Wicked Prey

Ranch to ‘get me.’ Juliet didn’t push him, and he slashed her with that stick, and then she took him over the edge. I heard the cop car coming, freaked out, and took off on my bike. I didn’t want Mom to know, because it might scare her.”
    Lucas sighed. “Ah, jeez . . . But Briar said she hadn’t seen you.”
    “I taught her how to lie,” Letty said. “So she could deal with Randy.”
    “Letty . . .”
    “That’s not all . . .”
    She told him about setting up Briar to get beaten. “I knew it’d happen sooner or later—probably lots of times. I thought if I could get it to happen while I was there, I could call the cops, and they could get there, and Randy’d go back to prison. I didn’t know they’d rape her.”
    Lucas looked at her for a bit, shook his head, poured some Cheerios.
    Letty said, “I thought I better say something before, you know, tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow?” He was confused.
    “You know—the court thing.”
    “What does that have to do with this?”
    She took another sip, then said, “You know—in case you wanted to change your mind.”
    “Aw, for Christ’s sake, Letty. We’re not going to change our minds. What’re you thinking about?”
    He actually saw her come unknotted: “I was a little worried,” she said.
    “I’m a little worried, too,” he said. “If you called nine-one-one, that means your voice is on tape and there’s no way to get it off. If Briar talks to somebody . . .”
    “Why would anybody care?” she asked. “They know what happened. She got raped and beaten up, and she pushed Randy over the edge. You said they’re not going to prosecute her, and besides, she’s a juvenile.”
    “Ranch isn’t,” Lucas said. “If he brings you up . . .”
    “You told me Ranch doesn’t remember anything,” Letty said.
    “He doesn’t—or says he doesn’t. And he was so iced up, I believe him. But . . . there could be fallout. They could put him on trial, they could put Briar on the stand . . .” He shook his head. “There could be trouble.”
    “Nothing I can’t handle,” she said. “I’m a kid. I got scared and ran away after calling the cops, and never told you. What could they do to me?”
    He looked at her for a moment, calculating, smiled, one of his smiles that tended to scare people—but not Letty—and said, “Nothing.”
    “And that’s what we tell Mom, right?”
    He thought for another moment and then said, “That would be best. We . . . let it go.”
    She stood up and said, “I’ve got to get dressed. I look like the witch in The Wizard of Oz .”
    As she was on her way out, carrying the cup of coffee, he said, “Hey.”
    She stopped.
    Lucas said, “I’m not sure I’d have been smart enough to pull it off, when I was your age, but I would have tried. I would have tried the same goddamn thing. You take care of your family and you take care of your friends.”
    “Goddamn right,” she said.

    JESSE LANE was standing in the barn watching Max Gomez weld a broken tongue on the hay wagon, the place redolent with the burning metal, when his cell phone burped. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the face of it: “Caller Unknown.”
    He said, “Yeah?”, half-expecting one of those robotic campaign recordings. Instead, he got Lindy.
    “Jesse, you know who this is?”
    “Where’re you at?” he asked, stepping outside into the sunshine.
    “That’s for me to know and you to figure out . . . if you want to go to the trouble,” she said. “I wanted to call and find out if you’re going to hunt me down and kill me.”
    “I thought about it. Brute would have. He said so,” Lane said.
    “Yeah, well, if you’re gonna try to get me, I’ll have to try to get you first. I got the money to do it,” Lindy said.
    Lane laughed and said, “Hey, Lindy. Don’t do that.”
    “We gonna let it go?” she asked.
    “Fine with me,” he agreed.
    “You heard about what the cops say—that Brute shot Tate and Rosie.”
    “Don’t surprise me none,” Lane said. “He’d think that was the efficient thing to do.”
    “Efficiency isn’t everything,” she said.
    “Nope, it ain’t. It ain’t even most things.”
    “I was right about the hotel. If I’d gone in there, I’d be dead, too.”
    “Yes, you were. Right,” he said. A butterfly flittered by, and in the barn, Gomez killed his torch.
    In the silence, she said, “I owe you some money.”
    “I got some money.”
    “I guess,” she said. “I’ve been