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  “In the car,” Nash said. “I’ll get it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The smell of coffee burned bitter in Martha’s nose. Having to wait on the man hand and foot, shit, he was just like the others. Why did she think he’d have some different sort of code, being a cop? All he had was a gun he treated like a second cock.

  When the news of Jacy’s disappearance settled on her, Martha was surprised to find her thoughts weren’t of fear or concern. Good for you, girl. You keep going.

  And Nash, her only boy. He’d come to rescue her. Martha wished he would have taken her along for the ride too. Though she didn’t know the boy anymore, she was grateful he’d become a man she could be proud of.

  She sipped her cup of coffee, black. She stood, went to the sink and spit it out, then dumped the rest of the pot down after it.

  You keep running, girl. Do what I don’t have the guts to.

  Brian’s knock was a cop-practiced side fist to the door, a rattling pound that was less than welcoming.

  Sarah answered the door already knowing who stood on the other side.

  “Early for a visit, isn’t it, Sheriff?”

  “Didn’t know I needed an appointment,” Brian said as he stepped past her into the room, declining to wait for an invite.

  Sarah shut the door behind him, but not without a reflexive scan of the street to check for any prying eyes.

  Sarah Navin taught at the high school, had even schooled Jacy last year in the classics—Shakespeare, Dickens, Fitzgerald. Her days of watching the school boys swoon were behind her, but she knew if she offered to fulfill any hot-for-teacher fantasies to them, she could find plenty of takers. Her dark brown hair fell thick over her shoulders and her body remained treadmill trim, even though her mid-forties had caught up with the creases on her forehead and lines around her mouth.

  But no schoolboys came calling, only Brian. He’d claimed her a few years after he’d married Martha when it became apparent his new wife’s skills in the bedroom weren’t going to cut it. Sarah fell under the spell of the badge and his impressive equipment below his utility belt. He packed a .357 in his holster and beyond. His slow decline into advanced middle age and soft-bellied atrophy had come up gradually enough that she got used to it. When it became truly noticeable, it was too late to break things off. The affair ran on his timetable, his terms. The passion had gone out of their couplings long ago. Theirs was rote banging or fornicating or fucking. No love making here.

  But Brian didn’t usually come by until late night when he had a few beers in him. Nine-fifteen in the morning was rare for him and, with Sarah off work for summer vacation, too damn early.

  “I’m not here for a piece,” he said. Sarah silently sighed in relief. “I need to know if there are any places where the girls go to hang out, maybe get away from trouble.”

  “Well, why would I know that? I’m not exactly a teenager anymore.”

  “But you hang around them all day. You hear them talk.”

  “They talk to me about The Great Gatsby, not their personal lives.”

  Brian shifted a hip out, leaned on the butt of his gun. “You have to know something.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I need to find Jacy.”

  “Oh,” she said. Sarah walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge and brought out a pitcher of iced tea she’d brewed in the sun the day before. “You two get in a tiff?”

  Brian followed her into the kitchen, watched her pour the drink, his patience being tested.

  “I need to find her is all you need to know about it. So where do the girls hang out?”

  “It’s summer, Brian. What they do when they’re on their own is as foreign to me as what the Chinese do on a vacation.”

  Sarah lifted the glass of tea to her lips. Brian swung out a thick hand and slapped away the glass with the stencils of orange and lemon wedges. The glass shattered against the sink. Sarah’s hand went to her mouth and a trickle of blood seeped between her fingers. She knew better than to scream.

  Brian grabbed her hair from behind and tilted her face up to his as he towered over her, a full foot and several inches taller than her.

  “Girls are girls and not a one of you is any better than a bitch dog in the dirt. Every town has their places. I went there. You went there. I want to know where it is nowadays and if you think you can protect that little snatch by holding out on me, well then you don’t know me at all.”

  Oh, I know you all too goddamn well.

  She brought her hand away from her mouth. A tiny slit on her lower lip leaked blood, the cut clean and straight from the glass.

  “Some girls talk about a train tunnel,” she said. “I heard about one girl who hid out there for a few days last year after she had an abortion. She didn’t want her dad to freak out and start beating on her.”

  Her eyes held his gaze. She’d remind him that he promised to ease up on this macho caveman crap, but she was tired of hearing herself say it.

  “Train tunnel, huh? I know the one it must be.”

  “That’s all I know.”

  He loosened his grip on her hair and gave a sarcastic, “Thanks.” Brian turned to leave the kitchen.

  “You want me to let you know if I hear from Jacy?”

  “You won’t be hearing from her,” he said. Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jacy felt her stepbrother’s eyes bore into her, heard his nervous clothes rustling fidgets on the couch. She knew he wanted to be gone from this zip code and she’d been damn surprised he agreed to come back and get her. Jacy figured Nash would never set foot within city limits again except maybe for Mom’s funeral, and even then he’d wear a disguise.

  But Nash had been the only one she could turn to who knew the way out. Too many people got stuck around here like they’d lost the map or something. People like Robin. Like everyone Jacy went to high school with. The few who went to school beyond high school took classes at the community college one county away. Nash was semi-legendary for getting out, and the circumstances around his leaving were a small-town mix of legend and gossip. She planned to ask him if it was all true once they were across state lines.

  Nash stood and made another lap of the living room.

  “Will you sit down and relax,” Jacy said.

  “I don’t want to sit on that skanky couch anymore. And I don’t know why we aren’t gone yet.”

  “Robin’s not back.”

  “Who cares? What’s she gonna tell us?”

  “Whether Evel wants to kill us or not for taking his money.”

  “We didn’t take his money!”

  Jacy exhaled loudly, little-sister style. “Look, you heard the cop call our names in. Brian knows by now. And the state police are looking for us too. Don’t you think we should get a new car, maybe? And try to move at night instead of broad daylight?”

  She watched Nash grind gears in his head trying to dispute her logic. He couldn’t.

  “Fine, okay. A new car is actually a really good idea. But how are we gonna get one?”

  “We’ll trade with Robin when she comes back.”

  Nash nodded, checked the wall clock again. “What are the chances of that thing being right?”

  Jacy shrugged. Nash scanned the rest of the room.

  “Hey, Jace, do you, like, hang out here a lot? Like, is this your scene?”

  She gave him a withering look, the practiced you’re-not-my-dad look. “Are you asking if I smoke meth?”

  Nash looked at the grungy carpet. “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Look, I have, but not a lot. I don’t do it every weekend and I don’t buy my own. Now and then I’ll take a bump when it’s offered. My life can get a little stressful, y’know?”

  She met his eye when he tilted his head to her. She didn’t feel like detailing the abuse, the late-night visits from Brian, just so she could garner a little sympathy from her stepbrother. If he didn’t un
derstand the need to self-medicate once in a while, then fuck him. But the way things were going, they might end up in prison, and Jacy figured there was a decent chance Nash could end up knowing all too well what it’s like to get an unwanted visitor in your bed late at night.

  The threats may be different—nothing as simple as, “I’ll tell your mom it was your idea. That you came on to me,” in prison. But Jacy had gotten her share of, “I’ll fucking kill you,” too.

  Nash felt like a dick for judging her. After what she’d been through, he was shocked she wasn’t a full-on meth-head or that she hadn’t lifted one of Brian’s service revolvers one night and put it to her temple.

  Or his.

  All of it meant she still had a chance. A fresh start and she’d be good as new. It was a lie he told himself, that he’d been reborn once he got out. Truth was, this town stuck to him like scars, and Jacy’s were deeper than his.

  A car pulled up outside, the tires crunching gravel in the unpaved driveway and the tall grasses scraping alongside the body. Nash turned to the door, anxious to hear the verdict on Evel and to talk a car swap with Robin.

  A car horn tapped out shave and a haircut, then two gunshots added two bits.

  Nash froze. He looked to Jacy who had nothing to offer him. Whoever had pulled up, it wasn’t Robin.

  He went to the door and opened it. A man with dyed blond hair, short cropped and all standing, electric shock, on end got out of the car. His jeans had wide holes in the knees, his T-shirt no sleeves. An eclectic mix of professional and homemade tattoos ran from wrist to shoulder and a holstered .45 sat on his hip.

  “Shit,” Jacy said from behind Nash.

  He turned his eyes to her. “That’s Evel,” she said.

  Nash turned back as two more dirty jeans types got out of the back seat of Evel’s double-cab pickup.

  “Hey,” Evel said. “Y’all the ones who took my money?”

  Nash didn’t like the smile on his face. It meant trouble. It meant this was a guy who took pleasure in his business and enjoyed seeing fear in other’s eyes. Exactly the type of person Nash hated most, and the posturing he dealt with the worst. He saw the type all the time during his shifts as a bouncer. He never liked to let it get to fists, but those shit-eating-grin-type guys brought him there a lot faster than the others. The last thing he would ever do to an overgrown playground bully like Evel is to let him see fear. “We didn’t take shit. We sent Robin to give it to you and tell you what happened.”

  “Oh, she told me.” Evel leaned against the bumper of his truck. “Told me two of my men is dead, too.”

  Nash stayed in the doorway, feeling slightly safer with the house around him like a shell. “One was dead when we got there, and we got there quite by accident. The other one is dead because he tried to kill me.”

  “Oh, am I supposed to be scared of you? Don’t fuck with this one or he’ll shoot you dead.” Evel put up his hands in mock horror.

  “I’m no one to be scared of,” Nash said. “But, yeah, don’t fuck with me.”

  Poking a snake when it’s rattling may not be the smartest move, but better than offering up your leg for him to take a bite.

  Evel stood up off the bumper, set his feet in the gravel and stared at Nash, his grin finally gone.

  “Where’s Robin?” Jacy asked from inside the darkness of the house.

  Evel’s grin came back. “Robin? Oh, she’s right here, honey.”

  He motioned with his hand and one of his lackeys reached into the cab of the truck and lifted a small object, handed it to Evel. He held it out in front of him. “You wanna ask her something?”

  Nash struggled to stand his ground as he recognized Robin’s head at the end of Evel’s outstretched arm. The black ribbons of makeup were still there, streaking down from dead, blank eyes. Her neck dangled strings of red flesh and veins, empty of blood. The hair twisted in his grip was tinted red with coagulated blood streaks. She probably would have liked the look.

  Jacy let a small scream loose. Without looking at her, Nash could tell she held a hand over her mouth, trying not to spark anything between them and Evel.

  Nash stood still, waiting for him to make the next move.

  “I gotta say,” Evel said. “When she told me she had the two people who brought her the money hiding out at her place, I thought she was bullshitting me. I thought maybe she had something to do with it.”

  “There was no reason to kill her,” Nash said.

  “She touched my money, bro. Nobody touches my money unless I say so.” He turned the head so her face looked at him. “Then she started talking about some kind of reward. Free junk and shit like that. For doing what? Bringing me back what’s mine? I tell you what, bro, I do what the fuck I want with people who piss me off.”

  Evel swung Robin’s head down to his knee, then brought her up and let go. The head arced high over the front lawn and Evel drew his .45, sighted quickly and followed the rise and slow fall of the head. He fired a single shot and Robin’s head changed trajectories in the air, a chunk of her skull on the shaved hair side split off and bounced against the rotting wood siding of the house.

  “Now, let’s see,” Evel said. “Who else touched my money?”

  Nash slammed the door, grabbed the arm of the nearest sofa and dragged it to act as a barricade, even though a half-drunk woodpecker could come breaking through the rotten door in a second.

  “Gimmie your gun,” he said to Jacy. She stared back at him, her hand still over her mouth. “In your purse, give me your gun.”

  He set the grimy sofa in place and lifted her purse off the chair. He found her outmatched pistol at the bottom and cracked the barrel to check his ammunition. Two left.

  “You have any more for this?”

  Jacy shook her head.

  Nash went to the window. Evel was flanked by his two helpers, each one with a handgun now. They walked forward to the door like they knew this would be easy.

  Nash fired a single shot. The pane of glass shattered and the bullet struck the ground a few inches from Evel. The three men dove for cover, Nash’s intention. He’d bought himself some time. He wasn’t sure how much, or how much more time one more bullet would get him.

  He didn’t want to kill them, or anyone else ever again. He needed a way out. And this time, he wouldn’t stop driving for anything.

  “Is there a back door?”

  Jacy gave him a confused look.

  “Fuck it, come on.” Nash grabbed her wrist and pulled Jacy into the bowels of the crumbling house. Down a short hallway he spied a bathroom fitted in dirty blue tile, a bedroom more shadow than light and at the end of the hall, another bedroom. Bigger, with an unmade king size mattress in the center of the floor and several posters of goth bands on the wall.

  “Shit.” Nash pulled at her wrist again and he tore Jacy out of the room.

  “There’s a laundry room,” she said, snapping to. “I think it has a door.”

  “Go,” he said, pushing her ahead of him.

  They reached the kitchen and she turned toward a door at the end, past the refrigerator. Out the small window over the sink, Nash saw one of Evel’s sidekicks making his way down the side of the house in the same direction they were headed. He was aiming for the same door.

  Nash lifted the tiny pistol and fired a round through the window. He saw the man jump and veer off course to hide behind a junk car half hidden by weeds. Nash’s last bullet.

  “Wait,” Nash called to Jacy. “Let me go first.”

  He pushed in front of her and put a hand on the knob for the laundry room door leading outside. He cracked it an inch and put one eye up to the opening. Broken concrete steps ran down to the thick weeds of the backyard. A small stand of trees vined with poison ivy lay fifty feet away, the only obstacles in their way an overturned child’s wading pool and a rusted lawnmower.

  “Okay, run for those trees. It’s too risky to make it to the car.”

&nbs
p; “Shit, my purse,” Jacy said. Nash felt her wrist slide from his grip as she ran back into the house.

  “Jacy, wait—”

  A booming gunshot rattled the branches. Nash pulled back into the house and slammed the door. He heard a loud voice, country accent as thick as the weeds in the yard.

  “Y’all better get the fuck outta here now.” It wasn’t Evel’s voice, this one had some years on it. Nash peeked out kitchen window. A man stepped down off the front porch of the neighbor’s house, a structure Nash would have sworn was abandoned.

  Sixty if he was a day, the old man hefted a double-barrel shotgun out ahead of him, wavering like he might let it drop, his arms too skinny to hold the weight. He wore a white tank top, a turning-white scraggly beard and formerly white boxer shorts, his legs possibly skinnier than his arms.

  “I called the cops you assholes! But let me tell you somethin’ right now!” The old man lifted the shotgun high in front of him. “They ain’t the ones you gotta worry about. You messed with the wrong fuckin’ American.”

  Nash wanted to yell to the man to go back inside, but he didn’t dare reveal his position. Nash couldn’t help thinking he was looking at what he might yet become if he kept up his habit of not knowing when the hell to butt out. Wise-ass remarks and a low tolerance for bullshit when you’re young seemed to be walking him down a path straight to pantsless, shotgun-waving old coot.

  Jacy put a hand on Nash’s shoulder, her purse now slung over her arm. “What’s he doing?” she asked.

  “Something stupid, but maybe enough to give us time to make it.”

  Before Nash could draw the next breath to tell Jacy to get going, bullets came from three different directions at the old man. His white shirt sprouted red stains. His kindling and paper body collapsed, the shotgun falling to get lost in the weeds. A final shot clipped the man’s chin and his beard split open to show white jawbone, quickly covered over in blood.