Blood on the Bayou (12 page)

“But she served her time, didn’t she?” I finally ask, my voice thin. “Why is she running now?” I know what Marcy told me—she helped a father kidnap his daughter from her abusive mother—but I want to know what the Kings know. Marcy clearly left out several
major
details in her version of the story.

Eli shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe those old demons are still hauntin’ her.”

“After forty years?” I lift a brow, letting Eli know I smell bullshit. “All of sudden she has to up and run after being a part of this town for decades? When everyone here thinks she’s a saint?”

“I never thought that woman was a saint.” Nigel grunts and crosses his arms with an arthritic hitch of his shoulder. “She was a tough bitch. That’s what she was.”

Marcy? A tough bitch? Tough, yes. But Marcy has the kindest heart. I’ve never seen her lose her temper, not even when two of my bunkmates at Sweet Haven tried to set each other’s hair on fire during the spring barbecue.

“Marcy wasn’t a bitch. She was a mama bear.” Stan throws his arm around me and leans in to whisper in my ear. I smell rat chili and whiskey with an undernote of diseased gums and rotted teeth and I try not to shudder. “She didn’t want us messing with her baby. The day you moved in down the street, she was up in here with that bulldog face of hers warning us to stay away from you. Said she was going to bring
down the wrath of hellfire upon our place in the sun if we didn’t keep you safe.”

“But she ain’t here anymore,” Nigel says, a shade meaner than I’d like. “Guess we can be as bad as we want to be.”

I look to Eli—the only one of the Kings who seems like a decent excuse for a human being—but he has his face in his chili, slurping up the sauce at the bottom of his bowl. No help coming from there. Guess he’s done offering me good-natured warnings. I grit my teeth and think uncharitable things about him and men in power in general. They always turn a blind eye when the going gets tough.

“Nah. We love our little Lee. She’s good to us.” Stan hugs me closer, pressing me against his sweat-soaked fat rolls. I can feel the stink of him seeping into my skin and want to shove him away. But I don’t. I have to watch myself. Closely.

That feeling of potential danger is stronger now. It lifts the hairs on the back of my neck, crawls skeeter feet along my arms. It’s the feminine instinct kicking in, reminding me that I’m the smaller, weaker member of the species. Modern society tells women we have equality with men—and some women never have cause not to believe it—but in moments like these, when you’re a woman alone and a man’s good nature is the only thing keeping you safe and you know his “good nature” isn’t that good, the fear kicks in. These are the times when the threat alone keeps you quiet and submissive and in your place.

A place Marcy didn’t want me to be. So much so
that she came to the dump to make sure these men never gave me a reason to be afraid. It makes me love her even more, and I swear to myself that I won’t betray her to Hitch or anyone else.

I stand, throwing off Stan’s arm. “Thanks for the chili.”

“You didn’t eat none.”

“I’m not into rat.” I grab my purse and the bottle that still has a few inches of amber liquid at the bottom. I’m done drinking, but I want the Kings to know they don’t get to keep my leftovers anymore. The bastards.

“It’s not rat. It’s pig,” Nigel says. “And we know you like them. That pig boyfriend of yours was over at your place just last night.”

“But he don’t sleep there no more.” Harlan speaks up for the first time, in a soft voice that, despite the heat, makes me shiver. I’ve always thought of Harlan as the sweet, slow, silent type. But he doesn’t sound sweet now. He sounds eager. Hopeful. About things I
know
I don’t want him to be hopeful about.

My feet tingle, itching to run. Instead, I take a slow step back and then another, resisting the urge. If I run, I’ll never be able to stop. I’ll have to run by this stretch of road every day and these hard-eyed men with their stink and their mean will know they’ve won.

“No, he doesn’t.” Nigel shifts his belly and loops his hands together underneath. “Maybe she don’t like pig, either.”

“Or maybe pigs don’t like her.” The man next to Harlan—Jake or Juke or something that starts with
a
J
—smiles, showcasing a mouth full of black spotted teeth.

“Could be.” Nigel clucks his tongue. “That ain’t good, girl. This ain’t a good town for people on the wrong side of the pigs.”

“Seems like you rats do okay.” I sound tougher than I’m feeling.

“We pay for our safety,” Eli says, speaking up for the first time since the vibe in the yard started going sour.

He’s got to be kidding. Cane and Abe wouldn’t take graft from the Junkyard Kings. They’re not crooked. The internal affairs investigation found nothing. They were led astray by false evidence when they arrested Fernando, not taking the law into their own hands. And they’re certainly not strong-arming people into paying for their safety.

“You’ve been paying for yours, too.” Eli plunks his bowl onto the ground by his feet. There’s red sauce in his beard, but it doesn’t make him look silly. He’s too intense to be silly. “You stop paying, and you’ll learn things you don’t want to learn.”

“And maybe I’ll be the one to teach you,” Nigel says. “I’d like to—”

“Shut your mouth,” Eli orders. Nigel does. Immediately. Which makes me wonder just how mean Eli is underneath the relatively pleasant facade.

Pretty mean, I’m guessing, to keep this bunch in line. Pretty damned mean, and I’ve been pretty stupid to think I live in an idyllic small town where everyone loves one another and gets along and me and the
crazy homeless guys are BFFs because I bring them booze. Maybe I’ve only been “getting along” because I had Marcy and Cane on my side. Maybe, now that I don’t, things will change. Maybe I won’t feel as driven to protect the people of Donaldsonville. Maybe it will be okay to leave them to the Invisibles and get the fuck out of town.

Deedee.
Sweet, weird little Deedee with her fuzzy braids and her skinny arms wrapped around my waist and all the need in her eyes. There’s no excuse to abandon her. Especially if D’Ville is even less child friendly than I’ve thought.

“Go home, Annabelle,” Eli says. “We don’t have anything else for you.”

“Nothing else you’re willing to give, anyway,” I say, still doing a decent impression of not being intimidated. “That’s fine, Eli. But you’re not the only one with information. Remember that when things start happening that
you
don’t understand. Maybe then we can have a real conversation.”

Eli doesn’t nod or raise his eyebrows or look in any way interested in my bluff that’s not a bluff but might as well be.

Fine.
Asshole
.

I take another step back and mumble “Whatever,” under my breath before turning and picking my way back through the mountain range of trash, gripping the glass handle of the whiskey bottle tight, refusing to look over my shoulder. I won’t show fear, even if every nerve ending in my body is sending out run-for-it flares that sizzle as they shoot up my spine.

I keep a slow, steady pace as I weave around a huddle of half-crushed trucks and a tower of old office furniture one of the Kings must have used to play blocks. There’s no other explanation for why every rusted desk in the junkyard is gathered in one location. I stop and stare at the tower for a long moment, looking for a weak spot, thinking about pulling one of the desks out and sending it crashing down just to be childishly vindictive. I’ve had enough whiskey for that to seem like a good idea. But I’ve also had enough whiskey to be too tired to bother.

“Fuck you, desks.” I flip off the tower. It’s easier to be angry at a bunch of inanimate objects than bitter and sad and confused by my failed attempt at information gathering.

It wasn’t a failed attempt. You learned that Marcy killed her dad and her kid, Cane and Abe might be crooked, and the Junkyard Kings are dangerous assholes who find it amusing to scare the shit out of the hand that’s fed them. Or drunk them. Or whatever.

And Eli knows something about that cave—that it’s dangerous, bad news—but won’t spill the details.

“So many good things.” I weave on my feet as I twist the cap off the whiskey.

Another drink is starting to sound like a good idea. A few more swigs and maybe I’ll be able to stumble home and pass out instead of looking for Tucker or answers or thinking about all the scary stuff that’s gone down today. It will all still be here tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. When I’ll have to drag my ass out of bed and tell Hitch I’m a failure. It’s okay to forget.

It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.
I repeat the mantra as I tip the bottle back with both hands and chug cheap whiskey.

It only burns a bit. I’m good at chugging things. It was my parlor trick back in my college days. The amount of hard liquor I could take down without passing out or throwing up was legendary, and every new person at a party would want to see the legend in person. I can’t count the times I woke up in my narrow dorm bed with no memory of how I got there. Enough that I should have stopped chugging things.

But I didn’t. I never stop. I never learn. And things are never okay. Never.

I know this.

So I’m not really surprised when I round another pile of trash and find Gerald waiting for me, an ominous light flickering in his dead eyes.

H
e comes for me.

I drop my purse and swing the whiskey bottle at his head, but he ducks a second too soon. I adjust and go for a backhand, but he snatches a handful of tank top and stomach skin and squeezes tight.

Tight, tight, tight
. So tight the pain makes me scream and my fingers spasm and my makeshift weapon thuds to the ground. I lift my hands to scratch his face, but he’s already on the move, knocking me to the ground, landing on top with that ropey body that feels so much heavier than it looks.

My breath rushes out, but his other hand wraps around my throat, keeping me from pulling in another. And then he’s tugging at my jeans and I’m kicking my legs and slamming my fists into his head, but he doesn’t seem to notice and I feel the button on my jeans pop open and panic smashes through all the protective barriers in my mind, blowing me open like a hurricane made of screams.

Not again. I can’t. Not again
.

I squeeze my eyes shut and thrash and kick like
I’ve been set on fire. I won’t look at him. I won’t look up into his gray face and watch his eyes fill up with the satisfaction or victory or violence or whatever it is he’s going to feel while he does this.

I’ll fight him until I black out, but I won’t look. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.

I won’t remember another man this way. I only have fleeting glimpses of Anton, but they’re enough. I see him sometimes when I’m really smashed, in those seconds just before I black out, when everything I’ve forced myself to forget comes surging to the surface. I see his red face, jaw clenched, veins standing out. He’s so angry, but pleased with himself at the same time. What he’s doing seems to hurt him, but it hurts me more—
so
much more—and that’s what he wants. The hurting is better than the fucking, better than the release that comes at the end, better than—

Thunk!
There’s a burst of sound—metal hitting flesh and bone with some serious force—and I can breathe.

Air rasps in as Gerald goes limp and I scramble out from underneath him, scuttling like an insect; a small, filthy thing that can’t think beyond getting away from the danger and the pain and the hands.

“Don’t!” I scream and bat the new hands away.

They’re clean and I recognize them, but I can’t let them touch. I’m not safe. I’m never safe.
Never
. Because all the things I’ve tricked myself into thinking I’ve put away are still there and I will never forget them and I will never remember them and I will never know the truth. Because Anton took that away, too.
Whatever he slipped into my drink that night blurred the edges of the nightmare, until I can’t even say for certain that I have the right to feel like a victim.

Maybe I’m just a drunk. Maybe it’s all my fault.

“No.” Suddenly I’m crying. Or maybe I’ve been crying for a while, and just suddenly become aware of it. As I become aware of Hitch beside me, pulling me close, pressing my head into his chest, whispering that he’s got me, asking me if I’m okay.

It’s the worst thing he could have asked. I’ve already answered that question, and the answer is “No.” I push him away and wrap my arms around my knees, squeezing tight, staring at where Gerald lies unconscious—but still breathing—on the ground a few feet away. Looks like Hitch hit him with a piece of an old fender. He’s bleeding a lot, but I don’t care. Not happy about it, not sad, not . . . anything.

Just empty, except for the raw feeling inside, almost like it happened. Even though Hitch stopped it.

This time.

Last time, he assumed I was a willing participant, assumed I’d jumped into bed with his brother without even asking me what happened. The disgust on his face tore me up all over again, made me feel like I was back on the bathroom floor, bleeding and puking and helpless while Anton stood grinning down at me, smug in his victory over his golden boy big brother.