Camellia fought for consciousness, clawed her way back, and forced her eyes open to look for Wolf. But he wasn’t there. He’d been shot with her gun. He’d been on the ground bleeding when Earl had knocked her senseless. All alone, back there. Nobody would find him. He’d bleed to death!
She tried to move her body, to sit up, to turn and look back. Maybe she could still see him. She pushed herself onto her side, twisting, and the canoe rocked hard.
A dripping wet paddle pressed into the center of her chest. “You stay still now,” Earl said. “Don’t make me hurt you again.”
“I didn’t make you hurt me the first time.”
“We just need some time, Camellia. That’s all we need is some time. You just got confused. You’ll come around. I know you will.”
“You shot him. You shot him and just left him there.” She got herself into a sitting position. Her hands were tied in front of her with a length of rope, and her feet at the ankles with duct tape.
“Ididn’t shoot him,” Earl said. “Gun went off. That’s not on me.”
“Leaving him to die is on you!”
He faced front, because he couldn’t look her in the eye, and she knew it.
“Send help back,” she pled. “Stop somewhere, anywhere, and tell someone. I won’t run away, just?—”
“There were folks heading his way,” he said. “I heard ’em coming before we left.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” He looked back and met her eyes when he said that.
His eyes weren’t right. They were off, not like he was on something, but like the person looking out from behind them was someone else. Someone she didn’t know. She said, “You wouldn’t do this if you were all right, Earl. Some part of you must know that. Stalking me, kidnapping me, shooting Wolf?—”
“Ididn’tshoot him.”
“And what about Mary Jo?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t do that to Mary Jo. She did it to herself. That’s why I’m here, don’t you get it? I don’t want you to end up like that, too. You women, you get this idea about independence and you can’t handle life alone. You’re not meant to. You were never designed to be by yourselves.”
Something skittered down her spine when he said that. Earl was having some kind of psychotic break, she thought.
“Untie me. Right now, Earl, you pull this boat up and you untie me, or I’ll throw myself over the side and drown. I mean it!”
“All right, all right.” He set the paddle down and pulled a huge knife from a sheath at his waist. She stiffened and braced when he brought it close, but he only sliced through the duct tape at her ankles. Then he looked up at her wrists and shook his head. “That was a show of good faith. I’ll untie your hands after we get a little farther if you behave.”
“You can untie them now.”
“No, Camellia. You just be thankful I didn’t use the zip ties. Cause I could have.” He pulled one of the plastic loops out of his pocket to show her. “They’re way less comfortable.”
“Gee, thanks.” She needed to slow him down. If someone had found Wolf, then they’d know by now that she’d been taken. Help could be on the way, and she wanted to give them time to catch up.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said. “You have to stop.”
“No.”
“Fine.” She turned around as if in a huff, so she was facing backward in the canoe. That way she could watch for rescuers and work on the rope without him seeing. She looked over one shoulder to see him facing forward. The water was picking up speed, so he needed to pay attention to steering them around rocks and such. The idiot didn’t even know enough to steer a canoe from the back. She’d be lucky if he didn’t capsize it and drown them both.
She started picking at the knots with her teeth, and didn’t take long to free her hands. She kept the rope wrapped around them loosely, though.
A slender strand forked off the Rio Grande, and Earl paddled them into it. She watched the main river fall away behind them and looked around for something to leave as a clue. The duct tape he’d cut from her ankles was wadded up in the bottom of the canoe. She quickly tossed a piece of it toward some branches, like leaving a breadcrumb behind.
Ignorant of her actions, Earl paddled into a shallow inlet only a few yards farther, then right up to the shore. He grabbed her arm to help her out of the boat, then pulled the boat behind them with his free hand, until he could tuck it into some dense growth where it wouldn’t be seen from the river.
While his back was turned, she tossed the rope from her wrists toward the spot where they’d landed. Then she pulled her hands up under her shirt a little.
