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His eyes widen. “I don’t know. I don’t—please, Dean’s in trouble. War, he might not be dead yet, but if you don’t call for an ambulance, you’ll be a murderer. Please, War.”
“You think he’s the first person I ever killed?” I lean closer. “Tell me why you all listen to Daisy.” I show him my bloody teeth and he lets out an ugly sob.
“She’s blackmailing them,” he says through his teeth. “Please, War, I swear it’s true. My dad, all the uncles, they were stealing from the ranch. She found out and used it against them. That’s how she took over back then, and now I guess everyone just goes along with it. Please, that’s all I know. Please, call an ambulance.”
I shove off him and stand. It huts to breathe and my face feels like mush. I step over Dean and stop as I stare up at Melody. She’s standing on the steps, her eyes wide, in a tank top and shorts, staring at the mess of her cousins. Slowly, our eyes meet.
“Blackmail,” she says.
I nod slowly, grimacing. “Makes sense. What do you want me to do with these two?”
“Can you kill them and dump their bodies?”
“Melody,” Evan says, sobbing now. “Please, Mel, we just wanted to scare you, that’s all.”
She gives me a hard look and I return it, eyebrows raised. “You sure?” I ask.
“No,” she says, turning away. “I’ll call an ambulance. You should head into the main house and pretend like you were never here.”
I nod and turn away. Evan’s still crying, and Dean’s still unconscious. I pause as I move past them and lean down. “If you mention my name, I’ll finish this. Understand me?”
“I understand,” he says, nodding over and over, and I limp out of the tower and away from the mess. I don’t know what Melody’s going to tell everyone, but she’ll come up with something good. That’s the beauty of being a liar.
Chapter21
Melody
Uncle Dudley drives Evan and Dean to the hospital. Nobody asks what happened—nobody even mentions calling the police. Uncle Lovett stands in the parking lot and watches the truck disappear down the long driveway and doesn’t turn in my direction. “No need to talk about this any further,” he says before he turns and walks back to the house, looking small and sunken. “No need to make this worse.”
“She sent them,” War says with rage burning in his voice. “You know she did.”
Uncle Lovett says nothing. He only disappears inside with everyone else.
I stay outside for a little while longer. My head spins with the implication of what happened, and I don’t know how I’m going to make sense of this. I wrap my arms around myself until War pulls me against him and hugs me tight.
“It’ll be okay,” he whispers in my ear.
“I don’t think it will.” Something in me breaks, and I sob into his chest. He holds me tightly as tears rack my body, and I keep hearing the fight, keep seeing my cousins lying at the bottom of the stairs bloodied and beaten, and keep thinking that they were there to kill us. They can claim it was only to make some kind of point all they want, but I know and War knows and everyone knows, they were there to murder me, all to make sure I couldn’t take over the ranch.
“Uncle Lovett was in on it,” I say when I get myself under control. “He knew.”
“I have no doubt about that.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Right now, we’ll go back into the tower and put the heaviest bookshelf we can find on top of the trap door. We’ll be safe until morning. Then we’ll visit with your dad, tell him everything we’ve found out, and get the fuck out as soon as we can.”
“But the week isn’t over.”
He laughs bitterly and kisses my cheek and wipes away my tears. “Fuck the week, Melody. This is about survival now. And besides, I’m not convinced your father has any money to pay us with at all.”
I let him pull me from the blacktop. Blood stains the carpet at the base of the stairs. We climb together, and War covers the trap door with a desk and huge pile of books, and we curl up on the mattress in silence. I keep thinking about my family trying to kill me, about my own cousins coming up to murder me, and it’s not so different from what I did all those years ago.
Sleep comes and goes. I wake when the sun’s streaming through the windows. War’s already up and sitting nearby, staring out at the landscape. I kiss his chest before getting dressed. “Walk with me,” I say and he stands wordlessly, bruises blooming on his face from the fight the night before.
We head down the steps and into the main house. Nobody else is awake yet. I make coffee and we sit out back drinking it, watching the sun get stronger and stronger. I take War’s hand in mine and hold it, and he smiles at me.
“Almost getting murdered makes you appreciate stuff like this,” he says, and I lean my head on his shoulder.
