Panther's Prey by Lachlan Smith

got murdered?”
    This leap gave me a start. “The police have the guy in jail. He confessed, evidently. Bo didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Jordan.”
    â€œI’m sorry to sound this way,” she said. “But we’re seeing bogeymen here, every night. Meanwhile, your father, the cause of it all, gets to live happily ever after thousands of miles away. The least he could have done was write a check from some of those settlement funds. The fire cut off Teddy’s income. Even if he goes back on disability, there’s not enough.”
    â€œI feel responsible. From now on, I should be able to help more.”
    She shook her head. “That’s not what I was saying. I know it’s wrong to be afraid all the time. But I’d never have thought they’d go as far as they did.”
    Tamara’s gaze remained fixed on Carly, sitting under the lemon tree beside the neighbor’s calico cat, its tail flicking as Carly experimentally stroked its fur. Then, as if at some unheard signal, the cat’s tail went straight up. It shot toward the fence and was over it in a bound.
    At dinner we covered our awkwardness with one another by focusing our shared attention on the child. A natural show-off, and fortunately still too young to pick up on the undercurrents between adults, Carly drank up our attention, running through her whole routine of faces and repeating the few words she knew.
    I read a bedtime story; then Tamara put her to bed. Teddy and I took our beers to the patio. A long silence was followed by this revelation: “Bo Wilder’s been calling me. Late at night, from prison, on a contraband cell.”
    I digested this. Finally I said, “You don’t have to answer when he calls.”
    â€œWe can’t live in fear anymore. I need to earn a living. Bo knows I can’t afford to walk away.”
The way you could,
his tone seemed to add. “I have a family to think about.”
    â€œSo what are you saying?”
    He seemed to have trouble getting it out, gazing off toward the persimmon tree, his face twisting before he answered. “You and me, we never really talked about my work. The summer I got shot, when you were working for me, I always meant to sit you down and ask you if this was really what you wanted to do with your life, defend guys like Ricky Santorez. Guys like Bo Wilder. But next thing I knew I was lying in a hospital bed. And now you’re the alpha dog and I’m the one who runs behind picking up scraps.”
    I nodded for him to go on. I owed it to him to hear him out, even if it was years too late for what he was saying to make any difference.
    â€œWhat I would have told you if we’d ever had that heart-to-heart talk is this: being my brother, certain people are going to expect things from you that they don’t have any earthly right to expect. Brilliance, for one. At least, back in the day, that’s what I’d have said. Nowadays, not so much.”
    The old brilliance still showed in sparks, as well as the ego that went with it. But there was no way to fan that near-dead coal back into flame.
    â€œThe fact is,” he continued, “being in your line of work, Bo Wilder has the right to expect that certain arrangements I had with certain people—Santorez being one—are still in effect, only with you standing in my shoes.”
    â€œBecause of what he did for Dad.” I was speaking of the murder of Russell Bell, the snitch who otherwise would have testified against my father and put him back in prison.
    Teddy nodded and shrugged. “And if they’re not, he’ll feel that someone owes him. Because in this world that he runs in, no privilege ever dies. Everything that’s worth anything gets handed on, like rights of inheritance. That goes for people, too, everyone who’s ever played a useful role. There’s no such thing as an unowned man.”
    â€œI don’t