The Perfect Letter (12 page)

“You couldn't make your own way on a bus, Jake. If you want to train, if you want to trade on your old man's name, you're going to want that name to be a good one. Remember that.”

“I don't want to train anymore,” Jake hissed. “I don't want to win at all costs. You're a liar and a cheat. You
and
my father.” She could hear the hurt in his voice, his wounded pride. The Honorable Jacob Rhodes. She knew how much he admired his father, how he'd always looked up to him. He always said if he could have half the accomplishments his father had, he'd think his life was a success.

That admission—that his father was a liar, that Jake didn't want to be like him anymore—must have cost him dearly. But why had he said it?

She heard a stall door open, heard the sound of something soft hitting wood—a person, maybe. Someone made a grunting noise, as if in pain. “I'm warning you,” Jake said, his voice laboring now. “Keep your goddamn hands off me. I don't have your stuff. It's over.”

In a minute she could see the shadow of Jake walking away, could see him trying to leave. Dale raised his voice now, seemingly not
caring if anyone heard. “You little shit!” he shouted. “I'm not letting you torpedo your daddy's whole career for a worthless piece of ass.”

“You can't talk about Leigh like that,” Jake said, turning around.

“Why not? She can traipse around here in her wet clothes and her tight jeans like some little tramp, but no one's supposed to notice? Don't kid yourself, she wants us all to notice her. You and me
and
your dad. She's just begging for us all to pay attention. Just because she's fucking you in the hayloft doesn't mean I have to bow and scrape to that little slut. I don't care if her granddaddy owns half of Texas.”

“You don't talk about her like that,” Jake said. “You don't say another word against her. I'm going to marry her as soon as she turns eighteen. She's going to be my wife, and I won't let you talk about her like that. Not now, or ever again.”

Leigh had held on to the stall nearest her to keep from falling over. He shouldn't have told Dale about their plans—not Dale Tucker, of all people. It was too risky; it could expose both of them.

Oh, Jake, you didn't!

Dale had laughed, actually laughed. “Whoo, boy,” he said. “You are dumber than I thought. That little whore is never going to marry a country boy like you. You think her granddaddy's going to will his millions to
you
?”

“I don't care if he does or doesn't,” Jake said. “It's only Leigh I want.”

“Then you're definitely dumber than I thought. The only reason to marry that little bitch is her granddad's millions, Jake. She'll break your heart faster than you can spit. She'll be screwing everything that moves.”

“You're just pissed I got to her first.”

Dale's voice dropped an octave. “She should be glad you got to her first. If I'd gotten to her first, I'd knock some fucking sense into that head of hers. Now I mean it: hand over the stuff or I swear I will go straight to the house right now and tell Grandpa that you're fucking
his baby girl. Let
him
deal with you. If you get out of it without a bullet in your ass, it won't be because I didn't try.”

Leigh knew he meant it. He'd expose both of them. It would all be over. But what did Dale want that Jake had?

“I told you, I didn't bring it. I never went to the place and picked it up.” Dale snorted. “Laugh all you want, but it's true. I won't be your dog anymore.”

Scuffling, grunting. The sound of fists. Jake and Dale were fighting in the darkness. She couldn't see them, but she could hear the sound of them hitting each other, could hear Jake cry out.

“I'll kill you,” Dale was hissing. “I will fucking kill you.”

She could see them fighting. It was dark in the barn, but she could see well enough that Jake was too much for the smaller, older man, that Jake was tall and broad and powerfully built. He swung out and caught Dale under the chin, knocking the other man into the dirt.

She watched as Dale Tucker grabbed a lead line, looped it over Jake's neck, and pulled. Jake gave a strangled gasp and fell to his knees.

Leigh's heart was in her ears. Jake was in trouble. She had to help. She had to save him.

She slipped around to the outside entrance to the tack room, running now. The barn was completely black, so that the two men fighting were nothing but shadows in the darkness, a blur of movement and grunting. She turned the handle of the door to the tack room, where her grandfather kept the .357. She found the gun right where her grandfather always kept it, under the pile of horse blankets on the shelf. It was loaded. It was always loaded—Gene said an unloaded gun was no better than a baseball bat.

Holding it low at her side, she opened the tack room door into the barn. The fight had spilled out into the aisle of the barn. She could see their shapes, but could barely make out who was who. Dale Tucker was nearly a head shorter than Jake, wearing his dirty old trucker hat
even in the dark, but he was muscular, strong, nearly as wide as he was tall. Jake was kneeling, and Dale had the rope tight around his throat, squeezing, his other hand pulling Jake's arms behind his back at an angle that looked so painful Leigh nearly cried out.

“Give me the stuff, you pussy-whipped little shit! I know you have it!”

“Fuck. Off.” Jake's voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper, the air nearly squeezed out of him.

Leigh raised the gun to sight at Dale's head. She cocked the weapon, a loud metallic clicking, unmistakable even in the dark. Both men froze.

“Step back,” Leigh said, her voice quavering in fear, or anger, or both at once. “Get your hands off him, Dale. I may be nothing but a worthless piece of ass, but you know as well as I do that my rich granddaddy taught me how to use this gun.”

Dale let go of the rope around Jake's neck and stepped away. “Well, look at this,” he said, his voice dripping sour honey. “Mommy's come to break up the fight. Jake, you didn't tell me you called for your mommy.”

“He didn't. I came looking for him and heard you talking garbage about me.”

Jake was lying on the floor, gasping, but at least he was breathing again.

“Honestly, sweetheart, I didn't know you were here. If I had, I might have said some things different.”

The gun was heavy in her hands. She'd never aimed one at a person before—she'd shot at cans along a fence line, once at a bunch of coyotes that were harassing some of the horses—but she'd never felt the adrenaline rush into her veins the way she did now, the throb of her own power.

As Leigh pointed the gun straight into Dale Tucker's eyes, words flooded her brain. Every nasty thing he'd said to her, every disgusting
look, it all came into razor-sharp focus. She remembered the look on his face earlier in the day, when he'd compared her to a mare in heat, just waiting for the stud to come in and ride her. She saw the self-satisfied expression he'd worn when he'd reached out and touched her breast like it was something he owned.

Now he was sneering. She could just make out his face in the dark, could just see the curl of his lip as he looked at her. Nothing but a worthless piece of ass, he'd called her, because she didn't like him, because she'd recoiled when he touched her. She was only worthless because she wouldn't back down to someone like him.

“You tell your boyfriend about today?” Dale said. “How you took it in the breeding shed like a good little bitch?”

She watched Jake's head snap up. That had caught his attention, like Dale had wanted.

“The only thing that happened in the breeding shed today,” she said, “was when I told you to keep your hands off me.”

“Oh, come on, now. Tell lover boy here the truth, Leigh. You wanted it. You loved it.”

“The only thing I want from you,” she said slowly, “is the sight of you walking away. Let him go, and no one gets hurt.”

“That's not what you said this afternoon.”

“I will never,” she said, “let you put your filthy hands on me again. Not ever.”

“You will. You know you will, because you don't dare tell Granddaddy on me. The minute you do, lover boy here is yesterday's news. I think you'll get down on your knees and do whatever I tell you to, just to keep ol' Jakey here on the farm. Now, that's a thought. We could work out a deal, a little tit for tat. That's all it takes for me to keep my mouth shut about you and Jake. Easy as pie for a girl like you. Sound good?”

Jake was struggling to get to his feet. “If you ever . . . If you hurt her, you son of a—”

Leigh kept the gun pointed at Dale, but she could feel her hands begin to shake. She couldn't. She wouldn't even think about it. Not ever.

“Now let's talk turkey,” said Dale. “What I want right now is for lover boy here to give me the stuff his daddy sent him for. If he doesn't, then he can be sure that the next time I catch you alone, I won't be so gentle.”

“You smug asshole. I'm the one with the gun.”

“You won't do it. You don't have the balls for killing, sweetheart. Might as well give me that gun right now. Come on, give it over.”

He still didn't think she'd do it. He didn't think she was capable of actually pulling the trigger. She held the gun steady.

“Leigh.” It was Jake now, coughing, pushing himself to his knees. “Don't give it to him. Don't listen to him.”

Dale was moving closer, his shadow coming at her in the dark, slowly. He held out his hand to take the gun from her. He kept talking—low, soothing—like calming a balky horse. “You angry about today, honey? All I did was give you a taste. You liked it, too, didn't you? Been thinking about me all day?”

Her face burned, because she
had
been thinking about him all day. About how much she hated him, about all the ways she wanted to humiliate him, pay him back for humiliating her. And that was the point, she realized—he wanted her to hate him. He wanted her to think about him, to insinuate himself into her head, because to a man like him hatred was the most powerful aphrodisiac.

“Come on, honey,” he said. Dale was only a few feet from her now, reaching out his hand. “Come on, give me that gun. You don't know the damage you could do with it, do you? You don't want that. You don't want that kind of mess in your life.”

He was close, closer, sidling up to her, moving slowly, talking low. He was coming for the gun, probably thinking to take it from her. He was enjoying his game, enjoying thinking he had the upper hand.

But he didn't have the upper hand, because she still had the gun.

Maybe, if she'd given it to him, he would have simply put it away. Then again, maybe he would have turned it on her and then Jake. Afterward—for many years afterward—she would try to decide which it might have been. Both. Either.

What she did remember, what she dreamed about sometimes at night, was the feel of her own fear, the knowledge of another human being who wanted to do her harm. It didn't matter that he was outnumbered. It didn't matter that he was unarmed. It only mattered that she hated him and that she was afraid of him and that she was the one who held the gun.

In the dark she could see him coming toward her, see the broad expanse of his chest in the checkered shirt, the muscular shoulders, the curl of his lip. She'd known that afternoon in the barn that he hated her, that he wanted to hurt and humiliate her.
The next time I catch you alone, I won't be so gentle.

Her finger tightened on the trigger. A flash.

All the noise in the world seemed to coalesce around her then. The next thing she remembered the lights were on, and she was on the floor of the barn, Jake bending over her, Jake taking the gun out of her hand. He was saying something to her, something she couldn't hear. “What?” she asked him numbly. “What, Jake?” His lips were moving, but she wasn't understanding him. It was as if he were speaking in a foreign language, something dense and impenetrable.

“Are you hurt?” Her ears were ringing, but she could just make out Jake's voice through a fog. “Are you shot?”

She sat up, felt her limbs and chest. Everything was where it should be. “I don't think so,” she said.

On the ground a few feet away lay the body of Dale Tucker, a dark stain spread across the front of his shredded gray-checkered shirt.
His mouth was open, and his mean little eyes were staring up at the ceiling, at nothing. She'd caught him full in the chest with a high-caliber round at close range, and it had torn through him like a stone through wet paper. A dark puddle of blood spread out from beneath him.

Jake bent over him, still holding the gun. “He's dead.”

Leigh wrapped her arms around herself, started to shake. “Oh God,” she moaned. “God, God, I killed him.” She could hardly see. The barn started to go white around her, and she collapsed on the floor. “I killed him. I killed him, Jake.”

It was all going away—Harvard, New York, herself and Jake getting married. It was slipping through her fingers like sand. They'd take her to prison. They might even give her the chair. She felt a noise roiling in her throat, realized the keening sound she heard was her own voice.

Jake shook her. “Stop. Stop it. Look at me, Leigh. Look at my face, just my face. Breathe.” She tried to do what he said, to look in his face, to breathe, but how could she? How could she? She might as well take the gun and put it to her own head. “I'm going to jail,” she said. “I killed him. I killed him, Jake!”

“Listen to me. You didn't. You didn't do anything wrong.”

“I did. I did it. I did it.”

She was panicking, but Jake was looking around at the blood on the floor, his hands on the gun. Then he knelt next to Dale and took aim at the barn door, firing a single shot—
bam—
into the wood.