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Trout jabbed her throat with the rifle. “Where’s the loot?”
“There is no loot,” said Kate.
“Don’t give me that!” shouted Trout. “You’ve robbed every bank from here to Houston.”
“You better tell him,” said Linda. “We’re desperate.”
“You married him for his money, didn’t you?” asked Kate.
Linda nodded. “But it’s all gone. It dried up with the lake. The peach trees. The livestock. I kept thinking: It has to rain soon. The drought can’t last forever. But it just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter …” Her eyes fixed on the shovel, which was leaning up against the fireplace. “She’s buried it!” she declared.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Kate.
There was a loud blast as Trout fired his rifle just above her head. The window behind her shattered. “Where’s it buried?” he demanded.
“Go ahead and kill me, Trout,” said Kate. “But I sure hope you like to dig. ’Cause you’re going to be digging for a long time. It’s a big vast wasteland out there. You, and your children, and their children, can dig for the next hundred years and you’ll never find it.”
Linda grabbed Kate’s hair and jerked her head back. “Oh, we’re not going to kill you,” she said. “But by the time we’re finished with you, you’re going to wish you were dead.”
“I’ve been wishing I was dead for the last twenty years,” said Kate.
They dragged her out of bed and pushed her outside. She wore blue silk pajamas. Her turquoise-studded black boots remained beside her bed.
They loosely tied her legs together so she could walk, but she couldn’t run. They made her walk barefoot on the hot ground.
They wouldn’t let her stop walking.
“Not until you take us to the loot,” said Trout.
Linda hit Kate on the back of her legs with the shovel. “You’re going to take us to it sooner or later. So you might as well make it sooner.”
She walked one way, then the other, until her feet were black and blistered. Whenever she stopped, Linda whacked her with the shovel.
“I’m losing my patience,” warned Trout.
She felt the shovel jab into her back, and she fell onto hard dirt.
“Get up!” ordered Linda.
Kate struggled to her feet.
“We’re being easy on you today,” said Trout. “It’s just going to keep getting worse and worse for you until you take us to it.”
“Look out!” shouted Linda.
A lizard leaped toward them. Kate could see its big red eyes.
Linda tried to hit it with the shovel, and Trout shot at it, but they both missed.
The lizard landed on Kate’s bare ankle. Its sharp black teeth bit into her leg. Its white tongue lapped up the droplets of blood that leaked out of the wound.
Kate smiled. There was nothing they could do to her anymore. “Start digging,” she said.
“Where is it?” Linda screeched.
“Where’d you bury it?” Trout demanded.
Kate Barlow died laughing.
