Page 75 of Castaway Whirlwind
“Is ok,” I say, my words slurred. I curl up on my side on the cool, damp grass from this morning’s storm with pins and needles in my mouth and the tips of my fingers and toes. “Is from period. Don’t look.”
“Paul!” she yells, pushing my hair off my face, her hands hot against my clammy skin, more blobs of color circling us.
My eyes roll back in my head as my equilibrium shifts when Paul lifts me offthe ground.
* * *
Russell
I press my face against the partition separating me and Gibson, wincing when the cuffs dig into my wrists, no doubt reopening my wounds. “If you ever yell at my woman again—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Gibson huffs, tossing his hat onto his passenger seat and scrubbing at his sweat-dampened hair. “What a fucking shit show, Russell. I thought Wyatt and Davis had it bad, but you…you’re in mighty hot water. Trouble. God love ‘em, those women are all trouble if you ask me.”
“Well, I didn’t. And you want to talk about a shit show? How ‘bout we start with the weasel that’s been stalking Layla right under your nose? Or how ‘bout the fact it was Cooke’s little sister fucking up everyone’s vehicles and getting away with it?”
Gibson clicks his tongue, then subtly nods to a camera trained on the back seat.
I press my lips shut as we wind our way down deserted two-lane roads toward town and the County Sheriff’s Office. The sky is an ominous gray, with more rain in the forecast later today.
Gibson curses when his walkie-talkie crackles with codes that mean nothing to me. His eyes flash to mine in the rearview mirror, and he yanks the steering wheel to the side, coming to a screeching stop with the cruiser dangerously close to nose-diving into the full ditch that runs parallel, knocking me sideways.
“What? What happened?” I ask, stretching as much as I can to work out the knots in my shoulders.
Gibson hops out, slamming the door closed with another curse. He holds his phone to his ear, listening intently asthe other officers stop their cruisers and step onto the road, surrounding him with various expressions of shock.
“What happened?” I yell the question.
Gibson turns to stare at me through the window. All I can think is the dogs, which I hadn’t counted on showing up so soon after Allen went missing, must have found the grave. My heart slams against my ribs with each beat, knowing in twenty or thirty years, the State will try to stick their lethal needles in my arms, with my son, brother, and little darlin’ heartbroken as they watch me from the viewing room.
I throw my head back against the seat. “Fuck!” I have to free my hands. Break out of or steal this cruiser. Grab Layla and head for Mexico. Elliott and Paul can have the business. Wire us money when we get somewhere safe and can contact them.
But the goddamn cuffs won’t budge, blood oozing from beneath my wrist wrappings to run down my hands and slick the back seat. Barefoot, I don’t have the force necessary to kick the back windows out or break the partition, despite my best efforts, and with the blood loss, I grow even weaker.
The officers scramble to opposite sides of the road when a car horn is blasted, a hair’s breadth away from being flattened by Renee’s silver SUV rocketing down the middle like a freight train so fast that she blows the hats off some of their heads.
I stare in disbelief as the officers who had just gathered dive back out of the way again when Trace’s truck comes to a skidding halt beside me. With my face flat to the window, I crook my neck up enough to see Cora leaning half out of the passenger side.
Cora points down the road at the SUV and screams, “Layla!” before Trace pulls her back in and peels out.
“Oh, goddamnit, Russell!” Gibson yells, whipping open the back door with his phone still held to his ear, finding me half-unconscious, laid out on his back seat, still trying to snap the cuffs apart. He dodges my left kick and grunts with the effort it takes to turn me over halfway. “Fuck! If you had just waited…” He slams the door closed, hops in the front, and then we’re flying down the road, my body tossed about with every high-speed turn following Trace’s truck.
Chapter 24
Layla
“Close but no cigar,” I manage to say with my tongue as thick and dry as cotton in my mouth when my vision clears enough to see it’s the wrong Berenson brother sitting in a chair beside me, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. The joke doesn’t earn me so much as a twitch of Elliott’s lips, mostly hidden by his bushy silver beard and mustache. “Come on, that was funny.” I try to smile, my lips stinging when they crack, tears rushing in when I rememberwhyRussell isn’t here.
Violet’s chin trembles when she carefully bends to kiss my cheek. “We were so worried about you.”
“Why?” When Dolly, Goldie, Faye, and Cora crowd me in a circle and stare, all silent and weary, I finally notice the too-bright, harsh lights and a rhythmic, annoying beeping. The mattress I’m lying on isn’t nearly as plush or comfortable as my bed at home. I squeeze my eyes shut with a groan, sleepy but growing more alert than I was earlier. “I told y’all it was just my period. You didn’t need to take me to the hospital. I feel fine.”
“Yes, we did. You were throwing up blood,” Cora says, a tear falling from the corner of her eye. “Scared the bejesus out of me and Big T.”
Faye adds, “And the only reason you feel ‘fine’ is because you’re all drugged up after surgery. Doubt you can feel much at all, thank god.”
“Surgery?” My eyes cut to Goldie, who nods.
“I think they called it ‘endoscopic therapy’,” Goldie says slowly, as if she’s unsure of the term, “for the tear in your stomach lining, either from throwing up too much, the insane amount of pain pills you were taking, or both. But the good news is—”
