Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

father wanted to marry his own daughter that you just kind of lost your mind for a minute.”
    “Give me that tape!”
    Meade stepped closer to me and drew back his fist. I forced myself to remain seated on the rock, betting that as disturbed as he was—and he was plenty disturbed—he was no Earl Graff. Meade didn’t respect women, but he wasn’t incapable of feelings for them. A nice moral conundrum, that.
    “You’re not going to hit me, Meade. I’m just a poor, weak woman, remember?”
    I’d pegged my man. Or boy. Meade backed away and lowered his fist. “You can’t use that tape in court, anyway. I saw it on a cop show once before Daddy locked the television up.”
    I smiled up at him. “Oh, sure, Arizona takes a dim view of this sort of thing, but Utah has allowed this sort of confession to be entered into evidence on various occasions. You screwed up when you killed Prophet Solomon on the Utah side of the state line.”
    Actually, I knew no such thing about the admissibility of taped evidence in Utah, but I was betting that Meade didn’t, either. The whole idea of my little trick was to get Meade to come with me to the county attorney’s office and
then
make a taped confession which would stand up in court.
    I hammered my point home. “Bear in mind, Meade, for this to work you have to bypass Benson, because as you said, he’s one of your own. But if you go to the county attorney with me and tell the truth, I’m betting you’ll get off with just a short stint in Juvenile Hall or even some nice mental health facility. You’ll be back out in no time.”
    It made sense to me. What were a few months compared to the length of the average life? If the worse happened and Meade wound up in Juvie until he turned eighteen, well, he could live with that.
    But I’d forgotten that even a week looks like forever to a teenager.
    When I saw the expression on his face, I knew I’d miscalculated. “You want me to live on the Outside? Never! I’d rather die!” With that, he turned on his heel and took off for the flooded canyon as fast as he could run.
    I sat in shock for a brief second, then dropped the tape recorder and hitched up my skirts. But as I raced after Meade, the skirts fell down again to my ankles, tripping me. By the time I recovered and caught up with him, Meade had already reached the canyon’s rim, where he stood looking down at the torrent.
    Frightened for the first time, but not for myself, I grabbed him around the waist. “Don’t, Meade.”
    The boy was no taller than me and painfully thin, but having lived most of his life on Purity’s hardscrabble land, he proved stronger than he looked. He twisted in my arms and hit me on the forearm with his elbow. Although I didn’t release my grip, the movement ripped the thin fabric of his shirt, and I found myself holding nothing but a ragged piece of red flannel.
    As I snatched at him again, he began running along the edge of the canyon, looking down as if rethinking his original intent. This slowed him enough for me to come close to grabbing distance again after only a few yards. I dared a quick glance down. This part of the canyon was less steep than other areas, and its sides sloped gently toward the current, creating an almost navigable bank. Almost, but not quite. The thing was still a death trap.
    Meade threw me an odd look, almost one of cunning. Then, just as I reached for him, he scrambled down the rocky side of the canyon toward the deadly water.
    “Don’t, Meade!” I screamed, as I slid down the slope after him. But the water roared so loudly that I could hardly hear myself. All I could do was keep stumbling after him, hoping that he wouldn’t trip, wouldn’t fall—or jump—into the maelstrom before I could grab him again.
    The slope, covered with rocks slicked down after two days of rain, proved treacherous. At one point, I had to grab onto the low branches of a scrub oak in order to keep my footing. Meade wasn’t as cautious. I saw his mouth open in a shout as he tripped, then fell, only inches from the water. Screaming for him to hold still, I let go of the scrub oak and edged toward him, intending to help him toward the flatter portion of the bank.
    It almost worked. I grabbed him by his thick leather belt. When he smiled up at me I thought I’d succeeded.
    Then he kicked me in the face.
    Shocked, I let go of him and began sliding down the bank on my belly. Just before I fell into the water, though, I twisted onto my