Me and the Devil

44.

Rafe fishes the little baggie from his pocket with hands that won’t hold still. The guest room smells like dust and old cologne, John B’s duffel yawns open on the bed, a pile full of T-shirts and sun-bleached shorts. Rafe taps a line out on the polished dresser, cuts it straight with his card, and looks at me over the edge like he’s asking a question he’s terrified to hear the answer to.

I answer by leaning in.

The burn bites up my nose and blooms behind my eyes. For a second, the room tilts, then sharpens, edges crisp, color too bright, my pulse a drumline under my skin. Rafe’s mouth twitches into something like a smile. He takes his own bump, louder, harsher, head tipped back, and when he lowers it the wildness is back in his eyes but pointed now.

“Let’s clean him out,” he says, already grabbing fistfuls of John B’s life and flinging them into a trash bag. “He’s not gonna be by anytime soon to pick it up.”

“Why?” Wheezie’s voice slices from the doorway. She flops onto the bed, wide-eyed, her gaze flicking between us. “What are you doing with his stuff?”

Rafe doesn’t look up. “John B killed Sheriff Peterkin.”

Wheezie blinks, a half-smile tugging like she thinks he’s joking, like this is one more Cameron performance that will dissolve into laughter if she plays along. “Okay… sure.”

The air snaps taut. Rafe whips a shirt across the room; it slaps the bedframe inches from her. “I don’t know why you’re smiling, okay?” His voice cracks, fevered. “Look at me. I saw it with my own two eyes. He shot her. And then he tried to shoot Dad, but I stepped in. I stopped him.”

Wheezie flinches, eyes glossy, her throat working around words she can’t shape. She looks at me, silently begging for a softer truth, for someone to undo the damage. “Why would he—” Her voice cracks under the weight of it. “Why would John B want to hurt Dad?”

I don’t give it to her. I step into the crack Rafe’s already split wide and shove it further. “Wheeze,” I say, soft as honey, but the sweetness is a lie. “Because he thinks your dad killed his father. That’s the story he’s been feeding everyone.” My fingers rake through my hair, Rafe’s ticks already bleeding into me. “I’m telling you, he’s a maniac. And Sarah has been hanging out with him.”

Her face crumples. The ground slides from under her, and I let it.

“Go to your room,” Rafe orders, yanking open another drawer like he means to rip the whole thing out. Downstairs, a shout snaps the quiet. Then another. Then the pop and hiss of flame.

“Ward,” Rafe mutters, tilting his head like he can triangulate panic by sound alone. We spill into the hall where the house is suddenly in motion. Rose cutting one way, a maid shrieking in Spanish, Wheezie’s door slamming; somewhere outside, the grill cracks like a bonfire. Smoke snakes under the back door.

The smell hits me, char and lighter fluid, and my stomach flips with recognition. The Pogues have always loved a distraction, loved fire for the way it commands attention. I can see Pope’s careful hands, Kiara’s laugh as she vaults the wall, JJ’s breathless “go, go, go,” like we were invincible. My body remembers how to move with them, even as my feet stay planted here.

Rafe’s phone buzzes in his pocket, frantic. He answers, some part of him already sprinting. “What?”

A beat. Then his face lights with vicious, glittering joy. “He’s where?” Another pause, the high already buzzing through his veins. “Stay there.” He hangs up, feral grin cutting across his face. “Kelce. Laundry room. They’ve got John B.”

My heart stutters and then finds a new, harder rhythm. “Let’s go.”

We hit the driveway fast. The night swallows us and spits us out at Kelce’s. Music still looping from a forgotten speaker, a string of porch lights stuttering like they can’t decide whether to glow or die. Shoupe’s already there, cruiser angled like a threat, a couple deputies milling in the yard with hands on holsters, boys in Vineyard Vines watching from the shadows.

Inside, Shoupe and a deputy fill the doorway, voices sharp, bodies tense as they push deeper into the house. I scan the side of the house, restless, heart pounding in my throat. That’s when I see it. The metal vent near the foundation rattling loose, screws skittering against the concrete. A sneaker pushes through first, then a knee, then a flash of a face I know better than my own. John B.

He drags himself belly-first, scraping against the siding, shoulders heaving as he wriggles free. A trail of dust smears after him like a signature. For one split second, his eyes catch mine. Memories flare. And then he’s gone, sprinting for the trees.

Rafe doesn’t see it. He’s buzzing too high, muttering under his breath, eyes darting between the deputies’ shadows inside. “He’s cornered,” Rafe mutters, electric with anticipation.

But I already know John B isn’t. He’s out. He’s running. And I’ve just let him go.

Shoupe suddenly barks into his radio, something about a perimeter, and we’re moving again, Rafe dragging the boys like a tide, Topper on one side, Kelce on the other, me trailing his wake. “Where you at, John B?” Rafe howls into the night, cupping his hands to his mouth like a megaphone.

We chase the shadows until the church rises in front of us, steeple pale in the moonlight, cross etched black against the sky.  The bell tolls, splitting the silence, and Rafe suddenly knows John B is up there. He charges inside. I follow.

He paces beneath the loft ladder, breath ragged, eyes glassy with something close to madness. Voices echo from above, John B’s, and Sarah’s. Rafe grips the ladder, ready to climb, but I catch his arm and drag him down.

“Don’t run into an ambush,” I hiss, but his blue eyes only slice through me. He  looks up the ladder and back at me. He flicks his lighter open, flame sputtering.

“We’ll smoke ’em out, then.”

He crouches by a ragged hymnbook left under the end of a pew, the pages already feathery with age.

This is the part where a better version of me would stop him. Snatch the lighter, stamp the ember, pull him backward. The girl on the dock under the stars would do that, the one with salt in her hair and rules about not hurting anyone, not really.

But I kneel instead, my hand steadying his when his fingers shake, shielding the flicker from the wind.

The paper resists, then surrenders. The edge blackens, then curls orange. Fire crawls across the pew’s underside, greedy, finding old wax, brittle palms, blooming fast. Heat licks my face. Kelce stumbles back, wide-eyed.

Smoke thickens. Rafe grips my wrist and pulls me out before it chokes us.

By the time Shoupe and his company shows up, flames claw the rafters. And from the tower, Topper stumbles down, coughing in John B’s sweatshirt, played like a fool. John B and Sarah are already gone.

Rafe freezes, fury splitting his face raw. Ash drifts down like snow, clinging to us both. I lace my fingers with his, steadying him, steadying myself.

Together, we watch the night swallow their escape. And I know I’ll never be the girl on the dock again.