by Ali Vali
“I’m a barkeep and I’m happy doing that, but I wish you the best of luck.”
He held his hand out and she took it. “If I hear or find Jerome Rhodes I’ll let you know. If it’s tradition you believe in, then I’ll bring you a token of my friendship.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“As soon as we’re settled, you and your partner will have to join us for dinner,” he said, walking next to her to the front of the house.
“Settled?”
“I bought a house not far from here,” he said, handing over a card with an address printed on it. “If I must become a native to get ahead, then I’m making my first step.”
“I’m sure the neighbors will be thrilled,” she said, putting the card in her pocket and imagining the look on Emma’s face when she told her Marisol and Hector were going to be their neighbors. “Congratulations. I’m sure the house-warming gifts will come pouring in.”
“My home is in Colombia, but for now I’ll be here full-time until I can get this going and leave Marisol in charge.”
“Good to know,” she said, smiling, “and thank you for dropping by, but I’ve got a few things to take care of.”
“Don’t forget to think about my offer.”
“And don’t forget to think about my response,” she said before turning and walking back to her office, patting herself on the back for not adding “butthead” to the end of her farewell.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They’d been sweating for what seemed hours at first, and now Dallas was holding on to Kristen trying to share body heat. She didn’t need to be sitting in the front seat to figure Johnny’s relentless driving was taking them farther north. They were going home, and when they got there he’d take and take until neither Remi nor anyone else would want what was left.
The box smelled of vomit and gasoline since Kristen had thrown up when she came to from the pain in her head and Johnny was, she was guessing, filling gas cans to keep from having to pull into a gas station and chance someone overhearing two women screaming for help. From the time they’d left New Orleans, he’d stopped for long periods of time only twice, and then they’d heard the box creak and a strange tapping noise as he talked to them. It was like he was sitting on the top and patting the wood in some weird celebration that he’d finally succeeded.
“What are we going to do?” Kristen asked, barely audible over the hum of the tires chewing up miles beneath them.
She pulled her arms tighter around Kristen and kissed the top of her head. It had been hours and he’d never opened the box, and if Kristen was as thirsty as she was, they wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight when he did let them out. But that was probably why he’d done it. “You have to believe we escaped once, so we can do it again. We’ll be fine, but you have to stick with me no matter what, okay?”
“I’m scared,” Kristen said before she groaned when the truck felt like it left the road and the sudden jolt made them bounce completely off the bottom of the box. “What’s happening?”
In her mind’s eye she could see the road that led to the hellhole Johnny had built on the land he loved to brag had belonged to his father and had been, according to him, a major site for a battle during the Civil War. He talked about it when he was drunk on the shit he made, but like everything he said, it was a lie. The Moores like her father and the ones who came before him had deserved to die out before now, and if she got out of here she planned to beg Remi to do it for her even if Remi didn’t want her anymore.
“He’s headed to the house, so when we get there be sure to stick with me. Whatever happens, stay with me and close your eyes if you don’t want to watch, but don’t try to antagonize him,” she said in a loud voice so Kristen would hear her over the rumble that made it sound like they were on a roller coaster. “Do you understand me?”
“I want to help you if I can.”
“Kristen, you don’t remember what he’s like, but I do. Do not get in his way.” Her last word seemed to echo when the engine shut off.
“Katie Lynn,” Johnny said, knocking on the top of the box. “You’re home now, so if you want to see the sunset you need to be a good girl when I open this up. Since you’re nothing but a little bitch, though, I’m going to give you a warning.” She heard the key ramming into the lock. “You try something and I’ll put a bullet in Sue Lee’s head, and then I’ll make you dig the hole I throw her in.” He slapped the top again. “We understand each other?”
“Kristen, please promise me that you’ll stay behind me.”
“Okay,” Kristen said, tightening her grip on her.
“Tell me you understand me or I might just drop this goddamn thing in the lake,” he said.
“Yes,” she said in a loud voice, thinking that she’d keep her answers short to conserve her energy.
The sun was blinding at first, but when he straightened up, his body blocked it and she could see the gun in his hand. “I can hardly believe you’re back,” he said, grabbing her by the top of her hair and yanking her to her knees, the pain excruciating when her weight bore down on them. “If you want me to be nice, don’t give me a reason not to.”
“Who’s that?” she asked, noticing the girl she’d seen briefly when he took her.
“Deidi, come closer and introduce yourself since your part in all this is almost over,” Johnny said, waving her over with the hand not holding the gun. “You could learn things like how to listen from Deidi, because I couldn’t have done it without her.”
“If you have her, what do you need with us?” she asked, lifting her hand to shield her eyes from the glare when he jumped down.
“No one can replace you, Katie Lynn,” he said, cocking his gun and lifting the muzzle a little in her direction. “But I’m a lonely man and Deidi here, she kept me company. She helped me out but she couldn’t replace you.” He lifted the gun and aimed it at her but at the last moment changed his target and shot Deidi, and Kristen started screaming.
Inside the house watching the girl hit the ground made Remi think they needed a distraction that would draw the weapon away from Dallas and the distressed Kristen. “Pick him up,” she said to Mano and Sabana, talking about Boone.
“You want to throw him out?” Sabana asked.
“Send him out like this and it won’t make much of an impression,” she said, stepping back when Sabana slit the man’s throat without her having asked. “That should do it.”
Deidi was gasping for breath on the ground and Dallas was holding Kristen’s head against her shoulder, trying to shield her face from the blood. When the screen door opened with a loud squeak, Johnny spun around and shot again as if it had scared him enough to pull the trigger. The bullet missed Boone as he flew off the porch from the momentum of his weight, but the blood made Johnny turn fully around and step closer.
“What in the hell?” Johnny said, walking toward the porch and stopping about halfway there. “Timothy, you in there?” A few steps closer was all he was willing to move since he stopped and tried to peer through the door as if something would come out and attack him. “You hear me, boy? Come out here and tell me what the hell happened.”
“That should do it,” Remi said to Mano, stepping away from the window. “Timothy, you ready to welcome Johnny home?” she asked as they pulled him to his feet. His head had been turned away when Sabana sliced Boone, so he seemed to be looking for him when he got up. She cut the rope tying his feet and pushed him through the door, waiting a beat behind him for him to see his brother.
At the sound of his anguished cry, she stepped out, glad to see Johnny looking at Boone’s body and making his reaction time too slow. She didn’t miss when she fired, hitting him in the hand he was using to hold up the gun. After he raised the stump that started at his wrist, he dropped and shoved it between his legs.
“Remi,” Dallas said, looking right at her but acting like she didn’t believe she was there. “Remi,” she said, and from her expression she appeared as if she was tr
ying to get her legs to work without letting go of Kristen.
Remi moved so fast that, like Timothy, she almost tripped as her feet hit the ground and she ran in the direction of the truck. Since she had the others with her, she didn’t worry about anything but getting to Dallas and proving to herself she was fine. “You’re okay,” she said when she was able to jump up onto the truck bed and put her arms around her and Kristen.
“You came,” Dallas said, sobbing. “You came.”
“You only had to think about what I told you night before last. You belong to me, and you do because I love you.”
“Katie Lynn, help me, girl,” Johnny yelled at Dallas between grunts of pain.
“Come on, we’re going,” Remi said, helping the girls out of the box only to have them both pull away from her.
“We’re disgusting,” Dallas said, her tears starting again, though silently this time.
The smell of urine and vomit hit Remi only after Dallas said something, and her heart broke at how much this idiot had broken the children he’d been blessed with. “It’ll wash off, querida, so don’t worry about it. Come on.” She coaxed them back to her side and smiled at Mano when he was there to help them down.
“I know you don’t want to go inside, so if you want, take off and we’ll be right behind you,” he said to Remi after he’d hugged both Dallas and Kristen. “We have to clean up a little.”
“Give me a minute,” Remi said, walking them to the car that Sabana had parked in the back of the house. “Stay here,” she told Dallas, kissing her hand when she grabbed her shirt front, not acting like she wanted to let go. “I’ll be right back, and nothing will happen to you.”
“Don’t be long,” Dallas said, then put her head on her shoulder. “And I want you to…I don’t know how to ask you.”
“I’ll be right back, and when I do we’ll never have this issue resurface again. I intend to do what I need to because of what he did to you, and because the bastard deserves it.”
“Thank you.”
“I love you, Dallas, and that’s what someone who loves you is supposed to do. I plan to take my job of protecting you and Kristen very seriously, so you don’t have to thank me.”
“You’re the only one who ever cared this much, so I do.”
When she made it to the front the area was empty. Boone’s body was gone, as were Johnny and Timothy, but judging from the yelling they were in the house. She stepped inside and found both men sitting at the kitchen table. Sabana was bringing gallon bottles of moonshine in from the other room and putting them in front of them. Despite his injury Johnny had a pile of broken glass by his chair as if he’d pushed a few to the ground and they’d broken, explaining the strong alcohol odor.
“You think you’re going to get away with this?” Johnny asked, pushing another two gallons aside and breaking them as well. “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”
“I do know that,” she said, unscrewing a gallon and pouring it around the rest of the kitchen. Then she took another one and made a trail to Johnny’s storeroom. “Your mistake was not realizing who you were messing with, Johnny.”
“Bob told me about you. He said you were going to ruin Katie Lynn’s career and life with what you wanted from her.”
“What’s that? To love her and give her the freedom to work without looking for my share, like Bob? To love her and give her the freedom to choose to love me back, not force myself on her like you and your sick friends?” She stood a few feet from the table and unholstered her weapon. “If that ruins her life it’ll still be better than what she’s had up to now.”
“I brought that little bitch into this world and it was my right to do whatever I wanted.”
“Those days are over,” she said, and Simon yanked his chair back. “Timothy, you want to stand up or do we need to do it for you?” He was crying but did what she’d asked. The whole time she’d been talking his gaze was fixed on the body near the table, where Mano had dragged Boone. “If I didn’t have Dallas waiting for me outside I’d take my time, but you need to understand the consequences of what you did. Where I’m from we deal with child molesters in a unique way.”
“What, talking people to death?” Johnny laughed at his own joke.
He jumped back and ran into Mano when she opened fire, emptying her clip into Timothy’s crotch. Every one of her bullets hit, even though he tried to shield his body from her until he went down screaming so loud that a neighbor two miles away would’ve heard him.
“Wait,” Johnny said, seeming like he wanted to run, but Mano was holding him in place. “Let’s talk about this,” he said as she popped the empty clip out and replaced it. “I’m Katie Lynn’s father,” he said as she chambered the first round, getting the Glock ready again. “I just wanted to see her again. It’s been years and I’m getting older, so all I wanted was to see my girls. You walk out of here and you have my word I ain’t gonna bother them again.”
Near the front door the girl who’d been riding in the front with him gurgled through the blood in her mouth. The hole in her chest was fatal, but for some reason she was hanging on, though Remi could see from her glazed look that it was a matter of time before her heart gave out.
“What happened to Dallas’s mother?” Remi asked, swiveling her head from side to side and popping the bones in her neck.
“That bitch left and I ain’t seen her again.”
Mano pushed him back in the chair and moved away from him. “I believe we’ve established that you’re a liar, Johnny, but if you want me to consider your offer of me leaving, that’ll have to change. The girls wonder about the loss of their mother, and we both know you know what happened to her. A simple country girl disappears without a trace only because she’s dead.”
“Katie Lynn done it.”
“Dallas was never a simple country girl, and she didn’t really disappear without a bit of a trail. That’s how Bob came into her life, but I took care of that problem,” she said, walking behind him and resting the gun at the base of his neck. “No, a woman with no education, two children, and an abusive asshole for a husband goes away only because she’s in the ground.”
One more bullet from Mano’s gun took care of Timothy so she didn’t have to keep talking loud to be heard. “You swear you’ll let me go,” he said, his breathing rapid and his attention on Timothy’s still body.
“I sure do,” she said sincerely.
“She was gonna leave me, so I helped her out. She’s buried out by the still.”
“Where by the still?” she asked, making a mental note of the markers he rattled off. “Get up,” she said, still standing behind him and twisting the gun to shoot at an odd angle. When the shot entered his backside and traveled up to somewhere in his chest, he seemed stunned for a moment before he dropped to his knees, hitting his head on the table on the way down.
“You said you’d let me go,” he said, his voice barely audible.
“I am, and maybe you’ll find forgiveness wherever you’re going because you won’t find any from me,” she said, moving so he could see her. “Today is the last day you’ll haunt their dreams,” she told him, pressing her gun to his chest over his heart and pulling the trigger. “Light it up,” she told Simon, throwing all the jugs Sabana had brought in to the floor.
Simon put a rag in one jug and lit it, throwing it against the wall close to the now-motionless girl whose eyes were still open, staring off into nothingness, and the dingy curtains in the front window caught like someone had doused them in gasoline. They stepped out and Remi stood alone in the yard at a safe distance, waiting for the evidence of what had happened to burn away.
After the back storeroom exploded, sending a ball of fire shooting up out of the back of the house, Dallas came and stood next to Remi, maneuvering herself under her arm. “Later we’ll come back and get your mom and give her the burial he stole from her,” she said, making Dallas start crying again. “Look, though, querida, and remember,” she said.
&nb
sp; “All I want to do is forget, but he never let me.”
“I can’t erase all the bad memories, but those flames mean it’s over. Johnny can’t hurt either of you anymore, and as long as I’m alive nothing or no one will have that kind of power over you again.”
“That’ll be hard to do,” Dallas said, walking with Remi to the car as the all-consuming flames emitted an intense heat that was uncomfortable even from where they stood.
“At first maybe, but every time you wake up with me those fears will fade, and when we get home, I’ll sell the condo if you want me to, but we’re waking up together every day.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“So Eliot Ness is back in town?” Cain asked Muriel after Hector’s car had left their property. “Now that she’s seen what happened, will they use bullets this time instead of their fists?”
“I did what you said and acted concerned, but I don’t know if I can continue this charade.” Muriel sat in her usual chair in Cain’s office and appeared like her old self for the first time in months. Her uncertainty had disappeared, and Cain was happy that all it had taken was time. “Something changed, though, because she wants to talk to you.”
“She talks to me all the time, and she hasn’t come up with a good enough argument to make me confess yet. I feel bad for what happened to her parents since no one should have to go through that,” she said, knowing full well what it was like to lose them like that instead of to natural causes, “but that won’t change my mind. I give to charity by writing a check to different organizations for the tax breaks as well as to help out. The tax break, though, does give me a warm fuzzy feeling since that’s the government’s main beef with me.”
“I don’t think she has your confession or strange sense of humor in mind,” Muriel said, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the service on the credenza.
