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“On your knees!” Buck shouted from behind me.
I stayed standing, not moving an inch. “So you can execute me? I don’t think so. Let’s just take a second and talk this thru. Is it money you’re looking for? Cause I’m worth a lot more than Ruth here. In fact, if you let her go and keep me, this would all be a lot more easy to handle. One hostage instead of three, it’ll be a breeze. And Xavier, my employer, is wealthy. He’s like a father to me and he’ll pay if you just—”
And then I turned and tried to yank the gun out of his hands. I was taller and larger than Buck, and physically superior. But the bastard must have been on his guard. He pulled the trigger and even though I was able to yank the gun up so the shot landed in the ceiling instead of my forehead, all my focus was on the gun.
I didn’t even see him pull out the needle until he’d shoved the shot into my thigh and depressed the plunger, right as I knocked the gun out of his hands.
I started to scramble after it, but only made it one single step before crumpling to my knees.
Ruth’s muffled screams against the duct-tape at her mouth were the last thing I heard before the world went dark.
Chapter Nineteen
RUTH
I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was already so horrible, being caught and manhandled by Buck of all people, him babbling at me the whole time between taking swigs from a seemingly endless supply of beer bottles from a cooler he kept in the foot of the passenger side footwell of his truck—babbling about how I’d ruined his life.
His driving had been terrible and I had the slimmest hope that a cop would pull us over for reckless driving. But he was taking backroads, not the highway. I’d felt another hope rise when I heard the sound of another truck and the rustle of someone outside.
But Buck had just put his finger to his lips, grinned maniacally at me, and then slipped out of the cabin.
The next thing I knew, Jeremiah—Jeremiah, of all people! How had he found me? What was he doing here?—had somehow appeared at the door. I’d tried to scream and warn him but it was too late.
Then there was that brief second where he’d even managed to get the gun away from Buck!
But in the end, none of it mattered. I recognized the packaging of the sedative Buck had yanked the syringe out of. It was for the damn cattle, and I had no idea how much he’d used on the Winstons or Jeremiah, or if they could possibly survive it.
And now I was left alone again, with a psychotic Buck, breathing hard as he looked down at Jeremiah, slumped on the floor beneath him.
“Take that,” Buck said, kicking Jeremiah hard in the lower back. I screamed uselessly into the tape gagging my mouth.
“What?” Buck said, looking over at me. “You got somethin’ to say? All this is your fault. None of ‘em would even be in this if it wasn’t for you.”
I went still and swallowed, then nodded and looked down, then bowed my head before finally looking back up at him.
He stared at me for a moment, unsure, before asking, “I take that tape off, you gonna start screamin’? Because no one can hear you out here. This bastard’s the only one dumb enough to come looking for you in the middle of the night on this stretch of road. Though how the fuck did he find us?” Then he frowned and came toward me, feeling all down the folds in my puffy dress until his hand landed on my phone. He looked at it in disgust, walking around behind me and shoving my finger against the little pad to unlock it. “Did you manage to send a text for help, you little bitch?”
I shook my head back and forth rapidly as he came back around to the front of me, finger tapping through the apps on my phone.
He came over, grabbed the tape at the corner of my mouth with his dirty-fingernailed hand, and ripped it off in one swift go.
“Who else did you text, bitch?” he yelled in my face.
“Ouch,” I gasped, then sucked in a large breath of air through my mouth. Buck was so pungent I could all but taste him on the air—but also the cedar forest air around us. “No one,” I gasped. “I didn’t even text him.” I nodded toward Jeremiah. “I don’t know how he found me.”
Buck turned around and reached into Jeremiah’s pocket, pulling out his phone. He unlocked it the same way he had mine and then started laughing, looking up at me. “Loverboy was tracking you. Guess he knew you were a faithless little bitch.”
Jeremiah had put a tracking app on my phone? When? Who the fuck cared? I tried to listen hard and could just make out the sound of rushing water, so we were near a river or a stream of some kind.
Not that that information helped narrow it down considering we were in Central Texas and you could barely throw a rock without hitting a stream or spring of one kind or another. Especially considering the rain we’d had lately. Even the usually dry creek beds would be running with water right now.
No, goddammit, it was official, I had no idea where Buck had taken me and less and less confidence with each passing moment that he’d told anyone where he was going or that I was even missing.
But maybe he’d told his brother where he was going?
Or… more likely, he’d just taken off like a goddamn cowboy all by himself to come find me.
And now here we both were. Trapped by this man who was clearly more than a crayon or two short of a boxset.
