Page 69 of At Last

Jade begins to cry but every time I open my mouth to comfort her, blood dribbles down my chin. Instead, I hold my hand out to her. She takes it, and we begin to walk. I need to keep him calm enough to give me time to formulate a plan. If it weren’t for the gun he held in the hand opposite the one he punched me with, I’d grab Jade and make a run for it. But the manic look in his eyes screams that he’d have no problem killing me, my girl or any samaritan I get to help us.

I lift my girl to put her back in her booster when he rips her from my arms. She cries harder. I cry harder.

“You drive,” he orders me. Reluctantly, I climb behind the steering wheel. He climbs in the passenger side with my girl in his lap. The gun he keeps pointed at her temple. “Try anything stupid, and she dies. Got me?”

Tremors shake my body from head to toe. My palms sweat profusely. I think I might vomit. Because of this, I don’t answer him fast enough and he strikes out, backhanding me along the cheek. Pain burns from jaw hinge to behind my eye socket.

“I asked you a question, bitch. Got me?”

Slowly, I nod and swallow down my tears and blood. “Got you,” comes out garbled, and I back out of the driveway.

We take the back roads out of town, his attempt to keep a low profile. But it makes me nervous. He doesn’t want me taking the highway. No highway. Back roads. He’s taking me somewhere no one will find our bodies. Or my body. Because I still don’t know what he wants with my daughter. Why he’d come after her?

Winding up the mountain, eventually he has me turn onto a dirt drive pocked with deep potholes. We bounce around the cab, my head hits the window. Jade he keeps a firm hold on, even though he jostles on the seat. We pass black walnut trees and thick brush. Finally we reach a decrepit singlewide. It’s been abandon for years. It has to have been, the place looks uninhabitable.

“Park,” he orders. I pull up along the blunt end of the trailer and cut the engine. There’s a small window, so probably a bathroom. Not a useful bathroom because I doubt the place was hooked up to a septic tank, but a bathroom nonetheless. “Out,” he commands next. “Keys on the seat.”

I do as directed. But while he is distracted by my daughter, I casually slip my hand into my front jeans pocket, remembering the phone. Fingerprint ID unlocks the screen and from memory, I hit the call app, hoping it’s Duke my cell connects with, as his was the last call I made, but am willing to take whomever. And then I get out, leaving the keys on the seat.

Jade in his arms, he carries her with the gun still pointed to her temple, me out in front. There’s a wretched smell coming from the trailer. And I know that smell. Death. In this Kentucky heat, a body would begin to draw insects rather quickly.

“Please, don’t bring her in,” I beg.

“I will put a bullet in her brain if you don’t move.”

There are two metal steps, no railing. The backdoor is open. A mouse or rat, or something scurries across the floor in front of me, scurrying across the toe of my sandal, and thus, my toe. I scream and jump. That’s when I feel the blunt end of his gun push me forward.

It’s filthy inside. I wade through the trash and debris of a kitchen into the living room. The flies have already found him. The man lying face down on the floor. There are syringes and used needles spread around the body. The dead guy has a band tied around his arm. His pallor is a gray/blue color. As I bend down to examine the man, I’d guess him to not have died more than an hour or two before.

Jade screams at the sight of the dead man and begins to outright sob.

“Please don’t make her see this,” I beg.

“Unfortunate turn of events,” is his only answer.

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