Lord of Order by Brett Riley (the reading list book TXT) 📕

had kicked him in the gut. If Hobbes had ever been interested in romance, or sex, he had kept it well hidden. And now this, at all times, and Stransky, of all people. Better if Hobbes had confessed lust for Bandit.

I know better than most how the heart wants what the brain tells you might be crazy or dangerous, Troy said. And with what’s goin on here, it’s easy to question our vows. All I can tell you is follow your conscience. But be careful. If Stransky guts you, don’t let it be in bed.

Hobbes looked tired and wasted. Don’t know why she gets to me like this when nobody else ever has.

Love makes us all stupid. So does lust. After the city’s safe, maybe we can look at Stransky and everything else with some perspective.

Hobbes looked out the window again. Somewhere out there the other Conspirators toiled at their jobs. Maybe they were recruiting. Lynn Stransky was hiding wherever the sisters kept her, probably in the nuns’ living quarters, though now that Sister Sarah had started sending her fellow brides of Christ and her parishioners away, perhaps they had moved the Troubler. Lord help us, I ought to know. Perhaps Troy suffered from the same illness that had struck Hobbes. Maybe he just wanted another excuse to see Sarah. Half of him was glad she was leaving. The other half wished she would stay.

He and Hobbes talked as the temperature soared, as the guilty and innocent tramped into their city, as the sun rose on another day in the long, slow flow of time’s river. They talked of lust and ammunition, women and plastic explosive, love and hatred and death. And when they finally went out for grub, they had resolved absolutely nothing regarding Lynn Stransky, Sister Sarah Gonzales, or the confines of their own hearts.

Troy, Hobbes, Ford, McClure, Boudreaux, and Long met after dark and sat on Boudreaux’s back porch, shooing away mosquitoes and drinking warm lemonade as Bandit lay at their feet, enticing each of them to scratch his belly. His muscles rippled. He had been eating well. I wish I knew how Willa does it, Troy thought. Her and that dog always seem fit and fine, and whenever they ain’t right in front of you, it’s like they cease to exist. No one ever saw the kid or the dog meandering about the city.

They’ve set charges on the bridges and the first fifty yards of the causeway, the girl said. They got caches on the 17th Street Canal too. I ain’t checked em all yet, but I figure they plan to blow every canal and levee, plus any roads outta town. Wouldn’t be surprised if they hit the highest-populated areas too.

They’ve started confiscatin our boats, said Ford.

What? said Troy. I thought they just wanted an inventory.

Not as of this mornin. A tenth of my fisherfolk are already down to rods and reels and cane poles.

Everyone let that information sink in. The undertows and currents and sheer effort it took to swim the river made using it to get out of town without a boat potentially, even probably, fatal. Santonio Ford’s recruits had started building rafts and canoes and hiding them in every conceivable nook and cranny, but they were making beds in a burning house.

Okay, said Troy, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. We can’t move the explosives, or else Royster will know somethin’s up, and then he’ll turn this town upside down. Probably throw the lot of us in jail. LaShanda, can you disarm the charges without makin em look disarmed?

Long scoffed. Who you talkin to? Anything they can cobble together, I can take apart. Problem is findin em all and gettin close enough.

McClure scratched Bandit’s ears. Findin em’s my job. Gettin close, that’s somethin else. Just to look, you’d think they ain’t nobody guardin the goods, but when you study the situation for a spell, you see three or four folks millin near every location. They act like they’re just walkin by, but they don’t go far. We’re gonna have to slip past em, distract em, or kill em. I got no preference.

If we kill guards at every cache, Troy said, they’ll figure out what’s goin on long before we finish.

Long nodded. Even if we can get close enough to disarm the caches, we’ll still have to stop em from detonatin the ordnance manually, come the day.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Troy said. Y’all get any assignments yet?

Ford and Long shook their heads.

So far, it’s all hypotheticals and business as usual, Boudreaux said. I’m supposed to go on some errand with Benn and Clemens tomorrow, though.

Be careful, said Troy. Them boys are snakes.

They lapsed into silence, swatting bugs and watching the sun set. It shone through the clouds and over the lake’s killing water, turning the sky blood red. On the porch, Bandit’s legs twitched as he dreamed his canine dreams.

17

The next morning, Gordy Boudreaux walked through the High Temple, trying not to look as nervous as he felt. A kind of creeping dread had shrunk his scrotum. A lump of wet paper settled in his throat, even as his mouth filled with spit. I’m ridin with men who want to kill everybody I’ve ever known and loved, but I can’t show fear. For all I know, Benn and Clemens are gonna take me to the swamps and shoot me. And for all I know, they’re right and just, and I’m damned for thinkin we should stand against em. What in the name of the Most High am I supposed to do?

He passed through the sanctuary and mounted the stairs to Troy’s office, wondering if it were for the last time.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow.

Upstairs, Royster was absent, but Clemens and Benn stood near Troy’s desk, Clemens inspecting his weapons.

You’re early, Benn said. I like that. Let’s get going.

Where we headed? Boudreaux asked.

Clemens slapped him on the