Page 50 of Forgotten

“Like hell you will,” I said.

We both charged at the same time, fists flying, and it was me who rocked him first. He tried to take a step back, but I hit him with an uppercut that sent him flying, landing on the hood of his unmarked car and sliding off and to the ground, motionless.

I turned to Lacey, who was backing away now. She had tears in her eyes, but I knew they were just crocodile tears. She was only sorry she’d gotten caught.

“You tried to ruin my life,” I said. “And for what?”

“You shouldn’t have ghosted me, Jesse,” she said. “I would have been such a good girlfriend to you. I would have loved you. I would have even been permissive if that’s what you needed. But no. You had to go shack up with that Garafalo girl. That whore.”

“All this?” I thundered. “All this because I dumped you ten years ago? Are you insane?”

Suddenly, she stopped backing up. A wry smile crossed her lips.

“No. I’m not insane. But Iwillwin.”

I barely felt the thump in the back of my head before the lights went out.

I came to a while later, how long I didn’t know. I was in the back of a car, my head throbbing. Sticky blood had dried cold to the back of my neck and down my shirt. I had been tossed into the backseat of a car unceremoniously, and it was driving fast down what sounded like a gravel road.

“What do we do?” I heard Lacey demand. “Oland, what do we do? You killed him!”

“I know,” he grumbled. “I know, dammit. Just let me think.”

“We don’t have time to think!” she shouted hysterically. “How am I going to get any money if he’sdead, Oland? They will figure it out! We will go to prison!”

“No, we won’t!” he shouted. “Just shut up for one damn second, woman!”

“Stop calling me woman,” she snapped back. “You know I hate that!”

“There are bigger problems right now than my choice of words,woman,” he screamed.

The voices got quiet for a long moment, and I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I tried not to respond, but I didn’t really need to do anything. My body wasn’t responding to any of my commands. My eyes wouldn’t even open. All I could do was listen.

“Does he have a pulse?” Oland asked, grimly.

Cold, shaking hands reached for my neck and missed completely, but held themselves on a random part of my throat.

“I don’t feel one,” she said. “Oh God, you killed him. You killed him, Oland.”

“We. We killed him,” he said. “This has to be we from now on, or else both of us are going to burn for it, you understand? It doesn’t matter if I hit him with the gun or you did. The fact is, he got hit, he went down, and his skull must have cracked. So we have to find a way to get out of this mess.”

“How?” she said, her voice quiet now. “How are we going to get out of this? What about our life?”

“We will have our life,” he said. “All three of us. On the ranch. Like we planned. But first, we need to dump this body. Then we need to call Arn and have him and Eugene clean the scene where he was bleeding so much. If they can get that clean before someone notices Jesse’s missing, we might be able to come up with a story as to how he got out here.”

“Maybe… maybe he pissed off someone,” she said. “Maybe he got in trouble with the mob.”

“In Texas?” he shot back incredulously. “No. Not the mob. Jesus. No. Maybe… maybe he made one of his brothers angry. What if he tried to hit on Amber? What if it was Luke that killed him?”

“It would be easier to get the ranch,” she said, sounding excited now. “He’s the only one who could really fight us. Maybe he also knew Jesse was going to get sued and lose part of it to us. So he killed him.”

“I like it,” Oland said. “All right, we dump him here. Come on.”

The car came to a stop, and I tried desperately to get my eyes to open. They refused, just like the rest of my body, to cooperate. Instead, Oland lifted me like a sack of potatoes and carried me through crunching brush for a few moments. Then he dropped me hard. I hit the ground and tried to suppress any sound from coming out of me.

“All right,” Oland said from above me. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait.”

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