them, Come home! Here was a predator worse than any coyote, closer to a rabid wolf, and he was closing in on their home and hers.
“Stop,” he ordered her.
She heard Billy digging in one of his pockets and then he shoved something in front of her face with his free hand and she smelled tobacco.
“Get me out a cigarette.”
Jody reached for the pack of Camels and dug out a cigarette with her shaking fingers. She held it over her shoulder and he took it.
“Now light it,” he said, and handed her a matchbook.
She lit his smoke for him and breathed what he blew out.
For several silent minutes they stood like that while he smoked. Jody had the sense that Billy didn’t have a plan. He was making it up as he went along, just as he had grabbed her when the opportunity presented itself. The fact that he didn’t know what he was doing didn’t make her feel any better, it only made him seem more unpredictable and dangerous.
Billy flicked the still burning cigarette onto the grass.
It was dry, and not more than a few seconds passed before it caught a few blades of the tinder-dry growth on fire.
Jody instinctively moved to stamp it out.
He grasped her shoulder and pushed the gun in deeper.
“Hold the fuck still.” And then he said with pleasure in his voice, like a boy discovering a new toy, “Well, look at that. Caught the damn grass on fire, didn’t it? Don’t that make a pretty light?”
He pushed the matchbook into her hands again.
“Start moving. And light another one.”
She walked, and tossed the next lit match onto a different spot in the dry grass when he told her to. He nudged her with the gun again and she repeated the arson. They moved slowly closer to the house, each time starting little fires while the older fires built behind them. Jody prayed the blazes wouldn’t join and get out of control, while at the same time she prayed that they would get large enough to attract her grandparents’ attention from inside the house. In her mind she saw Annabelle looking out the window, her forehead creasing as she noticed an orange glow that wasn’t supposed to be there. She imagined her grandmother calling out in a worried tone, “Hugh? Hugh!” If they saw it, they could call for help. They could escape out the back.
Please don’t come out the front to check on it.
But of course that would be the natural thing for them to do.
They would walk out their front door and put themselves directly in Billy’s line of fire.
If that happened, Jody resolved, she’d throw herself at him, even if it meant he shot her. She just had to hope it didn’t kill her right away. She would do whatever it took to keep him from harming the two people to whom she owed everything.
She didn’t let herself think about what life would be like for her grandparents if they lost her, too. They were smart, she told herself, they would do something to save themselves.
Finally, she spoke to him again.
“I know you didn’t kill my father.”
“Hell no, I didn’t.”
It wasn’t the surprised and gratified response she hoped for, but she tried again. “And I know you didn’t do anything to my mom and I know you didn’t kill your wife.” She wasn’t even sure she believed these things, but she said them anyway, borrowing Collin’s conviction that his father wasn’t guilty. She didn’t mention Red. If Billy had not been guilty of any murders before, he was guilty of one now. Her immediate goal was to keep him from becoming guilty of any more of them.
“Collin got you out of prison once and he’ll do it again.”
“Too late now.”
Her heart sank. Billy knew he’d cast his own lot by killing Red. Just as he’d told her, he had nothing to lose.
Hearing a crackle and feeling heat, she turned her head just enough to check on the fires behind her without angering Billy. What she saw terrified her. It was her worst fear about them coming true. The separate fires were combining, devouring the dry tinder of grass as they rushed toward each other and then merged and got bigger, hotter, higher.
Soon it would be on their heels.
Had he thought of that? Did he know they might be caught by the fire before the house was?
She was just about to turn back and shout at him when she saw something else terrifying that was marching toward them through an opening in the waist-high flames. Grandpa! Tall, broad-shouldered, grim-faced with hatred and determination, his white hair shining in the light of the fire, he appeared to her like a vision, an Old Testament figure, but one who bore a shotgun in his big hands.
How had he got there? How could he be here?
Quickly, heart pounding, she turned around and kept walking next to Billy.
She listened hard, wanting desperately to help her grandfather, waiting for the right moment to do it.
When she heard what she thought was his step on gravel, she stumbled to distract Billy. It slowed them down and so he jabbed at her again with Red’s pistol. The push gave her a reason to stumble again, which gave her an excuse to drop to the ground as fast as she could, getting herself out of two lines of gunfire, Billy’s and her grandfather’s. Crumpled onto the grass that might soon be burning, she gulped for air and prayed for deliverance.
“What the-” Billy got out before her grandfather’s shotgun barrel slammed into his gun hand, sending the pistol flying and shoving Billy aside. He screamed with pain and stumbled, and then fell to one knee.
On the ground, Jody lunged for the pistol just as he did, too.
She had her right hand near it when she heard her grandfather say, “Lay still, Billy, or I’ll shoot your head off.”
In that moment, she wondered if Billy really would rather die than go back to prison. We’ll find out now. Collin, I’m sorry. Billy’s left hand was only inches away from the gun that she was reaching for, too. Jody shot her hand forward the small distance, but Billy didn’t move to compete for it. She got her answer as she wrapped her hand around Red’s gun and watched Billy pull his own hand back and lie still. With Red’s firearm in hand and her finger on its trigger, Jody got to her feet, and joined her grandfather in holding Billy Crosby at bay.
“I’ve got this,” he told her as he pressed the shotgun barrel into the side of the other man’s face. “You’ll find your grandmother near the barn. We’ve been waiting there for you. Tell her it’s over. The two of you can put the fires out while I wait here with Billy for the sheriff. And this time there won’t be any problem with the evidence.”
“How did you know?” she asked him before she ran to do it.
Her grandfather never took his eyes off the man on the ground. “We got a call from Billy’s son.”
37
TWO NIGHTS LATER Jody walked up to where Collin stood beside his car in front of the Testament Rocks. His father was in jail, charged with so many crimes that once he was convicted of any of them, the question of his guilt or innocence in the death of Jody’s father would no longer matter. One way or another, Billy Crosby was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“Let’s walk,” she said. “Okay with you?”
He nodded, and took her hand to hold.
“Is the ranch okay?” he asked her.
“Yes. Grandma and I hauled a couple of big tarps out of the barn and laid them on top of the fires and pretty much stamped it all out. That, plus a garden hose, took care of it. There are some burnt spots, but that just means new grass will grow there.”
