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It doesn’t last as long as I’d like when Jacob Cook joins the fray.
The refuge owner explains how the Foss duo called him shortly after Willow did, pretending they had a tiger needing a home. He’d explained that he already had a new one coming in and couldn’t take any more.
Then Niles and Priscilla showed up this morning with guns and tied up his wife. Took her hostage. Said they’d feed her to the lions one piece at a time if he didn’t go along with their scheme.
“Still, that’s a poor excuse for my behavior. I’m terribly sorry, Miss Macklin, quite mortified beyond belief that I put you in this position with that brute and his banshee,” Cook tells Willow, adjusting his spectacles with a sad glint in his eye. “The other man who was with them, the one who beat up your driver...he kept a gun trained on my poor wife practically all day. And when it wasn’t him, it was the other sick puppy with the baseball bat.”
“He’s Priscilla’s brother, Wilco,” Faulk says, pointing to the man I ran down outside the compound, now in the back of a squad car. Priscilla and Niles were already hauled away in custody for medical attention.
“Do you recognize him?” I ask Willow.
“He worked at Exotic Plains and was always waiting on the Queen Bee hand and foot. He deserves what’s coming.” Shaking her head, she purses her lips. “I have to call my father...”
I pull out my phone and hand it to her. “Here. Use mine.”
She punches a series of numbers into the phone and steps away from where the police are still clustered, asking questions and taking statements from everyone on the scene. I find my nephew in the tumult and lay a hand on his shoulder—gently because he looks like he’s been through a shredder.
“Weston? You should let the medics take you in once they show up,” I tell him. “You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the ER?”
“Aw, hell, I’ve had worse.” He flashes a lopsided grin that blurs into his exploding bruises. “We got lucky, Uncle Grady. Damn lucky. They knocked us out the minute we pulled up and we woke up shut up in the trailer with Bruce...then that Cruella de Vil nutjob started beating on the trailer with a baseball bat, trying to get Bruce pissed as a bull.”
“Fuck,” I grunt, pinching the bridge of my nose.
Even though we’re in the clear, my heart stomps in my ribs.
I came too close to losing her, to losing them both.
“She did us a favor,” Weston grinds out, swiping a hand over his face and wincing.
“Come again?”
“I mean, if it hadn’t been for her banging around, getting the tiger pissed, I never would’ve remembered the safety pins near the roof,” he says with a sigh. “Willow helped me up on a wheel well, and we got that door unlatched just in the nick of time. Then Willow ran out screaming before anybody knew what was happening. You should’ve seen him charging out, all teeth and claws. He went after that psycho bitch like a hellfire missile. I was heading for the cab of the truck after Willow insisted, hoping they’d left the keys, but then you caught up to us and...well, the rest is history.”
I grin, still in awe the tiger didn’t just rip that evil woman to shreds.
While he’s going into details, I hear Willow telling her father she’s fine.
“I’m glad as hell you’re in one piece,” I tell him, pounding his back.
“You and me both. Better they nailed my face than my hands,” he says, lifting his thick palms up and staring. “Shit, if they’d busted up my fingers, no telling if I’d ever be able to work on an engine again...”
“I won’t forget what you did for us today, West. You ever need money to expand the shop, you know who to ask.”
He looks up at me and smiles like I just handed him the moon. He’s a good man, another McKnight rebuilding his life, figuring his shit out, and if I can help him find a few more missing pieces, I will.
I step away, closer to Willow, and hear her telling her dad that he doesn’t need to come.
She’s fine, she insists.
For the thousandth time, thank God. I wrap an arm around her, unable to keep my hands to myself.
Quiet tears come flowing down her cheeks. I can tell she’s trying to hold it together, even as the day’s insane stress overwhelms her.
“Here.” I reach for the phone. “Let me talk to him.”
She passes it over. Her father is talking about flights, and I wait till he’s done before saying, “Mr. Macklin, my name’s Grady McKnight. I just want to assure you that Willow’s safe. I have two young daughters myself, so I feel your concern. You have my word that I’ll find her a place to rest, without letting her out of my sight.”
