“Shut up,” he said but slid his finger from the guard and settled the gun between the seat and door.
We bumped along a road squeezed between pines and bracken. Gravel had long dispersed from the logging lane, compressed into the clay or sprayed into the undergrowth hugging the road. Hunters used this lane all the time during season. Unfortunately we were five or six months off hunting much of anything, except maybe wild turkey, so I didn’t feel too hopeful on meeting anybody in these trees.
“Where are we?”
“Behind Avtaikin’s property. Now shut up.”
Ronny’s face wore a sheet of perspiration. His eyes flicked over the landscape with the agitated vexation of a mother sparrow. I held my tongue as we drove deeper into the wood, winding up and down a ridge, thinking of anything to save my life.
“Aren’t you worried about this beautiful car?”
Ronny jerked from his musings with a start. “What?”
“You’re going to get it covered in dirt, and you know how hard it is to wash off clay.”
He stared at me, and I could tell I pointed out an obvious fact he hadn’t considered. “If Uncle Will can match traces of this mud to the same dirt from my body — assuming you plan to shoot me in these woods – he’s got you.”
His forehead began work on some new wrinkles while his right hand slipped to his hair, smoothing the pompadour with trembling fingers. The left hand kept a white-knuckle grip on the leather steering wheel.
“Besides that,” I continued, “how are you expecting to find the coins if you shoot me in these woods? And what about my gun? Why would Mr. Max break into my house to steal my old hunting shotgun when he’s probably got a nice armory collection at home?”
Ronny’s face reddened.
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing I pushed my luck. “But I just don’t think you put enough thought into this crime. Uncle Will says that’s the problem with most criminals. They’re just not smart enough to consider all their options.”
“Shut up,” Ronny exploded. “Just shut the hell up or I will shoot you right now.”
He grabbed the gun with his left hand, swung it up in his lap, and braked. The car jerked forward. Our backs hit the seat with a soft thud. Ronny grasped the keys and wrenched them from the ignition.
“Slide over the console and don’t try anything funny.” Tucking the gun under his left arm, he grabbed my wrist with his right hand, and we tumbled from the car.
“Walk.” Ronny said, directing me with the barrel of the gun.
My boots scuffled against the red dirt road, kicking an occasional piece of gravel. I squinted into the woods, wondering how far we were from civilization. There was nothing to see but the colors of the forest: dull browns, grays, the dark evergreen of native holly, and the bright green of emerging leaves. If I concentrated, I could have picked out a wider variety of hue. However my mind, for once, refused to stray from the matter at hand. Which was the crazy man holding my daddy’s gun on my back.
“Dammit, you know I’m right. Give up this idiotic plan and turn yourself in before you add more years to your sentence. Shooting me is not going to solve your problems.”
“Shooting you will solve one of my problems.” His voice rasped behind my right ear, his breath hot on my neck. “It’ll keep your jaw from flapping.”
He sounded desperate and angry, and my stomach curdled at the growing realization that I wasn’t going to be talking much longer.
“Come on, Ronny,” I whispered. “I’m not like Dustin. I’m not trying to blackmail you or steal from you. You know my family. We’re not bad people.”
“The way I figure it, you’re the only person who knows about me, except maybe Avtaikin. He’s not one to talk to the police.”
I shook my head and tried to plant my feet, but he nudged me forward.
“Oh yes and you only know because I told you. I saw your little drawings on those napkins last night. Didn’t see my picture on one of them, but I saw the bear and the cow, which is probably Avtaikin and that piece of trash, Virginia. You even had a nice little sketch of JB’s stepson, Mr. Luke. Nice group of suspects. And not a coin drawn there, either. You seemed a little obsessed with belt buckles.”
I felt sick. From fear and foolishness and sheer stupidity. I had overlooked the obvious money for the artistic bling of those belt buckles.
Ronny chuckled. “Don’t worry, I made sure those drawings are safe. Your Uncle Will will get them. And by the time he starts looking at those little pictures, you’ll be dead and I’ll be in Mexico. I put in for a vacation the day I took those coins. Wanted it to look natural when I left for my condo across the border.”
Ronny jerked my arm and spun me around. “Now, are the coins at your house?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Where? I tore through that rickety house pretty good.”
“I can’t tell you, I have to show you.”
“Tell me or I’ll start shooting body parts until you do. You will not stop me from getting my millions. I stole them, they’re mine.”
“Millions? Max said they’re only worth thousands.”
“You think you can trick me?”
I stared into his crazed eyes and knew Ronny Price was completely delusional. Which meant I was never getting out of this forest alive.
“You play games with me, I’ll play with you.”
He placed the gun behind his feet and taped my hands. A hard shove on my shoulders sent me sprawling on the ground. Pain shot through my tailbone while my brain scrambled over various pleas and plans. Ronny yanked off my boots and hurled them into the forest along with Todd’s keys. I heard them thud into the blanket of dead leaves and pine straw. He wrapped my ankles with the silver tape.
“You are making a huge mistake. This is never going to work.”
“Just shut up.”
Ronny clenched his teeth over the tape and tore a shorter piece. He waved the tape at me. “This is for your mouth.” A slight breeze blew the free end of the tape toward his hand. The tape stuck to itself.
“Damn it,” he cried and ripped off another piece. With eyes gleaming, he bent toward me. “Now tell me where those coins are. I’m warning you. I don’t want to hear anything else come out of your mouth.”
“No way in hell.”
Ronny tossed the tape and slapped my face instead. My ears rang and stars lit my vision. His grin revealed his pleasure in battering people. Ronny Price popped me with the flashlight, killed Dustin with a torque wrench, and completely enjoyed it.
He slapped me with such force it was nearly a punch, and I pulled my knees toward my chest and thrust them at Ronny, knocking him backward. I threw myself over the gun, trying to pin it beneath me. Ronny pitched on to his feet, leaned over, and easily pushed me to the side. My knees straddled the gun, and I heaved myself back on top. But then Ronny kicked me, hard. The kick sent me rolling and my knees drew up into my stomach. My eyes and nose ran while I inhaled the dirt and bits of leaves lying under my face.
“If I don’t find those coins, I am going to come back and kill you.”
My eyes widened as he snatched the gun. Ronny gripped the barrel and raised it high above me. I felt a light rush of air stir my hair, and the glossy walnut stock came crashing down. I rolled to the side and felt the gun catch my hair as it slammed into the ground. I continued the roll and found myself staring into Ronny’s astonished face. Before he could think to raise the gun, I drew in my legs. My feet shot out and smashed into his groin. He turned an astonishing shade of green-tinged white and buckled. I kicked again, this time slamming my heels against his nose. Blood spurted. Ronny tipped forward and the gun fell sideways.
I heard his faint cursing and knew the recovery period from getting kicked in the balls wouldn’t take long. And he would be pretty pissed abo
ut that broken nose. I threw my body on top of that gun again and shuffled inchworm style. My only thought was to get my daddy’s gun out of Ronny’s reach.
With my fingers curled around the gun stock grip and my chest flattened against the barrel, my Remington scraped across the ground below me. Weeds and vines whacked my swelling cheek. One tear trickled out my puffy eye.
“You get back here,” Ronny called. “Or as soon as I get up, I’m going to make you wish you had.”
Crawling to escape wasn’t an option. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to keep my back to him. I halted my creep forward and shuffled in a wide pivot to face him. Ronny sat with his knees pulled up, tentatively feeling his nose. Spattered blood besmirched his apricot shirt and tasseled loafers. His face looked none too good, but I feared it was a sight better than mine.
With an undignified half-roll, I hauled myself to sitting and scooted backward until my back hit a tree. I wedged the gunstock between my thighs and aimed the muzzle at Ronny. His laugh, short and brittle, sent a new flurry of goosebumps to prickle my skin.
“This is how it’s going down. You’re going to give me that gun and I’m going to leave you here. By the time you get to town, I’ll be on my way to Mexico.”
“You must think I’m pretty stupid,” I panted, fighting the nauseating clenching in my belly. I couldn’t catch a breath with the piercing pain in my side.
He pushed himself off the ground.
I slid my hands off the grip and to the trigger guard, feeling for the safety.
“You’re not going to shoot me.”
“Guess you’ll find out.”
I waited a tic, watching his feet for a change in direction. I prayed he would take the smarter option and drive away. Approach me and he’d make a pretty big target. I couldn’t let him take my gun. My finger slipped around the trigger. I held my breath.
“I need those coins, Cherry.”
I pressed myself against the tree and slid my knees a little higher. If he didn’t take off this would hurt. Real bad.
“This is your last chance. Give me the gun.” He stepped forward.
“Stop where you are.”
A bird cawed and Ronny lurched at me. I pulled the trigger and screamed at the burn. Then I pulled off another shot. The scorching pain knocked me sideways. My head smacked the earth. An avalanche of sticks and leaves showered me. Out of the corner of my eye, I registered a large branch falling.
I took that crack to the noggin as blessed relief.
EIGHTEEN
When I woke to the sound of birdcalls, I was taken back to summer nights in high school when we played music and drank too much around the campfire eating homemade pulled pork. I always woke the next day in a hazy state of hungover, just shy of food poisoning. That’s what I felt lying in the forest. The cutting ache in my side and throbbing head made me want to barf up non-existent BBQ. I lay still, fighting the dry heaves, confused as to why my arms and legs refused to work.
After my head cleared, I remembered. Ronny Price and my daddy’s gun. I flipped around to sitting and surveyed the damage. My lace shirt had ripped in several places and sported a rusty toe print from where Ronny’s dirty shoe created the sharp pain in my side. Silver tape still strapped my bootless ankles. Ronny lay a few feet away, bleeding from a gash in his leg where I winged him. He looked unconscious, but my shot had gone wide. Otherwise he’d have a much bigger hole.
However, I wasn’t sticking around to resuscitate a crazy man. And no way was I searching his body for the keys to his car with bound hands and feet.
My legs flailed to no avail. The tape wouldn’t give. Neither would the tape around my wrists. I tried rubbing the tape against the raspy bark of a sweetgum and only succeeded in scraping off skin from my arms.
I struggled to my feet, ignoring the blinding pain pulsing in my temples. Resolve and anger mixed with the pain as I steadied myself. I glanced down at the gun with regret. It would already take a miracle to shuffle out of the woods without having to juggle a shotgun between taped hands. Using small hops, I pushed it under the fallen debris and hoped Ronny wouldn’t look too hard.
By the time I reached the second ridge, every part of my body hurt. When I wasn’t cursing Ronny — and Dustin for blackmailing him — I began a rant on duct tape and the makers of my cheap socks that couldn’t withstand the wriggling, hopping movement I had mastered after numerous falls. I cursed Georgia for her hills, forests, and hard packed clay that felt like granite when my knees bit the dirt. Knowing anger was the only steam to fuel my engine, I continued to find fault in the world around me. The logging road was much longer and had more hills than I remembered. I didn’t want to think about the long trek down the county highway.
When the sound of a V8 engine reached me, I panicked and hopped into the woods for cover. My cursing turned to pleading at the thought of Ronny’s crazed anger when he found me missing. The time it took me to creep to this point in the lane would take him but seconds in his car.
I inched into the tree line and bumped against a fallen limb. The engine’s growl grew. Pitching myself over the log, I bent my knees to save my face. My forehead plopped into the weeds and dead leaves at the edge of a clump of seedlings. The vehicle roared past, taking the narrow, rutty road too quick for safety.
I wriggled forward, pushing with my shoulders and squinting my eyes against the weeds and stems that snapped and flapped against my face, hoping to hide myself. A thicket of sprouting honeysuckle looped and twined among the seedlings, tying them to the nearby trees in a tangled mess of vine. My head worked through the vines, perfuming the air with their sweet scent. The rumble approached. All of my moveable parts were writhing and scrabbling.
This time the vehicle crawled along the road. He was looking for me now.
I froze, flattened, and waited. The tires crunched over bits of gravel in the road. Dust kicked up from the dirty lane and floated in the air, mixing with the saccharine smell of honeysuckle. A squirrel chattered, angry at my abuse of his territory. A twig popped under a tire and the car stopped.
I held my breath, willing my body to disappear into the undergrowth.
I wished I had worn camo instead of teal. I would never again fault a man for wearing camouflage instead of apricot, even if that man wore camo every day.
A door opened with a metallic groan. Feet smacked the dirt road. Squeaky shocks absorbed the release of body weight. The door slammed shut.
Footsteps stirred more dust as they tracked across the road, plodding closer. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to lie still, but my body began trembling all the while my brain screamed to cut it out. The footsteps stopped, retreated, and stopped again. I took a minuscule gasp of honeysuckle air. The feet pounded hard and fast across the compacted dirt. A tiny tear tracked down my cheek and stuck on my lip.
Shit, my inner voice screamed, I do not want to go out like this.
“Gotcha.”
My body began to writhe, wriggle, and buck with an uncontrollable desire for freedom. I managed to get my knees under my chest and push off with my toes when a hand snagged my waistband.
“Quit squirming!”
“Screw you, Ronny Price,” I screamed. “You kill me and I’ll haunt you every night, you scumbag!”
His hand tore out the vines around my shoulders and I kicked my legs with the intensity of a pissed off mule.
“Just lay still.”
“Hands tied or no, I knew I should have tried to shoot you again.” I kicked again and felt my feet smack against something firm.
He grunted in pain and then spoke. “You shot him?”
I prepared to bellow my answer just as the question actualized in my brain. “Ronny Price?” I squeaked and tried to crane my neck to see behind me, but couldn’t.
“Just calm down and lie still.”
; “Oh my Lord, who is that? Can you cut the tape, please? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh Lord Jesus, thank you.” I stopped flopping but continued to jabber into the crushed weeds. “You need to hurry. Ronny Price is still out there. He did this to me. He murdered Dustin and Pete and stole from Mr. Max. He’s crazy.”
I heard the snick of a knife opening and the ripping of the tape at my ankles. My legs collapsed apart. “Oh, thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I could think of something.”
I turned my head to the side, but only saw trampled weeds and an end of the honeysuckle vine. Tiny leaves tickled my nose as a curling tendril waved before my face.
“Luke?”
“I’m damned sure I’m not Ronny Price.” He ripped his knife through the tape at my wrists. My arms fell to my sides in painful relief. “You’re going to be just fine. Don’t worry about anything. Sheriff’s up there now. He and his boys took the logging lane near Avtaikin’s place when they located the Lincoln with the LoJack. They found Price, but didn’t find you.”
I lay on my stomach staring into the pine straw, spent. Luke’s hands ran over my legs, up my back, and down my arms, checking for injuries. My eyes squeezed shut while he gently prodded my head.
“Ouch.”
“You’ve got another goose egg,” he murmured. “I’m going to roll you over now. Tell me if it hurts too much. Sheriff Thompson’s got the ambulance coming.”
He placed one hand on my neck and rolled me slowly toward his body. Another wave of nausea wafted over me as my back collapsed onto the forest floor.
“What hurts?” Luke smoothed my hair from my forehead and attempted a smile that appeared more of a grimace.
“Pretty much everything. What are you doing here?”
I closed my eyes while his hands drifted down the length of my body, gently bending my joints. I gasped as he prodded my side.
1 Portrait of a Dead Guy Page 23