The truck pulls to a complete stop before the door creaks open. The phone in my pocket starts buzzing. He’s calling the girl. I deny the call and send a text back to him.
Skylah
Is that you? A red truck just pulled up.
“Skylah?” he says into the dark.
I wrap my finger around the trigger. He’s in my sights right now. I could pull it and end this immediately.
But where’s the fun in that?
“It’s dark out here, baby. Are you okay?”
I will enjoy every fucking blow to this motherfucker’s body.
He takes another step closer before I grab the rope on the ground and start swinging the loop over my head. He turns toward the whizzing sound in the air.
His eyes are probably still adjusting to the dark, but I’ve been waiting in it for twenty minutes. Right when his face is pointed directly at me, I let it loose. It wraps around his neck beautifully before I yank it back. It tightens around him, and he screams like a little bitch.
“Aargh!”
I feel the urge to laugh.
Not funny. Be serious.
I jerk the rope closer. He falls to the ground. Cash spits out a curse.
“Don’t rip his head off, dammit. We gotta get him to Moonlight.”
“It ain’t far.” I spit in the dirt near his face, holding tightly to the rope as Matt thrashes on the ground.
“We’re still on old man Fleming’s place. We’ve got a few miles till we reach Moonlight,” Holden says.
Old Man Fleming’s death couldn’t have come at a better time.
I nod, trying to regain my composure. Lady Liberty snorts behind me.
“I know, girl. I’m anxious to get to the good part too. We’ll be there soon.” I pat her neck.
Matt stands up suddenly, attempting to run. The rope is already tight, far too taut for him to get out on his own. It jerks him back, like he ran into a clothesline.
“Whoa, whoa, calm down, Hayes. You’re all right. Panicking won’t make it end any faster.” Sam’s voice feigns a casual, calm tone.
Cash grabs my rope, following it up toward Matt, who kicks at him from the ground.
“Who the fuck are you people?!” he screams.
“No one can hear you. You know that? You’re so far out in the middle of nowhere. Not a soul is out here. Go ahead and scream as loud as you fucking want.” I hate how excited I sound. I can’t help it.
I’ve been looking forward to this.
Cash jerks him to his feet, grabbing one arm and looping it through a zip tie. He manages to grab the other one, despite Matt’s scrambling, and loops it in too. Then he tightens his wrists together behind his back.
It would’ve been a lot easier to do this with trucks and four wheelers, but it would have also been louder, and more likely, we’d have gotten caught. Even though we are far out in the country, somebody driving by might have takennotice of a bunch of four wheelers in a field late at night. And when Matt’s truck is found here after he’s reported missing, we have no connection to him other than some horse shit. And a few piles of that isn’t enough to incriminate us.
We’ll be the top suspects for this crime, for certain, so we’re being careful and minimizing any possible evidence that we were here.
We’re two miles from Moonlight Ranch, Sam’s place. The back corner of his ranch shares a fence line with old man Fleming’s property.
