I took out the gun, chambered a round, and holstered it. Just in case.
Some time after that, I dozed off.
I’m not sure whether it was the kick in the behind that woke me, or rolling off the bale onto the wood floor. But I came out of sleep quickly, knowing this was not the time to hit someone.
“Wake up, Slick.”
The wrong end of a rifle barrel pressed against my chest.
My insides liquefied, so it’s lucky I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before and had no more for breakfast than a couple squirts of whipped cream.
I held up my hands. He wanted to kill me, but if there was anything I could do to save Nicky, I would. By some miracle, she was still asleep.
“Surprised?” he asked.
My throat constricted to the size of a thread. I could barely breathe, let alone speak, so I shook my head. Stay calm and think, a voice screamed inside, but all circuits were busy. All I could see was the dull length of metal leading from my chest to JJ’s arm.
“Did you really think you could lose me? That you’d win?”
I barely heard him, as if my ears were stuffed with cotton. He shoved the barrel against my throat. If he pulled the trigger, it would be quick. It would be loud, and messy, but I probably wouldn’t feel a thing. All I knew was, I had to distract him from Nicky.
I forced sound through my throat, didn’t recognize my own voice. “I— I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Why’d you have to come here, Slick? You almost ruined everything. But it’ll work out. You’ll see.”
He jerked the gun away and strode to the front opening so he could look out. I launched into a coughing fit and used it as an excuse to crawl away from where Nicky lay.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
His attitude bordered on indifferent. That didn’t seem right. I needed to stay cool and keep him talking until help arrived.
“That straw’s moldy,” I said, waving my hand in front of my nose. I leaned against the wall halfway between him and Nicky, at an angle that made it difficult for him to see both of us at the same time. I took a few deep breaths to settle my rattled nerves. “You waiting for someone?”
“Mac.”
“He went to Chicago.”
“He’ll be back. If that bitch…”
Had I been right? Had something gone wrong between the co-conspirators? “You mean, Brooke?”
“You’re all bitches. Useless for anything but fucking.”
Okay, so reasoning with him was out.
“Should’ve done you right when I had the chance,” he continued. “You would’ve liked it in the river. Why’d you run away?”
“Got scared. I don’t…you know…not on the first date.”
“Cock teaser. You’re all the same.”
How could I gain a bit of confidence from him? “I didn’t mean to. You were different. You made me want to.”
His eyes flitted from the window to my face. Good. I’d gotten his attention. Maybe if he thought there’d been a chance of a relationship between us, he’d soften, or at least get confused enough that…what? My elbow rested against the gun beneath the jacket. He didn’t know I had it, or the knife in my pocket. But would I use either if I got the chance?
“You’re a liar.” He turned to the window. “You’re all liars.”
So much for that idea. There was a hint of hurt little boy whine in his voice. Maybe he’d snapped, as I’d feared. If that were true, we were screwed.
I checked my watch and wondered what had happened to my phone. It’d probably slipped off my shoulder when I fell asleep and was stuck between the bales. It was nearly nine, which meant if Malcolm knew where we were, they might be here soon. Had the police tried to find us? Or given up when there’d been no response from me?
“Malcolm doesn’t know where we are,” I said. “Why don’t we go back to Winterlight?”
“Didn’t you call him?”
“No. I talked to Dex and the sheriff. They’re on their way.”
“They’ll never make it,” he said, his voice derisive. “But Mac, he’ll find us.”
He sounded very sure. They knew each other well, Malcolm and JJ. Had grown up together, probably hunted all over the area together.
“Why do you hate him?” I asked.
JJ turned from his lookout post. “Everything he has should be mine.”
“You mean the farm?”
“Before Daddy…” He choked up a moment, the little boy in him showing again. “Before he disappeared, he said it would all be mine. Said he’d fixed it so I would have everything we’d ever dreamed of. Then, he went away. And Helen—”
“Helen?”
“My mother,” he said, giving the word emphasis I didn’t understand. “She talked bad about him. Said it was good he’d left. Said he didn’t care about us. But she was wrong! And then…”
He untied the little door covering the loft opening, shoved it open, pulled a bale over, and sat. He cocked his head, listening. I did, too, hoping for the sound of a siren, but all I heard was the high-pitched scree of a hawk.
I tried to take in every detail of his appearance. He wore camouflage pants with lots of pockets, lace-up boots, and a brown, knit muscle tee-shirt. It showed off his body and reminded me of how strong he was, how there was no way for me to best him. His black hair had been recently trimmed, and his beard, as usual, was neat. On the third finger of his right hand, I saw the bruising ring, a silver signet.
“You ever had a bad day, Slick? I mean, a really bad day?”
I was having one right then, thanks to him, but thought I wouldn’t antagonize him further by pointing that out. “A couple,” I said.
“Tell me about your worst day ever.”
I didn’t have to think about it. My worst day was a toss up between the time I realized my parents had never wanted me, and when Wastrel died. No matter what I said, though, his day would be worse, so it didn’t really matter.
“There was this horse—”
He snorted. “Figures.” He shook out a cigarette and lit it, tossing the match to the ground below. “I suppose you raised him from a baby,” JJ mocked. He took a long drag and turned away from the window. Smoke obscured his face for a moment.
“No. He wasn’t mine. I was paid to ride him, but I don’t think I could have loved him more even if I’d raised him.”
“You think people ever really love a baby that ain’t theirs?”
That startled me. “I…I don’t know.” The question had often been on my mind growing up. I knew my aunt and uncle loved me, but there was something different between them and Penny, something more, and I’d always felt left out of their circle.
He took a few more long drags, flicked the spent cigarette over his shoulder and out the window, and lit another. “You probably had a perfect childhood in a big house with real Christmas trees and mommy and daddy always there to take care of things.”
“Actually, no, it wasn’t like that. It was a small house, and we did have real Christmas trees, but I was raised by my aunt and uncle, not my parents.”
“Oh, yeah? They die or something?”
Only in my heart. “No, they just…went away.” How the hell had we gotten on this subject? I kept the old anger and hurt locked in a dark closet. I never let it out. But the door had opened; I felt the familiar pain begin to squeeze my chest.
“They left you?” he asked. “How do you know they’re not dead?”
“My aunt gets a letter every now and then.”
“They don’t write you?” He sounded truly surprised.
“No.” I shoved the ugly feelings back and slammed the door on them. “They don’t write me.”
“Dang.”
That was one way to react. “You got any more cigarettes?” I asked. I’d tried smoking when I was a teenager. Didn’t like it. But it might stop my hands from shaking.
“Thought you didn’t smoke in barns?” He smiled and tossed me the pack.
“Seems like a moot point right about now.” I lit up, inhaled, coughed.
JJ laughed, and I could see the dimples in his cheeks. He caught the pack one-handed when I pitched it back to him. “Sounds like maybe you have had some bad days, Slick.”
“Just a couple, like I said. How about you? What was your worst day ever?”
He shook his head, perused the landscape for a minute, and double-checked his rifle—a bolt-action Springfield thirty-aught-six. I didn’t like guns, but this was a weapon I was familiar with because one just like it was Uncle Vick’s prize possession. He kept it in a gun safe and took it out occasionally to stroke its smooth wooden stock. I’d shut myself in the bedroom when he did. He said the action was jammed, it wouldn’t shoot, but I didn’t trust it. JJ’s, in contrast, looked well used and lethal.
“Thought I’d had some bad days before, like when Daddy disappeared,” he said, “but last Friday…”
The night he’d attacked me, ransacked the apartment, and stolen my underwear. That day had turned out pretty rotten for me, too. But for once, I could clearly see this wasn’t about me. I stubbed out the butt against the floor, making sure there was no life left in it.
“What happened last Friday?”
“I found Daddy.”
“Wouldn’t that make it a good day?”
His look was answer enough. His face managed to convey grief and anger as well as his contempt for me.
“Found what was left of him, that is, in the woods north of our place. Old Mac ran him down with the hay mower that day we thought he’d run off.”
The bones—could it be?
“How do you know?”
“He admitted it, the bastard, and he laughed.”
He continued chain smoking, sucking hard and making each one disappear faster than the one before.
“Said how stupid I was all those years to think Daddy’d be back, when he was right by the trailer all that time. But old Mac’s dead now, just like Daddy, so he won’t be laughing no more. It’s going to be okay. Brooke’ll see. We’ll still be together.”
“You and Brooke?”
“Yep. She never wanted Mac, only me.” He spit out the window. “At least, once I took her to the river.”
He leered at me, and I turned away. Somehow, I didn’t picture this story having a “happily ever after.” I unzipped my windbreaker a little, as if I might pull the gun, but doubted my own resolve to do it. Something told me to keep him talking even though I knew the more he told me, the more he’d have to kill me.
“Did you tell your mother about finding your daddy?”
He shook his head and muttered, “My mother. What a joke.”
“What’d your mother do wrong?”
“I guess I could answer that if I knew her.”
His laugh had a brittle, bitter tenor that tugged at my heart for a moment. But I couldn’t let him get by my defenses even if we did share a common hurt.
“That woman—Helen—is not my mother. She told me last Friday when I went to tell her about Daddy. She married him right after I was born. My real mother died having me.”
I closed my eyes and began to feel thankful for my parents. They might have abandoned me, but they were still alive. There was always a chance of…I don’t know what, in the future. I hadn’t realized until right then how desperately I clung to that hope.
JJ’d had everything he knew ripped from him, including hope for that chance of his father walking in the door someday. No doubt it had been a lot to absorb. Then, he’d tried to cap off his day by raping me, but Malcolm stopped him, and JJ ended up in jail.
“That was a bad day,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said and lit another cigarette. “I wanted to kill somebody. So I went to the one place where I’d felt good, where I hooked up with Brooke. But you weren’t home.”
“Did hurting me make you feel better?”
“You would have come around once you got used to me. Brooke did. I needed to make you mine, take you before Mac did. That’s our way.”
“Your way, maybe. I doubt it was what Malcolm wanted.”
“He wanted you, I could see it in his eyes. That’s all that mattered.”
What I could see in JJ’s eyes scared me. How I’d managed to avoid the crazies lingering at every turn in New York only to find myself in the middle of nowhere with the local wacko was beyond me. The bucolic scenery and quiet had lulled me into a false sense of security. I’d let down my guard.
“You cut the brakes in Malcolm’s truck?”
“Did you like your little ride?”
“Was it meant for me?”
“You, Malcolm, same difference.”
Not to my mind, but mine was still sane, I think.
“What about Norman? What’d he do wrong?” I asked.
He gave me a little smile of acknowledgement that I’d figured that out. “He saw me and Brooke together. Threatened to tell Mac.”
“So, you drugged him and buried him alive?”
“He was takin’ that stuff anyway. Sandy got it for him from the vet. I just made sure he had a little extra.” JJ stared at me. “Then you had to go and mess everything up with your spring cleaning.”
“Yeah, well, the place needed cleaning.”
“Yeah, well,” he mimicked, “when this is over, you can clean for me.”
Not likely.
“And Sandy?” I asked. A strange feeling rose up inside, like I could say whatever I wanted. If I had to be dead, I’d have answers, first. “How’d she get in your way?”
“How do you know she did?”
I touched the sore spot at my hairline. “You have a distinctive style.” He liked that, I could tell.
“That there’s a cow should go to the sale barn,” he said. “She thought she knew what was going on, was going to avenge Norman. I showed her how’d it’d be better if she kept her big mouth shut.”
Movement at the other end of the loft caught my eye. Nicky sat up. She was awake? How much had she heard?
“Vi?” She saw JJ, curled into a ball and covered her eyes.
“It’s okay honey.” I stood, started to move toward her.
JJ pointed the rifle at me. “Where you think you’re goin’ now? You think I care if she’s scared?”
I froze, all the hair standing up on my neck, my breath coming in little puffs. Breathe, I told myself. Slow. “No,” I said, “but I do.”
He motioned with the gun barrel and turned back to the window. I ran to Nicky, using the moment of gathering her onto my lap to retrieve my phone, but I couldn’t find it. She put her arms around my neck and buried her face against my shoulder.
“Where’s your cell phone?” I whispered in her ear, keeping my eyes on JJ. If I could call Dex or Malcolm—
She shrugged. “Don’t know. I might have left it at that place.”
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I told her. “Your daddy’s coming as fast as he can, I promise. If I tell you to run, you can do it, right?”
She shook her head. “Not without you.”
“You have to. There’s a tree outside the back window. If I get JJ distracted, you climb down and hide, okay?”
She nodded against my chest. “Where?”
Good question.
“Shut up over there,” JJ groused from his post.
“You shut up. I’m just comforting her, okay?”
He swung the rifle up and put a bullet through the roof. I nearly jumped through the roof myself, and squeezed Nicky against me, one hand over her eyes, keeping my own closed tight. The roar made my ears ring, and dust filled the air. Gaston gave a nervous snort below, and Nicky started screaming. Maybe I couldn’t say whatever I wanted.
“It’s not okay,” JJ said when Nicky quieted. “Got it?”
I nodded.
After a few more minutes, JJ spoke again. “She has it all figured out. We just needed them out of the way so she gets the ground.”
By them, I gathered he meant the M
alcolms. And then what? JJ and Brooke set up housekeeping at Winterlight? She didn’t like the country. She must have figured if they killed Malcolm senior, Malcolm would inherit. Then, if they killed Malcolm—or he died trying to rescue them—before the divorce was final, she would get the land. But live there with JJ? She’d probably ditch him the moment she had the deed in her hot little hands. Or better yet, turn him in for the kidnapping. God, they deserved each other.
It could still work out if Malcolm and JJ both died. The thought of Malcolm dead sent such a shard of pain through my heart, I almost cried out.
“What happened in Chicago?” I asked.
He hesitated just long enough before answering for me to know that whatever came next would be a lie.
“We decided it made more sense to split up.”
“I see. Then, why’d you hit her?”
“All you bitches need to be put in your place. Just like Daddy always said. None of you can be trusted.”
- 42 -
JJ tossed his last cigarette butt out the window and stood. “Show time, Slick. Come ‘ere.”
I froze. I couldn’t make myself go near him.
His lips curled into a snarl. “Have it your way,” he said, walking toward us.
I shoved Nicky off my lap and stood.
“That’s more like it,” he said.
He shifted the rifle to his left hand, put his other arm around my shoulders, and pulled me against his chest. I couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through me.
“Now, don’t be like that. Look what I have.”
He opened his hand. My cell phone gleamed against his palm.
“Call Mac. Say ‘Muller’s old hay barn. Come alone.’ That’s it. Don’t try to get fancy. Got it?”
“Do it yourself.”
He spun me hard into the wall and grabbed Nicky in one smooth movement. She screamed and started crying. JJ didn’t say a word, just held the phone out to me. I took it and punched in Malcolm’s number.
He picked up on half a ring. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
He was in a car. Hearing his voice sent thoughts of our almost future tumbling through my mind, and all I wanted to do was cry.
Candace Carrabus - Dreamhorse 01 - On the Buckle Page 27