Chapter Thirteen
Twila
Prickle is gone by the time we get to Whiskey’s house. Apparently, imaginary woodland creatures have better survival instincts than I do.
Glamaw stands on the back porch in a pink robe, one hand planted on her hip and the other holding a flashlight like she fully intends to beat something to death with it if necessary.
Wren is pressed against the screen door behind her in unicorn pajamas, her dark hair sticking up on one side like she got yanked out of bed and immediately joined a neighborhood watch.
Whiskey kills the Harley engine and is off before I get my helmet undone. “Thought I told you to keep her inside.”
Glamaw raises the flashlight. “Thought I raised you not to take that tone with your mama.”
Whiskey stops so abruptly I nearly laugh before I get the helmet off. He points toward Wren instead. “Wren.”
“She’s inside.”
“You’re outside.”
“I’m grown.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Got it honest.”
My laugh slips out anyway.
Whiskey turns his head. “Don’t encourage her.”
“I like her.”
“Course you do.”
Glamaw finally gives me her full attention, looking from me to Whiskey and back again with the frightening maternal efficiency of a woman who could probably reconstruct a murder from laundry stains and facial expressions alone. “You’re the missing deputy.”
I straighten automatically. “Yes, ma’am.”
“The one my son kidnapped.”
Whiskey’s shoulders drop like he just realized bringing me home also meant introducing his mother to the evidence. “Mama.”
“What?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He ain’t involved.”
I laugh harder, and Wren presses her face closer to the screen.
“Daddy kidnapped her?”
Whiskey points at his mother. “See what you did?”
Glamaw shrugs. “She’d hear eventually.”
“Not from you.”
“Then quit doing things worth talking about.”
I’m going to love this woman.
Whiskey catches whatever is on my face and immediately says, “No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Glamaw opens the screen door. “Come on in, Deputy.”
“Twila.”
“Pretty.”
“Mama.”
“What now?”
“Can we deal with the thing in the yard before you adopt my hostage?”
I fold my arms. “I ain’t your hostage.”
Glamaw looks at Whiskey. “She still here?”
“Yes.”
“Could she leave?”
Whiskey looks at me, and I look right back at him because unfortunately, yes, I could.
Glamaw smiles. “Then she ain’t a hostage anymore.”
Whiskey glances between us like he’s calculating whether abandoning both women in the yard qualifies as self-defense. “Mama, please.”
“Fine.”
Wren slips around her grandmother before either of us expects it, but Whiskey catches her before both feet hit the porch.
He plants himself between her and the steps with the kind of automatic speed that says seven years of fatherhood have taught him exactly how fast determined little girls can bolt.
“No.”
“But, Daddy.”
“Inside.”
“I wanna show you where he was.”
“You can show me through the window.”
“Prickle doesn’t like windows.”
“Prickle’s gonna have to adjust.”
Wren gives him a look that could’ve come directly out of my own childhood. Whiskey doesn’t budge, so she sighs like a woman burdened by incompetent employees and steps back behind the screen.
“Fine.”
He waits until she’s inside before stepping off the porch.
I follow.
Whiskey glances over his shoulder. “I’d rather you stay up there.”
“No.”
“Twila.”
“If there’s some mutant deer stalking your daughter, I’m looking.”
“It ain’t a mutant deer.”
“You sounded confident right up until the mutant part.”
“It’s a deer.”
“With an imaginary name.”
“Exactly.”
“Who supposedly knows about church people.”
His flashlight stops halfway to the ground, and the humor falls out of his face. “That part’s bothering me.”
“Me too.”
For a moment, he looks like he wants to argue. I can practically watch the old instinct line up behind his teeth, the one that says danger means he gets to decide what everybody else does.
Instead, he blows out a breath. “Fine. Stay close?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Was that a question?”
We cross the yard together.
The porch light reaches maybe twenty feet before fading into darkness.
Beyond it, the tree line forms a black wall behind the house, thick Kentucky woods packed with enough trunks, brush, and deep shadow to hide damn near anything that doesn’t want to be seen.
The air is warm and heavy with humidity, but cooler dampness drifts out from beneath the trees.
Cicadas scream overhead, frogs answer near the ditch, and somewhere farther off a dog barks twice before going silent.
Normal country sounds.
Mostly.
I check the yard before I focus on the woods.
Fence line. Shed. Windows. Gravel shoulder.
The soft strip of dirt beside the drive where fresh tires or boot soles would leave something worth seeing.
Years of police work have taught me how easy it is to stare at the thing somebody points toward and miss everything around it.
Nothing near the house looks disturbed.
Whiskey switches on his flashlight. “Where’d she say?”
“Tree line.”
We slow as we reach the darker edge of the lawn.
A plastic bowl sits beneath a maple a few feet from the grass. There must have been apple slices inside because the bottom is sticky with juice and a couple scraps of peel are mashed into the dirt.
Whiskey crouches. “She’s feeding something. Could be raccoon.”
“Could be.”
He angles the beam lower, illuminating several small cloven prints around the bowl before they disappear toward the trees. They look like ordinary deer tracks, the edges softened by damp ground.
I crouch beside him. “Those look normal.”
“Yeah.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’m fucking thrilled.” He sweeps the flashlight farther, and a second set of hoofprints crosses the first. Beyond those are marks that don’t immediately resolve into anything I recognize.
I lean closer. “What the hell is that?”
Whiskey lowers the flashlight nearly parallel to the dirt so the shadows deepen inside every impression.
The marks are uneven and partly smeared, not clearly hoof and not paw.
They could be branches dragged across wet soil or overlapping prints distorted by rain.
They could be nothing except two exhausted adults standing in the dark after a seven-year-old named a forest creature Prickle and told us it doesn’t like church people.
Whiskey straightens. “Raccoon.”
“That ain’t a raccoon track.”
“Ugly raccoon.”
“Whiskey.”
“Deer.”
“Which one?”
“Deer with fucked-up feet.”
I look at him.
He looks back at me.
Neither of us says monster.
“Good,” I say. “Normal.”
“Completely.”
“We’re both full of shit.”
“Absolutely.”
A branch snaps somewhere beyond the reach of the light.
My body reacts before my pride can interfere.
I jerk upright, and Whiskey’s arm comes across me automatically.
He doesn’t grab me or drag me behind him.
He just puts himself between my body and the direction of the sound while the flashlight beam sweeps across trunks, brush, and a patch of leaves still trembling twenty yards in.
Nothing steps out.
“Rabbit,” he says.
“That was a big damn rabbit.”
“Kentucky.”
“Everything ain’t bigger in Kentucky.”
“Some things are.”
I turn my head slowly.
His grin flashes in the dark. “You walked into that one.”
His confidence should irritate me. Instead, heat climbs straight up my neck, so I start back toward the house before he can enjoy himself more.
“Your daughter’s imaginary friend has ruined enough of my night.”
“Thought that was my ex.”
“She’s competing.”
“Beth always was competitive.”
I stop so abruptly he nearly walks into me.
“What?”
“You really wanna bring her up?”
“Nope.”
“Smart.”
“Been told I’m exceptionally intelligent.”
“You kidnapped a deputy.”
“Temporary lapse.”
We reach the porch with Wren still waiting at the glass. The second Whiskey opens the door, she starts asking questions.
“What’s the lady from your bathroom doing here?”
“She’s a friend named Twila. Twila’s law enforcement. A deputy.”
“Can we trust her?”
“Yeah. Wren, this here is Twila. Twila meet my daughter Wren.”
“Hey,” I start, trying to be casual.
Wren looks suspicious as I hold out my hand.
“Nice to meet you,” she replies with a curtsy as if I am the Queen of England, reminding me of her cardboard castle, but she puts her hand behind her back.
“Glamaw says not to give my germs out to everyone.” Then she turns to her dad with the important stuff. “Did you see Prickle?”
“No.”
“He hides.”
“Convenient,” I say.
Whiskey catches my eye.
Unfortunately, Wren catches the word.
“He does. All deer do.”
I look down at her. “I believe you.”
Whiskey looks at me again, but I only shrug. Her imaginary deer ain’t the hill I’m dying on tonight, especially after I just crouched in his yard examining a mystery track neither one of us was willing to identify.
Wren points toward the kitchen table. “I drew him.”
“Course you did,” Whiskey mutters. “Glitter him too?”
The page is mostly green and brown crayon trees with a dark creature in the middle that might be a deer or might be an aggressively haunted potato. I bend closer and notice short black marks sticking up from its back.
“No glitter. He’s got spikes.”
“Spines.”
I look at Wren. “Spines?”
“Little ones.”
“Like a porcupine?”
“No.”
“Like a dinosaur?”
“No.”
Whiskey crouches beside her. “Like a deer?”
Wren sighs with the exhausted patience of a child dealing with adults who refuse to understand basic facts. “He is a deer.”
“Okay.”
“With spines.”
“Right.”
She grabs the black crayon and adds several more jagged lines down Prickle’s back with furious concentration. “And he’s skinny.”
“Deer are skinny,” Whiskey says.
“Skinnier.”
Whiskey looks at me.
I suddenly find the kitchen counter fascinating because I’m not admitting that her drawing is getting creepier.
Glamaw pats Wren’s shoulder. “Time for bed.”
“But Daddy just got here.”
“I know. Just in time to tuck you in.”
Wren looks at Whiskey, and his whole face softens. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You promise?”
“Promise.”