“Jace, calm down. Mr. Holmes wants to get your goat,” Bo said. “We have things to discuss with him.”
Red-faced, Wittman jabbed a finger in my chest. I couldn’t avoid wincing.
“I hate this prick,” he said. “He never lets up.”
“That’s what you like to hear, isn’t it, Walker?” said Bo as Jace retrieved his drink from somewhere behind me. “You love being in people’s heads, don’t you?”
“I wrote with no malice towards you or your brother-in-law,” I said, hoping my voice sounded steady. My Mississippi drawl became more pronounced when under pressure, which gave each word an extra syllable. “I hate his politics, not him.”
“I am my politics,” Wittman yelled. “Dammit, don’t you understand anything?”
“Why are we here?” I said, looking at my bonds. “Isn’t this a little overkill, Bo?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe.”
“What is this about?” I said.
Jace moved to sit on the white couch on my right. I was positioned on the wooden deck between them. The moon reflected on the Gulf in the row of windows behind his head. Wittman’s belligerence had waned, replaced with smugness.
He said, “Your newspaper is sinking fast. Your advertisers are bailing. You’ve bounced checks with your staff and vendors. Your shareholders are ready to cut their losses. Next week, your bank is going to call in your loan.”
“Nothing new, been there before,” I said, not sure how confident I sounded.
“We can make it all go away.”
“How?”
Hines said, “You move on to another story. Let the petition drive run its course without any interference—”
Jace added, “Who gives a shit about a Yankee and his baseball team?”
They were tag-teaming me, forcing me to turn my head back and forth as if I was watching a tennis match. I heard my brain rattle with each swivel.
Stringing them along, I said, “What’s in it for me?”
Hines flashed his winning smile and said, “New advertisers and money to pay off your vendors and the bank. Consider it a gift that the IRS won’t ever discover.”
Maybe I should have told them that I needed time to think about their offer, but I couldn’t avoid asking, “What about the Arts Council trial?”
Hines’ smile froze. “My lawyers are cutting a deal with the state attorney. I’m providing testimony against Pandora Childs, the real thief.”
“But Childs is dead,” I said.
His eyes bore down on me, willing me to shut up.
“What?” asked Wittman. “When? Where? We had no idea where the bitch was hiding.”
“No details. You slugged me before I could follow up on a text.”
Wittman pulled my phone out of his windbreaker. “What’s your password?”
I gave him the password. It wasn’t the time to worry about my privacy.
When I did, Jace read Harden’s text and put the phone back in his pocket. He took a big swallow of his drink. “Bo, you said she probably was hiding out in the Bahamas or some other Caribbean island.”
He slurred the word “Caribbean.”
I said, “Not hardly.”
“Shut up!” said Hines, backhanding me. Somehow the chair didn’t topple over. Through sheer will power, I kept it upright.
He said to his brother-in-law, “He’s lying, Jace. Trying to pit us against each other.”
Wiping his eyes and running his hands through his thick hair, Wittman said, “The bastard is just screwing with us. Right, Bo?”
I tasted the blood running from my nose. The metallic flavor pushed me to continue. I spit it out.
“Jace, why do you think I was at O’Riley’s?” I asked. “I was there to meet Childs. I got a text from—”
“I said shut up!” shouted Hines. He hit me with his fist, knocking the chair over. I lost consciousness.
When I awoke, I was on my side still tied to the damn chair. I heard Hines and Wittman yelling at each other outside. Their words were indecipherable through the glass door.
Julie Wittman sat on the couch. The gun was lying in the fifteen-year-old’s lap.
“Help me,” I whispered. “Untie these ropes.”
At first, she pretended not to hear me, but I kept repeating, “Help me.”
Julie stared ahead, looking over me out the windows, not at me. She mumbled something.
“What?” I asked. “Please help me.”
“Bo would be mad at me,” she said.
“Your Uncle Bo and father are in big trouble,” I said. “I can save them from themselves before it’s too late.”
She looked at me, waved the gun in my direction. “Bo would be mad at me.”
I tried to scoot across the floor and maybe loosen the ropes. They began to give a little. Hines and Wittman entered the cabin as I almost freed my left hand.
Laughing Hines said, “Well, what do we have here? Trying to escape, Holmes?”
“Uncle Bo, he asked me to untie his ropes,” said Julie.
“Good girl,” he said and kicked the back of my chair. A wave of pain racked my chest.
Jace straightened the chair and untied the ropes. Bo took the gun from Julie and pointed it at me. I rubbed my wrists, coaxing the circulation back into my hands. I reached up and felt the stitches on my head. Thankfully they were still intact. I wiped the blood off my cheek, nose, and lips with my sleeve. Then I looked at the scarlet streaks on my white shirt.
I smiled again. The hell with these beatings.
“Julie, bring Mr. Holmes a washcloth with some ice,” said Hines. “We’re not savages, Walker. All of this is a misunderstanding.”
Bo matched my smile, but his didn’t reach his eyes. They were reptilian. He wanted me to think that he would let me go soon. Maybe he even convinced Jace that was what he would do.
When she returned with ice wrapped in the washcloth, I applied it to my nose and upper lip. Jace sat quietly, drinking his bourbon with a blank stare. Again, I was caught between them. Other than the moon’s reflection, I could see no other lights outside.
Bo began to spin his tale. “Sue and I gave Pandora keys to our condo months ago. She wanted to take her nephews to Dollywood. She must have made copies before she returned them.”
“What about
