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He had to be okay.
Even if he left her.
Ricky pulled off the highway and made a few turns into a shady neighborhood before stopping in front of an old gray duplex with peeling paint and a rusted white railing on the porch.
“Where are we?” she asked, suddenly exhausted from the fear and grief.
“Buster lives here.”
Daisy straightened. “What? You’re handing over the drugs yourself? But you said… I don’t understand. Why shoot Moose if you were going to give the drugs back?” Hysteria tinged her voice, but she didn’t bother to control it.
None of this made any sense.
He turned somber eyes on her. “No, Daisy, I’m not handing over the drugs. I told you I can’t.”
“Then what…” Her stomach plummeted at the cold determination in his gaze. “Ricky, no,” she whispered as the hair on the back of her neck stood straight up.
“You told me Buster said he’d take the pay in trade.”
She pressed a fist to her mouth as she shook her head. He couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he meant.
“I’m sorry, Daisy. I have no other choice. You have to help me.”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, I tried to help you. Moose tried to help you, and you shot him,” she screamed. “You shot him, and you want to send me in there to be raped!”
“It won’t be rape if you just let him. If you agree to help me. I need your help,” he pleaded.
“What?” she screamed. “You’re out of your mind. Let me out of this car.” She turned to the door and yanked the handle. Where the hell was the unlock button?
The barrel of Ricky’s gun jammed against the back of her head, rendering her immobile. “I’ll do it, Daisy. I’m that fucking desperate. You’re gonna go in there and help me, your only family, or you’ll end up with a bullet like your man.”
The reminder of Moose’s fate had her choking out a sob.
What the hell had happened to her life?
And how would she survive this without the man she’d fallen for coming to her rescue?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FIERY PAIN BURNED a long streak across the side of Moose’s scalp like a rugburn on steroids. His head throbbed, and an incessant buzzing kept him from giving in to the sleep that tempted him.
He couldn’t get comfortable either. Something hard and sharp dug into his lower back while his arms itched with little prickles. It felt as though he was lying on a damn bed of leaves.
Leaves.
The woods.
He fought through the fog in his brain, trying to capture memories dangling just out of reach. He’d been with Daisy. In the woods. Why?
Thinking while his head pounded so badly sucked. Why was his headache this severe? It felt like he’d been shot.
It all rushed back to him as a horror movie played on ten times the speed in his mind.
Holy fuck.
He sat up so fast immense pain blasted through his skull. “Dammit,” he shouted as he cradled his head. Waves of nausea had him rolling over and dry-heaving into the leaves. When he pulled his hand away from his temple, blood coated his fingers and palm. Thankfully, it seemed to be no worse than a wide graze, but it was still enough to rattle his brain. With the dramatic way head wounds bled, he already had sticky blood running down his face and neck and soaking into his shirt.
Get up. Get up.
Ricky made off with Daisy.
Moose had to get his shit together and figure out where they’d gone.
How could they have miscalculated the situation so epically? Daisy hadn’t thought in a million years that her brother would actively set out to harm her. It turns out she’d been dead wrong. Moose’s mistake was listening to her and failing to put a bullet between Ricky’s eyes.
His gun lay against a tree root about five feet away. Another wave of nausea rolled through his gut as he reached for the pistol. He fought through it, retrieved the gun, and climbed to his feet. The forest spun, forcing him to close his eyes and wait out the revolutions.
After a few minutes, he began his journey out of the woods the way they’d come. How the fuck was he supposed to find Ricky? He knew nothing about the man beyond his affiliation with Buster and his relation to Daisy. They wouldn’t go home as it’d be the first place anyone would look.
His best bet would probably be to find where Buster lived or hung out. He’d start at the diner where he’d first seen the fucker harassing Daisy. The walk took him longer than it had on the way into the woods since his legs weren’t steady, and his head hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but he made it to Daisy’s car without vomiting or passing out again. One look in the rearview mirror had him cringing. Before he went to the diner, he’d need to clean himself up. If he went out in public looking like a murder victim from the Saw franchise, someone was bound to call the cops.
