Barbed Wire Heart

by Tess Sharpe

  “What the hell, man?” Troy asks.

  “The shit from the warehouse,” Buck snarls. “I took inventory last week. The load you brought over is six bags short.”

  “Wait a second,” I say.

  “This fucker’s stealing from Duke!” Buck yells.

  “No, I’m not!” Troy says. He looks bewildered, running a hand over his ball cap. “Man, maybe you counted wrong. I wouldn’t steal from Duke. I’m not fucking crazy!”

  “Liar!” Buck shouts, and he raises his fist.

  I move instinctually toward Troy. My hand closes over his arm.

  It happens in rapid fire. Troy lunges forward, pulling me with him, blocking my view of Buck.

  Someone screams my name. It’s Cooper, my mind registers, right before it registers the gunshots.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Duck and cover, Harley-girl.

  Thirty-Five

  I’m seventeen the first time I get rid of a body.

  It’s fall, just starting to get cold at night. I’m getting ready for bed, brushing and braiding my hair when I get the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Harley?”

  It’s Brooke. There’s a long, hiccupping breath following my name, and something inside me goes very still.

  But she doesn’t say anything else, just breathes in slow, steady pulses, and then I hear something in the background.

  Crying.

  A girl.

  “Where are you?”

  Brooke whimpers. My heart picks up, sweat breaking out along my forehead.

  “Brooke?”

  She wouldn’t have called me unless it was a last resort. She would’ve called her mom. Or her brother.

  If she’s calling me, something’s very wrong.

  I get up off my bed and shove my feet into my boots. Busy’s head perks up from her place on the rug next to my bookcase, but I snap my fingers and she stays where she is.

  “Brooke, tell me where you are. I’ll come get you.”

  “Harley,” she says again. “Oh, God, Harley.” Her voice breaks, and she’s crying too now. Big, uncontrollable sobs that make my heart kick up a notch.

  “Tell me where you are.” I switch my phone to speaker and go to the end of my bed, flipping open my trunk. I grab the stacks of folded quilts and the box that holds my grandmother’s wedding dress and put them on the bed. Underneath are boxes of bullets and a slim black case.

  “I didn’t—she didn’t—I couldn’t—” Brooke’s babbling. I open the case and pull out my single-action revolver, checking the chamber to make sure it’s loaded before tucking it into a holster and fastening it to my hip. I get up and grab the phone again.

  “Brooke, listen,” I say. “Just tell me where you are.”

  “Off Route Twenty-Three. At the lookout.”

  “I’m coming,” I tell her. “I’m coming right now.”

  “Promise?” Brooke’s voice shakes on the word.

  “Promise.”

  I mean it.

  I mean it even when I get to the lookout, and Brooke is standing like a ghost at the edge of the forest, her hands covered in blood.

  I get out of the truck and I see Molly, Pastor Evans’s only daughter, head of the choir and of Youth Group and basically God’s gift to good Christian men everywhere. She’s sobbing, crumpled on the ground, her yellow sundress torn, her fingernails broken and bloody.

  My eyes go to her right, a crumpled form lying under a pine tree.

  It’s Tripp. Brooke’s ex-boyfriend. The one who liked to hit her.

  Half his face is bashed in and bloody, and he’s very, very dead.

  I stare at him for a second, then I look at Molly, and finally I meet Brooke’s eyes.

  She looks back at me, and her chin tilts up.

  “I didn’t mean it,” Molly mumbles. “I didn’t. I didn’t. I just—oh, God, oh Lord Jesus, save me!” She descends into mumbled prayer for a few moments before she takes a deep, shuddering breath and goes on. “He…he wouldn’t stop…I had to make him. Please, please, please.” She’s rocking back and forth on the ground, and for the first time, I realize she’s holding something tightly in one of her hands.

  A rock. Sharp, jagged, wet with blood.

  The only weapon she could get her hands on.

  My eyes widen, and I look at Brooke questioningly, and she nods once. There’s blood all over Brooke’s shirt, too. And streaked on her mouth.

  She must’ve done CPR on him, trying to wake him up. I would’ve kicked his prone body a few times myself, but Brooke doesn’t have a killing bone in her body.

  Apparently, sweet little Molly does.

  The world feels upside down. Never in a million years did I think I’d be standing here, looking at a man Molly Evans just killed for raping her.

  “I didn’t know who else to call,” Brooke says under her breath. Molly’s still on the ground, sobbing.

  “You did the right thing,” I tell her. I keep looking at Tripp’s body out of the corner of my eye. I have a tarp and some rope in my truck. I’ll have to stop somewhere for bleach.

  “Okay,” I say, my mind made up. I kneel on the ground next to Molly. I can do this. I just have to act like Mo or Will. Be nice. Comforting.

  The feeling fits like a too-small T-shirt, cutting into me in all the wrong places.

  “Molly.”

  She just keeps rocking back and forth, mumbling to herself and Jesus about how she had to do it.

  “Molly.” I grab her hand, the one holding the rock she killed Tripp with. She jerks under my grip, her wild, shocked glance flying up to meet mine.

  “I had to.”

  “I know,” I say. She won’t give up the rock. So I just hold her hand over it. “It’s going to be okay. I just need you to answer some questions. Can you do that?”

  Molly nods, her fingers tightening on the rock like a vise.

  “Did anyone know you were going out with Tripp tonight?”

  She shakes her head. “My dad—he has rules about dating. I’m not allowed. I told him I was going to a girlfriend’s house.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “Nine.”

  “Does anyone know you two were dating?”

  She shakes her head again. “He wanted to keep it a secret.”

  Behind me, Brooke snorts. “I’ll bet he did.”

  “So no one knew? No one at all?”

  “Just Brooke.”

  I look over my shoulder at her. “You knew?”

  Brooke folds her arms across her chest. “I saw them at church a month ago. I told him to stay away from her,” she says. “And I warned her. I thought I had it handled.”

  I glare pointedly at Tripp’s body.

  “I realize now I didn’t,” Brooke says. “But I knew if I told you, you’d try to kill him.”

  My hands tighten into fists. She’s probably right.

  But I guess it doesn’t matter now, since he’s dead anyway.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to focus my thoughts.

  “I—I should have believed you,” Molly whispers to Brooke.

  Brooke’s eyebrows scrunch up. “Hey, no, Molly,” she says, crouching down next to me. “You…it’s okay. I know what people say about me. And he’s…”

  “A rapist who beats women,” I finish her sentence.

  My words just hang there in the night, the truth of it written on the hearts and bodies of the two girls next to me.

  Molly looks up at both of us. “I don’t know what to do.” She looks so small.

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I do.”

  I squeeze her hand, my fingers slipping a little in the blood. “It’s time to let go of the rock.”

  Her breath hitches. I drop her hand.

  “He can’t hurt you anymore,” Brooke says gently.

  Her arm shakes, but finger by finger, her hand finally relaxes, and the rock falls to the ground between us.

  “Let’s get you up
,” I say. I grab her gently by the elbow, pulling her to her feet. “There’s a bag of clean clothes and wet wipes and stuff in the toolbox of my truck. You need to clean up. Quick.”

  She takes a step toward my Chevy but hesitates, looking back at me. “But…what about evidence for the sheriff?” she asks, because she’s a good girl, law abiding, and she just did what she had to, and she’s programmed to think that’s enough. That the sheriff’s department will believe her.

  Like they ever believe women, even when there’s nothing riding on it.

  And this? This has a whole lot riding on it. This is one of their sons. One of their shining examples. And he’s dead. Killed by a girl half his size because they taught him no wasn’t something girls said to guys like him.

  Molly’s screwed if anyone finds out.

  “Molly.” I feel like I’m holding a butterfly with a torn wing in my hands. I’m so scared to hurt her more. But I have to, to keep her safe. “You can’t tell anyone. Ever.”

  “But—”

  “Tripp’s dad’s a deputy,” Brooke interrupts.

  Blood is flaking off her hands in the moonlight as she steps toward Molly.

  “They’d say you’re making it up. That you were asking for it.” Brooke’s hands twist together, her voice flat like she’s repeating something she’s memorized. Something that’s been said over and over…to her.

  I can’t help but be glad, so glad, that the bastard’s lying there cold and dead, just a few feet away from me.

  “That’s what they said to me,” Brooke continues.

  “I—” Tears trickle down Molly’s face. “But what’s gonna happen?”

  “I’m going to give you an alibi,” I tell her. “Because even though you haven’t told anyone about Tripp, he probably didn’t keep his mouth shut. So go clean up. And hurry.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Brooke tells her. She turns to me, finally letting the panic fill her face. “Please tell me you have a plan,” she says. “Because I’m freaking out right now.”

  “I’ve got a plan,” I say. Really, I have half a plan. But I can’t tell her that. My mind’s clicking as I think it through. Neither of them will be any help in getting rid of Tripp’s body. I need them out of here. Somewhere safe. Somewhere public, but not too public.

  “You’re gonna get cleaned up and change,” I tell her. “There’s some clothes in my bug-out bag. Take Molly to the Blackberry Diner, the one on Main Street. There’s a booth in the back that has a RESERVED sign on it. Sit there. When the manager comes over to tell you to move, tell her that you’re waiting for Jacob Green and that you’ve been there since eight o’clock. Can you remember that?”

  “Who’s Jacob Green?” Brooke asks.

  “It’s code. The diner is your alibi. When the sheriff comes ’round asking questions, every person working that night will tell him that you two were there. So will the regulars. You both stay there for an hour, try to get Molly to eat something. Then take her to your house and have her sleep over. Take her home in the morning, and make sure her dad sees you.”

  “Because that’s not suspicious,” Brooke says. “The choirgirl with the school slut.”

  “Tell him she led you to salvation. I don’t care what you come up with, Brooke, as long as he believes she was with you and not out here killing Tripp. Because there’s gonna be questions once he turns up missing. They will find out he was dating her. We need to make sure everyone thinks she was with you this whole night. There can’t be any question to it.”

  Brooke sighs, scrubbing a hand over her face. “Christ,” she says. “Is this really happening?”

  “Yes,” I say. “So get in gear.”

  Her eyes narrow. “You’re such a fucking bitch,” she says, and then her voice and mouth soften. “Thank you.”

  “Go get cleaned up. You guys need to go.”

  “What are you going to do with him?” Brooke asks.

  If I told her, she’d never look at me the same way again.

  “You don’t need to know.”

  She doesn’t want to know.

  No one does.

  I wait until the red glow of Brooke’s taillights fade into the distance before I pull the phone out of my pocket. I punch in a number, waiting three rings before he picks up.

  “Whassat?” Cooper mumbles.

  “It’s Harley,” I say. “I’ve got a Man in Black, and I need some help.”

  There’s a long pause. I can hear rustling, someone snoring in bed next to him. I know it’s Wayne. No one ever talks about it. But everyone knows. They live on the same piece of land.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Cooper says finally.

  “Nope. And I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell my daddy about this.”

  He swears so loud and so filthy, I pull my ear away from the phone for a good fifteen seconds. “Holy shit, girl, you’re worse than your old man,” he mutters. “Fucking hellraiser, and you’re not even legal yet. Where the fuck are you?”

  “The lookout off Route Ten.”

  “I’m coming,” Cooper says.

  “Good,” I say. “Bring bleach. Lots of it.”

  I hang up the phone and turn to face Tripp. I walk toward him; he’s bathed in the beam of headlights from my truck, his cloudy eyes staring up at the starry sky, looking slightly surprised.

  I should feel sick looking at him, but all I can feel is glad. Because it was either him or her, just like it is so much of the time.

  Molly is my goddamn hero. It takes a lot of strength to bash someone’s head in. Especially with nothing but a rock. And she’s little.

  I crouch down, wrapping my hand in my jacket so I won’t leave any prints, and dig in Tripp’s pocket, coming up with his phone. There are a few texts from his friends on his lock screen, but nothing else. I doubted his father enforces much of a curfew. Which is good luck for me and what I’m going to do.

  I pull a bobby pin from my hair, bend it straight, and use it to pry the SIM card out of his phone. A few seconds with a lighter held under it, and bye-bye SIM card.

  I’m just pulling the tarp out of my truck when I see lights in the distance. I drop the tarp, and my hand goes to my back, closing around my revolver. The brights hit my eyes, blinding me for a second.

  I pull my gun.

  But as the black spots in front of my eyes clear, I see the weathered blue of Cooper’s old Dodge and his wild, fluffy white hair silhouetted in the cab like a halo. He’s a funny kind of angel, not like the ones Molly’s dad talks about, but he’s the one I need right now. He pulls up next to my truck, flinging himself out of his own.

  “What the fuck, girl?” he snarls, stalking past me and toward Tripp. He comes to a halt a few feet away from his bashed-in head.

  “Isn’t that one of the deputy sheriff’s kids?” Cooper asks, staring down at the body.

  I take a deep breath. I make my eyes wide. “He was gonna…” I don’t finish the sentence. It’s better to let his imagination take over.

  But as my lie sinks in, Cooper doesn’t look horrified. Instead, his head tilts and his eye tats twitch. “Who do you think you’re fooling?”

  The shock is cold, like ice water in my face. The reason I called him instead of Daddy was I was sure Cooper would fall for this. “What?”

  Cooper looks down at Tripp. “There’s no way you killed this boy. You wouldn’t be this messy.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, believe me, honey, I’ll know your first kill when I see it,” Cooper says. “But this is not it. So…who you covering for? Boyfriend?” He peers close at my face. “Nah, Will wouldn’t be this messy, either.” He makes a slow circle around Tripp’s body, like he’s a coroner or something. Though, come to think of it, he’s probably seen as many dead bodies as a coroner. “A girl did this. He rape someone? She get the better of him?” He looks closer and whistles. “She did a number on him. Good for her.”

  “Are you gonna help me or just stand here spinning stories?” I spit out, pi
ssed off that he’s figuring it all out so easily. “You really think I’d get rid of a body that’s not my fault?”

  Cooper rolls his eyes. “Honey, you are your daddy’s girl in many ways, but when it comes to a woman in trouble, you’re just like your momma. One of the Rubies do this?”

  “I did it,” I say firmly.

  “Mm-hmm,” Cooper’s enjoying himself, and my patience’s wearing thin.

  “Cooper: Dead body. Dead deputy’s kid. And as much as the sheriff’s department is in Daddy’s pocket, I don’t think they’re gonna overlook me getting caught with one of their kid’s body.”

  “Fine, fine.” Cooper shakes his head. “Whatever you say, Harley. Pull the truck up. Go on home. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “No.”

  Cooper’s eyebrows rise. “Don’t think you want to be around after that. You want him really gone, no trace. We’re talking chainsaw and lye, baby girl.”

  I lick my cracked lips. I could take the out he’s giving me. It’s a gift. It’s because he loves me.

  But it’s also because he thinks I can’t take it.

  Never show weakness, Harley-girl.

  “It’s my responsibility.”

  Cooper looks back at me, respect mixed with pity in his blue eyes. “Okay, then,” he says slowly. “Quit lying your head off and give me a hand. Grab that tarp, then go gather some leaves and branches.” Jerking his chin at Tripp’s body, he adds, “We’ve gotta get that thing out of here, ditch his truck, and cover up the blood in case somebody happens by.” He looks back at me with a grin, and there’s new respect in his eyes. “Big girls clean up their mess. Better get started.”

  Hours later, when the chainsaw is cleaned off with bleach and the chemicals are eating away at what’s left of Tripp, I walk out of Cooper’s barn and throw up in the bushes. Scarred, tatted hands pull my hair back, and when I straighten, wiping my palm across my mouth, he stares down at me and says, “You okay, honey? First time…it’s hard.”

  It takes a few deep breaths.

  “Any second thoughts?”

  I meet Cooper’s eyes. I harden my own.

  “I warned him,” I say. “He should have listened.”

  I walk away. Head high. Shoulders straight.