Chapter 5 Gwen
GWEN
The cloud of steam forming in the air told me I was breathing, but my hands were as frozen as the snow on the ground. My legs, paralyzed.
I’d just killed a man.
How the hell had I just killed a man?
A cough.
Simone coughed.
The paralysis snapped.
Tripping over David’s body, I darted to Simone.
She still lay on the snow-covered gravel, unusually still.
I collapsed to my knees and took her face in my hands.
The headlights behind her were my only luminance.
Her left eye had swelled shut. Her always thick lips had ballooned to twice their size.
Even as I lifted her head from the ground, she still lay limp.
“Simone,” I said, tapping her cheek.
No response.
“Simone, wake up,” I said, shaking her shoulder.
A groan. Only a groan in response. It was better than nothing, but not enough.
I lowered her head to my lap. I looked at her, and a fear I couldn’t bear enveloped my mind.
What if she dies too?
Who would take Junie in? Would the state return her to Simone’s family? The people who’d done nothing when David had traded his toddler like cattle to get out of his debt to a drug dealer? The people who’d let their daughter run from shelter to shelter instead of opening their door to her?
What would I do without my best friend?
“Damn it, Simone!” I shook her again, and her right eye opened. “Thank God. Stay with me, okay?”
“I—I’m alright,” she said, eyes drifting shut again.
“Can you move?” I shook her shoulders once more. “Shit, we gotta get you to a hospital.”
“No.” Her one good eye opened wide. “No hospital.”
“If you could see your face right now—”
“No one can know.” Her words slurred, gargling on all the blood, but she enunciated enough for me to understand. “Can’t let this hurt the—” A cough quaked her frame. Eyes falling shut, she shook her head. “We can’t.”
Can’t let this hurt the ranch. That’s what she was trying to say.
Thousands of women lived within these gates. Thousands of women relied on the anonymity of Rhiannon’s Ranch. Thousands of women followed the same rule when we’d signed the NDA required to live here.
Don’t endanger the ranch.
I ran my fingers through my hair, grabbing two fistfuls at the back.
Would the police believe me if I said it’d been self-defense?
The police hadn’t believed me when I’d told them Troy hit me first. The scratches on his arms, the red splotch across his face, were signs that I was the aggressor.
Not that I had defended myself when he shoved me into a wall with his hands around my throat.
If the cops came, even if they did believe me this time, what about Simone? David had been right about something. The two of them had a court ordered custody agreement.
Simone had violated it when she moved here. She’d done so again when she’d taken on a new identity. Just as we all had. Not a single soul inside this ranch was innocent in the eyes of the law.
It was the only way we could escape our abusers. I’d taken Honey, who legally belonged to Troy. At the very least, I had committed theft.
Many women here had done much worse.
But I didn’t give a shit what the law said. Simone had broken it for a good reason.
The law was not always just. The law did not always protect the innocent. The law often protected the oppressor.
No. I would not do that to everyone behind these gates.
Carefully, I lay Simone back onto the gravel.
And some foreign entity floated into my body. It seeped up from my feet, moving them from my seat on the ground until I found myself standing. Then I was walking. I stood over David’s body, staring down at the pond of maroon beneath him, freezing against the snow-covered rocks.
His frozen, dead eyes stared back.
A shutter coursed up my spine. My stomach wretched, and I had to swallow down vomit.
I pulled his lids down.
The entity possessed me again.
My sticky, blood coated fingers grabbed each of his hands. And they yanked. They pulled. I felt none of his weight. No tension in my wrists or biceps.
Nothing. I felt absolutely nothing.
It was like I was in the eyes of someone else. I saw what was happening. I knew what she was doing. But she wasn’t me. This was a movie playing out before my eyelids. I was a viewer, not a participant.
My mind? My thoughts, my feelings? I didn’t have those anymore.
I was just a viewer.
Whatever possessed me decided to drop him at the conifer bushes along the fence line. They didn’t cover him, not entirely.
Then I watched as I scooped mounds of snow into the stomach of my hoodie. Like I’d forgotten a hamper and had nothing to dump my fresh laundry into.
Scoop some snow, dump it onto his body. Scoop some snow, dump it onto his body.
Over and over until he was a mound of pink, frozen water.
Now on my knees, I did the same thing to the trail of blood. Swept and swept snow on top of it until it covered the crimson.
Then I caught sight of Simone, and the entity released me again.
Slumped into a ball before David’s car, her teeth chattered so loud, I could hear it from here. I ran to her and dropped to my knees. Shaking her shoulders, I fought the cold that bit away at every inch of exposed, damp skin. “Simone. Simone, can you walk?”
A low grumble.
I reached under both armpits. “Come on. At least try.”
Another grumble. Simone tugged back.
I released an audible groan of my own, dropping her. Dragging David’s dead weight was easier.
If she wasn’t going to walk, I needed my car.
The run back to my cabin was as blurry as the fight with David. I knew I’d done it. But I couldn’t recall how.
All I knew was that my cabin was right there, a dozen strides away, and I ripped off my shoes. Why? Because they were covered in blood, I guessed.
I stripped off my sweatpants and my hoodie for the same reason. Blood tainted every surface of them.
Bundling the clothes close to my chest, I burst through the door. Honey barked and howled, rushing toward me, but I couldn’t greet her. The entity wouldn’t let me.
First stop, fireplace. Still burning from the fire I’d lit before going to sleep, I dropped the clothes inside.
Then I was a tornado. Raincoat, gloves, bleach, duct tape, a tarp, and other items I can’t recall. They were in my bag, and I ran out the door. Then I was in my car, a cloud of snow floating over my taillights. Before I knew it, I was beside David’s car, jamming mine into park.
I jumped out and ran to Simone. Grabbing her beneath her armpits and sliding her across the gravel wasn’t much more difficult than hauling lumber up the steps for my fireplace.
In heartbeats, I had her inside my car. Her head and torso draped over the center console, feet jutting out the door.
But a quick forceful yank had her nestled neatly in the passenger seat.
I slammed the door shut. The heat blasted through the vents. Hopefully, she’d wake up soon.
The entity returned as soon as Simone was safe beside me.
The car whipped a one eighty. I don’t remember the drive back to my cabin.
I vaguely recall dragging her inside like a drunken college girl.
Up the steps, through the threshold, and laying her on the floor.
I tucked a pillow beneath her head and draped a blanket over her frame, before rushing back out the door.
The entity stayed with me as I unloaded my bag by David’s trunk.
It took over while I flipped him onto the tarp from the mound of snow wrapped him in the thick blue plastic.
It rolled duct tape around the tarp. But it didn’t do a good job, because when it dragged him across the snow, his feet slipped out, and all I could think of was refried beans slipping out of my burrito at lunch today.
That’s what his feet looked like. Refried beans slipping out of a burrito.
Thinking about it that way made swallowing my bile bearable as I shoved them back into the plastic.
The entity didn’t return until I was hauling him into the trunk. Attempting to, anyway. I couldn’t deadlift a two-hundred-pound man.
But the entity could. It was smart enough, too, to lay the other tarp into the trunk first.
It was smart enough to return to the field it had dragged him through and churn it up.
It dropped my body to the ground, making snow angels to disguise the drag marks.
It even allowed a few tears to run from my eyes, a few anxious gasps and pants to float through my lungs, as I stared up at the star speckled cerulean sky.
It drenched bleach over the pool of maroon, diluting it to a pale shade of pink.
It was smart enough to put on my raincoat and tuck my hair into the hood and slip a fresh pair of gloves over my fingers before opening the driver’s side door of David’s car. It drove me to my cabin and led me inside.
For a heartbeat, only a heartbeat, it left me. For that single instant, I was in my home, and I was safe.
Until I locked eyes on Simone. She still lay on the floor, Honey curled up beside her, and her chest rose and fell with deep breaths. But I hardly believed it was her. Blood painted her face. The swelling had ballooned her cheeks to twice their size.
She was alive, but she was not safe.
Neither of us were safe.
Then I was in the shower. Then I was drying off.
I was stepping into a pair of inconspicuous black sweats.
A gray, indiscernible T-shirt. The two inch thick, puffer snow suit.
Also black. As unnoticeable in the Montana mountains as jeans and a hoodie.
All my hair, slicked into a bun and covered with a beanie.
A pair of sunglasses over my eyes. New gloves lined my fingers.
A paper mask tucked in place around my ears.
The entity did it all.
It led me out the door and behind the wheel of David’s car. And it drove.