“He was a good man!” Nina spat at him. “You came in with guns!”
“What choice we have?” Caleb said, too loudly. “Answered that door with a shotgun, he did. Then snatches at my weapon? A guy tying up kids? I’m putting that bastard down eight days in a week.”
“She needed binding!” Nina’s voice rose too, veins popping up on her neck. “Promising we’re all gonna die! Screaming murder in her sleep! She’s got a devil in her, look in her damn eyes!” She went to stand, but Leigh-Ann took a step towards her and she dropped back.
“Nina,” Reece said, “you gotta do better than that. Where the kid come from?”
“You tell me!” Nina snorted. “You’re the ones came for her, exactly as promised!”
The gang exchanged looks. No one could’ve been expecting them – only got into Texas last night, hit the Steers dressed in masks, switched cars, and only diverted up these lanes on Reece’s snap decision. Shit, they’d even left their phones back in Stilt Town so no one could ever track them.
“Nothing to do with us,” Reece said. “We’re here by happy chance. Lucky for her.”
“Plenty places we’d rather be,” Leigh-Ann added.
Nina faltered, but shook her head. “No. You’re the same wickedness. Why else you come and kill – kill –” She choked on the word. Tears in her eyes. “That kid turned up on our land. We tried to help. Spiteful little monster. She came in making threats – said trouble was coming.”
“She’s out of her mind,” Leigh-Ann decided, then told Nina, “If any of that’s true, this ain’t a rational way to deal with a kid making threats.”
“And she sure didn’t summon us,” Caleb said.
“Then who in hell are you?” Nina snapped. “How dare you! You animals! Get out of my house! Get out!” She sprang up and shoved Reece with both hands. He took a step and pushed back on instinct, sending Nina over the armchair. She fell near her dead dad and froze on her hands and knees; the sight of him rolled up in carpet made her slide lower, blubbering, the fight all knocked out of her.
Caleb took a step forward to pick her up, comfort her, but Leigh-Ann caught his arm. He shook her off with annoyance, but stopped where he was.
“Caleb,” Reece said, a little strained for once, “do me good and take Nina here to her room? Secure her. We’ll have a chat once she’s calmed down.”
“What –” The woman turned with panic.
Caleb closed on her quickly, showing his pistol but saying politely, “If you’d be so kind. I don’t want to do nothing we’ll all regret.”
“And you come with me, Leigh. Let’s get our shit out the car.”
Leigh-Ann held down the urge to resist for the hell of it, didn’t need telling what to do now. But with Nina bucking against Caleb she figured she had the better job.
She headed outside, scuffing her boots, Reece just behind her. Back down the long dirt road to their overturned car, both of them watching shadows along the way, in case Donny was waiting after all. They reached the car and admired Stomatt’s handiwork – the thing lying dead and crumpled on its roof. A miracle they all made it out unscathed. Together, they squeezed the big black duffel bags out past bent metal and broken glass. Damn heavy; one filled with guns and the other stuffed with more cash than any of them had ever seen. Leigh-Ann unzipped it just to look at it. Reece grinned, too.
The gang were now richer in their twenties than most Cutjaw trash got their whole lives. Alban Gray in Stilt Town still had to clean the cash, but they were as good as free. Reece had delivered exactly as he said he would. His easy smile as they hefted the bags up promised he’d figure this latest setback out, too. Leigh-Ann’s bag clanked as they walked; somehow she’d ended up with the one full of guns. Definitely the heavier of the two.
“Prefer to swap?” Reece offered.
Leigh-Ann kept on walking. “I’d prefer you found us a place where the locals welcomed us with apple pie. Didn’t think we’d have to kill anyone else today.”
“Well,” Reece said. “Imagine if we didn’t come out here when we did. That kid.”
“Yeah,” Leigh-Ann said. “Assuming we’re any better for her than them. It wasn’t all good, what we did today, Reece.”
“No.” He didn’t deny it. Didn’t remind her everyone on Fallon’s payroll knew who they were working for. Steers had gone into gas stops busting up displays, broken a guy’s wrist near Shreveport. Spread slander online about anyone not paying premiums to join their loyalty network. That didn’t exactly forgive killing them, so all Reece said was, “Saving a child’s a step in the right direction, though.”
“What’re we gonna do with her? Stilt Town’s no place for kids.”
“They got families there.”
“You know what I mean.”
Reece hummed concession.
Yeah. They needed Stilt Town for shelter, to process the cash they’d stolen, and all of that, but Alban Gray and his progeny were not Leigh-Ann’s favourite commune of God-bothering loons. She pointed out, “They think I’m unholy for being Black with tits – what’s a kid with red eyes to them? Might find they agree with Nina.”
“They think you’re unholy for living a life of vice,” Reece reminded her. “Gray’s not gonna have a problem with her. Trust me, Leigh. It’s a good thing we found her. We get to be heroes twice in one day.”
She could believe he’d convinced himself of that already. The world didn’t hold Reece Coburn back. “Only you could come out of a shitty day smellin’ of roses.”
But he smiled again and it was infectious.
“So we taking one of their rides, then? It’s late as hell.”
“No,” Reece said. “The kid’s shook up, Sto’s down and we got no idea where we are. It’s time for a break, I say. Food, sleep, get out of here come dawn. No one’s finding us here, are they?”
Leigh-Ann wanted to argue. Sensible thing was to plough right on. Like any of them had the momentum to keep going all night long. But hell, the invitation was there now and she wasn’t batting it away. She wasn’t ever turning down food and sleep. They came back into the farmhouse and she tossed the bag down in the kitchen, calling out to Caleb to rustle up dinner. Meantime, she prowled back through the house looking for the master bedroom. A big room upstairs, where a couple photos of the dead farmer and his presumably gone wife scowled at the bed. This would do. And damn if she didn’t need to get out of this boiler suit. Made her look even more like an overgrown Popsicle than usual, with her skinny neck and massive ball of hair sticking out the top of formless drab blue. She wrestled at it, got it down to her ankles when Caleb entered. He recoiled – spent their whole lives together and the idiot still got bashful at a bit of flesh. Leigh-Ann breezed over it. “Food ready?”
Caleb nodded, lingering in the door. “But first we gonna move the . . . out to the barn.” Didn’t wanna call a corpse a corpse. The guilt hunched his shoulders up. And it left him falling back on old instincts, gravitating her way for comfort. Never mind Leigh-Ann wasn’t ever thinking of him as more than a brother.