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Somewhere, not far, she hoped, was the county road. If she could only get there . . .
Blam!
Glass shat
tered, the back window exploding.
Shards of glass sprayed into the cab.
The truck shuddered. She wondered if the shotgun was capable of hitting the gas line or the tires. Maybe she was lucky that he didn’t have a rifle with bullets rather than shells.
Just drive!
Checking the rearview, she saw something on the crest of the hill where the sun was beginning to rise, dawn breaking.
Bryant Tophman, shotgun stock at his shoulder, barrel aimed at the truck was visible in silhouette. “Try it,” she muttered under her breath and shifted down as she started around what had once been a corner.
Blam!
The truck shuddered, but kept moving, and Bianca, determined to make it back to Grizzly Falls, to her mother, to her new baby brother and her bastard of a father who would dare sell her, tromped on the gas pedal.
CHAPTER 33
When Lucky Pescoli opened a bleary eye, the sun was streaming through the bedroom windows and his head pounded from a hangover that wouldn’t quit. His stomach was queasy and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d tied one on like this. It was a mother, a real rager.
He stumbled into the bathroom and peed as if he’d never quit before he really woke up, blinking, shaking off, then seeing himself in the mirror, a middle-aged man who needed to get his act together. Bits and pieces of the night before were starting to tumble through his brain, but in painful shards, scraping and slicing his gray matter. He opened the medicine cabinet, found a bottle of ibuprofen, tried to remember the dosage, and said, screw it, pouring out three or four liquid gels and swallowing them dry.
He closed the cabinet door, saw his reflection again, and recoiled. When had he gotten so old? When had life passed him by? Suddenly he felt as if he were riding a dying pony and everyone else in the world was racing by on thoroughbreds. He knew he’d done something he shouldn’t the night before, and he had a vague feeling that whatever it was would come back to haunt him. It was that bad.
Still bleary, his booze-soaked consciousness trying to surface, he nearly fell into the shower, then turned on the spray, the cold needles eventually turning hot. Hands pressed against the plastic stall, he let the water run over his head, clear his mind. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Otherwise he wouldn’t have passed out . . . oh, man, how had he gotten home?
He lathered, smelled the booze still oozing out of his pores, and scrubbed himself and his hair clean. Then he cranked on the handle and the steaming water turned instantly frigid, causing him to suck in his breath and swear a word or two before he turned the damned spray off, grabbed the pink towel hanging by the shower—Michelle’s towel, he realized—and dried off.
Michelle.
Crap, that’s what had started it all—the fight. He’d found her cell phone and had just been going to recharge it when, because he was suspicious, he’d scrolled through the pictures, texts, and calls. More than a dozen, probably twenty or twenty-five phone calls made to one number, a cell number he recognized as belonging to Barclay Sphinx. Well, that could be explained, right?
Michelle was an actress on his reality show, and though no one other than he and Michelle knew it, she was the reason Barclay Fucking Sphinx had come to Grizzly Falls in the first place. She’d been enamored with the man from the get-go; loved his shows, especially Tarnished Stars.
After attending a seminar where he’d spoken, somewhere—Spokane? maybe—and the success of Big Foot Territory: Oregon! she’d contacted the producer about a sequel to the show set here, in Grizzly Damned Falls. As it turned out, there was another group of Big Foot enthusiasts north of Missoula and Barclay had been mulling over the idea anyway. Then, lo and behold, Bianca, his very own daughter, had experienced her own Big Foot sighting, one that had ended in the body of a local girl being discovered. What kind of cosmic stroke of luck was that? A gift. From the fates. Not the dead girl, of course, that was a shame, a horrible tragedy, but if anyone was to have found her, it was good fortune that Bianca had stumbled into that creek.
From then on, because of the built-in publicity and hype, Barclay had been interested.
And Luke—Lucky—Pescoli had thought his fortunes were about to change. Through his daughter.
The only trouble was, Luke thought now, as he viewed himself in the mirror and saw his face with its bloodshot eyes, Michelle hadn’t just found Barclay an interesting producer or mentor or even stepping-stone to Hollywood, all of which Luke could understand. But oh, no. Michelle, as proven by the pictures on her phone, the late-night calls, and her general disinterest in her husband, had fallen in love and into bed with that loser, scumbag, fucking ass-wipe of a producer!
Michelle!
His Michelle!
The one woman in the world he’d been certain he could trust. She had adored Lucky Pescoli.
Until that son of a douche bag came knocking.
At the thought of it, his blood boiled, and as he shaved off the stubble and eyed his reflection, he hoped that he wasn’t seeing just the hint of a jowl beginning on his jawline. He leaned closer to the steamy mirror. And nicked himself.
“Goddamn it!” Luke cried, watching a small dot of blood bloom just under his lip. He stopped it with a scrap of toilet paper he pinched off from the roll near the toilet. As he did, he remembered the fight with Michelle.
