket key to push inside the tiny bullet hole from the outside. "It didn't go through."

Metal hit metal. Deacon really hadn't wanted to have a confrontation with Eve over the death of one of her men. It had become hard enough lately to hold his tongue. She was a stone-cold bitch, and was entirely unapologetic about it. The job-the mission-always came first. Over her men and certainly over the life of everyone else. Anyone was expendable. The only thing that kept him from going rogue was the fact that she did have to answer to The Directors, so someone was holding her in check.

Who the hell knew? Maybe if he had to answer to The Directors, he'd be a stone-cold son of a bitch too. What he did know was that the lines blurred a little more every day. Sometimes he wondered if they really were the good guys.

"Let's move," he said. "I hear sirens."

Deacon got behind the wheel once again. The others closed the back doors, and he was reversing out of the driveway and heading toward the funeral home before Axel got back into the passenger seat.

"You know," Axel said. "Our first worry was what Winter would've done if that bullet had hit her new recruit."



       
         
       
        

"And?" Deacon asked.

"What we need to be worried about now is what Tess is going to do when she sees that bullet hole in her van. That redhead's got a hell of a temper she keeps repressed."

For the first time that night, Deacon smiled. Maybe he was as bad as Elias, because suddenly all he could think about was seeing the sexy Miss Sherman in a full temper, and he wouldn't mind it one bit.





CHAPTER TWO




There were those who said Last Stop, Texas, should've been named Pass On Through.

The town had been founded back in 1850, at the height of the Wild West, as men on horseback made an impressive picture driving cattle straight through the middle of town to much fanfare. They'd let the animals stop and drink out of the watering hole on the Larson property, and sleep in the grassy fields under the stars. It was their last stop until the Oklahoma border.

It was a short-lived claim to fame, as the railroads came to Fort Worth in 1876, changing the way cattle drives were done. It was just as well, as Mr. Larson's watering hole had all but dried up about the same time.