“C’mon, Suze, be a good gal to your ol’ man. Make him happy t’night.”
“Your wife is dead!” I shouted, hoping my words would shake him back into reality. “You killed her, remember?”
For a moment, he stared at me slack jawed. Then his eyes filled with rage, offering a split-second’s warning for what was about to come. He struck me down with a heavy blow to my face. My mind exploded into a million green stars. Tears sprang out of my eyes. I tried to get up, but he wouldn’t let me. He dropped to his knees and straddled me, pinning me down with my wrists held above my head. With his other hand, he fumbled with his belt and zipper, his sickening fingers worming against my thighs.
Writhing desperately, I managed to knee him in the groin once, weakly, but enough for him to gasp and let go of my wrists. Screaming, I scratched at his eyes furiously, desperately, until I drew blood and still didn’t stop.
“You’re not doing this to me again, you hear me?” I kicked and pummeled him again and again until he fell off me, on his side, and curled up groaning and cursing my name.
I got up and looked at him as he lay there on the floor, holding his groin with both hands. An injured brute lying in his own filth. But not defeated. Not dead. Tomorrow, he’d be back on his feet again, hungover and madas hell. His hands shakily looking for the bottle. His mind gone haywire, fueling his sickening lust.
Silently, I went into the kitchen and grabbed the large cast-iron skillet, holding its handle with both my hands. As if I were possessed, I stared at my own white-knuckled fingers wrapped around that handle and wondered who I was. Who I’d become. Then I walked over to where he lay and raised the skillet above my head, ready to strike him dead.
A few moments slipped by like that, the only sounds being our intertwined breaths gasping heavily for air, my quiet whimpers, and his low groans of pain. The skillet frozen in midair. Just outside the door, Billy Ray’s heart-wrenching wails had succumbed to mere whimpers and sniffles. I stared at the heap lying at my feet, knowing what I had to do, and still, forced to admit I couldn’t.
The skillet dropped to the floor with a heavy thump, without touching him.
“Damn you to hell,” I said, and then I walked out the door, touching my mom’s pendant obsessively, begging Santa Monica to give me the strength to run away. To do what was right.
The screen door squeaked behind me, slamming shut with a loud noise that made Billy Ray jump to his feet.
I hugged my little brother tight, our tears mixed together where our faces touched. “Take care of yourself, Billy Ray.”
“Don’t go,” he begged, his small fingers digging into my arms. “Don’t leave me here alone with him.”
A sob caught in my throat. I wanted to stay. God, I wanted to stay. Every time before, I had. For him. Endured the bruises, the broken ribs, the unspeakable terror of my father’s flesh overpowering mine—because running away meant leaving my brother behind. But tonight was different. Daddy dearest had made that clear.
Tonight, he’d turned his rage on me like never before. Tonight, I’d seen it in his eyes—the shift, the way the violence unraveled into something else. Something worse.
If I stayed, I wouldn’t survive the next time. And Billy Ray needed me alive more than he needed me here.
I kissed his forehead, my lips trembling against his skin. “I have to. One day, you’ll understand.” He clung to me desperately, unwilling to let me go. “I’ll come back for you, Billy Ray, I promise. As soon as I find us a place to stay, I’ll come back for you.”
He stared into my eyes for a moment, his tears glinting in the faint moonlight, and let his skinny arms fall alongside his body.
“I promise,” I repeated, barely a whisper before letting go.
Then I started running across the fields toward the distant lights of Abilene, sobbing louder and louder since I knew no one could hear me anymore.
23
Snapshots
In person, Brad Pendergraft was much taller than I’d imagined, and thinner. He wasn’t like those thickset cops who spend their free time bulking up at the gym and pretending they don’t know that the supplements they routinely take are steroids.
Despite the early afternoon heat, he wore a light jacket, zippered almost all the way up.
I was parked on the side of a small road in North Henderson, having taken all precautions before stopping there. I’d driven up and down the interstate, then taken the Henderson exit and circled around several blocks before I was convinced that Jack wasn’t following me. I didn’t know why he wasn’t, though. For some reason, his absence scared me just as badly as his presence used to. Something had changed, and that could be very bad.
Organized crime, drug dealers, human traffickers ... those were terms I understood, but realities I’d never been exposed to. If they wanted me dead, Jack could’ve done that a thousand times already, right?
But not knowing was worse. It spread anxiety in my gut, and that emotion grew, poisoning my mind and promising to keep me up at night. It had to stop. And perhaps it had already stopped, but how could I be sure?
The private investigator climbed into the passenger seat of my car. “Did anyone follow you?”
“No.”
He looked around again, checking the rearview mirrors. Then he took out a manila envelope he’d been hiding under his jacket. “You got everything in here.”
