.
... They stood in the hallway listening to the heartbeat fade.
... It was as faint as the murmur of a bird’s wing at the edge of your cheek.
... Dawn was breaking and the hills were leaking pale light into this place without trees.
... And the house was silent as they let the shadows fade while shapes assumed their forms.
... “We kill ‘em now,” Bruton said.
... He looked intently at the man opposite him who was wearing a hunting jacket and stroked the stubble on his chin with an action that was full of menace.
... “We should’ve killed em years ago,” he said.
... “I know what you think, Pascal,” Bruton said.
... He looked at the gun in his hand as another man stepped out of the shadows. He had blood on his hands and reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask.
... “Anyone?”
... He shrugged and tipped it down his neck. Then he wiped his mouth, smearing blood across his face.

...

...“We get ‘em and we fuck ‘em over good, I want to hear ‘em howling in pain and I’m gonna dance on their fucking corpses.”
... “Okay, Soda, we do it,” Bruton said. “We do it and hit ‘em fast then we hurt ‘em bad and watch ‘em die.”
... There was a sound at the end of the hallway and the noise of steps on the polished wood where a pool of blood stretched like a snake to the kitchen door. The man who walked out of the shadows had hollowed out eyes and he stood playing with the hem of a dress.
... “They should never have started on Pauline. They’s gotta die.”
... “An’ they will, Al, they will.”
... “They threatened her just ‘cause she didn’t do what they wanted. I will cut their fucking hearts out.”
... Bruton stood at over six feet tall. He had the build of a boxer. He looked at Al with compassion in his eyes and laid his hand on his shoulder.
... “We will teach them a lesson. They will rue the day they started this.”
... “I say we go and do it now,” Al said.
... Bruton nodded.

...

...“And so we will and so we will. But we do it with guns, and we leave them just alive enough to torture ‘em and that torture must last.”
... They stared down at the body.
... A face white with pain stared out of the wooden floor at nothing. The contours of a lace dress merged with shades of black as her life blood ebbed from her and seemed to turn her feminine array to something of horror.
... “Pauline didn’t deserve that,” Bruton said. “We’s gonna make the law round here.”
... He turned his gun over in his hand, the light through the window catching it and glancing off the metal.
... It was a custom engraved Model 60 Smith and Wesson with a Satin Stainless finish. The handle had assumed the contour of his hand. The embellishments in the metal made him seem the member of some exclusive killing club. The two and an eighth inch barrel pointed into space with the certainty of vengeance.
... The other men carried Colts that appeared like natural extensions of their arms.
... They left the house and walked to the Jeep.
... Driving there they talked some more, passing the strange and barren landscape where it seemed that life had given up the struggle to sustain beauty in such a place.
... “What you think, Bruton?,” Soda said.
... “I think they’ll be over at the house and they’ll never expect us to come after ‘em so quick.”