I started shaking uncontrollably, sweat pouring in rivulets down my back and legs. My vision went spotty, and I tried to catch my breath, but I couldn’t. I’d lost control of the situation, and now, I was losing control of myself.
Still I tried to sound calm. “It’s not true. And people won’t care. Nobody cares what some woman did a hundred years ago.”
He tightened his grip on my hair, burning my scalp. “But your family does, don’t they? And all those rich folks inside that hospital over there. Dove held out on me, and I can respect that. But you’ve got no reason to do the same.”
“Dove? You saw Dove? When?”
“The day she died, the very same day. I guess you didn’t know that. Why would you? Yes. I did see Dove—and then I choked the life right out of her.”
Everything around me went still and black. My body was trembling but not from fear. I was flooded, from my head to my toes, with clean, hot rage.
I took a deep breath and clawed my fingers into the dirt. “You sonofabitch,” I growled. “I’m going t—”
Suddenly my head jerked back then forward, connecting solidly with the ground. There was a root there, and as my mouth filled with grass and dirt, white, hot pain exploded behind my eyes. My body went slack, sliding out of his grip to the ground. I waited for the next blow but heard instead the rattle of the bones and the chuck-chuck-chuck of cowboy boots on dirt. He was running away. The sound diminished into silence, and I rolled myself into a ball, trying to focus. There were no stars visible, just a strange yellow glow muddying the blue.
I felt myself drift.
Murder. A dead man’s bones. A stolen coin . . .
“Hey!” I heard across the field. A woman’s voice. “Come back!”
Then a man’s voice too. “I found her! She’s over here!”
I rolled onto my back, arms flopping out on the ground beside me, and groaned. Two people ran to my side. A woman—Althea, I realized—kneeled beside me, helping me right myself.
“Eve? Oh my God! What happened to you?”
Gingerly, I touched my forehead, then winced at the lightning bolt of pain. “Somebody grabbed me. A man. He hit me . . .”
And then the other voice. Griff. “I think I saw him, but he was too far away.” He paused. “I was looking for you to set up the Luster shots and . . . Jesus. Eve . . . your face . . .”
Althea fumbled for her phone. “I’m calling 911.”
I put out a hand in protest. “No. Please. I’m fine. Really.”
My head was reeling, fuzzy and sluggish from the pain, but my brain still screamed at me. No police! No police! it warned. And I knew enough to listen. The man had called Dove a murderer and a thief. I couldn’t risk anyone else hearing those accusations.
I had to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible until I could deal with the asshole who’d attacked me. And I was sure as hell going to fucking deal with him. This was why I’d stayed at the foundation. This is what I’d always known was coming.
“No police.” I stood, with some difficulty, and touched my fingers to my forehead. “I just got a knot, I think. I’m fine.”
“What the hell’s going on, Eve?” Griff asked.
“I’m not sure.” I glanced at Althea, her phone already connected to 911. Ignoring her shocked expression, I took it from her and pressed it to my ear. “Hello?” I said in a shaky voice. “So sorry. Misdial. Everybody’s safe here. Everybody’s safe.”
Chapter Eight
Tupelo, Mississippi
1934
Ruth crouched in the dark corner of the cage, sawdust beneath her shoes. She braced herself between two iron bars. The smell of animal urine stung her nostrils and made her eyes water, but she didn’t dare close them. She needed to keep an eye on the shifting shadow in the opposite corner.
She was seventeen years old. Only just a bit taller than she was four years before when she’d run from Pritchard, and barely a brick heavier. She’d never had much in the way of food, and doing the work of two grown men didn’t allow for much meat to accumulate on her bones. Still, she was too big to slip between the bars. And no matter what size she was, she’d be the loser if she had to battle with what lurked on the other side of the cage.
Down in Meridian, the town she’d first come to after her narrow escape from Jimmy Singley and his preacher uncle, she’d fallen in with a gang. They’d nicknamed her Annie, after that radio show Little Orphan Annie. It wasn’t so much that she had no parents—none of the kids did—but more because she fought first, swung hard, and, more often than not, ended squabbles. And her hair was redder than Alabama dirt, that was for damn sure.
The children slept in alleys and barns and sometimes fields with haystacks. The leader, Bug, a giant of a twelve-year-old with a kick of sandy hair right in the center of his forehead and a persistent rash on half his face, liked lording it over the others. But he didn’t much like to fight, and even though he was big, he was doughy. He told Ruth she could be his lieutenant because she kept the others in line.
“Swipe ’em,” he’d say after sauntering past a café and seeing silver candlesticks on a carved oak sideboard through the window. “And the doilies what’s underneath while you’re at it.” Or “Get that Sutton feller to cough up a few coins for the Orphans’ Home, why don’t you?” The Orphans’ Home being another word for Bug’s pockets.
One night, when they were all gathered under a rotted-out dock, Bug suggested a couple of kids waylay a traveling menagerie and steal their lion.
“What you gonna do with a live lion, Bug?” Ruth slurred. She and another girl had nicked a fancy brass cane from the train station and discovered it was filled with moonshine. Ruth had been strutting around with the cane all day like the queen of England, ducking into alleys and tipping back like a fancy chip.
Bug’s head wobbled on his shoulders and he imitated her voice. “Sell it off to another circus man, what do you think?”
Ruth eyed him coolly. He could mock her all he wanted, but he should be careful. She had a suspicion that she didn’t need him half as much as he needed her, and one day she was going to let him know all about it.
“All right,” she said. “Well, I guess I better handle this one on my own. We don’t want nobody getting killed.” A couple of the filthy, bedraggled children gaped at her. Bug nodded his assent.
Of course, Bug was an imbecile, and she hadn’t even considered stealing the gol-dang live lion. What she had done, however, was introduce herself to the owner of the circus and offer to feed and pitch hay for the animals for a dollar a week. After appraising Ruth’s skinny but scrappy body, the man said he’d just lost his number-one fellow to some floozy in Tupelo and if she weren’t afraid of the occasional nip or stomp, he’d be right glad to have someone new.
She left with them that night.
Dr. Asloo’s Wild Menagerie was surely a step up or two from Bug’s gang. That is, until just a few moments before, when she’d lugged in the cat’s water bucket and the door to the iron cage had swung shut, locking her in. It had happened one other time, years before, but she’d just slipped between the bars. Unfortunately, she’d gotten too big, and now she was cornered in this stinking cage, staring down an ill-tempered lion who wasn’t double dosed with Dr. Asloo’s special pine syrup like he was before the shows.