Billie pictured Sylvie and the horse waiting for their turn with the inspectors, Sylvie leading him in tight circles to the left and right around the traffic cones, leading him away then back toward the veterinarians. She imagined them bending to examine his legs, palpating for tenderness, flinches, pain. Looking for scars while Dale stood close by, cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Can you hear me?” Charley’s voice. He coughed, ending in a long, gasping retch.
“Yes!” she shouted, silently.
“They got me in here with you,” he said. “They put something in my inhaler. Rompun, I think. Can’t breathe. I can’t get out of this hay pile. Maybe you can. Don’t you forget what I gave you. My last words. Remember.”
She listened for more, but there wasn’t any.
She tried to struggle loose, but they’d tied her tighter this time. This time she wasn’t going anywhere.
“All okay with the inspector?” she heard Eudora ask.
“Close call,” Dale answered. “But we got through.”
“I smell gas.” Sylvie’s voice.
“I got some from maintenance for the ATV,” said Eudora. “It’s almost out. Let’s go celebrate.”
“Where’s my dad?” Sylvie asked. “And Bo?”
“We’re meeting them at the Road House,” Dale said. “Charley’s already loaded the horses, but the trailer’s got a flat, so he’s going to change it and catch up with us.”
Billie didn’t want to die like this. All the times in her life she’d cut and burned herself on purpose, the times she’d nearly killed herself working for Frank, or riding horses, or at home alone in drunken despair. Not like this, murdered in a fire in the type of place she loved most of all, a barn with horses, dying to the sound of her screams and theirs.
Dale, Eudora, and Sylvie left, their excited voices drifting away. A door closed. She was alone. Waiting. She didn’t know for what. Someone to come back with a lighter, a match.
The door opened.
She stopped struggling to listen, waiting for the sound that would start the inferno.
Silence. Then a grunt. Another. And another. Someone was moving the bales. She tried to scream again, roaring into the tape that covered her mouth.
“Is someone there?” a male voice.
Light poured onto her. She shrank away, terrified that it was fire. Fingers probed her hair, her head, snagged her ear, grabbed at her shirt.
“Oh my God!”
Bo ripped the tape from her mouth and cut the baling twine that bound her.
“What happened?” he asked over and over. “What happened? I came back for my fiddle and smelled gasoline.”
“Go,” she said to Bo. “I won’t tell them you were here.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
He backed away, eyes wide and wild. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
“You need to get out of here now, Bo. Run!”
He turned and darted for the door, slamming it behind him.
Billie reached for Charley between bales. She touched his arm, fumbled for his wrist, and felt for a pulse. None. She changed her grip and tried again. Nothing.
Voices sounded outside. The door rattled. Billie crouched behind the stacked hay, hoping that whoever entered wouldn’t notice it had been tampered with. The hay hook Bo had used to pull the bales off of her lay on the floor. She picked it up, ran her hand from the tip of the red metal hook to the wooden handle.
When the door opened, Eudora and Dale were arguing.
“He was turning us in,” Eudora said.
“He wasn’t the first bastard to try. This will take care of him—and her.”
Billie prayed that one of them would leave. She didn’t know how she’d manage to take them both on.
“I’m going to settle up with Dom,” Eudora said.
As if in answer to her prayer, Billie heard the door close.
“So long,” Dale said.
For an instant, she didn’t realize he was talking to her, addressing her where he thought she lay trussed in the middle of the hay. He struck a match. She smelled it, heard the whoosh of flame as it caught. Fire raced along the bales as he lit them. The room became an instant inferno, the air vicious as venom. The hair on her face singed. Dale stood between her and the exit. His eyes widened with surprise when he saw her. She had to get out.
“MOVE!” She couldn’t hear her own scream over the fire’s roar.
Dale stepped backwards, toward the door. He would step out and close it with her inside, she knew. Ignoring the searing pain in her shoulder, Billie swung the hay hook with both hands, bringing it down as hard as she could, burying the point in his neck. He grabbed at it, fighting to pull it out, and slammed her into the wall. She braced her feet against it and pushed off, hurling herself into the flames, dragging him with her. With both hands, he clutched his neck, trying to pull the hook out. She let go and ran.
Outside, Billie collapsed retching, gasping clean night air. Eudora charged past on her way back into the barn, shrieking her husband’s name. Fire wrapped around the door, crawled up the wall. The roof exploded in flames.
Chapter 30
BILLIE TURNED THE truck and trailer into the fairgrounds in Deming, New Mexico, parked beside an empty arena, and got out with Gulliver. They both stretched. She felt like she’d been sitting for days. Well, she had. Last week, she’d driven from Arizona to Tennessee in three days with her trailer empty. But the trip home with her new horse was taking a lot longer. Every three hours she’d pulled off the freeway to unload Jazz and lead him around to stretch his legs. She offered him water, timothy hay, and if there was grass, she let him graze. Every afternoon she stopped for the day, using Google to find fairgrounds with stalls and arenas where she could turn him out to roll and to run if he wanted to. So far he hadn’t wanted to, but he had the opportunity.
She’d reach home by tomorrow afternoon, pull into the ranch, and settle Jazz into the corral she used to quarantine incoming horses.
