Chapter 23
Layla
Russell holds me on his lap in the bath for the second time in as many days, kissing my crown while I cry into his chest as we wait for my stronger pain meds to kick in since the over-the-counter meds won’t be able to touch the level of pain I’m in. If I had kept better track of my cycle and hadn’t been so distracted by my other injuries, I wouldn’t have let Russell fall asleep inside me, waking up and gingerly pulling out with his cock streaked red.
It doesn’t matter how many times he’s assured me he’s not disgusted that I started my period in the middle of the night or how many times he watched me throw up this morning before I could finally keep my pills down without cringing, I still want to crawl through the woods, find wherever Allen was buried, and join him if only to escape how mortified I am.
“You really don’t have to stay in here with me,” I say with a teary hiccup, tensing when another cramp has me cupping a hand over my mouth to suppress the urge to vomit again.
Russell toes the faucet to add more hot water when the bath cools, then tips my chin up with concern knitting his dark gray brows. “Do you want me to leave?”
I slowly shake my head, my lips trembling, and he curls his arm around my back to hold me closer, his hand drifting to mine on my belly. “Thirty days,” he murmurs.
“‘Til what?”
Either he doesn’t answer or I don’t hear him, the pain meds finally taking the barest edge off my cramps, allowing me to relax enough to fall asleep in Russell’s arms.
What feels like minutes later, someone knocks tentatively on our bathroom door, and it’s a struggle to open my eyes. “Hey, Russell? The Sheriff is here with a bunch more officers,” Cora says nervously. “They’ve brought dogs with them, too.”
I jerk upright, splashing water over the sides of the tub. “No, no, no.” I clutch Russell’s shoulders with fear making it harder to find my breath. “No!”
“Dad?” Paul knocks on the door. “Mom’s here, and she says—”
“Get your butt out here right now and explain to me why our son was arrested on your watch!” a pissed-off woman yells, pounding the door. Renee , Russell’s ex-wife. A scuffle ensues, and someone kicks the door. “Don’t you—stop it! Francisco! Let go of me!”
“Christ,” Russell says with a deep sigh, sliding me off his lap. “I was hoping we’d have longer before they showed up.”
“You can’t go out there!” I scramble on top of him, wishing I was strong enough to hold him down, but he rises easily with me in his arms.
“I’m sorry, darlin’. I have to,” he says, cautiously stepping out of the bath and setting me down on the cold stone vanity, wrapping a towel around my shoulders.
I knock the towel off and try to circle his waist, sluggish from the meds. “But they’re going to arrest you.”
“I know.” Russell swipes away the tears falling down my cheeks with his thumbs. He pecks the corner of my lips before stepping out of my arms and turning to wrap a towel around his waist. With his hand on the doorknob, he says, “But I won’t be gone for long.”
“You don’t know that!” I hop off the vanity, gritting my teeth to keep from doubling over, pain shooting down my hips and thighs. I hobble toward him while tucking my towel in around my chest.
As soon as he opens the door, we’re met with Trace and Cora’s worried faces and a den of angry voices from the front of the house, multiple people talking over one another. Renee is still hollering somewhere in the background when I follow Russell into our closet to get dressed.
Water drips from the tips of my hair, wetting the heather gray T-shirt of Russell’s that I hurriedly pull on. I stuff my feet into the panties and black bike shorts he hands me from one of my drawers he filled with new clothes, as he pulls on a similar T-shirt and worn blue jeans. Trying hard to keep my balance, I race back in and out of the bathroom with a pad in place, and yet, by the time I make it into the living room, Russell’s hands are already cuffed behind his back. Sheriff pushes him through the open front door while officers spread out in the house, searching through our things.
It’s the nightmare from last night playing out all over again as Russell is led down the stone front steps to a cruiser pulled up to the porch where everyone is now gathered, dogs barking in the distance. Trace cradles Gauge in one arm, looping the other over Cora’s shoulders. Paul stands on the other side, arms crossed beside Renee and an older man I assume is her husband, Francisco.
“Please, please don’t take him!” I yell at Sheriff, jumping down the porch steps while my head swims, knowing it’s fruitless. Sheriff isn’t going to release Russell just because I asked nicely, but I can’t stop from trying. “Please!”
Sheriff presses down on Russell’s head, making him duck into the cruiser, then slams the back door closed. “Enough, goddamnit!” Sheriff yells, making me flinch backward. His face is drawn and haggard beneath his cowboy hat, his uniform buttoned up unevenly as if he was in as much of a rush to get dressed as we were, driving or flying all night to get back into town. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another with you, Layla!”
I go white as a sheet. Never in my life would I have expected Sheriff to talk to me in such a way. My vision goes hazy, the gray stubble on his cheeks the same shade as my stepfather’s. I sway and slap a hand against his cruiser to keep from falling. This is the very reason I avoid the more powerful pain meds, even if they do work better at lessening my pain. I can’t function when I need to. When Russell needs me.
“Now you listen here, missy,” Sheriff says harshly, bending low in my face, the brim of his hat shielding us. “Do exactly what Mr. Montes tells you to, honey,” he whispers so only the two of us can hear in a softer tone. He straightens and squares his jaw, raising his voice. “Or else you’ll end up in a cell next to him. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” I whisper, stumbling back into a hard chest. I don’t have to look up to know it’s Paul’s large hands that drop on top of my shoulders and squeeze.
Sheriff narrows his eyes at Paul, then shakes his head, walking around his cruiser to get in on the driver’s side, making the turn onto the lawn as Max had. He speeds off with two more cruisers behind him, leaving more damage in his wake.
I lurch to the side as soon as they’re out of view, clutching my stomach and landing on my tender knees to throw up in the trimmed bushes neatly lined in a row along the edge of the porch.
“Is she pregnant?” Renee asks with a gasp from behind.
“No,” I cry, my pulse hammering and my lips dry. I can’t tell what is a uterine cramp or an abdominal spasm as I continue to heave. Blood rushes in my ears, dimming the voices around me, the bushes blurring into one dark green blob.
“Are you ok?” Cora asks, kneeling beside me to hold my hair back.
“Uh huh,” I answer, my words hard to find. “I’m on my period. Makes me throw up sometimes.” I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth and push off the ground, attempting to stand. But no sooner than I do, I stumble sideways and land on my hip, rolling over onto my knees, heaving and coughing so hard that I can’t breathe.
“Oh shoot, shoot! You’re bleeding!” Cora yells, her voice turning tinny.
“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 off the 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 as the 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.