Page 4 of Taken By the Bounty Hunter

I nod. “Your eyes are like the Smiths, but you carry yourself like a Barker.”

“The Wyoming Smiths are related to most of the folks around here,” she says with a shrug like she’s had to explain herself a hundred times, and I’m the 101st person to question her genealogy.

“I guess,” I say. “Weird that I don’t remember you. I never met a Wynella Smith.”

“You were, what, 12, when my family split off and yours came this way?”

I nod.

“You couldn’t have known everyone.”

I definitely did.

“Maybe you’re right,” I concede rather than argue.

The guard doesn’t seem to care either way if I believe her.

She holds out the tray to me expectantly, but I don’t move. I don’t give a flying fig if I eat or don’t eat my mock-tapioca pudding today. I shrug and meet her hard gaze.

And then, Wynella does something unprecedented. She leaves the door wide open and walks over to my bed with the food tray.

“If you’re not going to stand up and take your tray, I guess you’re expecting room service,” she says with a heavy sigh.

It’s all I can do to keep from gaping at this gross negligence. Maybe she’s as tired as I am.

Suddenly, I know I can’t be here for one more day.

I know what I promised Curly. I said I would be good and lay low. I’m not supposed to worry because, somehow, I believed that no one would hurt me.

But I can’t do it. I just can’t stay here one more day. I need to get outside. I need to get to my journals. And I need to find Jefferson. Somehow.

I hold my breath.

Wynella bends over, pettily muttering as she sets the tray on my bed. “I see your punishment hasn’t broken you yet, maybe I should?—”

I lunge.

With the sharpened spring clutched in my hand, I stab her in the side, under the ribs. I’m weak, but I push as hard as I can.

The guard drops the tray. Mock-tapioca pudding splatters all over my bed and against the concrete wall as I jam the crude writing-implement-turned-weapon through her heavy denim uniform.

My captor cries out and falls to her knees.

I’m shocked at what I’ve done, and I stand there stunned for a moment, waiting for the blood to drip to the floor.

I must have hesitated a long time because she coughs and, with a labored effort, fumes, “They’re gonna beat the crap out of you, you little idiot.”

My feet are faster than my cerebral cortex.

That was too easy, I think to myself as I fly out of the building and run to the garden and greenhouse area.

Doesn’t matter. I just have to grab a few things, and I’ll be gone again. Maybe I’ll head to town. Maybe I’ll hitchhike to Bozeman. I don’t know. I’ll just have to figure things out. Like Olivia did. Like all of them did.

However, what greets me when I arrive at the greenhouse is not what I expected.

My journals are gone.

“What the…?”

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