“Lead the way.” She gave me a hard shove.
I stumbled, nearly falling on my face, but I kept on my feet until I reached the back door, then leaned my shoulder into it to regain my footing.
“Don’t just stand there. Open the damn door.”
I reached for the knob, and turned it, my palms slick with blood and sweat. When I got the door open, Stella gave me another shove. “Go on now.”
I fell to my knees this time, the wood of the small porch breaking my fall. The jarring made my teeth crack.
She kicked me in the middle of my back, sending me tumbling down the two wooden steps to the muddy yard. My shoulder landed in a puddle. It had started to rain again, and raindrops hit my cheek as I looked up into the sky, assessing my damage. While I hurt all over, my jeans had protected my legs, and my arms seemed fine except for an ache on my right bicep. My right shoulder had taken the brunt of it, but I was sure it wasn’t broken.
Stella stood over me, her gun pointed in my face, and the light from the still-open kitchen door illuminated the hate in her eyes. “Not so high and mighty now, are ya?”
“High and mighty?” I choked out, my anger consuming me. “It’s hard to be high and mighty when you’re on your back, lettin’ man after man screw you.”
Arrogance filled her eyes and she pulled her shoulders back. “Then you weren’t doin’ it right. Now get up.”
I tried to sit up, but my bound hands made it awkward.
Stella kicked my bruised shoulder, making me cry out in pain as I fell flat on my back, the back of my head sinking slightly into a soft patch of ground.
She stood over me again, her feet straddling my sides. I could have tried to knock her off balance, but the gun pointed at my chest stopped me.
“Look at you and your new life—livin’ in high cotton. You done forgot about your friends.”
“Friends?” I spat out. “You were no friend. You sat back and let Branson sell me to man after man. You became my jailer too.”
She laughed. “Let him? Honey, it was my idea.”
I gasped, and joy and satisfaction filled her eyes. “No one gives me enough credit, but I made a bundle off you. Seventy-thirty cut. I only got thirty, but Branson was doin’ the hard part of dealin’ with you.”
The woman standing over me was pure evil, so I wasn’t sure why I was surprised at her admission, yet I was.
She was loving every second of it.
“Now get up,” she sneered, swinging her leg over me and backing up. “The clock’s tickin’.”
I rolled to my side and pushed up on my bound hands and knees, then to my feet.
“Which way?” she asked.
“We have to walk closer to the road. There’s a path through the fields over there.”
“If this is some kind of trick, I won’t hesitate to shoot you in the back, Neely Kate. Just like you stabbed me in mine.”
I could have challenged that statement, but I didn’t want to antagonize her any more than I already had. Instead, I headed toward the front of the house.
“Uh-uh,” she grunted. “You said through the fields, so we’ll stick close to them.”
Reluctantly, I headed toward the edge of the hayfield, thirty feet behind Joe’s house.
“How far away is the path?” she asked behind me, shining the flashlight beam at my feet.
“A couple hundred feet.” I stepped into a divot in the ground and stumbled. “Can you shine that where I’m walkin’?”
“If you know this property so well, then you don’t need it, do you?”
We walked in silence and I could see the path up ahead, across from the pen that held the farmer’s fainting goats. As we grew closer to the path, I heard a car engine coming down the lane, the barest gleam of headlights in the distance.
Jed.
But Stella heard it too and gave me a hard shove in the back. “Where’s that path?”
“Up ahead.”
“Let me make this clear. You won’t be standin’ here to greet your man when he drives by, whether it be because you’re dead or we’re walkin’ on that path. Now which is it gonna be?”
I started to answer, but she shoved me again, turning off her flashlight as she pushed me down to the ground next to the field, flat on my stomach. Then she dropped down and lay down next to me with the gun digging into my waist.
“You better hope he doesn’t see us.”
The car grew closer, the headlight beams brighter now. I held my breath as they hit the road next to us, and I wasn’t sure what to pray for—Jed seeing me or not.
But his car drove right on past and as he was approaching the house, Stella got to her feet, and dragged me up too. “Let’s go.”
The path was a good twenty feet away, but she could see the opening now and prodded me along. Once we were down the path a ways, she flipped her flashlight back on.
“Lead the way,” she said.
The rain had made the hard-packed earth slick and muddy, slowing us down. We walked in silence for several long seconds, then it hit me that sound traveled out here. Jed might hear us talking, or at least enough snatches of conversation to investigate.
“What do you plan to do with the money?” I asked.
“What do you care?” she snorted.
I stumbled again, falling to my knees, which sank into mud.
She shoved the gun barrel into my back. “Get up.”
When I didn’t immediately respond, she said, “You know I don’t necessarily need you anymore. I’m on the path. I have a flashlight to get there. I could shoot you now and have one less pain in the ass to deal with.”
I had no doubt that she would. “Don’t forget that Kate wants me alive. I suspect she won’t give you any money if I’m dead.”
“What’s she want you so bad for?” Stella asked, jerking me to my feet. Then she added with plenty of spite, “Why does everyone in the goddamned world want you?”
I didn’t know any good way to answer that, so I said nothing as I started walking, hoping to end this trek, but dreading what was to come.
Chapter 27
The house was dark when we broke through the field, but I could see the edge of Joe’s car by the front porch.
“Now what?” Stella mumbled, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or to me. But she gave me another hard shove, dropping me to my knees for the umpteenth time. My knees were so bruised the ache was shooting down my shins, but it was my hands that hurt the worst. The circulation had been severely limited and they throbbed.
“Get up!” she shouted.
Apparently Stella didn’t believe in stealthy entrances to showdowns.
“I’d thank you for bein’ a bit gentler with my sister,” Kate called out into the darkness.
Stella’s head jerked from side to side. “Where is she? I don’t see her.”
“The barn, from the sound of it,” I said.
“Where are you?” Stella asked, grabbing my T-shirt in the middle of my back and hauling me to my feet, using me as a shield.
“Neely Kate’s right,” Kate shouted. “I’m in the barn, and you’re two minutes late. I’m gonna have to deduct a couple grand for that.”
Stella pointed her big gun at my temple. “Then I’m gonna have to blow your sister’s brains out.”
“You do that, and I won’t pay you a dime and you’ll find Branson in the exact same condition.” Kate took a second, then said, “How about you come collect your money and your man, I’ll get my sister, and then you can be on your merry way.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have the money,” Stella shouted.
Kate moved into the opening of the slightly ajar barn door. “Do you want the money or not?” Then she disappeared back inside.
“I don’t trust her,” Stella said, pushing me in that direction nevertheless. She slid the gun around my head then down to the middle of my back, making sure I never had a moment to jump her.
“What about Crystal?” I asked, trying to shift my hands, but the new position made the pain even worse. “Where does she fit into all of this?”
“Why do you care so much about that baby?” she asked. “Babies are a way to make a man give you money or give you want you want, preferably both.”