5
GWEN
The cloud of steam forming in the air told me I was breathing, but my hands were as frozen as the snow on the ground. My legs, paralyzed.
I’d just killed a man.
How the hell had I just killed a man?
A cough.
Simone coughed.
The paralysis snapped.
Tripping over David’s body, I darted to Simone. She still lay on the snow-covered gravel, unusually still. I collapsed to my knees and took her face in my hands. The headlights behind her were my only luminance. Her left eye had swelled shut. Her always thick lips had ballooned to twice their size. Even as I lifted her head from the ground, she still lay limp.
“Simone,” I said, tapping her cheek.
No response.
“Simone, wake up,” I said, shaking her shoulder.
A groan. Only a groan in response. It was better than nothing, but not enough.
I lowered her head to my lap. I looked at her, and a fear I couldn’t bear enveloped my mind.
What if she dies too?
Who would take Junie in? Would the state return her to Simone’s family? The people who’d done nothing when David had traded his toddler like cattle to get out of his debt to a drug dealer? The people who’d let their daughter run from shelter to shelter instead of opening their door to her?
What would I do without my best friend?
“Damn it, Simone!” I shook her again, and her right eye opened. “Thank God. Stay with me, okay?”
“I—I’m alright,” she said, eyes drifting shut again.
“Can you move?” I shook her shoulders once more. “Shit, we gotta get you to a hospital.”
“No.” Her one good eye opened wide. “No hospital.”
“If you could see your face right now?—”
“No one can know.” Her words slurred, gargling on all the blood, but she enunciated enough for me to understand. “Can’t let this hurt the—” A cough quaked her frame. Eyes falling shut, she shook her head. “We can’t.”
Can’t let this hurt the ranch.That’s what she was trying to say.
Thousands of women lived within these gates. Thousands of women relied on the anonymity of Rhiannon’s Ranch. Thousands of women followed the same rule when we’d signed the NDA required to live here.
Don’t endanger the ranch.
I ran my fingers through my hair, grabbing two fistfuls at the back.
Would the police believe me if I said it’d been self-defense? The police hadn’t believed me when I’d told them Troy hit me first. The scratches on his arms, the red splotch across his face, were signs that I was the aggressor. Not that I had defendedmyself when he shoved me into a wall with his hands around my throat.
If the cops came, even if they did believe me this time, what about Simone? David had been right about something. The two of them had a court ordered custody agreement.
Simone had violated it when she moved here. She’d done so again when she’d taken on a new identity. Just as we all had. Not a single soul inside this ranch was innocent in the eyes of the law.
