Page 83 of Broken Bayou
A gunshot explodes in the thick night air, and the side of Doyle’s skull explodes with it. He falls to the ground in a heap of blood. Eddie wails like an animal, his grip on my arms tightening as my legs weaken and my body sags.
“No! No, no, no, no, no.” It’s all I can say. Over and over and over.
My ears ring as Travis inches toward me. “I ... I ... don’t think he was going to hurt me.” I look at Travis. “He wanted to help me.”
“I know that, Willa.” Travis cocks his head to one side, runs the barrel of his gun down my cheek. “That was the problem.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The truth flares in front of me like a match igniting. Hot adrenaline rushes through my veins, reigniting the strength in my legs. I kick and thrash at Eddie but make little impact on his thick body. My mind reels so quickly that I have a hard time holding on to one thought. Travis is the one I should have been focusing on. Not Doyle. Not poor Raymond. Not Liv Arceneaux. Travis. The man I compared myself to, felt empathy for. My stomach roils. The man I kissed. My brain refuses to connect the monster in front of me with the boy who once captured my heart. Everything, all of it, was a lie. His defensiveness about his brothers. His concern for his town. What happened to the boy who helped me that night all those years ago? I stare into his cold blue eyes, at the dimple as he smiles at me, and a sickening thought materializes in my mind. I was the one who helpedhimthat summer, not the other way around.
“It’s you.” The words leave my mouth in a choked whisper.
Travis glares at Eddie. “Take her back to my truck.”
“No, Travis! Listen to me.”
“Shut up, Willa. This has gone too far.” He looks down at Doyle, bleeding on the ground. “Now, it’s messy.”
“Brother?” Eddie says, staring at Doyle.
“That brother’s gone now,” Travis says. “He was a bad brother. I’m the only Brother now.”
I stare at Travis in horror. “You killed those women. You put Emily in my mother’s car.”
Travis was the one who recommended the Delaroux farm. He was the one who disappeared to one of the shacks, coming back with garbage bags. But something had been off about one of them. The memory that crystallizes feels like a kick to my gut. I see it. So clearly. He was dragging the bags from the shack, one already looked full. In the panic of that night and after years of pushing that memory away, I distorted what I saw. But it’s an avalanche now. I can’t stop it. I see us frantically cleaning out the car, dumping garbage bags in the back of Travis’s truck. What if, during the chaos, he slipped something back in? I heard him slam the trunk closed as I finished behind his truck. I heard myself telling him to leave:I’ll do the rest.
“You put Emily in my mother’s car.” A sob escapes as I speak.
Travis tilts his head. “Emily had to be taught a lesson. She thought that asshole Raymond loved her. But I loved her more.”
Eddie releases a long guttural cry. “She don’t wanna be alone.”
“She’s not alone,” Travis snaps at his brother. Then his face smooths over, and his voice becomes monotone. “Where I put Emily, she could have friends with her. Friends I brought to her. And no one would ever find her, question what happened to her in those woods. Poor thing thought Raymond was coming for her. My note worked.”
My pulse throbs at an alarming pace. I force myself to breathe deeply. I will not pass out.
Travis leans closer to me. “Emily should have known better. She should’ve known she’d never get away from that house.” I twist in Eddie’s arms, but he holds me tight. “I made sure she’d never run away again.”
His voice stays steady, no emotion. “People were talking about my mother. About Emily’s death. I couldn’t let them dig her up. Delaroux’s shack was perfect. That is, until you called.”
My legs give out from under me, but Eddie’s grip keeps me from falling. Travis putting his dead sister in my mother’s trunk. The women found in those barrels. How he must have hunted them. A nice-looking police officer in a fancy truck. Even wearing just a navy polo and khakis, he still looked official. Trustworthy. And he watched his mother medicate his sister daily. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to learn how to overmedicate, how to incapacitate someone. A freezing claw clutches my throat. My breath catches, and I gulp for air. And Raymond. I warned Travis about him when it should have been the other way around. And now, Raymond is ... I can’t finish the thought because another image fills my head. The car by the shed. Rita’s car. Rita who, the last time I saw her, was racing out to follow up on a lead. She knew.
I bend over and vomit. Travis is unfazed. He points at me.
“Because of her, I can’t give our sister any more friends, Edward. Take her to my truck. We need to get out of here.”
Eddie doesn’t move. He’s still got a tight grip on me, but he’s not moving.
“Don’t listen to him, Eddie,” I say.
“Brother, take her back to the truck,” Travis repeats in a calm tone.
I kick and flail as much as I can. Eddie feels none of it. He hefts me off the ground and over his shoulder like I weigh nothing. “Stop, Eddie. Stop.” I writhe under his grip, but he holds firm, and adrenaline can only go so far. I give up fighting for now. I need to save my strength. Still balancing me on his shoulder, he squats down and retrieves something from the ground. Then he lumbers behind the shed and drops me next to the truck. That’s when I see what he retrieved, my gun. It’s in his waistband. I scramble to stand, but he presses me back down and holds my shoulders as Travis rummages in his back seat.
My whole life, I’ve trained to analyze people’s behavior. To read them. Study them. And I’d missed all his signs. Smile for smile, frown for frown, he mimicked beautifully. He was charming and believable, and I’d been so busy analyzing everyone else, so blinded by my past with Travis, that I failed to analyze him.
I scan the ground around me for any kind of weapon. The shed is close, but there’s no way I can get to it. Then I see the object I saw in the shadows earlier. The one that looked familiar, and a thudding terror shudders through my chest. There’s not just one. There are several. And they’re lined up in a neat line along the edge. Fifty-five-gallon steel drum barrels.
