Page 142 of Double Bucked

A pair of small hands reach out and take hold of the rose.

It’s a little girl on her father’s shoulders. She has on a fancy, small dress, and her hair is tied back in a braid. Her big, sweet eyes meet mine, and there’s nothing but awe in them.

“I want to be you!” she says.

When I meet her gaze, my heart jerks as though it’s been yanked by a lasso.

She’s me. Me as a little girl. That little prim and proper, gray-eyed girl who wanted so badly to be a Belleflower Queen she’d do anything to get it. The little girl who didn’t think she was good enough unless she won. The little girl who thought love was earned and never freely given.

You’re enough! I want to scream to her. You’re enough!

But the float rolls forward through the seat of people, and the crowd swallows her and her little rose whole.

46

EVERETT

The police car hits a bump in the road. Ransom and I knock together in the back seat like bowling pins. With our hands cuffed behind our backs, balance is tricky, and our knees and shoulders keep bumping together.

“This is all one heck of a misunderstanding,” Ransom says.

“Tell it to your lawyer,” the sheriff says. The second officer sits shotgun beside him and snaps gum between his teeth.

Quietly, I lace my hands together behind my back.

The cuffs are on tight. I have big hands. I could temporarily dislocate my thumb and try to slide out, but even then, it seems unlikely I’d be able to fit the cuff over my hand.

Ransom, meanwhile, can’t stop talking.

“Holden,” he says. “Jerry. This is crazy. You know me. Heck, Jerry, we grew up down the road from each other.”

The younger officer looks out the window. He snaps his gum again, but his discomfort is written in the thin line of his mouth.

Ransom wiggles forward in his seat. “You know I ain’t capable of killing no one. Especially not Mr. Preacher. The man gave me shit every day of my life, but I could take it. You want to be hunting the real bad guys—Arris Dagney.”

“Dagney?” The younger officer—Jerry, apparently—laughs. “C’mon, man.”

“I’m serious!” Ransom protests. “We solved it. All of it. This whole Belleflower Festival? It’s all a front. They’re selling women. Trafficking them. Real, dark, gangster stuff.”

“Ransom, shut up,” the sheriff barks.

Sheriff Holden’s jaw is locked tight. I notice his knuckles go white on the steering wheel.

Not a good sign. I tense.

“They’re the ones behind this,” Ransom continues, his voice charged. “The Benefactors’ Society. It’s all bullshit. They killed Mr. Preacher. They’ve got Claire. And if we don’t act quick, they’ll hurt her, too. Look it up. They call themselves Oculus?—”

But Jerry doesn’t get to hear the rest of Ransom’s tale.

Sheriff Holden takes out his sidearm, points it directly at Jerry, and fires.

Blood doesn’t bother me. Cruelty does. I look away as Jerry’s head turns into a cloud of red, splattering the side of the car.

Ransom shouts and jumps back.

“I told you,” Sheriff Holden says, his voice shaking, “to keep your goddamn mouth shut. That boy had nothing to do with this, and now you had to go and get him involved like that.”

Calmly, he puts his firearm away. Then he turns the car around, taking it off the main road. We roll down dirt paths, away from the center of town.

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