Chapter 27
NOLAN
When Donna Hayes opened the door, her first words were, “What did they do now?”
As for Nolan, his gaze fixed on the dish towel full of ice cubes she was holding against her left eye. Even then, her face was swelling.
“You okay?” he asked, and she gave a forced, nervous laugh.
“I just walked into a, uh, door. Yes, a door.”
A fist-shaped door?
“You want me to drive you to the hospital?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine.” She didn’t sound sure of that. “Really, I will. Can I offer you a drink? I made lemonade this morning, only the frozen kind, but it’s fresh.”
“Sure, I’ll have a glass.”
Donna was a woman who needed to keep busy, to find a use for hands that fidgeted constantly otherwise.
She took a china jug out of the refrigerator and filled two highball glasses, then handed one to Nolan.
Alexa had stayed in the car with Juno, on the phone to Jay Monroe about a problem with a zero-day exploit, whatever one of those was.
“Did the boys go running around on your land again?” Donna asked, and the quake in her voice suggested she already knew the answer.
“Yeah, they were up the hill with a rifle. I just hope they didn’t break through what’s left of the fence this time.”
“They’ll only be looking for rabbits. Meat’s so expensive to buy these days. I’ll talk with them, I will.”
“They weren’t shooting at rabbits. They were shooting at my dog.”
“At Juno?” Her hands flew to her cheeks. “I’m sure it was a mistake. They probably thought she was a deer.”
“Mistake or not, they were still on my land, and they still fired at her.”
“You’re sure it was Wyatt and Tucker?” she asked with a note of desperation.
“Got a real good look at them. Did they come back here?”
“Yes, but they were gone in a hot minute. I told them to stay put, but they took right off again. Kept talking about little green men. I asked them what they meant because what they were saying didn’t make any sense, but…
Boys will be boys, that’s what Bo always says.
” She promised again that she’d talk with them, but Nolan had heard the same pledge twenty times before.
“Will they listen?” he asked, confronting one of the elephants in the room.
She bit her lip, and if Nolan wasn’t mistaken, her eyes went watery too. “I mean, I’ll try.”
“You’ll try, but they only listen to Bo?”
“Bo doesn’t think it’s fair the way rich folks fence off all the land around here. How’s a man supposed to feed his family if he can’t fill the freezer with a deer or two?”
“There are hunting zones on public lands.” Not that Nolan expected Bo Hayes to pay attention to licences or tags. “It’s just not safe to go around shooting willy-nilly.”
“Maybe you could try wearing orange?”
Hard to do when he was skinny-dipping.
“I shouldn’t have to dodge bullets on my own property. My girlfriend was with me today, and the boys scared her half to death.”
Okay, so Alexa had acted calmer than Nolan, but she sure hadn’t been happy about the situation. Nolan didn’t feel too guilty using a little poetic licence, not when the Hayes family had been causing him headaches for years.
“Your girlfriend? The city girl you were with at the Cranstons’ place? I didn’t realise you’d met someone serious, not after Lisanne up and left like that.”
Thanks for the reminder. “Alexa is an old friend. We hadn’t seen each other in a few years, but we ran into each other a couple of months back and decided to give things a try.”
A try. That made it sound as if failure was an option. Had the mention of marriage freaked Alexa out? Nolan thought it might have, but he’d kept his feelings bottled up for years, and now they were bubbling over like warm champagne.
“I’m happy for you, Nolan.” Donna didn’t sound happy. She sounded sad. “Maybe we’ll meet her properly someday?”
“She travels a lot. You want me to stick around to talk with Bo?”
“Oh, no, that’s a bad idea. Bo don’t listen to nobody when it comes to the boys, not even Deputy Warnock.”
That wasn’t surprising. Jim Warnock had the backbone of a jellyfish and the personality of limp arugula.
He’d only gotten the job because his daddy used to be Sheriff.
Bo wouldn’t rein in his sons, and Donna couldn’t.
And Nolan was sick of dealing with the fallout.
He felt guilty for getting firm with an abused woman, but something had to change.
“Well, if Bo doesn’t make the effort, y’all will be visiting them in jail.”
“I—”
Before she could offer another weak apology, the door creaked open and Alexa walked in, holding out a bottle of water.
“Juno’s thirsty, and I can’t get the lid off.” She peered at Donna. “What happened to your eye?”
Fuck.
“I walked into a door,” Donna said, more confident of her story the second time around. “Just tripped by accident.”
“Yeah, right. Unless you face-planted on a fist-shaped doorknob.” Alexa glanced around. “You don’t even have doorknobs. Does he hit you often?”
“No?” It came out as a question, riding on a tremble. “Not really. Bo has a bit of a temper, is all, and I forgot to get the milk. I should have gone to the store yesterday.”
“Well, he could have gone to the store. He’s the one with the truck and the driver’s licence, am I right?
” Alexa was absolutely right, and whether it was a good guess or she’d hacked the DMV was anybody’s guess.
Nolan suspected the latter. “No milk, but fifty bucks says there’s beer in the fridge.
” She took two quick steps to the refrigerator, pulled open the door to reveal a six-pack of Bud Light, and screwed her face up in disgust at the rancid odour that spilled out.
“Called it. We’ll give you a ride to the hospital. ”
“It’s nothing.” Donna touched two fingers to her face and winced. “I swear.”
“With that amount of swelling, you most likely have a fractured cheekbone. After we take you to the hospital, we’ll take you to the sheriff’s department.”
“No, no, no, I can’t. He’d kill me.” The words popped out, and Donna clapped her hands over her mouth as if she could push them back in. “I mean, Bo wouldn’t be happy about that.”
“Lady, I hate to break it to you, but he’s gonna kill you anyway, sooner or later.”
Now Donna broke down properly. Terrific.
“What else can I do? I don’t got nowhere else to go.”
“Can’t you stay with your sister for a while?” Nolan asked.
“That’s the first place Bo looks, and the last time, he fought with Joey. My brother-in-law,” she clarified. “Joey got his nose broken.”
“Your parents?”
“There’s only Pops left, and he thinks Bo is a good guy.”
Alexa rolled her eyes. “Just go pack.”
“But—”
“Your husband has literally no redeeming features. He uses you as a human punching bag, he’s a shitty father, and he doesn’t know how to buy groceries or do housework.” Ouch. “We’ll find you an apartment.”
Donna cried harder. “I don’t got no money.”
“Well, I have plenty. Why are you still standing there?”
“Bo’ll lose his mind.” Her voice cracked. “He said he’d put me in the ground if I tried leaving again.”
“It’s the neighbourly thing to go to a funeral, right? Do you want burial or cremation? Open casket or closed? Closed would probably be better.”
Donna ran from the room. The Hayes home was small, more of a shack than a house, and they soon heard the sound of retching coming from the only bathroom.
“Damn, Alexa.”
“What? Someone needed to say it.”
Alexa had called Donna a punching bag, but that wasn’t entirely right.
She was more of a bowling pin. No matter how many times she got smacked down by her husband, she got right back up again and stood in the line of fire, exactly the same way as she had before.
She’d learned to weather the hard knocks, but she had no idea how to handle a tiny human cannonball like Alexa.
And Alexa didn’t care how much carnage she left in her wake.
Nolan tried putting a hand on her arm. “Go easy on Donna.”
“A bit of a temper?” She began pacing the kitchen, but the kitchen was only five steps long. “If a man punched me in the face, I’d fry his balls with a Taser. Okay, I’d get Jez to do it because she’s better at that stuff than I am, but it’s basically the same thing.”
Nolan winced, even though he’d never laid a hand on a woman and never intended to. He absolutely believed Jerry Knight would send fifty thousand volts through his crown jewels if he crossed that line.
“I know you only want to help, but you’re asking her to abandon her kids and everything she knows.”
“She needs to learn that this isn’t normal or acceptable. Think of it this way—Donna gets a fresh start, and Bo and the boys will have to find new hobbies besides trespassing.”
“What do you mean, new hobbies?”
Searching for Donna? Plotting revenge on the people who helped her escape? Finding a new victim to take her place?
“Cooking, laundry, cleaning…”
“I doubt they’ll do any cleaning.”
“Two out of three ain’t bad.” Alexa lowered her voice to a whisper. “I was going to confiscate Bo’s money, but he has, like, forty-seven bucks in his bank account. Taking his wife is the perfect alternative. I mean, it’ll definitely be more of an inconvenience.”
In the time they’d been apart, Nolan had almost forgotten just how warped some of Alexa’s thinking was.
But he couldn’t disagree with her goal. For years, he’d been dropping gentle hints to Donna that Bo was a monster, but either she didn’t see it or she didn’t want to.
Nolan had no doubt that Alexa was right when she said there’d be a homicide someday if Donna stayed put.
He tried that box breathing thing again. In on four, hold, out on four.
“If Bo finds out we helped…”
“I’m not going to tell him, are you?”
“No, but—”
Alexa began humming the funeral march.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine, we’ll do it.”