Page 60 of Look at Her and Die

Scottie was home on break for the upcoming holiday.

Trixie was Scottie’s show cow that she loved with all her heart.

I wasn’t sure if she was sadder about leaving me or her prized cow behind since starting college this fall.

“Ahh,” Kent said as he stared at Searcy. “That okay with you?”

Searcy drew in a full breath and let it out. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

Kent caught Anders’s hand and led them out of the house, leaving me alone with their sister.

“You gonna make it?” I asked.

“I feel like I’m about to throw up,” she admitted. “And, to make matters worse, there’s no way this is going to be something that’s easy. I just know Taryn’s gonna come back and want this ticket. He’s somehow going to know what numbers he bought and come find me.”

“You think he’ll be dangerous?” I asked.

“I think if anyone finds out, even if it’s him, that I’m going to have a target the size of Texas on my back,” she admitted. “Even worse, I think that I’m going to have to watch my siblings like hawks.”

“Anonymous is anonymous,” I pointed out. “No one has to know unless you tell them.”

“No,” she said. “But it’s going to look fishy when I move out of my house and get a car that actually works. And my family’s sure going to question how I can all of a sudden afford socks that don’t have holes in them.”

Her eyes came to me, and they were burning with frustration.

Normally, I would’ve told anyone else to ‘figure it the fuck out’ but in this instance, I had this burning desire to not scare her off.

Except, I was never one to sugarcoat things.

Nor was I the type of person to say one thing when I meant the other thing.

“Listen, Searcy,” I said bluntly. “You’re about to be faced with a lot of bullshit soon. You’re going to have to put your big girl panties on and deal with it. You’re going to have to be tough. You’re going to have to make a decision. And you’re going to have to figure out how to make this work, because there are greedy motherfuckers out there that are going to try to wiggle their dirty little fingers into your pie.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I never said I wouldn’t deal with it.”

“Well, sitting here playing this broken, scared young woman game definitely won’t get you anywhere. Where’s the bitch that told everyone in the diner that it was going to be grilled cheese or nothing? Channel her, because you’re going to need her soon,” I pointed out.

She would’ve said more but a knock sounded on my door and Yates poked his head inside.

“One, that fuckin’ bull is out again, and facing off with a fancy-ass Mercedes about mid-way down the driveway,” Yates said. “Two, those two kids that were out in the barn with Scottie are now in the pen where the bull used to be, and the gate is wide ass open.”

I looked at the eldest sister of those two children and said, “Go get your siblings out of that pen. I’ll try to get him back into the pen without him murdering anyone.”

And that was an understatement, because Sweet Baby Ray—aptly named because I wanted to smoke his ass—was a fucking psycho.

I wasn’t sure what my father had done when he’d raised him, but he’d turned into the most assholeish thing on the planet.

The only thing saving him from being prime rib was the fact that his bull juice got me a fuckin’ whack with each donation.

Honestly, I liked the program we were running, but having to deal with Sweet Baby Ray was like dealing with a live wire whipping back and forth in a horror movie. You were just waiting to get electrocuted. You knew it was going to happen, you just didn’t know when.

That was Sweet Baby Ray.

He was vindictive and spiteful and could hold one hell of a grudge.

Heading out the door, I put the hat back on my head—not a cowboy hat, but a worn-out ball cap—and took the steps two at a time.

When I got to Bumbo, I mounted him without using the stirrups and leaned over to release him from the railing.

---