Rock-a-Bye Bones (32 page)

“Stay here.”

Pleasant grabbed my arm. “Don't take them on. They'll kill you without blinking an eye. Rudy was helping me and Potter stabbed him. They were going to sell my baby, and Rudy took her. He was going to leave her where I knew she'd be safe. Luther chased him into the yard and stabbed him, but Rudy got away and took my baby with him.”

I didn't tell her anything about Rudy, but she read my face. “He's dead, isn't he? I knew when no one came to help me that he'd died. Rudy was my friend. He's dead because he took the baby to save her. Potter was going to sell her to some lawyer who had a family to buy her. I told Rudy to take her to Sarah Booth Delaney, because I knew she'd come looking for the mother.” She nodded. “That's who you are, isn't it?”

“Yes, but let's exchange introductions later.” I gave a ruthless tug on the chain. “This chain isn't budging.”

“Oh, it will.” She tightened her body and pushed. The chain moved an inch down her hips and I sat on the floor and pulled with all of my might. The links dug into her tender flesh, but Pleasant never even whimpered. Any minute Potter and Owen would come inside. It was now or never.

With a grunt of desperation, Pleasant tore at the links, and five seconds later, the chain hit the wooden floor with a clatter. She was free. And just in the nick of time. The front door squealed open.

“If that dog comes out of the woods again, shoot it,” Potter commanded. “I'm going inside for more shells.”

We raced for the back door. There was no point trying to be quiet now. We took the steps in three strides and aimed for the underbrush where Pluto and Chablis paced. At the moment I dove into the bushes, the bottom dropped out of the clouds. Rain fell in sheets so thick it was as effective as fog. Pleasant and I crawled deeper into the woods.

I searched for Sweetie Pie, but there was no trace of my hound. I couldn't help but fear that one of the shotgun blasts had hit her and she was wounded somewhere, maybe bleeding to death. The rain came down so hard, I couldn't see four feet in front of me.

“Keep moving,” I told Pleasant. “There's a creek. We'll go there and follow it north.”

How Coleman would find us now, I didn't know, but we couldn't remain at the cabin. While I'd broken my word about remaining outside the cabin, I had rescued Pleasant.

Wearing only the sacklike dress and tennis shoes, Pleasant shivered in the cold. Her teeth chattered so loudly I could hear them. Hypothermia was a danger if I didn't find a dry place for her quickly.

“Stay here.” I had a thought. “Chablis, Pluto, keep her safe here.”

“Don't go back.” She clutched at my arm. “They will kill you. I'm not exaggerating.”

“If Potter left the key in the truck, we can have transportation out of here. If the key isn't there, at least I can disable the vehicle.”

She saw the reason in that and stopped arguing. “Be careful. Those are two mean men.”

“Stay here—and stay low.”

Using the rain for a shield, I ran toward the parked truck. I was almost there when the front door burst open and Potter came out. He wore a slicker and boots, and he carried the shotgun and a high-power cue beam. He meant to track us. And I had no doubt he had years of experience in running his prey to ground.

I hid behind the truck, fully aware I'd miscalculated. I'd assumed Potter and his cohort would go out the back door and look for us where we'd disappeared. No such luck. Now I had a choice. I could run for it and risk getting shot in the back, or I could check for the truck key. I inched up and looked in the passenger window. The key wasn't there.

Edging the door open, I stuck my hand inside and ripped all the wiring loose that hung beneath the steering wheel. My mechanic's experience was limited, but surely I'd snatched something vital.

I didn't bother closing the door. I moved to the back of the truck, anticipating a dash into the nearby woods. To my consternation, the rain began to slack off. I was trapped.

 

24

I had no choice. I had to make a run for it, but I went in the opposite direction from Pleasant. If Potter got me, I didn't want to lead him to Pleasant. I'd told her to follow the creek. That was the best way out. I'd studied the map and the creek would lead her to the road. Potter couldn't use the truck, either. He'd be forced to walk, just like Pleasant. I'd done the best I could for her.

Expecting any second to hear a blast and feel the buckshot penetrate my back, I made for the woods.

“Hey! Stop!” Potter had seen me. “Stop or I'll shoot.”

I kept running.

“Hey, POS, I'm the one you want.” Pleasant stepped out of the woods. “You're going to prison, asshat. I'll see to it.”

Holy cow, that girl had a set of brass ones. And she was going to get herself killed.

I'd made it to the edge of the woods. I turned around, my pistol ready at my side. “Sheriff Coleman Peters is on the way. He reserved your bunk in Parchman. Let's go.”

Potter shifted the gun from Pleasant to me. We were both valueless to him, and I didn't doubt he'd shoot us if he had a clear opportunity. It had never occurred to me that Pleasant had been taken for her child. That Potter and DeLong were going to sell her baby made me furious. I still had my gun, and if he lifted the shotgun, I would shoot him.

As if he read my mind, he lifted the gun to his shoulder. “You've been begging for this a long time.” He aimed at Pleasant.

I braced myself as I'd been taught, aimed, and fired. The bullet missed Potter's crotch, but not by much. Wood chips flew from the house. He was so shocked, he stumbled backward and dropped the gun. I took another shot, deliberately high.

“Run!” I yelled at Pleasant. We took off in opposite directions.

A crashing from the woods to my right sent my heart into my throat. When I realized it was Sweetie Pie, the relief was so delicious I wanted to cry. My hound was unharmed. Potter had missed.

I'd never been a fan of jogging and I hated sprinting even more, but I put everything I had into a long, fast stride as I ran for my life. Limbs slapped my face and my boots skidded in the mud, but nothing slowed me down. It was run or die, and I really, really wanted to live.

Sweetie edged me toward the creek, and I let her pick the way. She had a homing device in her hound dog brain, and while I might guess the correct direction, she was true as a compass. Fifteen minutes later, huffing painfully for breath, I heard something else in the woods. I prayed it was Pleasant, and my prayers were answered when she crashed through a thicket. A long streak of blood covered her hip, and her legs were a mess of scratches and bruises, but her face held radiance. She was free, and her baby girl was safe. I shrugged out of my jacket and offered it to her but she refused.

I signaled her to keep going and I forced myself to jog. We stumbled through more deadfall as we drew close to the creek. The rain was petering out, but night had begun to kiss the eastern sky. Darkness might be a helpful cover, if we didn't freeze to death. Where in the hell was Coleman? He'd had plenty of time to arrive. We weren't so far off the path that we wouldn't hear the four-wheelers.

Had something happened to Tinkie? Had she met Potter coming in as she was going out? Surely word was all over town by now that Tinkie and Oscar had a new baby. If Potter felt the Richmonds had thwarted his plan to sell Libby—and I had no doubt he could get ten to twenty thousand for a healthy baby girl so beautiful—then he might have taken his wrath out on Tinkie.

“Did you say the sheriff was coming?” Pleasant gasped out as we struggled through the woods.

“Yes, he's coming.” There was no point sharing my doubts with her. “He'll find us any minute now. Just keep going.”

I stumbled and went down just as the tree I'd been beside exploded. The gunshot blast made my ears ring.

Luther Potter was not fifty yards behind us—and he was closing in. He had no incentive to keep either of us alive. If he dropped us in the woods, he could leave the bodies for the animals to scavenge and wouldn't even be bothered with disposal of our remains.

Pleasant was panting with exertion, and her body trembled from the cold. We didn't have much time left for a rescue. She was about to fall in her tracks. Hypothermia would kill her as effectively as a bullet. What the hell had happened to Tinkie and the cavalry?

I judged we'd made it half a mile from the cabin. The terrain was brutal, and the wet, slick ground often made us trip and slide. Potter faced the same elements, but he wasn't afraid, freezing, and exhausted from having had a baby and being mistreated for weeks.

To Pleasant's credit, she never complained. Her gaze remained on the ground in front of her, and she was focused on the extreme will it took to put one foot in front of the other. She faltered and almost went to her knees, but she caught herself on a small tree, pulled up, and forged ahead. She had a baby to live for. I'd never seen anyone display such courage and determination.

“Give it up,” Potter yelled. “I'll make it quick and painless. If I have to keep tracking you, I'll shoot you in the gut and leave you for the coyotes.”

Pleasant sobbed. She stumbled and fell, hard, onto her knees and hands. She tried to get up but couldn't.

“Go,” she said. “Leave me.”

“I'm not leaving you here.” I wasn't courageous, but I couldn't leave a helpless woman to the abuse I was certain would befall her.

She tried again to rise, lost her footing and tumbled to her side, and I knew she was done for. “My baby. I never got to hold her.”

“Get up.” I tugged her arm. “You can't quit. You have to make it. Libby needs you.”

Her eyes had gone dreamy, and the shaking had stopped. She was dying right in front of me. “Libby.” She whispered the name. “I like that.”

I didn't have cell phone reception, but I damn sure had pictures of Libby. I whipped out the phone and found the cutest one where she wore a red and white polka dot onesie with a big matching peony bow on her red hair. “Look!” I commanded Pleasant, shaking her back to consciousness. “This is your baby. Get up and fight for her.”

For a moment life came back into her eyes as she stared at the picture. “My baby. Love her for me and tell her I'm sorry,” she said, and that was it. The black tide of unconsciousness pulled her under. Her breathing was so shallow and her body so cold I knew it was only a matter of moments before she was dead.

Rage consumed me. The injustice of what had happened to Pleasant washed red behind my eyeballs. I gripped the pistol and faced toward where I knew Potter was. “Luther Potter, I'm going to kill you.” It was wrong and I knew it. Vigilante justice wasn't my normal operating procedure, but this man had tortured and imprisoned a young woman. A child, really. She would die in the woods because of this man. He'd generated a world of suffering for a lot of people, and he stood between me and rescue. If I had to kill him, that was fine by me.

“Little girl with a pop gun, you'd better watch your step. I'm gonna have some fun with you before I gut you.”

He was a stupid, stupid man. And arrogant. And a misogynist, among many other unpleasant things. I wanted to stay with Pleasant, to hold her hand as she moved from this world to the next. I grasped her fingers, which were icy cold. She didn't seem to be breathing. She was already gone. The realization that I might have played a role in her death by dragging her into a freezing November rain when she could have stayed in the cabin, chained but warm and safe, was the final blow to my reason. I would kill him.

Potter was so self-confident, he stepped out from behind a tree. Either he'd forgotten I was armed, figured I was a bad shot, or was so deluded he didn't think I'd pull the trigger. He failed to consider the red rage that blinded me to everything, even danger.

Holding the pistol at my side and hidden by my jacket, I walked toward him as fast as I could move.

Concern flitted across his face, but it didn't stay.

“You'd best back up, girlie. I ain't playin'.” He brought the shotgun up.

I'd closed the distance between us to within thirty feet. I brought up the pistol and pulled the trigger in one smooth motion. I didn't aim. I didn't have to. Righteous fury sent the bullet deep into his thigh.

Disbelief crossed his face, then fury, then pain. He dropped to his knees. When he tried to bring the gun around, I kept moving forward until I was on top of him. I put the barrel of the pistol against his head. “Drop the shotgun.”

He did, immediately.

I'd never considered myself irrational. Or capable of killing someone in cold blood. But Luther Potter was the exception to many things. Pleasant Smith was dead because of him. She'd had her child stripped from her moments after the baby's birth. She'd never even held her infant girl. Potter's crimes extended beyond Pleasant to Charity, Faith, the Smith clan, Frankie, and Rudy Uxall's murder, and Tinkie's heart would be broken because of Luther Potter and the crimes he committed.

I cocked the hammer. In the middle of a hardwood forest in Bolivar County, Mississippi, I intended to take a man's life. The reasons were numerous and correct.

“Don't kill me.” Potter's fear stank. Now that he was the victim, he was a coward. “Don't! You can't just shoot me.”

“Yes, I can.” My finger tightened on the trigger.

He started crying, which only made me want to pull the trigger more. My hand was steady. I didn't want to mess this up. One clean kill shot.

“Please, don't do this.”

His sobs didn't touch me. Watching his blood spill from the hole in his thigh and seep into the forest floor didn't mean a thing to me. I felt nothing but a desire to end him.

I inhaled and pressed the barrel harder into his skull. He wailed. I began to squeeze the trigger.

I had no clue what hit me, but I went flying and the gun went off in a wild shot. I landed on my side, but the barrel was still trained on Potter. He looked longingly at his shotgun, some five feet away, but he didn't try for it. He finally believed I'd shoot him.