Chapter 2
Sadie
“Come on,” I groan, fighting against the rusted barbed wire. I twist my pliers, the muscles screaming in my arm to just give up the splice in the fence. It’s not like the horses are going to get out.
But I push through it, creating an ugly knot with the wire.
Good enough. That’s good enough.
I wipe the sweat from my brow, and peer up at a pair of buzzards circling past the north end of the field. The way they drift, you’d think they were bored. Out here, the only thing hungrier than birds are the men who hide behind their badges.
But at least vultures are honest about their sickness.
I frown and then shove my pliers into the back pocket of my damp jeans. As I do, Flint lets out a resounding bark, carrying all the way across the ranch from the back porch. My chest damn near seizes.
“Flint!” I spin around, searching for any sight of my American Gascon Hound, a nasty reject from a mountain lion hunting outrigger.
He turned on his handler and ended up here.
Just like me.
I finally spot him, bounding down the dirt path that leads to the old decrepit barn in the far north pasture. “Flint, no!” My voice carries loud enough the horses nicker from the adjacent field.
My one-hundred-thirty-five-pound dog slams on his brakes, nearly tumbling over himself, and comes bounding in my direction instead. The clouds have finally cleared from last night’s storm, and the sun glints off the ugly scar across Flint’s black and blue face.
“You can’t be running off,” I say to him, stroking his head. “You can’t leave me.” My heart skips a beat, and I peer around us, an eerie feeling settling in the pit of my stomach.
I twist my wrist and check my watch. It’s that time.
And right on cue, I hear the engine. Low and smooth, thick tires on gravel. I squeeze my eyes shut and grab my dog’s collar. Flint tenses right beside me, bristling.
I don’t open my eyes until he’s within spitting distance.
The white sheriff’s truck rolls to a stop, the window already gliding down as I finally open my eyes. I can feel the pressure in my temples, building as I meet the hazel eyes of my husband.
“Afternoon, Sadie,” Clayton calls, a smirk on his face.
Flint lets out a low growl.
He ignores him, and his deputy, Nate, bursts into laughter.
“You working hard, or hardly working, Sadie?”
“Shut up, Nate,” Clayton scoffs. “We both know she doesn’t know the meaning of hard work. That’s why she’s out here.” He meets my eyes. “Learning her lesson, and lucky she’s not in jail.” He pauses, his eyes raking over me. “I expected you to be at the house.”
My stomach knots up. “Why?”
His lip ticks upward. “I’m hungry.”
My head throbs. “Right. Sorry. The fence… It… Um…”
“Always the fence, huh?” He puts the truck back in gear. “I’ll be off at seven this evening.”
“Okay,” I mumble, holding his gaze.
“I want steak.”
“Yes, sir,” the reply comes automatically. Nate chuckles from inside the truck, and Clayton grins.
“See you later, honey. Be a good girl, get your work done.” He shoots me a wink, and then pulls away, whipping a U-turn in the middle of the yard. The tires slip as he floors it, leaving me coughing in a cloud of dust.
I stand there until he’s gone, a chill left in his wake despite the ninety-degree temperature. Slowly, I force my fingers free from around Flint’s collar, my hand aching.
“Someday, we’re going to get out of here,” I say, but the words are empty. This is my family’s ranch. And I can’t leave it.
Because I’m on house arrest.
So, I continue to walk the fence, tracing each post, re-securing the line, checking for any weak spots.
Flint lets out another bark toward the old barn, and I eye him, shaking my head.
“I don’t like it when you bark at nothing,” I tell him, rolling my tight shoulders. Every muscle in my body aches from the hard work I do alone. Clayton fired the ranch hands.
All that’s left is me.
I pause, wipe the sweat from my eyelids, and look up the hill to where the house sits, a good quarter mile of open ground away.
Then I look down to the barn, tucked into the draw at the bottom, barely visible.
Maybe two hundred yards. A straight run if you don’t trip in the gopher holes or step on a snake.
Where Flint’s full attention rests.
“Fine, we’ll investigate.” I pull my fence pliers back out of my pocket, just in case I need to use them. They’re all I have to defend myself.
Clayton locked the guns away. I’m a danger to myself, apparently.
But he’s probably right about that.
A slap of grief hits my chest, a little burst of giggling invading my mind in the most painful way. I push it away, and I urge Flint forward.
“Let’s go.”
Flint bounds off toward the half-collapsed building, and barks at the front sliding door. I jog after him, and yank it open, ducking inside as a sheet of red-brown dust tries to follow me in. The door automatically slams back behind me.
Fuck, I hate this place.
My dog goes off immediately. His bark explodes in the structure, rattling the walls, but I can’t see a damn thing right now. I blink viciously, trying to adjust to the dark.
“Flint,” I hiss. “Calm down.”
Hay and oil and the old, pissy stink of a barn that’s been half-abandoned for three summers straight since it collapsed on the far end overwhelm my senses. My ears ring with the chipping bay of my hound, and I desperately scan my surroundings, my eyes finally adjusting.
What the hell is he barking at?
I move toward the workbench at the far side, where Flint has rooted himself in the floor. I don’t let myself think about what I’d do if the barn collapsed the rest of the way, and how bad it might hurt to be pummeled by a metal beam overhead. But I do envision it, like I do everything.
Then I hear it. In between Flint’s barks.
I freeze.
Breathing. Ragged, off-beat, a kind of ugly snoring like a tractor running out of gas. At first, I think it’s a coyote, maybe a dying stray dog, but then I see the blur of something that’s not quite animal, sprawled in the back right corner by the old grain sacks. Exactly what Flint is focused on.
Holy fucking shit.
I creep toward the human being lying on the floor, my heart hammering in my chest. My vision continues to adjust, and I see it—him—flat on his back, legs splayed, arms out. His jeans are caked with mud, his right leg rolled up to above his knee.
Oh my god. Oh my god.
He’s bad off. The wound is obvious. His right calf, torn up and ballooned to double size, is the color of old eggplant. A bandana is tied above the knee, and under it, a set of knife marks, X-shaped, leaking thick blood.
A snake got him, I think immediately. I should call an ambulance. But I can’t.
I crouch down, careful not to get too close. He smells fucking awful, like sweat and blood and rot. Every survival instinct is telling me to back out, lock the barn, scream for help over the radio to Clayton. Let them deal with it.
But… something stops me.
I set my pliers down and check for a pulse, which is wild and erratic but still there. Secondly, I check his face. Do I know this guy? Is it one of Clayton’s men?
Because if it is, I’ll leave him here to die.
I take in his jawline, forehead, and the ragged mess of blond hair with weeks of unshaven stubble. He’s familiar, but… why?
My brow furrows as I lean away from him, racking my brain.
And then it hits me in one big wave. He’s not someone I know, but someone I’ve seen. My brain flips through every flyer posted in the post office, every news alert that’s played on the TV for weeks, and I place him immediately.
Cade Kellan, the psycho Marine.
The one who escaped military prison and made a run for it. The one who’s wanted for two counts of capital murder—and who knows what else.
I tilt my head as I peer down at him, my heart now racing. He might be dangerous, but right now, he’s just a human being, mangled and barely hanging on.
And that’s a kind of suffering I’m more familiar with than most.
If I call an ambulance, this is it. He goes to trial and will get the death penalty.
“This is a death sentence, too,” I reason with myself, as Flint’s bark finally ceases. “But if you die in my barn, then you’ll go out a legend—the man they never found.”
For some reason, that’s appealing. Even if this guy is a fucking monster.
I guess I’m just used to them.
I lean forward and unspool the bandana, slow, careful, and try to see what’s left of the wound.
The cuts are hasty, the kind a desperate person makes when the pain is so bad you’ll do anything to get it out of you.
He’s tried to bleed the venom, maybe even tried to dig it out.
The edges are swelling up like bread dough, and I know that in an hour his leg will be useless, if it isn’t already.
He wakes just enough to jerk his head, his eyes rolling under the lids. “Don’t,” he slurs, his voice cracked.
I jump, and then push the fear down. “I’m not going to hurt you, just be still.”
He tries to move again, but the effort knocks him out again.
Thank God.
I try to remember what to do in this scenario, recalling what my late father said to do about a rattlesnake bite.
Elevate it first.
“Right,” I nod to myself, and stand to my feet, ignoring the lightheaded buzz in my head from the heat and my own dehydration. I grab old, rotted sacks of grain and start stacking them at Cade’s right foot.
“You,” he murmurs. “Fuck you.”
I glance over at him, meeting a pair of cold eyes, wide and tracking my every movement. “I’m elevating your leg,” I say, my voice strained. “Just let me help you.”
He blinks, as if the words are confusing, and then closes his eyes.
I finish stacking the feed until it’s at about a forty-five-degree angle, and then go for his right ankle. “I just need to lift your leg.” Carefully, I reach down, wrapping my hands around his boot, eyeing him.
His eyes fly open, and I brace for him to swing at me or something.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he just groans as I lift his leg up and onto the feed. I get his foot placed, and then let out a breath.
“Why?” Cade’s voice oozes with pain.
My gaze bounces from his foot to his face, his eyes leaving me feeling uneasy. “My cousin is married to a toxicologist in Houston.” I don’t mention that I haven’t talked to them in nearly six years.
The protocol remains the same.
“I took the bandana off,” I gesture to the ratty rag on the floor, explaining mostly as a means to calm my own nervous system.
“Tourniquets are actually bad. They’ll cause all the venom to eat away at the tissue and muscle in your leg.
It’ll have to be amputated, or you’ll lose the ability to use it, at a minimum. ”
“I’m going to die anyway,” Cade mutters, dropping his head back on the dirt.
“Um, yeah, maybe,” I swallow hard, folding my arms across my chest. “But actually, there’s only like a ten to twenty percent chance that you’ll die.
The mortality rate isn’t quite as high—though it’s less than one percent, if you actually, like, go to the hospital.
” I snap my mouth shut then, forcing myself to stop rambling.
“No hospital,” he barks, jarring me. “No hospital.”
“I know,” I say, swallowing hard and taking a step back. “I can’t call one anyway.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Why?”
“I don’t have a phone… anymore.” My heart squeezes as I admit the truth out loud. It’s been years since I really talked to someone that wasn’t Clayton or his posse.
And now, it’s an AWOL Marine with a capital murder charge.
“I should probably clean out the wound and get you water,” I gesture to his leg and then look at him.
But he doesn’t hear me. He’s already passed out again.