Sweat dripped down my back even though the sun was starting to get low in the sky. Jane’s body curled into my chest as I trudged forward. Her hot breath fell on my neck. I had never touched anything so broken. Maybe the kitten that Mattey’s sister Jojo tried to save from a coyote when we were kids. Their dad had to put it to sleep. Right before we buried it, Jojo said the cat needed a name, and I was left holding it, thinking about how soft it still was, while she tried to come up with one so that she would know who to say a prayer for.
“Hold it right there.”
The voice came from the dark green shadows of the cornfield behind us. Hunter let out a low growl. Jane’s fingers dug into my arms. I started to turn around. A gun cocked, the noise like a quick clash of teeth. It said, Don’t move. Stop. Now.
I stopped.
“Get on the ground.”
I lowered Jane robotically down, beyond careful, heart pounding.
“Facedown. Both of you.”
I got down on my stomach next to her, cheeks in the dirt, eyes locked on each other. Hunter’s growling intensified and then erupted into a gnashing bark.
“Hunter, no!” I hissed at him, but it was too late.
There was an awful pop-pop and a yelp that felt like it ripped me in half.
Jane screamed.
A heavy boot ground into my back.
Then a knee.
A hand wrenched into Jane’s hair, mashing her face into the dirt.
And the cold barrel of the gun that shot my dog pressed against my head.
JANE
Ivan smelled. Even out here in the fields it smelled like being locked in the car with him. Cologne, cigarettes, and a strange basement mustiness.
“You still wanna try to run, huh?” Ivan yanked my shirt up to reveal the jagged, raw wound. “I will rip you right back open, one stitch at a time until you can’t stand it anymore. I will make you talk.”
His left hand covered my face, and his right kept a gun pressed to Cade’s.
“Don’t move, or I’ll blow a hole in the boy’s head,” Ivan growled.
His voice came in like it was being funneled through a tiny opening. I was where I’d learned to go to get away from reality. If Ivan blew a hole in Cade’s head, if he slowly twisted a blade through my body, I would already be gone.
“The police are on their way,” Cade said into the dirt. Stupid. Stupid. Why was he talking?
“Bull.” Ivan called his bluff.
But Cade didn’t stop. “I’m telling you, I found this girl in my corn and called them.”
A flash of metal glinted in the blanket Cade had dropped beside us.
The knife.
From trying to open the fan.
My eyes met Cade’s, connecting in a silent plan.
“I was taking her to my house,” Cade continued. “Can’t you hear the sirens?”
Cade was emphatic. It was convincing. Ivan straightened up on one knee enough to scan the path and fields. The second he took his eyes off us, I rolled to grab the knife from the folds of the blanket, and without a second thought, I rammed it into him. I didn’t aim. I pushed it against him wherever I could reach. It caught on his skin and then plunged into his shoulder. Ivan let out a roar and dropped the gun. His back arched, and he grabbed frantically at the knife.
“Run!” Cade shouted, diving for the gun. He and Ivan were a tangle of arms and legs, punching and grunting.
I scrambled on all fours toward the corn. Back to the lines and the shadows. I clutched my side and forced myself to my feet, taking off in an uneven lope to hide. I ducked through to the next row, then the next. Someone was running alongside me on the other side of the stalks, bursts of heavy breathing, swoosh of leaves, feet hitting the ground. Louder. Closer. And then he broke through the line of corn in front of me.
Cade.
I collapsed against him. He guided us to the ground.
“Shh, shh, shh. Get low. He’s right behind us. He got the gun back,” he whispered.
The stab wound throbbed. My middle felt like it was missing. Only my head and feet were mine. Crawl. Just keep crawling. Every rustle of the leaves, I expected to be Ivan.
“We need to get to my house.”
Cade navigated the maze, glancing behind him and keeping us moving toward the edge of the field.
“Can you hold on to me?” Cade asked.
I nodded, and he knelt down so I could climb onto his back. The second I had a solid grip, he took off running toward the house as fast as he could.
That’s when the shots rang out.
CADE
POP-POP behind us.
The man had figured his way out of the corn and was firing off rounds, even though he was still too far away to hit us.
My house didn’t seem to get any closer even as I threw every cell of my body forward, racing toward protection. This was the breakaway run of my life. No end zone ever felt so far. Carrying Jane was too slow. I had to buy us time. I ducked behind our tractor.
“Keep going toward the house!” I ordered, lowering Jane to the ground.
“What about you?”
“Get in there. Lock the doors. Call 9-1-1.”
“But . . .”
“Go!”
I picked up a bushel of corn and rolled it loudly out to the left, hoping the man would follow the sound. I took off to the right, to try and circle around the back of my house. But he was already coming around the corner, between me and the back door, scanning the yard and field for us.
I snuck behind the chicken coop and scrambled toward my truck to hide, climbing up into the back, lying flat. The clouds slowly expanded and contracted overhead like I was caught in slow motion. I fought the urge to sit up and survey where he was, praying Jane had made it somewhere inside to hide. Footsteps crunched on the gravel. My whole body stiffened.
“Nice try.”
The guy was peering down at me. His sunglasses had fallen off, and one of his eyes was swollen shut from a puncture ripped in the lid.
How I’d rolled him off me I have no idea. He was frickin’ huge, with a neck as wide as his head. The top of his shoulder was splattered red from the knife going in, but he seemed to barely feel it.
“Where is she?” he demanded, reaching into the truck and grabbing my T-shirt like a noose. He pulled it so tight around my neck I could barely breathe, then he yanked me out of the truck.
“Don’t play games with me, bro.”
The man jammed the gun to my head and marched me to the front door, throwing it open. “Get down.”
I dropped to the floor.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he called in a mocking singsong tone. “I have your boyfriend. If you don’t come with me, I’m going to shoot him. Tick tock.”
He had no reason to keep me alive other than to bait Jane. Every nerve ending braced. I heard his gun cock. My teeth clenched. My whole body tensed for the bullet I knew was aimed my way. Please, God, no . . .
There was a click and swoosh, the cha-chuck of a shotgun, and then a deafening boom and thud. I turned my head to see the man crumple beside me, blood pooling out around him.
His face was in line with my face on the floor.
His mouth was open. His eyes were open. And he was dead.
As the room came into focus around him, I homed in on the feet standing beside his body.
My father’s.
JANE
I heard the gunfire through the fog of being half passed out under the porch and stifled a scream. Cade! I tried to roll out from under the front porch where I was hiding, but my legs were lead, bolting me to the dirt. The same free fall of blankness that flooded through me when Raff was killed seeped through my body again. Face, brain, heart. Negative space. A wave of nausea swept over me, and a sob choked in my throat.
Move. Do so
mething.
I rolled onto my side and was about to haul myself out when I heard voices by the door, then footsteps overhead.
I froze.
“Let’s wait out here for the police,” a man said.
I didn’t recognize who was talking.
But I did know the next voice.
“They said they’re on the way,” Cade said.
I let out a giant breath. He was okay. He sounded like he was straining to speak. But he was okay.
My mouth opened to call out to him, but I caught myself. Wait it out, I told myself, right where you are, under the porch. All of this, the barn, no real doctor, risking Cade’s life—it would be for nothing if the police scooped me up. No, I had to stay hidden. I took a shallow breath and lay as still as I could under the sagging planks of wood, with the wet leaves and empty bottles tossed beneath. Their glass reflected blue, red, blue, catching the colors from the police cars as they pulled up flashing in the driveway, sirens screaming. Police descended on the house.
“Go on in, boys. Check it out. . . . What happened, Danny?” a woman’s gruff voice asked.
“All I know is some guy had a gun aimed at my kid. And I took care of him.”
Oh, it was Cade’s father. He shot Ivan! I struggled to hear the conversation.
“So it was self-defense?” the woman asked.
“A man’s house is his castle,” Cade’s father responded. “Helluva lot of cops you got. This really necessary?”
The bottoms of everybody’s shoes were outlined by the yellow light from the front door that cut through the slats of wood over my head. Officers kept walking back and forth, up and down the creaky stairs, investigators with white plastic over their feet. Bits of dirt came through the floor and fell onto my face. I didn’t move.
The woman’s voice was muffled, but it sounded like she was asking Cade’s father again what exactly happened. He was standing directly above me, talking louder than everyone, his words a little slurred.
“Like I told you: I heard a scuffle in the front room. I came in from the kitchen. Saw this guy with a gun pulled on my boy.”
“Well, you stick to that and we’ll be fine.”
“What do ya mean, stick to that? It’s what happened,” Cade’s father demanded.
“Look, people don’t break into houses for no reason. It’s still a murder scene.”
Murder scene. Ivan was dead. I flashed numb with relief.
Cade’s father sounded annoyed at the questions. “Come on, Connie . . . sorry, I mean Sheriff. You know we got nothing.”
“I don’t know what you do or don’t have,” the sheriff said. “Cade, anything you want to tell me?”
I cringed, but Cade didn’t miss a beat.
“I have no idea what he’d want with us, Sheriff Healey,” Cade said.
Sheriff Healey. His buddy Gunner’s mom. I was trying to place who was who.
“Okay. Okay,” she conceded. “Why don’t you go inside and get a drink of water, Cade?”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Then go get me some.”
“Uh . . . sure.” I heard Cade walk inside.
As soon as he was gone, the sheriff lowered her voice so much I could barely make out what she was saying. “Danny, you’re not getting mixed up in any of this cartel business, are you?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Am I? You don’t come into town anymore. The farm’s been struggling. You’ve got to be running out of cash. Promise me you’re not looking for . . . different . . . ways to get out of the hole.”
“Connie . . .” Cade’s dad’s voice went ragged with warning. “You know what I think about those people. How could you even begin to suggest that I . . . after . . . she . . .”
“You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry,” she backed down fast.
The sheriff sighed and sat down heavily on the steps, just inches above me. If for any reason she felt compelled to look in the spaces between the steps, there I would be. I closed my eyes like that would somehow help me be invisible.
“Can’t blame me for asking, Danny. I don’t know where your head is, you know? We used to see each other all the time at the boys’ games. We used to talk. But this is the first time I’ve even been out here to your farm in, what, a couple of years? More. I remember coming over for barbeques every other weekend.”
“Want me to fire up the grill?” Cade’s father said bitterly.
The sheriff clicked back into business mode when he refused to engage, standing up with a grunt. “I’m heading back in to check things out. I’ll do my best to get that body out of here ASAP for you. I’m going to grab Cade to walk us through everything. . . . And Danny? Get Tom’s guys to do the cleanup. They’re the best.”
Cade was inside with the police for a long time—long enough that I think I drifted out of consciousness for a few minutes here and there. I touched my shirt over the throbbing cut. It was soaked in blood again. What if I passed out under here and died? No one would find me until my decomposing body smelled too bad to miss. It would be a news story. Girl’s body found stuffed under front steps.
Cade’s father went in, and out, and in, and then came back and sat on the steps. I heard the crack of a can being opened, and he sighed along with its release of air before taking a long sip.
Finally Cade came back outside. He sank down on the step beside his dad.
“You all right?” his father asked.
“I guess. You?” Cade said.
“I’d be better without this damn circus. They need to haul that piece of garbage to the morgue and be done with it. What’d Connie wanna know in there anyway?”
“Where I first saw him. Anything he said to me. What he might have been looking for.”
“Come lookin’ for anything to steal, you ain’t finding it here,” Cade’s dad said.
They sat in silence for a while. His father opened another can of beer.
“Don’t say I never did anything for you, kid. I think that guy woulda popped ya . . .”
Cade didn’t answer.
“Guess I’ll go ahead and call up Tommy Mack to clean this mess up once the cops clear,” his dad grumbled. “All these damn people in my house.”
“I’m gonna go look for Hunter. He, uh, ran off with all this craziness.” Cade tried to make it sound casual. The yellow circle of a flashlight flickered overhead as he took off toward the barn.
Through the gaps in the stairs, I watched a piece of plastic yellow crime tape flutter down to the ground behind him. It settled like a ribbon from a birthday present.
CADE
Jane. Hunter. I had to find them. They had to be all right.
Dead eyes. All I kept seeing, as the flashlight cut through the darkness, was that man crumpled on the floor. It could have been me. If my dad hadn’t gotten there right then, I’d be on the floor instead, with a face that still looked like a face but had no life inside.
When I got to the far edges of the fields where everything went down, I started walking slower, dreading what I was going to find. The little beam of light barely illuminated anything at all, and I tripped on something soft and motionless. My dog? I crouched down. No. Jane’s blanket. I felt around on the ground until I found the knife. I would need to get rid of it.
Everything that happened was a blur—my dad rushing over, pulling me to my feet, getting me out of the house, everything he kept asking that I could only answer with “I don’t know.” Gunner’s mom and the whole sheriff’s department showing up. They crawled around, picking up things in their blue gloves while I stood there all sweaty-palmed in the doorway waiting for them to stumble on something that told them I was helping someone hide and that’s why we’d been targeted. My heart had been beating so hard, and I kept opening my mouth to tell Gunner’s mom everything, and then closing it again.
/>
Jane was scared to go back into foster care. I’d told her I would hide her. The guy was dead. Threat over. Jane Doe could heal up in my barn and head north like she said she wanted, and it would be like none of this ever happened.
I walked in circles calling for Hunter, shining the flashlight on the same empty places. The urgency turned into a quiet heaviness as I scanned the path to the barn.
You’re not going to find either of them, I told myself.
I had texted my mom a while back, that Hunter ate rat poison by accident and was dying. I thought that would make her come home. Not forever, obviously. But at least for a day, an hour, at all. She called Mattey’s dad at the vet’s office instead of me. When he got confused and told her he didn’t have Hunter with him, she knew that it wasn’t true, because the first thing I would have done was rush him to Dr. Morales. I would never let anything happen to that dog. And now look.
I’d wound my way back to the barn.
I pushed the door slowly open and crossed the airless room, dropping the blanket at my feet. I found myself staring at the knife in my hand. That guy’s blood all over it. And to think all I’d wanted to do with it was open a fan. Suddenly that’s what I had to do, like it would somehow bring me back to that point and none of this would have happened.
I grabbed that fan off the floor and finished hacking it open with the dirty blade. I stabbed at the casing until the plastic was in shreds. When there was nothing more to chop up, I snapped the fan cover in place, shoved in the batteries, and turned it on, aiming the breeze right at my face. I collapsed on the edge of my sleeping bag with an elbow over my eyes, listening to the hum against the thick quiet of the night. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
The last time I almost cried was the first time my dad went all alcoholic on me, right after my mom left. I didn’t understand then that I couldn’t get through to him once he’d reached that point. He was shouting that I broke the tractor. It wouldn’t start. What did I do to it? I tried to show him what was wrong, and he got so pissed he threw the wrench at me. It hit me right above the eye.
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