“We should go back.”
“What? Go back?” I look over at him. I wasn’t going to push him any further this afternoon, but now he’s got me irritated. “Look behind you. Do you see anything? Do you?”
“It’s just a… feeling I got. There’s something odd back there.”
“Odd? God save me…” I run my hand over my chin and mouth. “Okay, you know what? You’re right. There is something odd back there. He is fucking odd. And while I’ll grant you that, let me tell you something. I’m from LA. Hollywood. I know fucking odd. I live fucking odd. If you think Daniel Christiansen is the oddest person I’ve ever had to interview, you are sadly mistaken, Deputy. Hell, compared to some people I’ve had to question, he’s goddamn Stephen Hawking.”
Clint doesn’t say anything in response at first as we continue to sit, unmoving.
“I saw something. We should go back and look.”
“There is nothing to go back and look at.”
“I’m telling you, I saw something. What could it hurt to just go back and take another look?”
Now I’m starting to get more than irritated. Deputy Nolan is a nice-enough kid, and I’m sure he’s a fine law enforcement officer and an all-around helluva guy, but I am over this. All of it. This case, this place, the dust, the never-ending grass, Andre-the-fucking-Giant back there. I am over every bit of it, including a young man who has the bit between his teeth for a fantasy revolving around a young woman who has been dead for months, but one he somehow believes is out there in a tower somewhere, waiting to be rescued. At this point I want only one thing: to get back to LA as quickly as I can get my ass on a flight headed west.
We are not going back there. Ever.
“Hey, Clint. Listen to me, and listen carefully. You’re shadowboxing at something that doesn’t exist, okay? There’s nothing back there to discover. There’s nothing around here anywhere.” I slash my hand in an arc across the breadth of the cab. “Nothing that is going to change the fact that Sloane Finley is dead. Nothing back there is suddenly going to magick her up. Now, I. Am. Done. Here. And we’re going. So do me and yourself a favor. Just put the goddamn truck in gear and let’s get back to Stockdale.”
He stares at me, his jaw cracking tight, mouth a slash that shows as much as his eyes just how upset he is about this. He’s standing at the water’s edge, watching his fantasy version of Sloane Finley sail off into the distance, borne on the words of a jaded FBI agent who just wants to get the hell away from here as quickly as possible.
“Fine,” he grits the word out as he yanks the shifter back, and with a jerk we begin rattling our way down the road. Away from the ranch, the barn, the silos, Daniel ‘The Wall’ Christiansen. All of it.
Which makes what I do next even more exasperating.
Because I can’t for the fucking life of me understand why I find myself staring into the side mirror and watching as the place fades behind us.
* * *
We make it two-thirds of the way back to Stockdale before Clint opens his mouth. “You gonna report me to Sheriff Braddock?”
I look over at him, and then back to the highway that slips by. “For what?”
“Mouthing off. Not obeying orders.”
I snort. “I’m not your supervisor. I’m just a visitor here.”
“You’re a federal agent. I ain’t stupid. You outrank me.”
I start to respond with the first thing that comes to mind, but then stop myself, thinking better of it. He’s right. He isn’t stupid. He’s young, and idealistic, and a good, decent kid, which he needs to have driven out of him at the earliest possible moment if he’s going to survive in this field.
“No, Deputy Nolan. I am not going to report you.” I put my hands behind my head, fingers lacing, and then I lean back, eyes closing. “I am, however, going to offer you some advice.”
“What’s that?”
“Stop believing you can make a difference. Stop believing you can solve anything. Just accept. Just accept that the world around you is an unstoppable force of shit, and that you are not going to be able to turn it into anything worthwhile.”
He says nothing, and I open one eye and glance over. As I suspected, his jaw is set again, lips pressed together so tight they’ve turned almost white.
“I know you don’t want to hear that, but if you want to stay in law enforcement, you need to wrap your head around the concept.” I crack my neck, and then look over at him again. “You are not here to serve and protect. You are here to observe and clean up. You are a glorified janitor for the worst parts of humanity. And at the very end, when you’ve swept all the body parts into a bag, you get to write a report describing everything you’ve observed and discovered, so it can either be filed away, never to be seen again, or used against you in a court of law.”
I take a deep breath. “You think in terms of helping people. Saving them. Rescuing them from the evils of this world.” He starts to open his mouth, but I continue without stopping. “And don’t even try and tell me different, Deputy. I saw it last night and you wear it on your sleeve like a badge of honor.” His mouth snaps closed, and he avoids my gaze. “Someday you are going to take a call. It’s going to be somebody phoning from the side of a highway. There’s been an accident. And you’re going to get there, and there’ll be a body lying on the ground. ‘I didn’t see her! She came outta nowhere!’ And you’ll go, and you’ll see she’s just some kid trying to make her way north. And you’ll roll her over to check for a pulse even though you already know it won’t be there. And that’s when you’ll find it. The child she was carrying in her arms, trying to protect. And it’s still alive, but only for another minute or so. And you’ll stand there and watch it happen because there’s not going to be a goddamn thing you can do, no matter how much you want to be the hero. Because that’s how life works. Life doesn’t need heroes or want heroes. It wants cleaning people to tidy up the messes, and you just signed up for the worst shift of all.”
Clint keeps his face forward, lockjaw rigid, adamant in his refusal to acknowledge what I’ve just said. Not that I expected any different. He’s young, and it’s going to take far more than me being an asshole to change his way of thinking. Especially because I’ve little doubt that’s what made him become a deputy in the first place.
The tires make a sibilant hiss as we drive on, and my mind is starting to drift from what I’ve just said when his voice cuts through the cab, stiff.
“What makes you think I ain’t already seen something like that?” He looks over at me, his face a mask of challenge. I stare at him until he can’t hold my gaze any longer. And then I continue staring until he shifts in his seat, relenting. “Fine. I ain’t. But that don’t mean I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“Yes it does. Because until you’ve seen something like that, until you’ve held that child in your arms until it sucks down its last breath and goes still, you’re going to keep thinking you can save people. Change things. Make a difference in the natural order. And believe me, Clint. There is a natural order to how things work in this field. Bad things happen to good people. In fact, bad things happen to good people more often than they happen to bad people. And you are going to see it happen. And there’s not going to be a goddamn thing you can do about it.
“That’s a shitty fucking way to live your life.”
“It’s a realistic way to live your life. And trust me, the sooner you accept it, the easier you’ll be able to get through one day to the next without wanting to eat your gun, and instead, survive.”
For a moment he sits in silence, driving, and then he talks to the windshield. “Let me ask you something”
“What.”
“You ever been wrong, Agent Jones? Huh? Has there ever been one time in your career you’ve just been flat-out wrong? That your intuition just didn’t get it right?”
“That’s not relaven—”
“That ain’t answering my question, Agent Jones. I asked you if you’ve
ever been wrong. And more important, if you have ever been wrong, was there somebody who paid the price for your mistake?”
And it’s my turn now to grit my teeth.
I unlace my hands from behind my head, turn, and gaze out the window of the Bronco. Watch as the sun burns high in the sky, bleaching everything from the world in its brilliance.
“Yeah. I’ve been wrong before. More than once.”
I pick up the crumpled picture from the seat and look at it. Stare at it. Remember voices from the past.
‘You think I’m ready for this, Mason?’
‘You’ll never know until you try, right?’
‘Can you see her? I can’t get a visual!’
‘Man down! Man down!’
I feel my hand clenching the paper, beginning to crumple it. I force myself to stop, my eyes bringing the image into focus once again. And the voices continue. Newer. More recent.
‘Pretty girl. Dead girl.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Are you going to find her, Mr. Jones?’
‘You aren’t, are you? No one is.’
But those voices shouldn’t be here. Because I’m not wrong this time. I’m right. I know I am.
I know it.
“Yeah, I’ve been wrong before, Clint. But this time I’m not. This time I am right.” I hear the defensiveness in my voice, and I shove that emotion back. I don’t need to be defensive. There is nothing for me to feel defensive over.
I am right.
This time.
“Yeah?” Clint looks over at me, and his gaze is reproach and sympathy wrapped together, each one fighting for dominance over the other. “Well you’ll excuse me if I find that notion kinda funny, Agent Jones. Seems to me if you were so goddamn convinced of that, there shouldn’t have been a problem going back to take another look, should there?”
He gives me a pointed glare, and I can’t believe I have to keep myself from looking away.
Fucking kid.
And then he gives me one final parting shot.
“But maybe you just didn’t want to find out you might be wrong, did you?”
Twenty-One
Him
I keep my boot on Jasmine’s back, holding her on the ground as she makes quiet sounds, but I don’t look at her. No, my eyes are on the drive where the dust has stopped kicking up because those policemen are stopped somewhere over the first dip of the driveway.
When she squirms, I dig my heel in harder until she stops, and I can feel the anger rising in me. Wrath has always been my weakness. It was my weakness on the football field, and the Devil has made her test me with it again and again.
But this… this I can’t ignore.
The dust starts rising again, a new plume flowing up like a miniature sandstorm as their SUV heads out toward the gate. I watch it for another minute before I look down at her. There’s blood on the back on her shirt, a hole that wasn’t there this morning, and I know she got it climbing out one of the windows.
Should have boarded them up.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
She’s crying and it should make me want to give her mercy, but I gave her that last night. I gave her mercy this morning when she couldn’t get out of bed… and what did she give me in return?
Betrayal.
“You just don’t learn.” I lift my foot off her back and try to breathe, try to unclench my fists as I stand beside her. “Get up.”
Jasmine just cries, her face in the dust, and I’m disgusted by her as I grab her arm and pull her off the ground. One glance at her clothes and I can tell they’re ruined.
She’s ruined.
“You are dirty. Filthy.” The words slip out as I start pulling her toward the barn. She fights, trips, falls, and I drag her the rest of the way because she doesn’t deserve to be carried. She doesn’t deserve my mercy, my love, my care.
I have given her all that and more over and over and over.
And she kills our child. Tries to leave me. Tries to destroy our family.
Ripping the door to the barn open, I toss her inside and then lock it up. Just in case they come back.
They won’t come back. They’re looking for someone else, not Jasmine.
Jasmine is mine.
* * *
Her
He walks away from me, and I want to run. I want to run more than anything in the world, because the police are out there. In that cloud of dust that choked my lungs. But it takes everything I have just to sit up.
My voice breaks on a sob as I stare at the cement under my hands.
If I’d just been faster. If I’d pushed harder.
So many mistakes. So many many mistakes and now I’m going to die for them. I know it, and a large part of me just wants to accept it. It wants me to lie down and just let it happen, however he wants to do it, but there’s still a tiny voice begging me to fight. To run.
I hate that voice.
I hate myself.
“You’re filthy. Take your clothes off.” He’s back, standing over me, but I can’t move. All I can do is stare at the dust coating my arms, turning them pale and chalky. Daniel isn’t patient today though, he grabs my shirt and rips it upward, peeling it off my butchered back as he forces my arms up to yank it over my head.
I definitely hurt it worse squeezing through the window. I felt the wood scratching me through the shirt, and every single inch was torture until my ribs were free.
And it was all for nothing.
“NOW, JASMINE!” he shouts, and I flinch. No bra because I couldn’t stand one against my back, but I’m in shorts. Underwear. I bring my shaking hands to the button on my shorts, only fumbling with it for a second before he grabs me off the ground. I’m nothing but a doll in his hands, barely able to get my feet under me as he shakes me. “NOW!”
“Okay, okay,” I whisper, nodding over and over as I pop the button and shove them towards my hips. Bending hurts so much, but his impatience wins out and he rips them down, and then my underwear. As I stumble out of my clothing, he grabs me again and shoves me ahead of him toward the wall by Moses’s stall. I wonder if the horses are in there, or if they’re roaming happily in the pasture.
I hope they’re not in here. I don’t want them to hear this.
Cold water hits me like a thousand tiny needles and I squeak out a scream as I try to turn away from it, but the pressure of it on my back is torture. I end up turning in circles, trying to shield myself as he sprays me with a hose. When I try to speak, to beg, he aims the water at my face, and I spin away, sobbing as I hide against the wall, sliding down it as he continues.
“Filthy. Disgusting.” There’s only rage in his voice as he stomps closer, tossing me to the side easily so he can spray where he wants. “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes,” he mumbles, half under his breath as he grabs my hand and scrubs at it with his.
The water puddles under me, and I’m shivering from the icy temperature of it as he shoves me again and sprays my back. I cry out, trying to crawl away, but he pushes me down again with the toe of his boot.
“Cease to do evil, Jasmine. CEASE TO DO EVIL!” he roars, his voice completely different as he rants. “That is Isaiah, Jasmine. From the Bible. God tells you the truth in His Word, and you ignore it! Deny it! You deny me!”
“No, no, no, please…” I’m babbling, and it’s useless, all of it, but my brain isn’t working right anymore. It’s on autopilot. It wants to live. It wants to survive another day… stupid, stupid, stupid. There’s no hope here. None.
“You deny God when you defy me, Jasmine!” His fist finds my wet hair, wrenching me upright, and I can barely see through my tears as he drags me across the barn to the workbench, shoving me down onto it.
“Please, please, don’t—” My head cracks against the smooth wood, a strange pop of sound from the force of it, and it’s like my ears are ringing. Before it stops, he rips my head up again, and I taste leather as he pushes it p
ast my lips and teeth.
“No more talking. Be silent,” he growls from above me as the leather yanks at my mouth. He’s tying it behind my head, and I try to plead through it for him to stop. “BE SILENT!” he shouts, tightening it before he shoves me back down. “God bids you to be silent, Jasmine. You cannot continue to defy me, because God bids you to obey. God demands of you to listen to your husband, to obey, to offer me your body freely.”
I scream an unintelligible version of ‘no’ just before light flashes behind my eyes, followed by a disorienting pain. It takes me more than a few seconds to realize he slammed my head into the table again, but I think it was harder this time. Everything is swimming, and I feel nauseous even before I feel his cock prodding between my thighs.
“Accept me,” he snarls, one hand on my ass as he shoves me forward until my head bumps into the wall. He tries to thrust, but it won’t go in at first, and then I hear him spit. His fingers take his dick’s place for a moment, and those he gets in on the first try. There’s nothing gentle, and I don’t expect it as he shoves them in and out, mumbling his insanity aloud. “The wife is meant for the husband, meant to be one flesh. Meant to carry his child.”
No. I’ll die, the first chance I get. You’ll never use me like that.
His cock drives into me, still nowhere near wet, and I groan against the leather in my teeth as he forces himself in. I think it hurts, I’m pretty sure it does, somewhere in the wasteland of my body, and all I can think about is how much easier this would be if I hadn’t made him angry. If he’d never found the birth control. If I’d never betrayed the weak trust I’d started to build.
I was so close. So close.
“One flesh, Jasmine. This is what we are meant for. It is God’s plan.” He grunts as he works himself inside me, trying to get all the way in, but my body is slow to respond today. Not that he understands why. He doesn’t understand anything.
Jasmine Page 23
