Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
He shook his head. “I can’t. They said I had to bring them money or they’d kill her.”
“Her who?” I asked sharply, startling the man.
“My dog,” he explained like it was completely rational that whoever it was would threaten his dog if he didn’t pay the money he owed.
And genuinely it would’ve worked with some people.
I wasn’t some people, though.
I was me.
I couldn’t say I’d been in his exact same position before, but I knew what desperation felt like.
Yet here I was, making something of myself.
The man standing in front of me probably had some of the same possibilities that I had, yet he’d chosen a different path in life.
“Get out of here,” I barked, holstering my gun.
He ran, not looking back, and I felt Ruthie finally settle at my back.
“Shit,” she whispered. “He’s never done that before.”
I blinked and moved until I could look out the doors.
It was finally lightening up outside, which meant I could see that the man had run.
He was no longer in the parking lot, but what she’d just said didn’t make my heart rate decrease any.
“He’s never done that before?” I asked for clarification.
She shook her head. “Normally, I just give him the dollar and he leaves.”
I gritted my teeth and walked closer to her. “Does your boss know this man?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s the one who opens when I’m not, so I only assume he does.”
“And the sight of that man never raised any red flags with you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He’s just down on his luck.”
“Really down on his luck,” I muttered to myself, pulling my phone out of my pocket.
“What are you doing?” She asked in surprise.
“Calling the police. They need to know what happened, that way if it ever happens again a report is on file for it,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes. “I already said he’s harmless.”
“I don’t care if he’s ‘harmless’ as you say he is. Just make sure you always keep your distance from him, and stop being so trusting. Everyone has a past, and I saw the violence in his eyes. He was desperate today, what do you think will happen if three days pass and he still doesn’t have what he wants?” I asked her.
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know.”
I studied her face for a long moment before I said, “He’ll come back. He knows you’ll give him money, next time he’ll be smarter about who he comes in here with, too.”
She nodded. “I’ll be careful. Dane said something about allowing us to carry a shotgun under the counter. Maybe it’d be a good thing to start that.”
I gave her a raised brow. “Do you know how to shoot a shotgun?”
She shook her head. “No. But don’t you just point and shoot?”
I shook my head.
I mean really, was the owner just going to say, ‘Here’s a gun. Shoot anyone that you feel needs to be shot?’
“Before you tell him that, I’ll take you out to the range and teach you. When do you open next?” I asked.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head slightly. “I’m not allowed to own a gun.”
I stopped to think about that for a moment.
Of course she wouldn’t be able to.
“Are…do you mind telling me…how you killed him?” I asked, leaning my ass against the counter.
It’d been weighing on my mind.
Not the fact that she’d killed him, but the fact that she’d had to kill him.
What had happened that she needed to resort to those kinds of measures?
All I’d been able to gather from Silas was that she’d been abused and scared for her life.
I had no details on the rest.
She looked down at her hands where they were buried in the box full of straws, and closed her eyes like she’d wanted to do anything but explain.
But she did, and I was never more proud of her than I was at that moment.
“I met Bender when I was in college. He had gone to the same high school as Lily and I and we had unknowingly followed him to Louisiana. I hadn’t ever really noticed him until college, though. I had a crush on him from the moment I saw him, but his eyes were all for Lily, my best friend,” she told me. “But when he saw that Lily had the hots for Dante, his best friend, he slept with me to try to make her jealous. Me, being the naïve girl that I was, had no clue that’d been why he’d done it. I was only happy to be noticed. So we got together that night, and weeks later with nothing from him, I found out I was pregnant.”
She smashed the straws into the holder and turned around, thrusting her fingers into her hair.
“I told him what happened, and he acted like I was a piece of lint to be picked off his shirt. Gave me a ‘that sucks’ and went on about his business. But my pregnancy had been difficult, and bills started piling up.” She shook her head. “I don’t really know how it happened, but his parents somehow found out, and forced him to marry me. Something else I didn’t know at the time.” Her head hung. “I was so happy not to be alone through that, that I jumped at the chance.”
She started, lurched forward and folded the box closed, needing something to do with her hands as she said, “We married, but he was abusive. Resented everything about me that he could. At first it was all just verbal attacks, but they slowly morphed into physical attacks when I was five months pregnant. It was bad. He was six foot five inches and over three hundred pounds. Was a star athlete at ULM. Played in three sports. And he was so muscular.” She rested both hands on the top of the box, and I finally couldn’t take it anymore.
I moved forward and gathered her into my arms.
“Yeah?” I asked.
She felt tiny in my arms.
I wasn’t that big, only six foot three, and two hundred and thirty pounds, but the sound of the man she’d once been wed to sounded massive.