Run rose run, p.30
Run, Rose, Run, page 30
Damn. Was this how he was going to do it? Just climb in?
It was almost like a written invitation. If someone caught him halfway through the window, he’d be the easiest target imaginable—but it still felt like better odds than trying to get in through the front door.
Ethan guided the rifle through the window, balancing it on its stock against the inside wall. Then he took a deep breath and pulled himself up onto the sill.
His boots scraped noisily on the side of the house, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He got his torso through, and he was slithering the rest of the way inside when the door at the end of the kitchen swung open.
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Ethan didn’t have time to move. Caught in the window frame, he was face-to-face with a pair of green eyes.
And whiskers.
And two black, triangular ears. Then a low, sinewy body slunk into the kitchen, making for a food bowl in the corner. The door swung shut behind it.
Ethan nearly choked with relief as he pulled himself the rest of the way into the room. A damn cat! The creature, oblivious to the fact that it had nearly given him a heart attack, sniffed disdainfully at its dish. Then it brushed past Ethan’s legs and hopped outside the way he had come in.
Ethan bent down and picked up the rifle. He could hear the faint buzz of talk radio coming from the other side of the kitchen door. Taking a few noiseless steps forward, he reached out and turned off the light. Then he waited, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness while he listened for movement in the other room. Hearing nothing but the same low, staticky radio voices, he opened the door.
Though it was nearly pitch-black in the room, Ethan could make out a couch along the back wall and an exterior door on the wall opposite. Another doorway opened to what he assumed was a hallway leading to the rest of the cabin.
“So keep your dial tuned to 860 AM,” the radio voice intoned, “for all your sports and weather news…”
The radio voice seemed to be coming from the far corner of the room. Edging closer, Ethan could see what looked like a large recliner—and the body of a sleeping man in it.
Gus Hobbs.
Ethan carefully leaned the rifle against the wall. Then he launched himself forward in the darkness. He didn’t want to stand back and threaten this man; he wanted to beat him to a bloody pulp.
Hobbs woke with a start just as Ethan was on top of him, and the guy only had time to throw up his hands before Ethan was driving his fists into his head and arms. Hobbs started yelling and trying to block the blows, but Ethan was wide-awake and enraged, and there was nothing Hobbs could do but try to scramble backward out of the chair to avoid him.
“Stop! Shit!” he was yelling. “Man, stop! Shit!”
Ethan finally pulled back and stood above him, panting. “Where is she, Hobbs?” he yelled. “Where is she?”
Brilliant overhead light flared in his eyes, blinding him. Squinting, Ethan turned to see another man in the other doorway, calmly leveling a pistol at his chest.
“That fool ain’t Gus Hobbs,” he said. “I am.”
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Ethan sucked in his breath. He wasn’t afraid: he was furious. He’d let his emotions cloud his judgment, and he’d attacked without knowing the size, strength, or even the identity of the enemy. What a stupid, rookie mistake.
He stood up to his full height, as if he wasn’t looking down the wrong end of a pistol at all. “Where’s Rose?” he demanded.
Hobbs didn’t answer, and the other man wiped angrily at his bloody, swollen face. “Shoot him,” he said. “Shoot that bastard.”
Gus Hobbs turned his cold gaze to his partner. “Maybe I should shoot you,” he said.
“I just closed my eyes for a minute—”
“Exactly,” Hobbs said viciously.
Hobbs was lean but muscular, with a hard, almost handsome face. If Clayton Dunning had been a bulldog, then Gus Hobbs was closer to a wolf. Had AnnieLee really married this man? Had she lived here in this very house? Ethan still couldn’t believe it.
But whatever the truth was, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding her safe.
And, he thought grimly, not getting killed trying.
“Step outside,” Hobbs said to Ethan, gesturing with the gun.
The other man laughed as he wiped his bleeding nose on his sleeve. “He don’t want to get the floor messy when he shoots you.”
“Shut up,” Hobbs told him. To Ethan he said, “Hands up. Go on.” He motioned toward the front door, which was just to Ethan’s left.
Ethan put his hands up and slowly turned. But he turned the long way around, to his right, so that he could see the kitchen door and the rifle he’d leaned against the wall next to it. Maybe it was because the Winchester was the same color as the wood paneling, or maybe it was impossible for Hobbs or his flunky to imagine someone having a weapon and not using it, but neither man had noticed the gun. Ethan figured it was eight feet away from him. Doable, he thought.
Finally Ethan rotated so that he was facing the front door. “I can’t open this with my hands in the air,” he told them.
“Jesus,” Hobbs said. “Open it, Rick.”
As Rick came toward him, Ethan’s right hand dropped down and he yanked the knob as hard as he could. The door went smashing into Rick’s face. At the same time, Ethan dove backward toward the rifle, landing hard on his side. He grabbed the gun and rolled onto his back in one smooth motion, and then pulled the trigger and shot Gus Hobbs.
Or…he shot where Gus Hobbs had been.
The bullet punched a hole in the wall as Hobbs disappeared around the corner. Ethan swung the gun toward Rick as he got to his feet. “Run or I’ll shoot,” he growled.
Rick hesitated. Ethan fired, and the bullet grazed Rick’s biceps. The man needed no further encouragement to leave.
Then Ethan, alone in the living room, inched toward where Hobbs had gone. Crouching low, he peered through the doorway. He saw a short, empty hall and a back door flung wide open.
Hugging the wall, Ethan walked forward until the yard came into view. In the moonlight he could see patchy grass, a utility trailer, a shed, and a clothesline with a few yellowing towels on it. A moment later, Gus Hobbs’s face and gun peered around the corner of the shed.
“Want to count to three and shoot each other?” Hobbs drawled.
Ethan fired, aiming right above Hobbs’s head. The bullet hit the shed’s overhanging roof. “Where is she?” he yelled.
Hobbs, who’d disappeared behind the shed, didn’t answer.
Ethan dropped the rifle and jumped down the steps into the yard. He raced around to the other side of the shed and grabbed Hobbs by the legs as he was trying to run into the woods. They both went down hard in the dirt. Hobbs’s gun spun out of his hand and landed out of his reach.
Hobbs kicked at Ethan’s chest but Ethan held on, hauling himself up along Hobbs’s body until he was astride him. He pushed Hobbs’s face into the dirt.
“That kid from the gas station found her—Wade,” Hobbs gasped. “Said she hit her head, passed out cold, then woke up cross-eyed and saying my name.” He gave a kick and then lay still. “The stupid little prick brought her here. She always caused more trouble than she was worth, so I did what I had to do. Shit, man, that hurts!”
“You have no idea what hurts means,” Ethan said. “Where is Rose McCord?”
Hobbs started to laugh—a wild, unhinged laugh that sent chills down Ethan’s spine. “I threw her damn body in the cellar,” he said.
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A pit opened in Ethan’s stomach. Her body? He got up and yanked Hobbs by the belt until he was standing.
The man reeled, coughing and cackling. “She deserved it,” Hobbs said, rubbing the dirt from his face with his shirt.
If Ethan hadn’t dropped the rifle back by the steps, he would’ve shot Hobbs for real. “Take me to her now.”
Hobbs straightened up. “If you say so.”
Dread and fear made Ethan detach; he felt like he was watching himself walk through the yard behind Hobbs, who was still laughing softly but maniacally. Ethan saw himself pick up the fallen gun as Hobbs went to the cellar doors and heaved them open.
“Have at it,” Hobbs said.
“You go in first,” Ethan heard himself say.
Hobbs cursed and descended the ladder. Ethan followed close behind him, keeping the tip of the rifle aimed between Hobbs’s shoulder blades.
The ceiling was low, and Ethan couldn’t see anything. “Light,” he said.
He heard Hobbs fumbling around, and then a flashlight clicked on. The beam was weak and flickering. It swept the perimeter of the room, revealing dirt, piles of gravel, and debris.
Then finally the beam found a human form. AnnieLee was curled in a corner, her hands and feet tied. Her eyes were closed and there was tape over her mouth.
“AnnieLee,” Ethan gasped.
Her eyes flew open, wide and terrified.
Ethan felt himself slam back into his body, back into reality. Dear God, he thought, she’s alive. His knees almost buckled.
But they didn’t. He turned toward Hobbs, who was heading for the ladder. Ethan grabbed him by the collar and spun him around. Hobbs went to swing at him with the heavy flashlight, but Ethan ducked. Low and at close range, Ethan threw a vicious uppercut, tightening his fist right on impact. His knuckles slammed into Hobbs’s chin with a sickening crack. Hobbs’s head snapped back and hit the ladder. Then Hobbs careened sideways and dropped, unconscious. The flashlight hit the ground and went out.
Ethan didn’t bother to hunt for it in the dark. He just crawled to AnnieLee, calling her name over and over, even though she couldn’t answer. When he got to her, his desperate hands found her face and then her shoulders, and he pulled her to a sitting position, pulled her against his wildly pounding heart. His eyes stung and he wiped at them—he was crying. “You’re okay, you’re okay. Tell me you’re okay,” he begged as he tugged the tape from her mouth.
“Ow,” AnnieLee said as the tape came away. She leaned forward as he struggled to unbind her wrists. Her hair was damp; she smelled like sweat and fear. “I’m okay,” she said, her voice cracked and raw. “But I’ve sure as shit been better.”
Ethan nearly shouted in relief. Then the knots were undone and her hands were free. He helped her to stand, and she stumbled toward the ladder. He sent up a prayer of thanks as he followed her out of the cellar, just as the sun began to rise in the sky.
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Two hours later, AnnieLee Keyes—née Rose McCord—was sitting in a small-town police station, wrapped inside one of Ethan’s flannel shirts and looking tired, pale, and angry. Ethan was standing and sipping from a Styrofoam cup full of weak Folgers and watching as the police chief, a paunchy, mustached good ol’ boy by the name of Anderson, tried to coax out the story of what had happened to her.
It wasn’t working.
“I don’t care to talk to you,” she told him for what must have been the tenth time. A sharp edge had crept into her voice, and she sounded older. Harder. Anderson had given her a cup of coffee, too, but she hadn’t touched it.
The chief looked up at Ethan like he needed backup.
Ethan gently touched AnnieLee’s shoulder and straightened the collar of his shirt underneath her tangled hair. He still couldn’t really think of her as Rose. It was such a beautiful name, but it sounded so soft. “He’s trying to help,” Ethan said.
AnnieLee gave him a sharp look. “You don’t know him,” she said.
“No, but he’s an officer of the law. He’s sworn to protect and—”
“This officer,” AnnieLee interrupted, “has never protected me. In fact, he did the opposite.”
Ethan dropped into the metal folding chair beside her. This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” AnnieLee said, “when I used to call the cops on Clayton for hitting me, they said I was a troubled teen. They said that I was a liar and I just wanted attention. You’d think the bruises on my arms would be proof, wouldn’t you? Well, they weren’t.” She folded her arms over her chest. “The chief grew up here, just like Clayton did. They rode their damn Schwinns around town when they were little, and they got drunk in the same Boone County bars when they grew up. They were friendly. Which meant that when I called on Anderson, he took Clayton’s side.”
Ethan turned to look at the police chief. As a soldier, Ethan respected rank, and he wanted this man to tell him that this wasn’t true, that it had all been some kind of terrible misunderstanding. But Anderson wouldn’t meet his eye.
The police chief cleared his throat. “Domestic disputes can often be exaggerated by—”
“See what I mean?” AnnieLee practically hissed. “Three times I ran away, and three times they sent me right back to the man who was hurting me. That doesn’t sound like protecting and serving to me. Does it to you?”
Ethan crushed his empty coffee cup in his hands. Though AnnieLee had never been as open and honest with him as he wanted her to be, he knew she was telling the truth right now. “AnnieLee, would you be able to talk to someone else?”
Slumped in her chair, she seemed to nod.
“We need to speak to another officer,” Ethan said to Chief Anderson.
Anderson hesitated for a moment, but then he got up. When he returned a few minutes later, it was with a young, round-faced woman with coppery hair. “This is Officer Danvers,” he said. “She can take your statement.” He didn’t meet AnnieLee’s glaring eyes, but he gave Ethan a curt nod of farewell and walked out.
With Anderson gone, AnnieLee visibly relaxed.
Officer Danvers sat down behind the chief’s desk. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said. “And I’m sorry you had to go through what you did. Do you want a warm-up on the coffee? No. Well, then, let’s dive in, okay? I wonder if you can tell me what happened with Gus Hobbs.”
“I came here to kill him. I still might,” AnnieLee said fiercely.
Officer Danvers looked taken aback. “Let’s focus on the crime that was committed against you, Ms. Keyes. What concerns me now is how and why you came to be tied up in Hobbs’s root cellar. How did that happen?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up down there,” she said.
Ethan turned to Officer Danvers. “She was hurt. Some kid found her and took her to Hobbs.”
“I was going there anyway,” AnnieLee said.
“Well, I doubt you were aiming for the cellar,” Ethan said.
“No, sir, I was not,” AnnieLee said. “I was aiming to blow his head off, but it didn’t work out that way.”
“I’m not sure you should—” Officer Danvers began.
“Please, AnnieLee, start at the beginning,” Ethan interrupted. He knew the story began a long time ago, and he wanted to hear it all.
AnnieLee drew a long, deep breath. “I’ve known Gus Hobbs since I was twenty years old and still getting beat on by my stepdad, Clayton Dunning. I thought Gus was going to rescue me from all that,” she said. “And I guess he did for a little while.”
She stopped and stared down at her hands. Neither Ethan nor the police officer said anything. They just waited. Ethan watched as AnnieLee rubbed at a raw place on her wrist.
Then she looked up again. When she spoke, her voice was calm and flat. “But then something changed in him. And pretty soon he’d dragged me so deep into hell I thought I’d be down there forever.”
Ethan sat there, barely breathing, as finally the truth began to come out.
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Tell me what you mean by hell,” Officer Danvers said.
AnnieLee gripped the cold metal seat of her chair. She didn’t know if she could do it. Ever since she’d left Houston, her survival had depended on denying everything she’d been through.
She stared at the cup of coffee she hadn’t even tasted. Her throat felt tight, as if the words she needed to summon wouldn’t have room to come out. It was so hard to admit the truth.
“Take your time,” said Officer Danvers.
AnnieLee’s gaze shifted to the clock above Danvers’s head, and she watched as the seconds ticked by: One thousand one, one thousand two…
“Gus was so charming at first,” she said finally. “He told me that I was the most beautiful girl west of the Mississippi River. ‘Probably east of it, too,’ he used to say, ‘but I ain’t ever bothered to cross it.’” She gave a derisive snort. “Can you believe that BS? Well, I could, because he was just about the first person to be nice to me since my mother died. I thought we were in love.”
“Did you…marry him?” Ethan asked in a low voice.
“Sir,” Officer Danvers said, “please let her continue without interruption.”
AnnieLee turned to Ethan, whose handsome face was full of pain. “No, I didn’t,” she said. “I told Clayton that we’d eloped so he’d let me move in with him. And things were good for a handful of months. Gus was really protective. Controlling, too, but I thought that was just his way of taking care of me.”
AnnieLee stopped and looked at Officer Danvers. “Has a man ever held your hand just a little too tightly, officer? And suddenly you realize that you’re not strong enough to get it free, and you just have to wait until he decides to let you go?”
“No,” Officer Danvers said quietly.
“Well, Gus liked to do that. He wanted to remind me who was stronger. And he said that there were people out there who wanted to hurt me, and so it was important that I didn’t go anywhere by myself.” She grabbed a ballpoint pen from a mug on the desk and began clicking its point in and out nervously. “He never left me alone.”
Officer Danvers pushed a box of tissues toward her, and that’s when AnnieLee realized that tears were sliding down her face. She pulled the box into her lap and went on.
