well. I closed my eyes. He pressed the knife harder against my skin. I tried to move away from the pressure but couldn't.
Blood trickled down my neck and soaked into my shirt.
Without warning, Harrison loosened his grip on my hair, and the blade cut deeper. I groaned with the effort of keeping my back arched. If I lowered my head, the knife would cut deeper. He shifted more weight onto my back. I gritted my teeth and grunted.
The bastard. I couldn't hold it much longer.
'Say something,' he growled.
I wouldn't. Not if I could help it. He was going to kill me anyway. I would not give him the satisfaction of hearing me beg… or cry.
'You should of heard Peters,' Harrison said as if he'd read my thoughts. 'He cried like a baby, didn't he Robby? And boy could he scream. Screaming and crying for me not to hurt him, the old fart. Guess he shouldn't have reported me, the stupid son of a bitch.'
Harrison took the knife away, and my face smashed against the cement.
He moved his face close to mine and whispered, 'You're going to beg for mercy, scream for it, before the night's out.'
My back and shoulder muscles trembled uncontrollably as the chill of the cement seeped into my sweat- soaked skin. I clenched my fists to stop the shaking.
Robby said, 'Let's get going. It's not safe here. Anyway, you can take your time with him at the farm.'
I closed my eyes and felt sick.
'Yeah, well… I want him to beg.' Harrison kicked me in the ribs. The blow knocked the breath out of my lungs. He nailed me again, this time on my shoulder.
'Don't kick him in the head,' Robby said. 'I don't want to have to carry the bastard.'
'Say something, damn it.'
He kicked me again and again, and in a very short time, I lost count. I gritted my teeth to keep myself from groaning. Maybe I could talk my way out of it. It was worth a try.
I struggled to regulate my breathing and said, 'The police know you murdered Peters.'
'Yeah right.' He punctuated his words with kicks. 'They don't know shit.'
Each blow seemed to merge with the next. My skin burned, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
I gulped some air. 'And they know that you helped Sanders with his insurance swindles. Do you think he's going to keep his mouth shut when they come down on him?'
Harrison became very still. Somewhere in the room, flies droned above the drip of a faucet. He began to pace, and it seemed that his agitation increased with each passing second. His boots scraped across the grit on the cement, and his breathing grew louder, faster, out of sync with the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears.
Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. He came to an abrupt stop a foot away from my nose. I had a close-up view of his boots, scuffed up cowboy boots with sharply-pointed toes.
'In that case, you're gonna pay. You're gonna wish you'd never been born.'
He leaned over, and I felt his breath on my hair. 'As a matter of fact, by mornin', you're gonna be in so much pain, you'll be beggin' me to put you down.'
Robby laughed.
I closed my eyes and swallowed.
Harrison grabbed my arm, clenched his fingers in my hair, and yanked me to my feet. I could see the knife then. The blade was easily four inches long, a hunting knife.
'If you kill me, it'll be harder for you,' I said and hated the tremor I heard in my voice.
'Awh… now he's worried about me. Better worry about yourself, you little shit. Where,' he waved his arm, 'where are they, huh? I don't see no cops round here.'
He turned toward his brother. 'They don't have squat.'
'They know you're Drake's cousin,' I said, 'and Timbrook's brother-in-law and that T amp;T Industries has been wanting to buy Foxdale and-'
Harrison snatched the front of my shirt and shoved me against the wall. 'It's all your fault.'
I didn't say anything, and after a moment, he said, 'Beg, damn it. Beg for your miserable life.'
The faucet dripped into the lengthening silence.
Harrison looked over his shoulder. 'You have something to soften him up, don't you, Robby?'
Robby had been watching us with about as much emotion as I would have expected if we'd been discussing a hay shipment.
Harrison yanked me off the wall and shoved me down the aisle toward the back of the room. He turned me to face the last stall.
'Kneel.'
Oh, God. It can't be- I thought back to the guard's phone call. Why had I assumed it was him.
I stiffened.
'Kneel down,' Harrison screamed. His words echoed in the tiny room.
He kicked the back of my knee and pushed down on my shoulders, forcing me onto my knees. In my peripheral vision, I saw the knife in his right hand, his fingers curled loosely around the handle.
'Robby, open the door.'
A slow smile spread across Robby's face. His eyes were curiously blank as he watched my face. He pushed back the stall door.
The security guard was slumped in the narrow space between the wall and toilet.
I swallowed and clenched my teeth.
His throat had been cut, and his head hung at an angle that could only be achieved in death. His eyes were open, staring without sight at the top ledge of the door frame. The stall walls above him and to his left were streaked with a spray of blood.
Bastards.
Movement caught my eye. Every muscle in my body tensed. Something crawled across the glistening white cartilage where his trachea had been severed. A blowfly. Another crawled along his uniform's sharply-creased collar. Others buzzed above our heads and bumped against the ceiling. Saliva flooded my mouth.
Fucking bastards! A scream in my mind.
Harrison grabbed my hair and pulled my head back so that I had to look. I closed my eyes, but it didn't make any difference. I could see him clearly in my mind, every detail.
That was it. What I'd missed. The guard wasn't a horseman. He wouldn't have known that the riding area in barn B was called an arena. It had been Harrison or Robby on the phone, not the guard.
I wondered how he'd felt when they'd marched him in here and thought I already knew. My stomach heaved. I swallowed hard and tasted bile at the back of my throat.
'Johnny,' Robby said, 'his eyes are closed. Think he's asleep?'
'Let's wake him up.' Harrison leaned into me and placed the knife under my ear. 'This is how Robby did it.' He drew the blade across my throat. 'Just like that. Shit, Cline, you're shaking so much, you made me cut you.' He chuckled. 'Next time it's gonna go all the way in, got it?'
'I think he's got it,' Robby said.
Harrison pulled me to my feet and shoved me against the wall. He stuck the point of the knife under my chin and squinted at my face.
I forced myself to hold his gaze.
'Say something, damn it.'
'Fuck you.'
He pushed the knife in deeper, and I had nowhere to go. I think he would have killed me then and there. It was certainly in his eyes. But Robby yelled, 'Don't kill him, Johnny. Not yet. We run into the cops, we can use him.'
Harrison eased up on the knife.
More blood trickled down my neck.
After a moment, Robby said, 'Come on, Johnny. We gotta get outta here.'
