Page 142 of The Lonely Road

I’m starting to get to know Kaz, and I’m not sure I really like the man. I appreciate his candor, though.

“You’ve got some balls on you.” That’s how Mac greets me when he sees me come up to his porch, where he’s sitting, reading something on his iPad. His tone and expression are neither warm nor hostile. It’s almost like he’s been expecting me.

He doesn’t look as bad as he did when I last saw him at the hospital. He has good coloring. He’s reading a screen, so he’s not still concussed—or maybe he’s just ignoring medical advice, either way, the man looks well.

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

He shrugs.

“Hey, Mac, do you—” Mav steps out onto the porch and clocks me. His jaw clenches, and his eyes harden.

He crosses the porch and punches me in the jaw.

It’s a clean shot. Controlled. He pulls it—not much, but enough to make the point without putting me on the floor. I’ve been hit harder, but not often, and not by someone who meant it the way Mav means it.

I straighten. I work my jaw.

I guess this is what Kaz meant about rolling with the punches—and he didn’t mean it euphemistically.

“If you do it again, I may have to retaliate,” I warn him.

Mav holds my gaze steadily. “You can try.”

“Oh, stop being teenagers,” Mac grumbles. “Sit your asses down.”

We do as he asks. I take the armchair across from Mac and Mav, a wicker table between us.

Mav shoots me a look that’s dripping with disdain. “You want to tell me why I shouldn’t finish the job, Brooks?”

Mac sets his iPad on the wicker table. “Yeah, what he said.”

A dry, cutting chuckle slips past my lips. “Because it won’t fix anything. And because you’d rather see what I do next.”

Mav’s the kind of man who takes other men’s measure accurately and quickly and doesn’t often revise his assessment. I can feel him revising.

“You’re right on both counts.” He leans back in the chair, his demeanor king to peasant. “I’m reserving the right. You make this right—with Taya, with Clara, with this community—and I’ll stand down. You don’t, and we’ll revisit.” He studies me with the flatness of a man who means every word of what he’s about to say. “And I want you to understand that when I say this community, I mean the whole of it. Everyone who trusted you. Everyone who thought you were just a surveyor doing a job. Everyone in this valley who has been in a fight against people like High Mesa and their ilk for years and had someone like you sitting in the middle of it gathering intelligence.”

I hold his gaze. “I understand.”