The Redeemers Read Online Free

leading her through the Big Woods all those years ago, when real evil entered their lives, and kept on following her ever since. His hands were still shaking a little bit. Three men coming at him with some kind of ownership over his sister had brought on a rage he seldom liked to let loose.
    “Come on.”
    Caddy wouldn’t move. “I don’t want him to see me like this.”
    “You don’t have to see Jason until you’re ready,” he said. “We’ll get you all cleaned up.”
    “You can’t clean up all this shit. All the shit I’ve done. Don’t you want to know?”
    Caddy’s whole body was shaking, and he reached around her shoulders and hugged her in close. Caddy had always been much smaller than Quinn. He kissed the top of her head, smelling the foul scent of body odor and cigarette smoke. The cherry perfume used to cover it all up doing a poor job.
    “You’ve been gone almost a month,” he said. “Jason doesn’t give a shit what you look like. He doesn’t care where you’ve been.”
    Caddy shook her head, but she let Quinn lead her away from the trash-strewn hill and back to Lillie Virgil and the safety of the Big Green Machine. The eighteen-wheelers blew past on their way to Memphis and down to Mobile. Quinn walked in step with his sister slowly, her whole body quivering under his arm as she started to cry. She’d left everything—her mother and father, her brother, her son, and even an outreach ministry that, for a time, had seemed to have been not only her salvation but salvation for a lot of others after the storm.
    “Come on,” Quinn said. “Let’s go home.”
    “I don’t know what all happened,” she said. “I don’t remember.”
    “Good.”
    “I’m sorry, Quinn,” she said. “I fucked up. I fucked up bad. Just leave me here. No one has to know.”
    “Nope.”
    “You damn bastard,” she said. “Why do you just keep coming back?”
    “Our daddy comes back after thirty years and it’s all on me?” Quinn said. “Dealing with him and Jean? To hell with that.”
    “I’ll fuck up again,” she said. “It’ll happen again.”
    “Maybe.” Quinn wrapped his arm over her shoulder and they started moving toward the big truck. Caddy looked up into his eyes as they walked and gave a blank smile. He held her close and tight. They moved together, Quinn feeling good, until his sister threw up on his cowboy boots. He stepped back as she dry-heaved.
    “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus.”
    “Slow steps, Caddy,” he said. “Slow steps.”

3.
    M ickey Walls was just about done loading a truck with two thousand square feet of Brazilian cherry flooring when goddamn Debbi Cobb pushed her way through the showroom and back into the warehouse wanting to know just who in the fuck did he think he was. Mickey was smoking Marlboro Reds with his best installer, a fella named Lee Salter, who’d just gotten back from a six-month stretch in Parchman, and wasn’t in any mood to square off with his ex-mother-in-law over one missed alimony check.
    “My daughter has too much class to beg you for what’s coming to her,” Debbi said, chomping on some gum.
    “Hello, Debbi,” Mickey said. “Sure is good to see you. How about we step into my office?”
    “I’d rather stay right here while you go write me a check.”
    “Come on,” he said. “I made some coffee. Let’s talk.”
    “About all you’re good for,” Debbi said. “Talk.”
    But she turned, noticing but not acknowledging Lee’s old weathered ass giving her a good look-over. Mickey knew Debbi liked it. Why else would a woman pushing sixty wear a pair of painted-on black jeans with fancy-ass pockets, a black-and-silver-striped top reading BEBE , and silver heels showing off her purple-painted toenails? Her hair was high and puffy, with blonde streaks in all that dyed brown, and she had on a pair of big designer sunglasses that looked like a pair of welding goggles. As she followed him back into the showroom, Lee puckered his lips and