Read Online The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen - Free Book Online Page B

down the
stairs, clutching the banister with each step.
It had stopped raining and the city glistened. Puddles like tiny mirrors lay on
the roofs of parked cars. Every restaurant sign and arc light hadbeen transformed into a leaky faucet. The city was so loud
after a rainstorm, every movement shimmering with sound.
How could she be in shock like this? Did she have that right, when all along
she’d known his death was a possibility? Every time he’d walked
into a bank it was possible. And lately, with so many people after them, it
could have happened at any time—at a filling station, in the bathroom of
a supposedly safe apartment, driving down the street in a small town, buying
coffee and the paper. Hiding in a farmhouse in Points North, Indiana. Why
Points North? What on earth had happened these past few days? She knew
something didn’t make sense, but she lacked the energy to overturn these
rocks and peer beneath them. All that mattered was she had been buried. He was
gone. And the world was crying around her.
She walked down the street, weaving, and realized it was later than she had
thought. She could smell the lake, smell it receding. Everything was pulling
away from her. She’d probably never even see Ronny again, not that that
was such a terrible fate. But suddenly Darcy missed her, wanted desperately to
share this with someone, wanted to talk to her about Jason and Whit, breathe
the brothers back to life with their stories. They could not possibly be dead.
Jason Fireson dead? Someone with such vibrancy, someone whose simple
glance contained more energy than all the working stiffs trudging to work on
the train each morning? Life was three-dimensional with him, the flatness of
the mundane popped up into startling clarity, so many roads to navigate and
mountains to climb. That’s what it was like with Jason; he made
everything possible. Except death. That was unimaginable.
The photographs, Jesus. How could they print photos like that? Gratuitous. The swine .
Reveling in it. Was that all he was to them? All those people who had gladly
hidden the brothers in their crumbling homes, lied to the police for them, sung
their praises in taverns and factories. Now they were chuckling at the thought
of a bunch of country officers stalking them in the night and—
A car rushed past, turning a puddle into a weapon. She was soaked from the
waist down. She hollered after it, pedestrians staring at this very unladylike
wraith, this banshee of madness. Goddamn you! Goddamn you all!
And now a police officer, Jesus, asking her to calm down. Sir, you insultme. I am calm. This is calmness. Wrath is calm.
God, she could have slapped him, but that would have been a mistake. At least
her father hadn’t shared her address with any reporters; at least there
were no flashbulbs recording her dazed movements. Darcy loathed pity, but she
found herself telling this beat cop, this fresh-faced rookie, that her husband
had been killed last night. He told her he was sorry and took her by the arm to
walk her back to her building. He asked if she had reported the crime and she
said, yes, yes, it’s being looked into, that’s not the point.
Jesus, she’d told a stranger, and he was helping her to walk straight, or
close enough. She was crying on his shoulder, on his uniform, already wet from
the rain, so maybe he didn’t mind. She wasn’t sure how long he let
her do that, but it must have been a while, because when they finally reached
her building again and he tipped his hat to her she felt spent. Dry.
Where was she supposed to go?

    They had blindfolded her for the next portion of their getaway, squeezing her
between two silent men in the backseat. She instantly regretted that comment
about being able to identify them.
“This is hardly the way to treat a lady,” she said, hoping her
strong words could compensate for her increasing alarm. A final door was shut,
the engine was turned on, and they were rolling away. Where, and for how