Barbed Wire Heart

by Tess Sharpe

  I need to drop off the drugs here before I go to the Tropics to show off my black eye and tell the sad tale of my attack. That’s when the frenzy will set in. Buck’s first instinct will be to go balls out: arm as many people as he can and jump in, guns blazing. He’ll probably have hit the warehouse by now, which meant he had the useless guns on him. He’ll take them to his place for safekeeping, because he’s a paranoid bastard who doesn’t trust anyone. Which is exactly what I want.

  I reach the clearing, driving up to the back entrance through a large field that my great-granddaddy used for cattle, and the tight, hard knot inside my stomach begins to unravel.

  When I kill the engine, open the door, and my boots hit gravel, relief swamps me. I made it. I’m home.

  For the first time in days, the moment I turn the key, I take a deep breath. Busy trots ahead of me, heading toward her water bowl. I fill it with some fresh water and toss the bag of meth on the kitchen counter.

  Dried blood flakes off my face as I rub my cheek. I walk over to the big mirror in the hallway, wincing when I get a good look. My nose looks a lot worse than it feels, thankfully. But my eye is still throbbing like a bitch. I head upstairs to shower.

  Generations of McKennas line the wall along the stairs, from my mutton-chopped great-great-great-great-granddaddy Franklin, who settled the land after conning some miners out of it like the crooked asshole he was, to Momma and Duke on their wedding day. At the landing is a timeline of pictures of Will and me, gangly kids growing inch by inch, the awkwardness fading from our faces. The last picture is from the day he left for college, his arm around my shoulders, our smiles fake and wide, hiding the hurt. There’s dust gathering on the top of the frames, but I’m too tired to beat myself up for not keeping house.

  I’ve been busy.

  I toe my boots off at my bedroom door and strip off my clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and head into the bathroom, where I turn on the shower faucet. The water’s hot and perfect, and I stand under the spray for a long time, letting it beat down on my sensitive cheek. The pinpricks of pain spread down my face, and I picture them swirling down the drain with the pinkish water, but no such luck.

  Busy’s still downstairs when I get out and dry myself off. As I walk back into my room to pull on a clean pair of cutoffs and a tank top, my wet hair drips down my back. I’m just about to twist it up when I hear a thump downstairs.

  I freeze, and my heartbeat thunders in my ears.

  Busy’s not barking—that’s my first thought.

  I need my gun—that’s my second.

  There’s a .22 under my bed and a .45 in the bedside table. I grab the .45.

  Busy should be barking. She should be attacking. I should be hearing screams of pain. Growling. Whining. Something.

  But there’s nothing but silence.

  My fingers curl tight around my gun. I pad across the bedroom in bare feet, curving my body around and out the door. Rounding the corners, I lead with the .45, keeping my back tight to the wall, just like Duke taught me. Every step is steady and silent, but my heartbeat’s anything but. As I clear the rooms on the second floor methodically, it hammers in my ears so loud I’m afraid I’ll miss something—the squeak of a floorboard behind me, the snick of a door shutting. With each breath, each step, my mind’s racing, panic rising. How’d they get in? Is it Buck? Where’s Busy? If they hurt my dog, I’ll slit their throats. Then I’ll have to deal with a body dump. Where the hell am I going to get enough lye this early in the morning?

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I might have to kill them no matter what. Anyone who trespasses on McKenna land is out of their mind. Or here to kill me.

  Possibly both.

  When they invade your turf, shoot first, ask questions later, Harley-girl.

  I step down the stairs with my back to the wall, my shoulders brushing against the photos, making them rattle against the plaster. I have to bite down my urge to call for Busy as I reach the bottom.

  The light’s on in the kitchen. My .45 raised and ready, I step forward into the line of sight.

  And then I see why Busy’s not barking.

  Will is standing there, the bag of meth I jacked from the trailer sitting open on the kitchen island in front of him. His gaze rises to meet mine. His arms are crossed, and every line of his body tenses—but not because I’ve got a gun pointed at him. No, he’s furious. It radiates off him in ripples, like air wiggling in a heat wave.

  My stomach sinks as I lower the gun and thumb the safety back on. I walk into the kitchen, placing it on the island next to the drugs. Busy’s sitting next to Will, gazing up him adoringly like the traitor she is.

  He’s the one person she’s no use against.

  “So,” Will says, gesturing at the bag. “Want to tell me again how nothing’s going on?”

  Twenty-Five

  I’m almost eleven years old when I wake up inside a car trunk.

  At first, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I remember being in my bed. And then…nothing. When I open my eyes, it’s all darkness tinted red, the tang of gas strong in the stuffy air.

  The car’s moving. I’ve been taken.

  I keep my eyes closed, because if they’re closed, I can pretend that’s why it’s dark. I can pretend I’m not locked in here. I tuck my knees into my chest and wrap my arms around them tight, curling myself into a ball.

  I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m somewhere light. Somewhere it never gets dark. I’m just gonna wait this out.

  I suck in a mouthful of musty air that smells of gasoline and rubber. Breathe in, breathe out. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t pretend any longer. I can smell the exhaust, feel the spare tire underneath the lumpy carpeting, rubbing against my belly.

  It’s so dark.

  I concentrate again on my breath huffing in and out.

  Suddenly, the driver guns the engine. I don’t have time to grab hold of anything—my body’s tossed to the side, slamming hard into the back of the trunk as the car gains speed. I’m rocked back and forth. All I can do is clamp my arms over my head, trying to protect it as I try to jam my legs up against something, anything for leverage.

  Warmth trickles down my face, and I don’t know if it’s sweat or tears or blood until it leaks into my mouth.

  Blood.

  The taste of it centers me. Clears the fog and loosens the tight feeling in my chest.

  I’ve been taken. I don’t know who did it. I have to concentrate.

  What do you do, Harley-girl? What do you do when someone takes you from me?

  Be calm. Find a weapon. Run at the first chance. Kill if you have to. And never, ever stop trying to get free.

  I have to get out.

  The brake light. I need to smash it.

  I take a quick breath in and slam my palms up, scrambling for a hold. My fingers scrape smooth metal, catching on a loop of wiring that leads to the locking mechanism. I grip it like it’s my lifeline, swinging my legs down so they’re braced against the bottom of the trunk where the bumper must be.

  I need to get to the brake light.

  The next second, the car chassis scrapes against the blacktop and the back end flies up—we hit a big bump. I grit my teeth and hang on, my legs smacking hard against the side of the trunk as the driver takes a sharp right.

  More blood trickles down my cheek. I tilt my head, wiping it away with my shoulder as I squinch down onto my hands and knees and angle my foot down, stretching it toward the brake light. My feet are bare, but it doesn’t matter.

  You do anything it takes to get back to me, Harley-girl. Anything.

  I smash my heel against the plastic, hard, ignoring the pain that shoots up my foot. Sweat or maybe it’s blood gathers at the small of my back and my thighs tremble from the effort. I kick and kick and kick again, ignoring the pain, ignoring the blood.

  I have to get out.

  I finally burst through, the cracked plastic slicing my ankle, but I can feel cool air against the t
orn sole of my foot.

  Okay. Okay. Now I just need to get my hand through and pray someone will see. I pull my foot free, whimpering as it scrapes against the broken plastic and glass. Blood trickles down my toes, drying in the spaces between.

  I wiggle toward the busted brake light, and poke my hand into the space I broke through. I wave frantically, just like Daddy taught me to.

  The car comes to a sudden, shuddering halt, and all the panic I’ve managed to push down rises up inside me.

  Run. Find a weapon. Aim for the crotch or the head. Kill if you have to, Harley-girl.

  The trunk pops, and sunlight bores into my eyes. I blink, tearing up, trying to make out the blurry person in front of me.

  I need to come out fighting. I need to do anything I have to so I can get away.

  But then my eyes clear. It isn’t Carl Springfield in front of me. And it isn’t some strung-out tweeker.

  It’s Daddy.

  For a second, my mind just does this loop-de-loop. Like I’m on a roller coaster and my stomach hasn’t quite caught up with the rest of me. And then I realize: This is a test.

  Another lesson for me to learn. Just teaching me theory isn’t enough.

  No, Daddy has to know his lessons are sticking.

  “Under twenty minutes,” he says, nodding. “Not bad.”

  Then he reaches down, not to grab me, but to flip up the carpeting covering the spare tire. He pulls out a tire iron and places it in my hands.

  “Next time, think before you panic,” he orders. His mouth is a determined line, but there’s something lurking in his face, hiding beneath the beard, maybe, that looks like regret. “You could’ve gotten free a lot sooner if you’d thought for a second and used the tire iron. Then when they come for you, you’ll be ready for them—you’ll be armed. You’ve got to stay cool and be smart. You can’t panic, Harley. Panicking will get you killed.”

  I lick my lips. They’re raw—I must have chewed them bloody without knowing it. I want to scream at him. I want to swing the tire iron and smash his face in with it.

  I want him to hug me and promise me he’ll never do this again.

  But Daddy never makes promises he can’t keep.

  “Do you understand?” he asks me, when I don’t say anything.

  I look up, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to hating him. But there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can say. His crooked world is my school, and it’s been that way forever…will be that way forever.

  I am my daddy’s girl, and I do not flinch. Not even in front of him.

  But it takes me two tries to say, “Yes, sir,” in a hoarse voice.

  Daddy grabs me beneath the arms, heaving me out of the trunk and setting me on my feet. We’re still on the property, but now we’re a long way from the house, near the western part that sinks into nothing but forest for acres. My head’s spinning, and so’s my stomach. I want to puke, but I breathe hard through my nose, a long, shuddering gasp, and hold it in.

  “Are we done?” I ask Daddy, clenching my teeth. I won’t throw up. I won’t.

  “We’ll go back to the house,” Daddy says. “Clean you up. Your head—” He reaches forward, and I finally flinch.

  “Sweetheart,” Daddy sighs. “I know this is hard—”

  “Are we done?” I ask again.

  We’re at a standstill for a long moment, when all I can feel is the blood trickling down my face, and something else, something deep inside me that hurts more than my foot or lips ever could.

  Then he looks down. “We’re done…for today.”

  I nod, just once, my chin jutting out. And I turn and walk away, ignoring him when he calls out for me. The world starts spinning beneath my feet, my arms feel wobbly and my legs tremble, but I stagger forward, aiming for the splash of dark green ahead of me.

  I barely make into the forest before I collapse onto my knees, vomiting helplessly into a fern bed.

  Eventually, seeking solitude like a wounded animal, I get up and stumble deeper into the woods until I end up in one of my favorite spots, the ruins of the stone house, the one that my great-times-a-bunch-granddaddy built. Only two walls and the river-rock chimney still stand, overgrown with manzanita and blackberry bushes. I’m sitting with my back up against what’s left of the chimney, fiddling with a loop of barbed wire I’ve picked up along the way, when Will finds me.

  He doesn’t say anything, just drops down next to me onto the ground, his legs stretched out in front of him. I know there’s blood on my face, so I don’t look up, but after a few minutes of silence he holds out the paper bag he brought.

  I scoot until I’m sitting cross-legged in front of him. Will sets the bag down between us, grabbing a washcloth and bottle of water from it. He wipes my cheek, dabbing gently at my temple where the gash is.

  Will’s good at patching me up. I suck at doing the same for him, but I’m teaching him how to climb trees right to make up for the last time, when I accidentally elbowed him in his fresh black eye when I tried to clean it. He’d been really nice about that. He’s really nice about everything. Sometimes I wish I was, too, but I don’t think I’m built that way.

  I don’t think Daddy built me like that.

  “You hurt anywhere else?” Will asks, pressing a bandage onto my cheek with his thumb. His eyes scan up and down me, checking.

  I start to shake my head, but stop halfway into it, closing my eyes, because my brain feels swollen and sore inside my skull. I can’t help it and it shames me, but I can feel a tear sliding down my cheek. I raise my fist and wipe it away furiously.

  Will shoves the box of Band-Aids back into the bag a little too hard. It rips, the contents of his makeshift first-aid kit scattering onto the forest floor.

  “He shouldn’t have done that,” he says quietly, like he’s expecting Daddy to be looming, listening. Ready to teach me another lesson.

  I shrug, unable to meet his steady gaze. But I can feel the sobs rising in my throat. So I swallow them down and go back to fiddling with the barbed wire again, twirling it back and forth between my fingers.

  “Hey,” Will says, and I finally look up. He tries to smile at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s okay. You got through it. Maybe he won’t make you do it again.”

  We both know he’s lying through his teeth. If Daddy doesn’t do this again, he’ll do something worse.

  “You can get through anything,” Will says.

  “You don’t know that,” I say, because the years have taught me that sometimes people don’t. Sometimes houses blow up. Sometimes mommas die. Sometimes daddies are something that shouldn’t live in the same skin as the man who tucks you in at night.

  “I believe it.” Will tugs at the wire in my hands. “Look,” he says, running his finger down the barb. “You gotta be like barbed wire. Tough no matter what, ready to tangle with anyone who gets too close. If you stay like that, you’ll be too strong for anyone to hurt you. Not inside. Not where it counts.”

  He grabs my hand and loops the wire around my wrist. Digging in his pocket, he comes up with his hunting knife and uses it to twist the ends together to form a bracelet. Then he presses the flat of the blade against the barbs, bending them inward so they can’t scrape me. When he’s done, he looks up and smiles, this time for real.

  “So you don’t forget,” he tells me.

  I smile back. My stomach’s tight, there’s the taste of blood in my mouth, and barbed wire wrapped around my wrist, like a gauntlet, a badge of honor, a tie that binds him and me.

  I’m too young for this feeling and too old and too scared and a little happy, and it’s years till I realize this is where I start turning away from Daddy and toward Will instead.

  Twenty-Six

  June 7, 9:55 a.m.

  For a long moment, Will and I just stare at each other from across the kitchen island. I want to say something—anything—but I don’t know where to start.

  “What the fuck happened to your face?” he demands, and then he moves forw
ard. He’s touching me, light and careful, always so careful. I want to lean into it, but I force myself to stay still. “Jesus,” he says. “Who did this?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I answer, pulling away. I back up and put the kitchen island between us, like that’ll help me. I should know better.

  When it comes to him, I do know better.

  Will glares at me. “You need to start explaining. Now. Because the last time I checked, you never handled the product. You gonna tell me Duke changed his mind about you cooking? Or have you developed a habit the size of Texas?”

  “If you’re gonna be nasty—”

  “Then tell me what’s going on!” Will demands. It takes a lot to get him this angry, but I reckon he has reason, so I hear him out. “What the fuck, Harley? Where’s Duke? Don’t tell me he’s away in Mexico like you’ve been saying around town. I talked with Mo. She hasn’t seen him for months. His guns are still in their hiding places downstairs. I checked. No way in hell he goes any distance unarmed—”

  “He bought some new guns—”

  “Harley!” He cuts me off with my name.

  I flinch, too worn down to hide it. Busy’s ears perk up; she rises and moves to my side, nosing at my hand.

  A flush rises on the dark curve of Will’s cheekbones. “You’re lying,” he says. “Stop it.”

  I shrug.

  “Please, just tell me what’s going on,” he begs, quieter.

  He steps forward, and when I don’t step back, he comes even closer.

  “Brooke’s worried about you,” he says.

  “Brooke worries too much.”

  “I didn’t start worrying until I saw what you’ve set up in the attic.”

  He’s found my perch. Fuck. Heat crawls inside my chest, an anger and embarrassment that’s hard to define. It’s almost unbearably intimate that he’s been up there, that he’s walked around my nest of blankets and pillows. That he’s seen what I’ve been doing. How I’ve been living when I’m not in Burney.