Page 2 of Taken By the Bounty Hunter

And there she was. Not just any sister-wife. Floydene Blatch. The nastiest, meanest, most influential sister-wife of all. Buying scratch-offs, of all things.

I don’t know what she was doing in Bozeman, a couple of hours away from her home. She’s a legal wife of one of the oldest, most respected elders, which gets her certain privileges. But still, I’ll bet her sister-wives with lower standing would love to know that Floydene gets day trips out of town.

But scratch-offs? Not very demure or trusting of the favored wife of a prominent polygamist.

Seeing a sister-wife handling lottery tickets was like seeing a cat on a leash. Something was not right about it. For a brief second, her face flashed a particular type of guilt that told me this was not the first time. I was so shocked that I froze in my tracks. That was my second mistake. We locked eyes. She recognized me.

I fled, driving Jake’s donated farm truck like a beast back to the safe house.

I was followed. Of course, I was. If not by Floydene, then by whoever was low-key chaperoning her, or by someone she called as soon as I took off.

The whole thing was my mistake, so I decided to be the sacrifice in this cat-and-mouse game.

And here I am, counting hash marks on the floor, watching the light change in the barred window of my cell, and freezing my butt off in a bib overall and tee-shirt—the standard issue uniform for people assigned to hard labor as punishment for crimes of fraternizing with someone of the opposite sex you’re not married to, reading or watching unapproved media, or, in my case, insubordination, theft, and leaving without permission.

I assumed I’d be forced to work the crops or the livestock, just like other times I was caught getting up to no good. At least I’d be outside in the sunshine.

Boy, was I wrong. I never expected to end up in a cell. I never knew the elders had converted one of the old dormitories into a prison. Heck, I never could have guessed I wouldn’t go outside for 31 days. Not once.

When I’d returned to the church on my own accord, I’d thought the larger population of the polygamists would be so happy to have me back that the punishment would be negligible. Since Goldie left, I’m the only person who knows how to give relief to the sick among us who refuse genuine medical care.

Curly, the grandfather figure of the rescue group, further cemented my confidence when he drove me back to my mother’s house despite the protests from our friends.

When Curly dropped me off, he had told me to keep my chin up.

“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “Some very powerful people are putting eyes and ears everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Inside and out. They aren’t going to hurt you.”

I’d known Curly barely a month, but I hugged him like I’d wished my dad had when I was a child.

As soon as I saw my mother exit the house, followed by my Uncle Nevyn, I knew I was in for it.

What will it be, I’d wondered. Forced marriage? A beating? Would I be brought up in front of the whole church and forced to confess my sins? A temporary shunning, with everyone forbidden from speaking to me for a month?

Child’s play.

Let’s get on with it, I’d thought, so I can get back to my greenhouse. Back to my books, journals, recipes, and herbs all waiting for me. I had raised beds to plant and water. I had all kinds of new knowledge to add to the journals.

That thought alone comforted me as my uncle marched me to the old dormitories.

“The greenhouse is the other way,” I’d say.

I knew I would miss my freedom, but I consoled myself by looking forward to spending time with boxes of recipes, notebooks, and journals that had not yet been indexed and cross-referenced. My filing system was only in the infant stages when I ran away. Those journals and books are my connection to Goldie—to someone in the outside world who cared about me.

That, and the card in my pocket from Jefferson Hope. What could I do with that, though? I don’t have a phone. Useless, but it was thrilling to have at least one minute of flirtatious—if awkward—attention from a man.

As my Uncle Nevyn walked me down the worn path through the compound, I saw something worse than physical punishment.

Smoke rose from the library. My stomach lurched at the sight. In the flickering firelight, I saw men carrying boxes and stacks of books outside and tossing them onto the fire.

Louisa’s life’s work. Up in flames.

My heart hurt for her.

Ever since Louisa was 14, she’d been adding to the library little by little for years with donations from the community and by trips to thrift stores in town. It started in Wyoming, and the humble library moved with us to Montana.

It was an escape from everyone’s humdrum lives.

That a library was allowed to exist at all was a minor miracle. But it kept the children and sister-wives happy. It gave the mothers with young children something to do without having to go into town.

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