She shakes her head so vigorously, she makes me dizzy before she points behind me. “It’s his.” Her words are as shaky as her hands.
When a man with a scarred face steps out from a tree even larger than the one the woman was hiding behind, instincts have me leaping to my feet to protect her. Some could say she is who I need protection from, but my intuition hasn’t reached the same conclusion.
She disclosed the stranger’s hidey-hole, and her eyes are as humble and honest as JR’s. Not to mention the fact that I misjudged JR the first time I laid eyes on him in almost a decade, I refuse to make the same mistake again.
“Stay where you are, or I’ll shoot.”
The man laughs a mocking chuckle. “That gun hasn’t been fired in years.” The eyes of a snake stare me down as he mutters, “Not since it was believed to have taken down a rabies-infested vermin who should have kept walking when he stumbled onto this place.” After snarling at the lady I’m protecting as if my skin is made out of armor, the man steps closer to us. “Death was knocking on Cecil’s door. I was this close…” he holds his thumb and index finger an inch apart, “… from righting the wrong my grandmother made.” He spits on the ground, missing the shock that fills my face when it finally dawns on me who he is. JR isn’t a killer because his victim isn’t dead. He’s standing right in front of me. “Thenhewent and ruined everything.” The way he sneers ‘he’ leaves no doubt whom he’s referencing—JR.
“Rosie left this land to Cecil because she didn’t want to see it mined. If you sell this place, you’ll be denying your grandmother her final wish. Is that what you want, Roderick?” His smirk belongs to an extremely dangerous man. He’s not ashamed I’ve worked out who he is. He’s proud. “Walk away before JR fixes the error he made seven years ago.”
“And how’s he going to do that?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer him. “You’re here, withus.” The woman behind me shivers in fear when he locks his eyes with her. She is not his friend. She is his enemy. “And he’s all the way on the other side of the mountain, surrounded by law enforcement officers who want him dead just as much as I do.” He shrugs like his next words aren’t direct stabs to my heart. “They’re thirsty for blood since he killed one of their own last night while trying to escape.”
“JR didn’t kill anyone. He was with me the whole night.”
He steps even closer, forcing me to point the gun at his head instead of his heart. “That isn’t what the DNA will say. It’s all over the deceased officer’s corpse.”
My heart launches into my throat when he holds up a baggie full of hair. Even with the early morning sun bouncing off the plastic material, I know whose hair is inside. It’s the strands JR clipped off in a hurry two days ago.
“He will still find a way to protect me.”
There’s so much confidence in my tone, Roderick’s headshake makes him look like a fool. “Not possible. He failed seven years ago to reach Cecil in time, and it will be the same for you this time around as well.”
His arrogance brings out my bitchy side. “I got out without a second look, didn’t I?”
It’s slapped into a black void when he discloses, “Because I wanted you to.” He fans his arms across the landscape. “Because by forcing you to come to me, it forced her out of hiding.” He bares teeth while snarling, “You should have let him die.”
“You killed Cecil!” the female screams, her voice broken up with huskiness. It’s clear she adored Cecil as much as JR did.
“And I’d do it again if it fixed that whore’s mistake!” He bangs his chest. “Iwas her blood. Her family. Yet she left everything of value to him.”
“Because you killed your grandfather,” retaliates the woman as her strength rises from the murkiness bombarding her. “Your fingerprints were on the spikes stuck under Memphis’s car. You tried to suffocate him before first responders could arrive. If it weren’t for my brother, you would have killed them that night.”
“Those are lies.Hearsay.They’ll never hold up in court.”
“Because you threatened my family so much, my brother had no choice but to hide the evidence.” She locks her watering eyes with mine. “I was searching for it. I was determined to take him down.” Salty blobs glide down her cheeks when she confesses, “But when he killed my mother and tortured my sister for hours on end, I wanted to die.”
“But Cecil found you before you could.”
Dirty strands of blonde hair fall into her face when she shakes her head. “No. Rosie did.” She shifts her eyes back to Roderick. “When I woke up in the cabin, I told her everything you had done, and even though you were her grandson, she believed me because she knew you were evil. That’s why she left you nothing but the plot of your parents’ gravesite.” She hands me a hessian lap-sack bag brimming with old electronic equipment. “It’s all in here.Allof it. And for what it misses, I’m sure this will more than make up for it.”
She points an old-style remote at the branch Cecil’s noose is dangling from. A video camera is mounted where the branch comes off the trunk. It’s pointed right at Roderick, meaning one thing—she got Roderick’s confession on tape. It’s no longer hearsay.
“You conniving little bitch!” Roderick roars when reality dawns on him that he just convicted himself. He charges our way, his face as red as his balled-up hands. “You will rot in hell before I’ll ever let that evidence see the light of day.”
Not thinking, I cock back the hammer of the gun and fire one time. As predicted by Roderick, the barrel seizes with the bullet still in the chamber. I’m about to use its butt as protection, but before it can skim halfway across Roderick’s temple, a blur of muscle and testosterone comes out of nowhere and side-tackles him to the ground.
JR is still wearing the sleeping pants he went to bed in. His hair is damp with sweat, and every one of his muscles contracts as he beats the living shit out of Roderick. He belts into him with everything he has, his strength so mesmerizing it takes me several long seconds to remember that this is the opportunity I’ve been seeking. I have the chance to save JR as he did me multiple times.
When my stomps on the sloshy ground do little to slow JR’s onslaught, I thrust the bag of electronic goods into the frozen female’s chest, scoot past Roderick, who was so blindsided by JR’s second attack, he’s already unconscious, then bob down to place myself into JR’s line of sight.
“That’s enough, JR. I’m safe. We’re safe. You can stop now.”
The animalistic movements of his fists slow a little, but I need them to end completely. If they don’t, he will kill Roderick this time around.
“JR!” I sign and shout. “You arenotyour father,” I whisper when his eyes lock with mine for a fleeting moment. “So stop now before you undo all the good you did to ensure you would never become him.”
He glances down at his bloody hands before returning his wide-with-terror eyes to my face. He looks set to run. The urge is burning through his eyes like an out-of-control blaze, and the flares brighten when the flickers of police lights bounce off the woodlands surrounding us, but something stops him, and this time around, I know that something is me.
