Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“Just stop with the threats,” she snapped.
“I’m not going to do anything except try to save this man.
He needs a hospital, but I understand you don’t want to do that right now.
I can make do with what I have in the barn.
Livestock-grade ketamine and antibiotics.
They’re locked in a cabinet. I can be there and back in ten minutes. ”
“You’re not going alone,” he said. “You run, your family dies.”
“You have my family,” Ellen said evenly. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
“How do I know you don’t have a gun out there? A radio? A phone? No.”
“I can’t promise he’ll make it,” Ellen said, “but if there’s a chance—any chance—I need those meds.”
Brock nodded at Rena. “Take the girl.”
“No!” Ellen snapped.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Lyla said, already moving. “Just tell me what to get.”
Ellen’s gut twisted at the thought of her daughter outside with Rena, but she had no choice. She leaned in close, spoke clearly. “Ketamine’s in a blue box. Antibiotics—penicillin and ceftiofur—white vials, red and green caps. Don’t forget the flashlight.”
Rena and Lyla left, rain and wind blowing in as they went out.
“Is that why you were here earlier pretending to be with the county?” Ellen asked the man. “So that you could case my house and determine whether you could just break in?”
“No,” he said.
She waited; he didn’t say anything else.
Ellen turned to Margery. “Are you okay? Do you need water?”
“I’m okay,” Margery said, her voice shaking.
Penny took one of her hands. “They’re not going to hurt us,” Penny said with quiet strength, then turned to the man. “Right?”
“No, ma’am. I just want my brother to live. That’s all. I’m sorry about the trouble. I just need my family safe. You can understand that.”
His voice was almost earnest. Ellen wanted to believe him—but didn’t.
“You came here under false pretenses,” she said. “You’re not with the county. Why? Tell me!”
He hesitated, then said, “You save Sammy, I’ll tell you.”
“And Greg Baldwin?”
His jaw tightened. “We didn’t mean for him to get hurt. He wasn’t supposed to be home.”
Just like the other robberies this week, Ellen thought. What was going on with these people? Burglars with hearts of gold? She almost laughed at the thought.
Ten minutes later, Lyla and Rena returned, soaked to the bone. Rena held the supplies in a plastic bin. Lyla’s expression caught Ellen, wide-eyed, alarmed. But she didn’t say anything.
Ellen filed it away and turned back to Sam.
The dining room was the only space with halfway decent lighting and close to the kitchen for sterilizing tools.
Ellen ordered Rena to boil a pot of water while she checked Sam’s vitals.
His fever was of the most concern. She would prefer to have an IV to inject the antibiotics and ketamine into, but she didn’t. She would have to make do.
She did the math on a scratch pad and adjusted the dosage of the medication. She prepared three shots.
Once the water was boiling, she slipped on latex gloves and told Rena to do the same, then put her forceps and scalpel into the water and rinsed them with vodka that she had in the cabinet.
Sam’s abdomen was taut and warm to the touch—bloated. The wound had started to scab at the edges, but it was oozing pus, dark and foul-smelling.
Ellen injected ketamine into his thigh. His body jerked briefly, then slackened. He was barely conscious when he came in; now he was out.
“He won’t feel pain now,” she told Rena.
With a second syringe, she injected ceftiofur directly into a vein at the bend of his arm, then followed with a broad-spectrum penicillin.
“You’re really gonna cut into him?” Rena asked, pale.
“Unless you want the infection to kill him before you can get him to the hospital.” She was more concerned about internal bleeding, and didn’t know if she would be able to stop it.
Ellen took a deep breath. She sliced into the edge of the wound, carefully enlarging it to expose the embedded buckshot. Sam moaned, muscles twitching involuntarily under the sedative.
Every pellet she removed came with fresh pus and tissue. She worked slowly, methodically, gripping the tiny fragments with forceps, wiping blood and infection away, whispering to herself with every extraction.
“One … two … three…”
By the sixth pellet, her gloves were slick. Her fingers trembled.
“Come on,” she whispered.
The seventh was lodged deep near his liver. She hesitated, then angled her forceps and eased it free. The eighth she nearly missed—it sat just beneath the skin near his navel, and removing it caused a sudden gush of blood.
Dammit, this wasn’t good. “Pressure, I need pressure!” she barked.
Rena scrambled to grab a clean towel, pressing it down with shaking hands.
When the bleeding stopped, Ellen poured aluminum sulfate powder generously into the wound—old school, rough, but the best she had. It fizzed as it reacted with the exposed tissue. Then, she packed the cavity with gauze and wrapped the abdomen in layers of clean bandage.
Sam was pale, but still breathing.
Ellen leaned back, sweating, her head aching. It was the best she could do under the circumstances.
“He’s unconscious,” Rena whispered, leaning over him, eyes red and wild. “Is he still…? Is he…?” She looked up at Ellen, imploring her for an answer.
“Yes, he’s alive for now. If he has internal bleeding, I can’t fix that here.”
Tears streamed down Rena’s face. “It’s my fault. All of it. I just wanted to help him … I didn’t mean for your daughter to get hurt. I was scared. I—”
“Save it.”
Ellen got up and went to the kitchen. The man followed her, stood in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room where he could see everyone. She pulled off the gloves and tossed them in the trash, rinsed the blood from her arms and scrubbed with soap and hot water.
“You want to help your brother?” she snapped. “Get him to a hospital the minute the rain stops. If you wait, you’ll lose him.”
She glanced at the man. He still held the gun, but it was lowered to his side. “Is he gonna make it?”
“I don’t know,” Ellen replied honestly. She showed him the bowl of bloodied pellets. “These were in his gut. There’s still a bullet in his leg, but I didn’t touch that. Too risky, and it doesn’t look infected.”
His jaw tightened and he nodded once. “Thank you.”
“What’s really going on?” Ellen asked him. “You promised to tell me.”
“Mitchell Robinson hired me,” he said quietly. “No one was supposed to be home. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I sincerely hope Baldwin makes it.”
It took Ellen a moment to realize what this man had said.
“Mitchell Robinson hired you to steal from Greg Baldwin?”
“And others,” he said.
“What could they possibly have that he wanted?”
“Contracts. They were all signed last week but there was an error in it. He needed the contracts back.”
“That makes no sense. If the contracts are signed, they’re signed. He’s what, stealing them back and then…?”
The large man shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me everything, other than where to go and when the house would be empty. Take the contract, break the computer, steal a couple other things so no one knew what we were really after.”
“But most contracts are electronic. There’s going to be a record.”
“He had someone with the skills to hack into the signing program and delete the clause, and I guess the forged docs were the ones filed in the recorder’s office. He just didn’t want anyone to come up with a different version.”
“Three houses…” Then Ellen realized why he was at her house earlier today. “How did you know I had a copy of the Coulters’ contract?”
He laughed humorlessly. “Robinson has cameras everywhere. He saw you leave the Coulters this morning, and when I found just a copy of the contract, he assumed that you had the original.”
“And you took it.”
He nodded.
She had only skimmed the contract and didn’t remember the details.
Only that George was confident that Verdacorp couldn’t exercise any of the mineral rights.
She saw a clause related to that, but she couldn’t remember it verbatim.
But if one of those clauses was removed, it could make all the difference.
“He really wants that plot of land,” the man said. “Those acres between his property and the Coulters’ property, where he has the right-of-way. Like, desperate.”
“And you don’t know why he’s so desperate?”
“No. I’d tell you if I knew. You saved Sam, I owe you.”
“My daughter—” she began when she heard Penny calling for her.
“Ellie? Margery needs you.”
“The pregnant woman?” Ellen said to him. “She’s showing signs of preeclampsia. If her blood pressure spikes, she and the baby are both in danger. You keeping a gun on her isn’t helping.”
He said nothing.
Ellen took a moment to compose herself, then walked into the living room, brushing past the man with the gun. He followed.
She took Margery’s blood pressure. It was 150 over 80. “Lie down,” she said gently but firmly. “Close your eyes. Breathe slow. In. Out. You’re going to be fine.”
“Mom,” Lyla whispered, kneeling beside Margery, voice low. “Ryan’s truck is out front. They came in Ryan’s truck.”
Ellen’s blood ran cold.
Where was Ryan?
Ellen touched Lyla’s arm—I heard you—then rose slowly, heart thudding in her chest.
She turned to their captors.
“Where is my daughter?” Her voice was surprisingly steady. “I did what I promised. Now tell me where Avery is.”
Rena looked to the man. “Brock,” she said, her voice quivering.
The man didn’t answer either of them.
Ellen took a step forward, voice rising. “What did you do?” Her breath hitched. “What happened to my daughter?”