Run Wild (45 page)

“What are you going to do?” Natasha asked, still whispering.

Rebecca grinned and by the look on her face she might have thought Natasha had asked her if she wanted to watch a good movie or play a board game. She looked absolutely delighted and incredibly calm.

“Do as I say and don’t try and be a hero and I promise you’ll walk out of this alive.” Rebecca leaned into Natasha, and the faint smell of roses drifted around her. She’d taken care to make herself look nice and even dabbed on perfume for this event. “Cooperate fully and you might walk out of here a richer woman than you were before.”

“Really?” Natasha asked.

Rebecca didn’t seem to hear the sarcasm. “I promise,” she said, nodding. Then without notice, she yelled, “Hey, whore! Get your ugly ass out here this fucking minute!” Rebecca’s voice echoed off the walls.

Later Natasha would shake her head in disbelief. But Ethel came running out of one of several doors at the far end of the dining room/family room extension off the kitchen.

“Get out of my house, you little tramp!” Ethel screamed, and pointed a long, daggerlike pink-painted nail at Rebecca, seemingly unimpressed by the rifle aimed at her.

If Natasha screamed, she wouldn’t ever admit it to a soul, but the explosion the rifle made when it was fired inside the house was deafening. Natasha did cover her ears and duck. When she straightened, Ethel was rolling on the ground, screaming loud enough Jim Burrows would probably hear her no matter where he was on his land.

“Oh my God!” Natasha yelled, feeling the strain in her throat.

The smell of the gun firing stunk but not as badly as the incredibly pungent odor that quickly filled the room. Natasha gagged when she raced over to Ethel.

“Put your hand on it. Stop the bleeding!” Natasha yelled over the shrill screaming.

“Leave her alone.” Rebecca walked up next to Natasha and smiled as she stared down at Ethel. “Feel the pain, bitch. Roll in it. Wallow in it. Know what it feels like to hurt over every inch of your body.”

Ethel responded by wailing, her screams slowly turning into hysterical tears.

“You’re insane.” Natasha didn’t take time to think about what Rebecca might do next but ran around the long island in the kitchen and yanked a towel from the refrigerator handle. She hurried back to Ethel and slid to the floor next to her, fighting nausea from the stench of the blood and the open wound spewing blood from her leg.

Natasha pressed the towel on the wound and watched it quickly turn red. Looking away, she grabbed Ethel’s hand, fought with her for only a moment when the woman tried pulling away to cover her face, which was where her other hand was. Makeup streamed from her eyes, which were squeezed shut. Natasha managed to press Ethel’s hand over the wound.

“Keep your hand there. Don’t move it,” she instructed. “Do you hear me, Ethel?”

The woman kept crying loudly, her mouth opened wide, giving indication she might break into another screaming fit at any moment.

“I shot her upper thigh. It’s a flesh wound.” It was hard to hear Rebecca. “She will be fine. But I bet it does hurt like hell,” she finished, and giggled. “Now, do you have your phone on you?”

“Yes,” Natasha said, turning and looking up at Rachel. Natasha also had her gun on her and would use it if she had to but thought an upper kick to the side of the head would be a lot more satisfying.

“Stand up and get away from her. Do you really want your fingerprints all over her body?” Rebecca was still smiling. “Now, call Jim Burrows and inform him you’ve just shot his wife.”

“What?” Natasha stood slowly. This was turning uglier and uglier by the minute. Rebecca was beyond gone in the head. She would do anything, kill, maim, or torture, to see through her sick, morbid plot. “I will not,” she said flatly, facing Rebecca.

“You can’t outsmart me,” Rebecca told her smoothly. “No one has figured me out yet. The phone call to your office asking about your father.” She rolled her eyes. “You have no room to talk when it comes to the dear daddy department,” she sneered, but then her features relaxed and she began smiling again. “Not even the sheriff discovered I was the one who put the buck in the road. I just didn’t need interference that night, not when I was making sure all our bases were covered and that slut over there hadn’t changed the house too drastically.”

“You really are clever.”

“Yes, I am. And now you will call Jim.” She raised her gun.

Natasha leapt, forcing her full weight on Rebecca and sending the two of them flying backward. Carpet burns scorched Natasha’s arms. She grabbed the rifle, determined to get it away from Rebecca. It went off again and Natasha jumped backward, doing a crazed crab walk backward as her hair fell into her face.

Something smacked her on the top of the head, and she leapt to her feet, a moment later realizing that it was spackling from the ceiling where the bullet had lodged.

“Do you think I don’t already know that you can fight?” Rebecca sneered, moving from her knees to her feet and picking up the rifle, which had fallen next to her. “Get out your fucking phone, now!” she screamed.

Natasha glanced past Rebecca for a second when she saw something, or better yet someone, run past the long, narrow windows that lined the far wall. The thin, see-through curtains that hung to the floor, covering the windows, made it difficult to tell who was out there. Natasha looked down quickly, hoping Rebecca wouldn’t notice her moment’s distraction. She hoped help was surrounding them as they spoke.

“Fine. Fine,” she said, and hated how badly she shook when she reached into her coat pocket and felt her gun. She could pull it out, fire, and take Rebecca down. It would be self-defense. No one would accuse her of anything else. One look at Ethel, who had actually kept her hand pressed against the wound, and Natasha stuffed her other hand into her other pocket. She pulled out the cell phone. “What’s the number?”

Her fingers shook almost too much to manage the phone. Rebecca rattled off a phone number and Natasha touched the buttons, backspacing when she actually pushed one hard enough for the phone to register it. Then when she’d tapped the keyboard enough times to make a show of entering the number, she tapped the last number she’d dialed, Trent’s phone.

It started ringing as she brought it to her ear.

“Tell him you shot his whore,” Rebecca ordered.

Trent answered on the first ring. “What’s going on in there?” he barked, although he kept his voice low.

Natasha cleared her voice, determined to sound cool and collected. The situation was out of control, but Natasha wasn’t hurt or a prisoner, at least not yet.

“Hello, Jim,” she said calmly. “I’ve just shot your wife.”

“Whore,” Rebecca corrected, watching Natasha with bright, wide-open eyes.

“Whore,” Natasha repeated.

“You didn’t shoot her,” Trent stated.

“No.” Natasha looked at Rebecca. “No, she’s not dead.”

“Yet,” Rebecca said.

“Yet,” Natasha repeated.

“Tell him to come to the house and he better be alone or she will be dead along with his unborn bastard.” Rebecca raised her rifle with the skill she’d professed earlier to having, moving it into position with one fluid movement. “Tell him that now,” she snarled.

“I heard her,” Trent said. “We’re coming in now.”

“Come to the house alone,” Natasha said anyway, without taking her attention from Rebecca.

“Hang up.”

Natasha hung up the phone.

“Now give it to me.” Rebecca reached for Natasha’s phone.

“What?” Natasha hesitated. “Why do you want my phone?”

Rebecca pressed the barrel of the gun against Natasha’s forehead and yanked the phone out of her hand. Once again Natasha’s life flew by before her eyes. Images racing too fast to comprehend spun around her in head, evolving and disappearing from the incredible pressure building where the barrel pinched into her flesh.

Rebecca glanced down at Natasha’s cell phone and her smile faded.

“Why, you—,” she snarled, her voice reaching screeching tones in less than a second. Rebecca’s smile vanished and a snarl so evil, so incredibly filled with hatred, twisted her expression into a cruel frown. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” she screamed, slamming Natasha’s phone to the floor.

Natasha didn’t want to see her life flash before her eyes again. And she sure as hell wasn’t ready to witness the last scene. Slapping the rifle away from her head with her forearm, she yelled when she bulldozed into Rebecca.

“I fucking think I’m tired of your head games, bitch!” Natasha screamed, and grabbed Rebecca’s firing arm, twisted it, and sent the rifle skidding across the carpet to the kitchen floor, where it clunked and spun once.

Natasha didn’t let go but lifted Rebecca, heaving her into the air, then slamming her to the floor. She reveled in the one moment all air flew from the little bitch’s lungs with a loud grunt. Rebecca looked up at Natasha, shocked and confused as if she didn’t comprehend what had just happened.

For a moment Natasha swore the gun had fired again. A whirlwind of commotion spun around her. There were men everywhere. But what didn’t make sense was that instead of Trent’s arms wrapping around her and pulling her away from Rebecca, Natasha’s cousin Jake yanked her backward.

Trent slid down next to Rebecca, flipped her to her stomach, and grabbed her wrist, pulling it behind her back as he slapped handcuffs on her. Then he pulled her to her feet, not too nicely, and gave her a quick shake when she began screaming and trying to fight him.

Uncle Greg rushed into the house as well, moving expertly around Trent and sliding to his knees next to Ethel. Greg was feeling her pulse and letting his serious gaze travel over her body, assessing the situation, when Natasha’s cousin Marc walked around Trent as well. Marc had his phone out and pressed it to his ear. Natasha wasn’t sure if he was talking to anyone or not. But when he squatted on the opposite side of Ethel he looked over at Natasha and winked.

“Good moves there, Cuz,” he said.

*   *   *

Trent had parked his Suburban behind the Avalanche as an identical Avalanche pulled up alongside it. He got out of his truck as the King family unloaded next to him. Every man in Natasha’s family was a good couple inches taller than he was, not that he cared. When Greg King had called him he apparently had connections good enough to know the bust was going down. King had offered to assist and Trent agreed.

Greg King and his sons, Marc and Jake, were professionals. They never mentioned Natasha. They asked all the right questions and listened seriously when Trent informed them how it would go down. They didn’t argue or inform him that he’d better be taking good care of their niece and cousin. But Trent saw that demand in all of their eyes now.

Natasha slid out of the backseat, arm in arm with Aunt Haley. The two women were talking to each other, huddled close against the wind as they hurried to Trent’s house. He followed, key in hand, and unlocked it so Natasha and her family could enter.

It had been a long night. After he’d cuffed Pat O’Reilly and let the Redding police take him in their squad car, the paramedics had taken Ethel Burrows in the ambulance. Jim Burrows had hovered close by. His love for his new wife had been legitimate. The man was a shrewd businessman though, and although family meant the world to him, he knew a bad deal when he saw one. He’d left with the ambulance, but Trent wouldn’t be surprised if Jim filed for divorce once Ethel was safe in a hospital bed.

Jim’s tormented expression when Rebecca had been hauled off was more of a heartbreaker. It would destroy the man knowing how much his older daughter despised him. She had planned on killing Jim and had screamed it to enough witnesses to make premeditated, attempted murder charges stick easily. Jim Burrows would need a while to recover from all of this. Trent planned on checking in on him here in a few days.

In the meantime, Trent had a houseful of family whom he barely knew and all of them were watching him with scrutinizing stares. Haley King repeatedly looked at him with a stare that said,
I know you’re sleeping with my niece.
He wouldn’t deny it. Haley’s hard, intense attention, when she sent it his way, also made it clear he hadn’t met with her approval. Trent wasn’t sure what would make her approve of him.

“There’s Midnight,” Natasha announced loudly and dragged Aunt Haley through the house to the back door.

“Midnight?” Marc asked, following but standing inside the kitchen.

“My father’s horse,” Trent grumbled, inching around the large man and hurrying outside after the women. Now he knew how Natasha had got to the ranch. He had panicked at first that leaving her at his house had been the worst mistake of his life. He thought Rebecca had shown up, knowing Trent would be arresting Pat O’Reilly, and dragged Natasha from his house at gunpoint. He should have known better.

The three King men followed Trent into his backyard and watched Natasha leave Aunt Haley’s side and run up to Midnight. Trent shook his head when the horse actually seemed glad to see her.

“Who would have thought there was so much country in our girl?” Marc said, laughing.

Natasha shoved her long black hair over her shoulder as she turned and made a face at him. “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.” She then locked gazes with Trent and her expression sobered.