Read Campbell for Free Online Page B

them, and we fed them, and we helped them stay alive. We gave them order. We were leaders when you were up here with your grandfather strung up on your porch, rotting, scaring people off. ”
    Just like that, he’d said it. Lucy pulled her sweater around her tight, the chill in his tone affecting her. She stared at him, wondering if he was smart enough to try and disarm her, or if he was just being arrogant. He could have killed her out here, or tried anyway, the two of them alone, but he didn’t look the type. Lucy knew that he’d have to be an idiot to assume she wasn’t armed. If he attacked her, he would never leave Campbell alive.
    Tal knew that too.
    “You take, and you take, and you expect people to keep on giving. Here’s a bit of information for you. Vancouver came to us. Half of those little towns? They came to us too.” She took a step towards him, entering his personal space. “You know what else?” Her eyes locked with his. “If you fuck with me, it’ll be you hanging in the front porch with your dick in your mouth, just like him.”
    Tal took a step back, and found himself visibly shaken at the imagery she’d projected and in that second, he knew he’d given her exactly what she wanted. A reaction. “So you did do it,” he said quietly. “Connor didn’t think you had it in you.”
    “Go back to the trailer,” Lucy replied coldly. “You leave in the morning. You’re not welcome here. Not that you ever were, but you’re really not now.”
    Tal paused for a minute, his mind racing behind his dark eyes. “There has to be something we can figure out, something that works for both of us.”
    “We’re not cut from the same cloth, Tal Bauman,” she said bluntly. “And you should be thankful for that.”
    Lucy locked the farm house door behind her and trudged up the well-worn staircase to her room, the first space she’d ever felt truly comfortable. It wasn’t a big room, and the furnishings weren’t fancy, but she’d worked hard to give them positive associations. A dear friend had made her the quilt. Her and Zoey had painted the walls. This farm wasn’t the one they’d lived in before. She and her brothers had burned that one to the ground a few years earlier in the hopes of getting some closure. They’d gotten drunk, each of them working through a series of painful moments that the flames weren’t hot enough to eviscerate. Charring them felt good, however.  
    Sometimes, Lucy appreciated the pain of her past. She felt like it pushed her forward in a way that nothing else could have, forced her to do whatever she could to make it all for something.  
    “I was wondering where you were,” Zoey mumbled, as Lucy undressed and crawled into bed beside her. “That jackass Connor just left after spending some time with Cole. I saw him out the window.”
    Lucy sat up and flicked on the lamp beside the bed. “What kind of time?”
    “I don’t know,” she said groggily, rolling over and blinking in the fresh light. “He headed out the front door about twenty minutes ago.”
    Suddenly Lucy’s visitor made more sense. He’d been sent to distract her. “You don’t think….”
    “I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I couldn’t hear anything, but it’s hard to say.”
    “Cole wouldn’t have told him anything I didn’t already,” Lucy said, thinking back on all the things Cole could have revealed, but wouldn’t. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m just surprised.”
    “You saw the moony eyes they were making at each other over lunch.”
    “I didn’t notice.” Lucy mentally kicked herself for not paying more attention to her brother. He was the sibling easiest to manipulate. “Do you think they—”  
    “I think you know what I think, but that’s always what I think. I know he’s assumed straight, but I think he’s just got good PR. Your brother is pretty good looking too, so if he thought he could get something out of it, why not? He wasn’t getting anywhere with