Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Finn who hastily ended his call but kept his distance, watching our interaction intently. I nodded at him to let him know that all was well, but he still didn’t take his eyes from us.
Bridget stiffened in surprise and I realized my error. The hug. “I’m sorry,” I said, taking a step back. “I wasn’t thinking.” Hugs weren’t something I’d experienced from anyone other than my mother growing up. I imagined that Bridget’s life was very much the same, if not worse. Her mother barely ever made eye contact with anyone. Not even her. It was amazing how quickly I’d embraced the hug as a greeting.
“It’s alright. Affection always did come to you naturally. I always watched you put your hand out or step to close to someone before you’d correct yourself.” She laughed nervously. I did too.
“You were very observant.”
She looked around the room. “It wasn’t like there is much else to do but look when no one thinks you’re looking. Speaking of looks. You look so different than the last time I saw you. At your mother’s funeral,” Bridget said, looking me up and down yet again.
It was more of a curiosity than a compliment, but I thanked her anyway.
I tugged on the cut-off hem of my black denim shorts which barely covered any leg at all, suddenly feeling very exposed. “Yes, things have most certainly changed for me,” I said.
“Yes. I left after that.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Why?”
“Because, your father told us you were dead. Killed yourself just like your mother had.” She trained her eyes on me. “I didn’t believe him for one moment. I knew you were stronger than that.”
Suddenly it occurred to me that she might not be alone. “Bridget, I’m happy to see you, but why are you here?” I asked, looking to Finn who was already peeking through all the windows. “How are you here?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m alone. They think I’m passing out flyers for the tent service,” she said, her spine straightening slightly. Her eyes finally meeting mine, if only for a second. “You’re not the only rebel to come out of God’s Light, you know.”
I smiled. “Then where are your flyers?” I asked, eyeing her empty hands.
Bridget smiled sheepishly and whispered, “I tossed them in the nearest dumpster.” A small laugh escaped her mouth and she immediately covered it and composed herself although I could see how proud she was of her defiance.
I was proud of her too.
“You’re right. Maybe I’m not the only rebel to come out of the church,” I commented. “But as happy as I am to see you again, Bridget, why are you here?”
“I…came to find you. I overheard some of the elders, including your father, talking about you. He told us all you were dead but I heard him correct himself to Pastor Dimitri. He told him that you were dead to him. Not like DEAD dead. Then he said you were nearby and that…”
Dread. Pure dread filled my body. I felt chills and sweats at the same time as my entire being registered the fear mounting in my heart and mind.
“And that what?” I said, egging her on, trying to remain impassive.
“And that we would all see you again real soon,” she whispered to the ground.
Finn stiffened but made no move to come forward. “What…what else did he say?” I asked, trying to come off as calm as possible.
Bridget shifted from one foot to the other. “I…”
An unfamiliar male voice called to her from just outside the window. “Bridget, where did you go? Bridget, where are you? We’ve got work to do!”
“I have to go,” she said, scurrying toward the door. She placed her hand on the handle. “That’s my husband.”
“Husband? Bridget, what husband?” I asked. “You don’t have to go. I can help you. You can stay. I’ll protect you if you want to stay.”
“You were always foolish, Sawyer. You of all people should know better.” Bridget shook her head and scurried over to the door, not giving Finn so much as a second glance as she passed him on the way. Her shoulders were now hunched, her eyes downcast. The God’s Light traditional uniform for women. “No one can protect me.”
“Wait! Don’t leave. What else did you have to tell me?” I asked, feeling the panic in my chest growing.
Bridget glanced up at me with sympathy in her weary eyes. “Sandy Bennett. Remember Sandy Bennett.”
“Bridget where are you!” the voice outside grew louder and angrier. She opened the door and the outside light temporarily blinded me.
"Wait, Bridget!!" I called again. But I was too late.
She was already gone.
Chapter 13
Finn
I left Sawyer with Josh at the bar because Critter insisted that we needed to talk. Maddy, the nurse, was with Sawyer’s mother and when I asked if she was enough security Critter informed me that she was more security than actual nurse and that he and I quote ‘wouldn’t fuck with her.’
“Where are we going?” I asked Critter who pulled up the airboat behind my shack and barely slowed down so I could jump on board. “I thought you wanted to talk?”
“I’m moving my lips and sounds coming out, right? Ain’t that talking?” Critter spat, turning the boat and heading into the swamp at speeds that anyone who hadn’t grown up here wouldn’t dare try.
“That girl who came in. Bridget. She gave us a name. Josh is running it and looking into it. Let’s see where that takes us before we do something that is gonna keep you separated from your family for another twenty-two years.”
Critter’s glare burned a hole in my skull. “I’ve been waiting twenty-two fucking years for this bastard to roll-on back into my swamp and you best believe I’m gonna make sure he ain’t ever leaving.”
“What exactly is your plan then?”
“Good old-fashioned southern hospitality,” Critter answered gruffly.
Shit.
“And that means what?”
“That means I’m gonna shoot his head off his shoulders and then I’m gonna light a cigar. Maybe later, I’ll celebrate with some pie.”
“All right. Go in. Blow his head off. Got it. Sounds like a hell of a plan.”
“No. You weren’t listening. There was also that bit about a cigar and pie.”
I rested my head in my hands. “Critter. I want this asshole gone as much as the next guy. But you just got Caroline back. If we get caught, we’re right back where you started and it’ll be you paying the price for Richard’s crimes. AGAIN. Don’t let him win. Not this time. Don’t you want to see her when she gets better? Talk to her? Then we have to be smart about this. I’m not saying that southern hospitality is off the table. I’m just saying that maybe we don’t want to rush into a church and blow the pastor away while he’s preaching at the pulpit like some dumb ass redneck militia of two.”
Critter rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic, Karen.” He scoffed. “Ain’t you ever killed a man before? I’ve served in two tours and I tell ya, it takes a little more finesse than just popping a cap in his ass or whatever you kids say nowadays.”
“I don’t know a single person who says that,” I groaned. “Except maybe Miller.”
Critter looked out into the dark waters before us. “I’ve known men like him before. He’s not going to stop until they are back under his control or dead. And since we know he’s not going to get his control…he’s gotta go,” Critter said with a mixture of both anger and sadness. “He’s lucky he isn’t already dead, but he was a hard man to find. Covered his tracks well, hiding behind that church of his. I had several PI’s look into him over the years. They couldn’t come up with shit until the last one came back and told me Richard and Caroline were both dead. Car accident.” Critter closed his eyes briefly like he was remembering a pain that was too much to bear. “I thought she was dead. I thought my world was dead.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “Now I realize that my PI must have found Richard and that fucker paid him off to feed me false information. Th
at son of a bitch PI better hope he never crosses paths with me again.”
We moved over a patch of ground like it was water. But when I saw the next patch in the distance I stood and squinted like I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“Shit,” I swore. There was something lying right in front of the boat. “Stop, Critter!” I screamed, directing his attention at the clump of hair and fabric.
Critter swerved sharply and knocked me into the water. I waded over to the grass and pulled myself up only to see that the thing we were about to hit wasn’t a thing at all.
It was a person. Someone I’d seen just hours before. The same person who’d delivered the warning that Richard was here.
Bridget.
Sawyer
Angry. I was so beyond angry.
All I saw was red. Bright blood red.
On the inside, I was a car skidding to a screeching halt on a wet road. On the outside, I was a fake soft smile and elevator music.
“Who did this to you?” Josh asked, gently. There was a lot of sympathy in her voice as she patiently waited for a banged up and bruised Bridget to answer the questions she’d asked several times already without a single muttered response. “We’re trying to help you,” Josh continued. She was in full cop mode, but her compassion for the woman in the hospital bed between us surprised me.
“Bridget, I told you. We can help you. We can protect you. Look at me. I’m here, aren’t I? They are keeping me safe. They can keep you safe too,” I reassured her, placing my hand on her arm that wasn’t in a sling. Bridget stared at my hand as if I was burning her. I jerked it back and rubbed it like I was dousing the flame.
“Not for long,” she groaned, her one eye purple and swollen shut. She was banged up bad and we had no idea how she’d gotten to be lying in the middle of the swamp but she’d live.
For now.
“Bridget, if you go back there,” I trailed off, knowing exactly what would happen. This was a warning for coming to me. She could have died. They wouldn’t have cared.
Monsters parading themselves around as Christians.
“What if I could—” Josh started when two men entered the room. The first man I didn’t recognize at all, but he was wearing the Church of God’s Light pin on his shirt. The second one stayed behind the door in the shadow with his hat low on his head.
“Don’t answer anything,” the first man commanded, coming to stand at Bridget’s side. “This is my wife.”
“Funny,” Josh said, standing up to reveal her full police uniform. Her badge glinted under the fluorescent light. She scrunched her lips. “I didn’t hear a ‘thank God you’re all right.’ I didn’t even hear a ‘I was worried sick.’ The only thing I did here was you proclaiming that she was your wife like you’re collecting your dog from the pound.” Josh pointed to Bridget’s eye. “This how you treat your dog, sir?”
“I’m in shock. That’s all,” the man said, picking up Bridget’s hand awkwardly like he’d never done it before. “How dare you accuse me of treating her like a dog.”
“No, I believe I indicated you treated her like less than a dog.”
“Can we talk later, officer,” the word dripped off his tongue in disdain. “I’d like a moment alone with my wife.”
“Only if it’s okay with our victim,” Josh said using the same stress on the word victim.
Bridget didn’t meet our eyes but nodded. “It’s okay. This is my husband.”
“Bridget, you don’t have to talk to them!” I cried as Josh moved toward the door. “We can stay. You don’t have to be alone with them. Ever again.” Josh turned me around by my shoulders and guided me from the room, shutting the door behind us.
“We can’t leave her in there with them!” I shouted. “They’re monsters. Look what they did to her!”
“They ain’t gonna do shit with me standing out here.” She placed a hand on her belt. “I got a gun and shit. What are they gonna do. Fight me with some bullshit prayers? Sawyer, if they touch one hair on that girl’s head, I’ll go in their shooting like it’s the wild wild west up in here.” Her eyes were strong and serious.
“Thank you,” I said, grateful that I wasn’t the only one trying to protect her.
“But there is something you must know,” Josh said, keeping her eyes trained on the door.
“What?” I asked.
She sighed and pointed to the window where Bridget’s husband was huddled over her bed. “That girl in there is gonna walk out of this hospital with them tonight.”
“No!” I shouted, feeling sick at the thought.
“What they did to her was a warning and she got the message loud and clear. Not even a blink or wink or shake of her hand to tell me otherwise.”
“No…!” I said, reaching for the handle. “My mother stayed with the man who tortured her. I’m not going to stand back and watch it happen again. I can’t, I won’t!”
Josh pulled me back and set me down on the chair in the hallway. She crouched down so only I could hear her. “You need to realize they aren’t all as strong as you.”
The door opened and the familiar feeling of dread dripped down my spine as the men walked past me. I couldn’t bother looking up at them. I was too disgusted to give them that much. “We’ll be back,” Bridget’s husband said almost cheerily, like he was bragging. “To bring her home.”
When the bell chimed and the doors slid open, both men climbed inside. Before they slid shut again the other man spoke. The one who’d lingered in the shadows.
“Yes. We will be back. To bring them home.”
Chapter 14
Finn
I wish I could unsee the mangled girl lying between the reeds in the swamp. I wanted to wash Bridget’s image from my brain because it was all I could see except every time the image came to me it wasn’t Bridget I saw lying there bloodied and broken.
It was Sawyer.
The thought made me sick. I had to pull over twice on the way to Critter’s to purge the thought via the entire contents of my stomach. After heaving onto the road, I banged out my frustrations with my fists on my steering wheel. Screaming my rage out to absolutely no one.
Critter was out back of the bar puffing on his cigar and directing a liquor truck that was backing up to the door.
“A little early this morning?” I asked him as the driver of the truck hopped out and handed him a clipboard before sliding open the back door and pulling out the metal ramp.
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed,” Critter said.
“Maybe if you got some sleep you would.”
“Too busy thinkin’ to sleep,” he said, taking a puff of his cigar.
I’d known the man my entire life. I used to steal sunflowers from the field around his house when I was still in diapers. Never once do I remember him appearing tired until that morning. I was too young when Sawyer’s mother left to remember how he handled it all although I’m sure he looked just as tired then.
“Anything you’d like to share with me?” I asked, hoping that maybe by talking I could ease his mind a bit.
Critter followed the drive ramp and inspected the shipment. He scribbled his signature on the paperwork, handing it back to the driver who tucked it away and started unloading. Critter, never one to sit idly by, grabbed a box and followed him into the bar, dropping it in the storage area next to the office. I followed and did the same. “Nothing you’d want to hear,” he grumbled.
“Try me,” I said.
Critter grabbed another box from the truck. I was bending over to grab one myself when he turned to me, dropped the box and reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. He pressed a few numbers and held up the screen so I could see his contacts pulled up to someone listed only as 911-B. “What is that? Or who is that?”
“This,” he said, tucking the phone back into his jeans, “is a number I could call and with one flick of my thumb I could have Richard Dixon wiped off the face of the fucking planet now that I know where he is.”
“Then,
why haven’t you?” I asked curiously.
“Because she asked me not to,” Critter said, rubbing his hand on his face.
“What?”
Critter grabbed another box. “Caroline. Last night she had a moment of clarity. A longer one than usual. She told me it wouldn’t make me no better than him if I had his filthy blood on my hands. She made me promise I wouldn’t and now I gotta figure out how to put an end to that son of a bitch’s reign of terror some other way.”
“We,” I corrected him. “WE have to figure out how to end it.”
Critter grunted. “How’s Sawyer holding up after seeing him at the hospital?”
“She keeps saying she’s okay but I know she isn’t. I wouldn’t be if I was in the same room as the very man who kidnapped her mother, threatened both of their lives and tormented for years?” Even saying the words made me downright murderous myself, but I saw how Critter was teetering on the edge and didn’t want to be the one to tip him over and have him break his promise to his wife.
“Yeah, I’m aware of the man’s resume,” Critter snapped. “But thanks for the update though. It’s always nice to have a refresher course in all things awful about the man I’ve imagined killing for a couple decades plus.”
“He ain’t exactly on the list of people Sawyer and I will be inviting to our wedding,” I said without thinking.
Critter turned to me and shot me a glare like I was the enemy. I turned around to make sure Richard wasn’t standing behind me. “What?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You serious about that? You thinking of marrying my daughter?”
I thought about my next words carefully, but the answer was a simple one and it wasn’t a day to be lying to Critter. “Yeah. Yes.” I grimaced. “Sir?”
“Son…”
“It’s son now?”
“Yeah, it is.” Critter pointed at me, wagging his finger as he spoke. “Son, if you go and hurt my girl in any way, I’m telling you right this fuckin’ second that I’ll skin you alive, feed your carcass to my hunting dogs, and mount what’s left of you above my front door as a warning to others.” He ruffled my hair like he used to do when I was a kid and I didn’t like it now as much as I hated it back then. I smoothed it back down and Critter smiled, going about wiping down the bar and glasses like he didn’t just threaten my life in a very real and gruesome way.
The Outskirts Duet_The Outskirts & The Outliers Page 29
