Page 71 of Castaway Whirlwind
“Oh my god,” Cora whispers from behind me, though I won’t take my eyes off Max long enoughto confirm she’s standing on the landing, holding Gauge, who is starting to fuss after being awoken by our voices. The flurry of heavy footsteps hopefully means Paul has joined her.
Molten hot cruelty flashes across Max’s features, though he does cut his bloodshot gaze sideways, growing nervous but trying not to show it as Elliott and Trace close in on him. He laughs, trying to save face when he says, “I see how it is. Russell wants to rescue another damsel in distress to add to his little harem.” He twirls his index finger around. “And you’re so desperate for a kid that you’re gonna steal mine, and what? Make Cora pop out the babies you can’t have?”
He may as well have sucker punched me as hard as he did Trace at the bar, and I scream, “Fuck you!” I shove Max harder this time, making him grab onto the railing to keep from falling backward when he loses his footing. “I would never, ever do that!” Seething with more rage than I’ve ever felt, I make a quick motion to Elliott, grab the sawed-off he had hidden somewhere, and aim it squarely at my brother-no-longer’s chest. The gun’s recoil will likely knock me off my feet if I pull the trigger, and there will be a hell of a mess to clean up, but it’ll be worth it. “Get the fuck out of my house and life!”
“You’re not going to shoot me,” Max sneers, though there’s plenty of doubt in his voice.
“Castle law, Maxwarison.” I jab him in his chest with the barrel, making him flinch hard and suck in a pained breath. “You make one wrong move, and I’ll shoot you and get away with it. Self-defense.” He jumps down onto the floor when I go to jab him again, and as soon as I clear the last step, Trace rushes upstairs.
Finally taking me seriously, Max holds his shaky hands upbetween us, backing away toward the front door while I stalk him.
“Go on, call my bluff,” I goad when Max hesitates to open the door. “Give me a reason to pull this trigger. Cora will raise Gauge with Trace, and my nephew will never get the chance to grow up to be anything like you or Dad.”
Elliott takes one step toward him, having lost his patience, and Max tucks tail, shuffling fast through the front door without a look back. He barely misses hitting the back end of Elliott’s Bronco when he swings his car out and cuts directly across the lawn, speeding down my driveway.
As soon as Max is out of sight, Elliott takes the gun and catches me by the elbow when my knees give out, my body shaking so hard from my sky-high adrenaline and fatigue that my teeth chatter.
“You did good,” he says, helping me to the kitchen table and pushing my glass of water in front of me.
I take a greedy gulp, then another, my stomach roiling. “He’ll be back. For Gauge, at least, if not Cora.”
Elliott drops to his haunches so I don’t have to keep straining my neck to look up at him. “No, he won’t. Guys like that? They see their families as property, not people to be loved and cared for. He’s going to cut his losses and run.” Seeing how unsure I am, he says, “But if he does come back, Russell, Trace, and I will be here to take care of him. So will you. Bet on it.”
That, I believe wholeheartedly.
Something to the side catches Elliott’s eye, and I follow his line of sight to the back doors, watching Russell cross the lawn after slipping out of the woods. I’m already running out of the house before Elliott has risen from his squat.
* **
Russell - 2 hours earlier
I’ll break my wrists before letting go of the motherfucker who dared to talk so vilely to my little darlin’, throwing money at her,solicitingher. Sheriff may hold the legal authority in this county, but I’m the one who bankrolls it with my company, the region going bust if I were to move operations or shut down. It’s why this side of the station is a ghost town, not a single deputy within sight to stop me as I drag Allen, limp after passing out, toward the back exit. The security cameras and any body cams the deputies might be wearing will be wiped or havemysteriouslyglitched and stopped recording long before anyone thinks to check them.
I don’t have any kind of solid plan when I jam my hip against the door’s metal bar to open it, yanking Allen out into the wee hours of the night. My truck is presumably still at the dance hall, and I can’t exactly call a cab or order a ride with a prisoner in tow, so it’s a hell of a relief to find Wyatt’s new beast of a black truck idling behind the station with Davis in the front seat beside him. They both jump out when the exit door slams closed behind me, working together to lift Allen and swing him into the bed of the truck with a heavy thunk.
“Elliott,” Wyatt grunts, answering my unspoken question of why the fuck they’re waiting for me outside around back.
Figures. The only reason my brother isn’t here himself is that he knows I would want him to stay with Layla.
Wyatt unlocks my cuffs with a set of keys he got from who knows where, and he tosses both to Davis, who thencuffs Allen’s hands together. My wrists are raw meat, the cuffs having dug deeply into my skin, my blood dripping down my hands as I regain feeling in my fingertips. Davis takes a seat on the rear wheel well, holding Allen’s service weapon across his lap, and he taps the top of the truck to signal we’re good to go.
Wrapping my wrists with the clean fast food napkins I find in Wyatt’s glove box, I ask, “Are you and Davis sure you want to get involved in this?”
“Layla is family, and no one fucks with our family,” Wyatt says, tugging on his overgrown beard before putting the truck’s gear in drive.
* * *
“Deeper. Don’t want animals digging your corpse up and eating it, do you?” I nudge the side of Allen’s head with the toe of my boot when he sags with exhaustion, his palms and fingers as raw and bloody as my wrists after an hour of shoveling the dense clay soil.
I’ll give it to Allen—it isn’t until now, the top of his head barely peeking above the edge of his grave, that he starts to cry. “Please, please. I don’t want to die.”
“Then confess,” Davis says, looking bored with his arms crossed, leaning back against a tree with one heel kicked up against the trunk. We’ve picked the perfect location where no one could accidentally stumble upon the grave—a small clearing in the middle of a copse of old, fat pines choking the light a mile and a half from Elliott’s cabin.
Finding a sudden burst of energy, Allen yells, “I told you I didn’t do anything! There’s nothing to confess!”
“Wrong,” I growl low in my throat, nudging his head harder. “You let your good ol’ pal, Steven, spin some kind of sob story, somehow making my sweet Layla out to be the bad guy. You waited until Sheriff Gibson was out of town to haul her in on trumped up charges so you could terrorize and humiliate her, and then you had the fucking audacity to—” I can’t even repeat what he said, or I’ll go ballistic and shoot him straight in his dick.
Wyatt begins kicking piles of freshly dug soil on top of Allen, growing more agitated. “And you cuffed my wife! You were there that night—you remember what I did to the last man who put his hands on her!” he roars.
