The Remedy (28 page)

That was what occurred in the following moments—Bugger baring his teeth like a feral animal while Rob somehow returned an unimpressed, swaggering smirk. Despite the hate apparent in both men’s eyes, there was something holding them back, delaying the violence that so wanted to present itself. There was no doubt in Leigh’s mind as to what this reason was: she had met her just moments ago.

Old Clementine Cedar wouldn’t be too happy about her son and nephew killing each other. And the victor would undoubtedly have to deal with the matriarch’s displeasure.

As if he were reading Leigh’s thoughts, Rob said, “We don’t have to do this, Bugger. But if anyone’s going to touch Leigh, it’ll be me.”

Frothy foam sprayed from Bugger’s mouth.

My God. Is he really rabid?

“No!” Bugger screamed. “You took mine. I get this one.”

Rob held his hands out to his sides like a police negotiator. “’Fraid it doesn’t always work that way.”

“Yes, it
does
! Ma said so!”

The regression that Leigh had previously observed in the cabin returned. Again, Bugger was that bratty six-year-old who wasn’t getting his way. Rob took on the part of the tolerant adult, patiently explaining to his toddler cousin the golden rule of parenting:
Because I said so
.

“Oh boy,” Rob said, delivering the phrase with an exaggerated amount of exasperation. “Is she going to be furious when I tell her about this…”

“But she said…”

Leigh couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Though she would’ve previously sworn it impossible, it seemed that she was actually witnessing Rob actually outsmart someone.

Well, he outsmarted
you
, didn’t he?

Her self-criticism was like a slap to the face. She’d been so mesmerized by the sudden turn of the events that she’d completely ignored the opportunity Rob’s presence was creating for:

A distraction.

However, the barn still only had one exit—and it was directly on the other side of this face-off. As involved with one another as Bugger and Rob were, Leigh seriously doubted they wouldn’t notice if she made a run for the door. An escape attempt from their common prey would be more than enough to make them forget, at least momentarily, about their differences.

No, if she were to make a break for it, the two men would have to be engaged in actual physical combat. Bickering back and forth just wasn’t going to cut it. But it continued.

“You’re going to be in so much trouble,” Rob said.

“What?” Bugger slammed his palms against his brow repeatedly. “No, wait! Mama said—”

“But I won’t tell her if you put down the knife.”

For a moment, it looked as if Bugger was seriously considering Rob’s threat. He glanced at the blade in his grip as if it had betrayed him, transformed from a loyal friend to a treacherous enemy that had landed him in such a horrible dilemma. But the illusion did not last long as the alluring glint of its metal reflected across his eyes.

“No!” he screamed. “You’re full of shit.”

Hands slapping on his thighs to show he’d given up, Rob replied simply, “Suit yourself. I’m going to go get her right now.”

And then, despite the insanity of the maneuver, he turned his back on his psychopathic, knife-wielding cousin and sauntered toward the barn’s sliding door.

Leigh had as much time to question if Rob had lost his mind as it took to inhale a single breath. The moment it had left her lungs, Bugger was screaming a voice-cracking war cry and sprinting toward Rob’s back, his knife ready to do its bloody business.

What a fitting end for a backstabber: a stab in the back
.

Just as the tip of the blade was about to puncture the back of his neck, Rob spun, grabbing Bugger’s wrist and bringing the furious attack to a screeching halt. Rob used Bugger’s own momentum to throw his cousin over his shoulder, hurling him to the dirt.

A cloud of dust accompanied a painful “
Oof!”
as Bugger’s body hit the earth at Rob’s feet. Despite the soil particles floating in the air, Leigh could see the knife fall from Bugger’s grasp as the abrupt landing jerked it free from his grip. Rob, too, spotted the loose weapon and sent it flying away from them both with a field goal–worthy kick.

But feet suspended in the air or not, Bugger was instantly upon him again, unfazed by his previous tumble. Rob couldn’t defend himself against the ensuing tackle that brought him painfully to his knees.

The two men rolled across the barn floor, tangled like two mutts in a backyard dogfight. This was the moment Leigh been waiting for, her chance to sprint to the door and flee into the forest before either captor knew she was gone.

She scrambled to her feet and placed one foot in front of another, putting weight on her back toes like a sprinter waiting for the gunshot.
Deep breath…

Bugger hurled his opponent away, sending Rob soaring to a patch of ground directly in Leigh’s path. Before she could even consider attempting to jump over Rob’s body, he was springing back to his feet, a large knife he’d landed next to now in his hand.

It didn’t even register at first that Rob was speaking to her when he shouted, “Don’t move, Leigh. It’s okay now. Everything’s under control.”

Keeping the blade pointed at his enemy, Rob glanced at Leigh and flashed a reassuring smile. Except when their eyes met, Leigh was overwhelmed by the pure madness that stoked his stare like burning coals behind his gaze.

He really thinks he’s the hero
.

What happened next was nothing short of magic. Of the blackest kind.

Like a magician, Bugger seemed to pull a circular saw blade from thin air. With the freakish accuracy of a carnival knife thrower, he hurled the blade at his cousin. His eyes still on Leigh, Rob didn’t see the jagged disc approaching until it was already buried in the back of his hand.

He screamed.

The knife he had been holding dropped to the ground as blood sprayed across his chest and face. Whimpering like a fox caught in a trap, Rob pinched the edge of the saw blade and tried to extricate it from his hand. The blade, however, did not want to budge, its curved teeth no doubt hooked into the inner tissue. Distracted by his pain, Rob didn’t notice Bugger charging him.

The punch caught him right under his jaw, a perfect uppercut knockout. Leigh winced as she heard the sickening crack of Rob’s teeth gnashing together, no doubt breaking and slicing the inside of his lip. Bugger connected with such tremendous force that his cousin took flight, his airborne route leading him right into the pile of moldy hay. He landed almost silently, the damp straw cushioning his fall like a pillow.

With his enemy dazed, Bugger took his time reclaiming his knife and leisurely strolled over to the haystack. Only once Bugger was mere feet away did Rob become aware of his approach, his groans abruptly ending and his eyes popping open. He tried to scurry backward through the damp hay, but the hard wooden wall behind him allowed no further retreat.

Bugger had him trapped.

“Bye-bye, Robbie!”

Perhaps it was the stress—the severe shock of traumatic events, one after the other, taking a toll on her exhausted mind—but Leigh’s brain just couldn’t seem to process information at normal capacity any longer. That had to be reason the scene happening before her eyes was playing out with the speed of a slow motion replay.

Bugger charged, bringing his knife down with all the fury of hell behind it. In the frame-by-frame playback of Leigh’s strained consciousness, she could see a wooden handle just barely sticking out from the depths of the moist straw with surprising clarity. She saw Rob slowly reach for the handle, the fingers of his uninjured left hand gripping it tightly. With Bugger no less than two steps away, the muscles in Rob’s left bicep hardened as he struggled to lift the unidentified handle from underneath the hay, sending pieces of straw flying in the air like confetti. But even with the flying silage impeding Leigh’s vision, she was able to immediately identify what was on the other end of that handle.

And so did Bugger, when he ran at full speed into the four sharp tines of a farmer’s pitchfork.

Leigh flinched at the sight of the pitchfork’s bloody tips appearing in a perfect row through Bugger’s back. The holes they created in his back widened as Rob drove his arm forward, further forcing the fork through his cousin’s body. Leigh heard something that resembled a serving fork stabbing a Thanksgiving turkey as the rusty metal punctured flesh and scraped bone. Over the nauseating sound, Bugger released a short “
Ulck!”
before staring down at his midsection in complete disbelief. Rob had jabbed him like the last remaining bite of a steakhouse dinner.

For Leigh, the world regained its speed as abruptly as it had slowed down.

“
GRAASHHH
!”

The word Bugger managed to scream through a throat full of liquid had no meaning short of total rage. Despite being impaled by the fork, blood pumping out from the perforations in his back, Bugger began slashing out viciously with the knife that somehow remained in his grip. The blade came so close to Rob’s face that the hair on the side of his head actually danced with the breeze created by Bugger’s swipes. Still, despite Bugger’s dying determination to cut his cousin’s throat, the long handle of the pitchfork kept Rob a safe distance from the knife, the arc of Bugger’s swing just short of reaching his flesh.

Bugger managed to slice the air at least six times before his arm slowed, his eyes rolled back, and the knife finally dropped from his hand. It disappeared into the straw like a needle in the haystack.

With a heavy grunt, Rob tossed Bugger’s dead body to the side as easily as if he were made of hay. Then, springing to his feet with more energy than Leigh would’ve thought possible at this point, Rob delivered one final kick to the corpse’s gut.

“Should’ve thrown the knife at me,” he said, gasping for breath. “Dumbass.”

Leigh looked at Rob, who was now looking over at her, blood oozing from the corner of his maniacal smile.

Why didn’t I run?

Her two feet were, for some reason, immovably fixed to the floor:

She was literally frozen with fear.

Rob, his bottom lip split open from Bugger’s powerful uppercut, spat a wad of thick, red saliva onto the ground and wiped away the red trail running down his chin. With one quick tug and a sharp, excruciating yelp, he yanked out the saw blade still embedded in his flesh, leaving behind a dark, bleeding gash. Visibly in pain, Rob brought his injured hand down to his waist, wrapping the ragged cut with the bottom of his T-shirt as he walked toward Leigh. She watched the material go dark as the wetness seeped through immediately.

“Are you okay, Leigh?”

Leigh was aware that she was backing up yet again away from the exit. At least this time she was on her feet.

“Get away from me, Rob. Just stay away.”

The expression on Rob’s face might’ve been comical in another scenario not nearly as grim. He looked actually hurt by Leigh’s words, as if he had done nothing to deserve such a response.

“No, no, it’s okay.” He extended his hand extended in reassurance. “It’s okay.”

“Fuck you!”

Leigh’s words came without thought, the tanks of logic within her mind running on empty. She was now solely fueled by emotions, her actions dictated by the factions of fear and anger battling inside her.

“Fuck you,” she repeated. “You’ve lost your fucking mind. Don’t you dare come near me.”

Again, Rob seemed perplexed by Leigh’s outburst.

“Leigh.” Somehow, the serenity in his voice was far more threatening than if he had been screaming. “You’ve got it all wrong. My cousin was the crazy one.”

He stopped creeping forward.

“I love you, Leigh.”

Leigh stopped walking backward.

“What?”

The runaway crazy train that Leigh had boarded the moment she entered the twisted world of the Cedar family was somehow
still
picking up speed. Even with everything she’d endured up until this point, Rob somehow had more surprises left. His eyes were simultaneously still and chaotic, like a cement foundation built on a fault line. His strange, unreadable expression made it impossible to determine if he was speaking with sincerity or just trying to bait her into another trap. Leigh suspected the latter.

Rob observed Leigh’s bewildered state and insisted, “It’s true. I love you. I always have. I never wanted to hurt you.”

When a hot, wet streak ran down her left cheek, Leigh knew she had begun to cry. She was more afraid than she’d ever felt in her life, and no longer had authority over any function of her body.

“Rob,” she whispered hoarsely. “Just stay back.” She wiped away the tears fogging her vision. Rob’s looming figure seemed to warp before her like an abstract painting.

“I saved you.” He took another step toward her. “Bugger was going to hurt you, but I stopped him. Now we can be together.”

Even more shocking than her own tears were the ones now falling down Rob’s face, rolling down the sides of his nose and mixing with the blood leaking off his lips. “I don’t want to do this anymore.” His shoulders jerked as his sobbing intensified, racking his entire body.

A strange sensation tickled the depths of Leigh’s gut. It was only a suggestion of an emotion—an incomplete transmission sent from her brain with the weakest signal possible. But the feeling struck her with just enough force to introduce itself as, considering the circumstances, a most unwelcome guest:

Pity.

“I love my family, I really do.” Rob’s eyes had become nearly as red as the bottom of his stained T-shirt. “But I can’t help them anymore. They’ll just have to find another way to get their food, because I’m done with this.”

The rubber heel of Leigh’s sneaker collided with a barrier behind her.

The wall. She’d run out of room to retreat and had no choice but to stand and face her weeping pursuer, a man who looked like he could just as easily fall to his own knees as decide to strangle every breath of air from her body. Was he actually remorseful? Maybe Leigh wouldn’t need to escape him if she could further encourage his change of heart. All she had to do was feed the fire.