Page 21 of Daddy's Little Convict
Fuck.
He stopped, wondering if he should wait until Travis drove up into the gated lot of the other halfway house, or if he should continue on up the hill, except that his brother didn’t turn down the male residents’ driveway. Instead, he continued on up thehill, taking a different turn that immediately curved into a steep upward climb into the trees that now obscured both head and tail lights.
Jeff sped up, needing to get those truck lights back in sight. Up the rough road he went, winding his way steeply through the trees. He didn’t find Travis’s headlights again. He found another road, but that one really did look more like a cattle trail than a road. He ignored that turn, but with a feeling of frustration welling up inside him, he took the next. This led back down the mountain.
He quickly lost all confidence that he was still behind his brother. No one had ventured down this road in a long time. It was just too narrow and overgrown, and the only sign of civilization he passed was the hunter’s cabin that local hoodlums had accidentally burned down last winter.
He should have maintained a closer distance and a sharper eye on his brother. He hit the steering wheel, but there was no such thing as turning around. There were too many trees and rocks crowding in on both sides. He followed the road all the way down the mountain before the path he was on intersected a real road. The same one he’d come in on approximately half a mile south of the men’s reformatory.
He stopped his truck, frustrated, knowing he had next to no chance of finding Travis up there. Not by himself. Hell, probably not even if he called the local sheriff for help. Ten men in separate vehicles could scour this mountain and probably never find him.
Swearing, he smacked the steering wheel again, then grabbed the gear stick. Shifting back into drive, he was about to turn left and head back to the motel, when something not twenty feet dead ahead of him moved in the grass growing tall on the side of the road. Deer out here were plentiful. So were skunks.
He paused, watching to see what it was--and whether or not it was chewing on something. But instead of a browsing animal emerging from the roadside brush, the tip of what he had mistaken to be just an abnormally bright roadside rock slipped back off the road into the grass. That was not a rock, he realized with a start. That had been the tip of a dirty white sneaker.
Just like the kind Tabitha wore.
All the air whooshed out of his lungs.
Slamming the truck back into park, Jeff threw off his seatbelt and jumped out. He ran to her, finagling to keep the bulk of his body from blocking the headlights so he could see exactly who was hiding in the grass. Jesus, if this was her, he was going to paddle her little backside for scaring him like this. He’d passed right by her!
This might not be her. Let this be her.
He parted the weeds and grass, shielding his eyes from the glare of the lights. “Tabitha?”
It was her.
Oh Jesus, what happened?
She lay on her side, knees drawn up to her chest, her head pillowed on her arm while she sucked on a dirty thumb and stared blindly at nothing.
“Tabby?” he asked, lowering himself beside her. He touched her hair, and then her cheek. For all she moved, she could have been a doll. A doll that blinked and sucked her thumb like a little girl as withdrawn into herself as the horrors of the world could make her retreat. Her face was sunburnt pink, streaked by dirt and dried up sweat tracks.
“Tabby, baby?” he coaxed, laying his hand on top of her head.
“Go ‘way,” she croaked.
He swore, looking up in surprise just as a faint light lit up the tall grass around him, adding to the brightness of his own headlights. It was just a soft brightening of the branches and theweeds, but it was enough for him to notice. And when he turned his head, there was no doubt in his mind who was sitting behind the wheel of that distant vehicle, stopped in the middle of the road, watching them back. It was too dark and too far away for him to make out the vehicle, but he knew.
Travis. Because he’d come up here looking for Tabitha, not expecting to be followed and certainly not expecting for Jeff to find her first.
And now he was just sitting there, way back on the road, not closing as any other probation officer might have done. Certainly, he had every legal right to drive right up to them and Jeff would have no recourse but to put her in Travis’s truck.
But he didn’t, and the only reason Jeff could think for why Travis was hanging well back was because his brother knew exactly what condition she was in.
Anger, raw and hot, ignited in the pit of his stomach. Jeff tore his gaze off the distant headlights and got down in the weeds with Tabitha.
“Come on.” He slung an arm under her shoulders, lifting her head up out of the grass. “Let’s get you up.”
Her groan at being moved broke swiftly down into dry sobs. “Go ‘way!”
“I know, baby.” He scooped his other arm under the backs of her knees, paying her feeble protests no attention. “Let’s get you off the ground.”
Lifting her into his arms, he ignored the smell that came with her—sweat, piss, and the unmistakable skunky odor of marijuana. Especially on her hands. He ignored his own temper too, because it was rising ever hotter as he carried her as gently as he could to the car.
“Did you fall in something?” he asked, as he wrangled the car door open. The very clothes she wore were weirdly stiff and yet tacky. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“I wetted my pants.” Her voice was shaky, and higher pitched than normal, but it was the reversal to baby talk that stood out to him the most. Every breath she took was a sobby gasp, but when he got the door open and the interior lights lit her up, there were no tears. Her face was dirty and red, and every inch of skin bared by her clothes was sunburnt worse than his headlights had suggested. Her lips were cracked, as dry, as if she hadn’t had water in a week.
