Banished

by Sophie Littlefield

  “I guess she went to bed early,” Prairie said as she stepped aside to let me into the dark foyer of the coach house, Rascal following.

  She slid her hand along the wall. I could barely make out its outline in the moonlight coming through the door. There was another soft click as Prairie’s fingertips found the light switch, and the room was illuminated by the soft light of a lamp on a low table.

  A few feet in front of us, an elderly woman in a pink quilted housecoat sat in an overstuffed chair, her feet out in front of her at an odd angle, one of her satin slippers upside down on the wood floor.

  For a second I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then I noticed a dark stain that ran down her neck and into the folds of her housecoat, and when I took half a step closer, the reason became clear.

  Her skull had been bashed in.

  CHAPTER 18

  PRAIRIE MADE A SOUND next to me, a cut-off little cry. I pushed Chub’s face hard against my shoulder, shielding him from the sight of the dead woman. When he’d been crying moments earlier—he’d known that something bad waited inside.

  I saw that bits of shattered white skull showed through the woman’s ruined scalp and blood-matted hair, and I took a step back. My foot hit something on the floor and I tripped, nearly dropping Chub. Instead, I staggered sideways and managed to stay on my feet. I looked down to see what I’d tripped over: a skillet, an old black one with a wooden handle.

  “Welcome home,” came a deep, rough voice. Another lamp switched on and I could see a man sprawled lazily on a floral-print couch, one arm slung along the plump cushions, the other hand dangling a handgun.

  It was Rattler Sikes.

  A purple bruise showed through the stubble on his jaw, but otherwise he looked none the worse for wear. My heart sank. All our efforts to throw him off—they hadn’t worked. Had he seen every move we’d made?

  As if reading my thoughts, he chuckled softly. “Bet you’re surprised to see me. You really thought you could get me off your trail with that wild-goose chase? You must of forgot I ain’t got any quit in me.”

  “Rattler,” Prairie said, her voice choked with fury. “What have you done?”

  “Before you go lookin’ around for something you can throw at me, Pray-ree, you might ought to consider I got a gun and you got a little boy with you ain’t done anything to anyone.” The way Rattler said her name, it was like he was mocking her with it. “And I got a itchy finger, so’s if you so much as make me nervous, why, I’m liable to go twitchin’, and I know none of us wants that, right?”

  “You’ll have to shoot me first.” I turned so my body was between Rattler and Chub.

  “Hold up, there,” Rattler said. “I ain’t shootin’ nobody just yet. Don’t you want to know how I came to meet your friend here, Pray-ree? She weren’t any too hospitable, though, I gotta say.”

  “How could you—”

  “She saw me knockin’ on your door, and come over wearin’ garden gloves and waving her pruning shears and askin’ me all kinda nosy questions. Liked to have pruned me to death, way she was lookin’ at me. And I got to thinkin’, maybe I’d just wait for you from her house here. Nice window I could look out of, make sure I saw when you got home. And now look, it must be my lucky day, ’cause you gone and come to me.”

  “She never hurt anyone—”

  “Hey, all’s I asked her to do was leave me be and set quietly in this here chair while we waited on you all. I wasn’t fixin’ to kill her or nothin’. Then I tell her to git me some tea and she come back with a skillet and she’s ready to haul off and hit me on the head with it, only she didn’t move quick enough. Guess that didn’t work out too well for her, now, did it?”

  I thought about how frightened the woman must have been when Rattler forced his way into her home. His grip on the gun looked sloppy, but I knew better. He could hit a can on top of the trash in the burn barrel in Gram’s backyard while standing in the middle of the field next door. I’d watched out my bedroom window one summer twilight as he and a few of Gram’s customers took turns shooting. The other guys hit the barrel or missed entirely, but Rattler nailed the can every time.

  Now he was staring at Prairie with an intensity you could light fires with. And she stared back. There was something between them, all right, something crackling with tension and danger, something almost … alive.

  “You slowed me down, girl,” he said, so softly that I knew he was speaking only to her. I might as well have not even been there. “But you can’t stop me. Not when I’m coming for you.”

  My fear curled and stretched into something new, a realization that Rattler didn’t want to kill us—he wanted something worse. It was as if he wanted to own Prairie, and I realized that I was more frightened of Rattler Sikes and the other Banished men than I was of the professional killers who’d been chasing us.

  More frightened of Rattler than all of those guys put together.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Prairie said, but there was a tremor in her voice, and she shrank back from him. It was like the twisted energy around him diminished her.

  Suddenly Rattler laughed, and the spell was broken.

  “Now let’s get back on a friendlier track,” Rattler said, his voice oily. “Set on down, girl, I think you ought to be comfy enough in that chair. We got a little talkin’ to do ’fore we all git on the road.”

  “We’re not going anywhere with you,” Prairie hissed.

  But Rattler only shrugged. “I’m gonna take you girls home, where you belong. You can go easy, or you can go hard. Up to you. Hailey, go on, take the kid and git him settled in one of those bedrooms. And take that mangy hound with you.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I edged through the room, avoiding looking at the dead woman, Rascal at my heels. I wished he was a better watchdog—it was like he didn’t care at all that Rattler was threatening us. My heart was pounding so hard, it seemed like everyone ought to be able to hear it. In the hall a door stood open to a small room with a tidy bed made up with a quilt and a pile of embroidered pillows. As I put Chub on the bed and slid my backpack off my shoulders, I tried hard not to think about the woman with half her head leaking out in the other room.

  “I like how you look all eased down in that chair,” I heard Rattler say from the other room. “You’re lookin’ real good, Prairie.”

  I had to do something to stop Rattler. I unzipped the backpack and dumped everything out. I handed Chub his giraffe and sorted frantically through the rest of the contents.

  “Bedtime?” Chub asked, yawning. “I want my bed.” Even through my terror I noticed how well he was speaking, how clear his words were. Evidently he had forgotten his fear, or maybe he was simply too tired to care.

  “You can just nap here for now,” I said, pulling the quilts and covers back from the pillows. I could hear Prairie murmuring something.

  “Okay. Good night.” Chub got up on his knees to hug me and I kissed the top of his head.

  Chub started to wiggle under the covers, but suddenly he sat up, frowning. “I don’t want to watch.”

  “What, sweetie? What don’t you want to watch?”

  “Bad man’s eye. I don’t want to watch.”

  My nerves were so skittish, it took some effort for me to smooth the hair off Chub’s forehead and kiss him gently and get him to lie down again. “You don’t have to. You just go to sleep.”

  “ ’Kay.” He closed his eyes, his long lashes casting shadows on his soft cheeks.

  In the other room Prairie and Rattler talked in low, intense voices. There was nothing I could use—just my old clothes and Prairie’s purchases. I glanced around the room but saw only framed snapshots, a fancy silver comb and brush, china figurines, a basket of dried flowers. There was a chest of drawers pushed up against the wall and I ran my hand along the top of it.

  “You can’t tell me you don’t remember how much fun we used to have,” Rattler said, his voice rising. “You used to love skinny-dippin’ with me and the rest
of ’em.”

  “I never loved it,” Prairie snapped. “I hated it.”

  “That ain’t true. You know you an’ me should of been together. Everyone knew it.”

  “No. No.”

  I yanked open the top dresser drawer. Slips and camisoles, folded tissue. I tried the next drawer.

  Scarves. A soft pile of scarves, lengths of silk in every color of the rainbow—beautiful, but nothing I could use. My heart plummeted.

  “Only, you didn’t do like you were supposed to,” Rattler continued. “I waited, I followed your mom’s rules, even if you didn’t. You think I didn’t know about you and that boy from Tipton?”

  “He was—”

  “You thought you were so smart, sneakin’ around with him? Thought nobody’d figure it out, just cause you kept it from your mom? Well, I knew. I knew.” I was shocked at the bitterness in Rattler’s tone. Was he … jealous? Was that possible?

  I stuck my hand in the drawer and seized the scarves and pushed them to the side. My fingers brushed against something hard and sharp. I picked it up. It was made of pale bone or ivory, with two delicate long, curved points at one end and a pearly fan-shaped decoration carved at the other. Some sort of hair ornament, I guessed.

  I picked it up and held it in my right hand so that the long, curved points lay against my wrist, then stepped into the other room.

  “Don’t matter anyway,” Rattler said. “ ’Specially since your sister beat you to the big prize.”

  I heard Prairie’s sharp intake of breath. “What do you mean?”

  Rattler laughed bitterly. “Only that once you took off, your mom said she guessed Clover was old enough to date after all. It took some convincin’, like to hurt my feelings the way she kept turnin’ me down, but I finally got her to see things my way. I guess I had a mighty fine time with—”

  “Don’t say her name!”

  “I’ll say what I want, Pray-ree,” Rattler hissed. “You need me to spell it out?”

  I stepped into the light.

  Rattler glanced at me, and for a split second his face was open to me, his expression unguarded, and I saw something there I would have never imagined in a million years.

  Pain.

  Because of Prairie. It wasn’t love—I refused to believe a man like Rattler could love—but a longing so strong he wore it like a second skin; and it was suddenly easy for me to believe that their connection went back not just generations but centuries. The thing binding Rattler to Prairie knotted tighter the more it was resisted.

  But when Rattler saw me staring at him, the hurt vanished and was replaced with something else, something sharp-eyed and crafty. Amused, even.

  “Little Hailey girl,” he said. “Look at you, practically grown up.”

  “You never—you couldn’t—she wouldn’t—” Prairie gasped for words and looked like she was going to come out of her chair and attack him. But Rattler raised his gun hand without even looking and leveled it at her.

  “Go easy, Prairie,” he warned, his voice barely more than a raw whisper.

  Then he looked at me full-on, his eyes glinting green sparks in the dim light. One corner of his cruel mouth quirked up.

  “You know who I am, don’t you, Hailey girl,” he said softly, and suddenly I did—I knew, and my hand clutched hard at the handle of the hairpin as the knowledge thundered in my brain. “I’m your daddy.”

  I lunged at him and raised my hand, clenched that hairpin tight, and the sound when those elegant curved points found their mark wasn’t like much of anything at all, like sliding a knife into a melon—

  But the sound that came out of Rattler made up for it, a sound that was neither human or animal but something in between, a wild something, a furious something, as he clawed at the thing that was sticking into his right eye.

  “Prairie!” I yelled. I whirled around and saw her bolt out of her chair.

  I ran to the bedroom and yanked back the quilts. Chub was propped on his elbows, his little face winding up for a scream of his own. He wasn’t all the way awake, I could see that—it happened sometimes, when he was startled out of a deep sleep; it was like a sleep-waking nightmare.

  “It’s me, it’s me, Chub,” I said as I yanked him out of the bed, stuffing everything back in the backpack and shrugging it over my shoulders. He started to wail, squirming in my arms as I ran out of the bedroom. Rattler had got the hairpin out of his eye—blood covered the hand he had pressed against it—and he raised his gun hand and swung it from Prairie to me.

  Then he shot at me.

  I waited for a jolt of pain that didn’t come, but there was a crash from the bookshelves behind me.

  “Down,” Prairie screamed, and pushed me away from her, but I stood my ground as she raced for the kitchen and jerked open a drawer and pawed frantically through the contents.

  “Rascal!” I screamed, and he appeared in the hall, looking uninterested. “Sic him, boy!”

  The change in Rascal was astonishing. In a flash he went from standing still to snarling and hurling himself at Rattler, teeth bared. He clamped down hard on Rattler’s shin, and the sound coming from his throat was guttural and feral. Rattler yelled in pain. As he brought his gun hand down on Rascal’s skull, the gun went off again and Prairie stumbled against me. She didn’t say a word, just made a sound like “unh.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” Prairie said, yanking on my hand and pulling me toward the door.

  “Rascal, come on!” I yelled, and we ran as Rattler hopped back, clutching his leg where Rascal had attacked him.

  When we reached the porch, Prairie stumbled and barely caught herself.

  “You’re not fine,” I said, heart pounding. “Did he shoot you?”

  I saw the spreading damp of her blood and the jagged tear in her sweater, the awkward angle at which she was holding her arm.

  “Ahh,” she said, breathing hard. “All right, I’m hit. But we have to get out of here. It’s not just Rattler, Hailey. There were lights on in my house that weren’t on before. Didn’t you see? Bryce’s men are over there, and they must have heard something going on.”

  “But—”

  “They’ll come here, Hailey. To see what happened.”

  And then they’d come after us.

  Again.

  “How—What can I—”

  “Just help me run. We can get to a pay phone, there’s one a couple of blocks back.”

  I remembered her cell phone, crushed under the Buick’s tire.

  If there was a moment for me to be strong, this was it. Prairie had taken the lead since the moment we’d met, and I’d followed. Not always willingly, and I hadn’t always believed or trusted her, but I followed.

  Now, though, she needed me. And I had to set aside my doubts, my questions, my fear. I set Chub down, yanked my old shirt out of the backpack and tied the sleeves tightly around her arm, above the bullet wound, to slow the blood flow. She stood still and pale, biting her lip but not making any sound.

  I held Chub’s hand and supported Prairie with my other arm, half dragging her, retracing our steps down the alley toward town. Rascal followed, docile again. Any traces of the vicious attack dog he’d been moments ago were gone. I listened for footsteps behind us, the sound of tires on gravel, but there was nothing.

  We reached a shuttered drugstore and I could see the pay phone in a pool of light at the edge of the parking lot. I hesitated—we’d be a visible target for anyone who came along.

  A taxi cruised slowly by.

  I jumped into the street. I’d never hailed a cab in my life, but I held my hand high and waved it hard. For a moment I thought the cab was going to pass us by, but at the last minute it slowed.

  “I can’t—my arm,” Prairie said.

  “We can cover it—”

  Prairie shook her head. “No. It’s too dangerous. If he sees blood, he might insist on taking us somewhere. A police station, or a hospital.”

  “Would that be so bad? Come
on, Prairie, you’re shot. You need a doctor.”

  She shook her head hard. “No. You don’t understand. Bryce is connected. In more ways than you can imagine. I’m sure he’s got people covering the police scanners, the highway patrol—if we end up with the authorities, we’re as good as dead. Besides, we can’t take Rascal.”

  “But—”

  The cabbie rolled down his window. “Excuse me, miss. You coming?” he asked in a thick accent.

  Prairie shook her head again. I made a split-second decision. “I just need to use your cell phone, sir. Please. We’ll pay.”

  The cabbie narrowed his eyes and frowned. “No ride?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I just really need to use your phone.”

  He muttered something I couldn’t understand and started to roll up his window.

  “No! Please!” Frantically I gestured for Prairie to give me some money. She dug in her pocket and handed me a roll of bills. I peeled off three twenties. “Here. Just for a few minutes. I promise we’ll give it right back.”

  The cabbie hesitated, then sighed and reached into the pocket of his coat. He handed me his phone and I passed him the money. “You stay right here,” he said, stabbing a finger at me.

  “Yes, okay.”

  I handed the phone to Prairie. She stepped back into the shadows while I waited next to the cab, Rascal sitting calmly at my side. Chub watched the transaction closely from my arms, his eyes wide and worried. “Phone,” he said. “Prairie call.”

  “That’s right, Chub. We borrowed the nice man’s phone so Prairie could make a call.” I glanced at the man, hoping his expression would soften when he saw how sweet Chub was, but he stared stonily ahead, arms crossed.

  It didn’t take long. Prairie shuffled back and handed me the phone. She was trembling. “Thank you,” I said as I gave the phone back to the driver. He didn’t respond but took off, wiping the phone on his shirt.

  “I talked to Anna,” Prairie said. She had started to shiver all over. “She’s coming. We need to stay out of sight. I told her we’d be in that first yard.”