7
“What does she mean,not enough? What’s happening to her?”
With my hand still wrapped in the tail of my shirt, I carefully placed Stella’s arm across her chest. I felt utterly defeated.
“You’re Jeffery Dalton.” I forced myself to draw in a breath, long and deep. I couldn’t look at him.
“Preacher. Nobody calls me Dalton.” He was staring at the dead man between us.
“If this isn’t my father, who is he?”
I heard a woman scream, then.
Loud.
Outside.
“Shit, that’s Cammie,” Preacher said, scrambling to his feet.
“Cammie Brotherton is here?”
“I picked her and her daughter up in California,” he shouted back at me, racing for the door, his gun out again.
I quickly glanced around before chasing after him—Dewey Hobson was no longer in the house.
“Dewey, no!” I shouted, barreling out the front door.
He didn’t hear me. His fist pistoned through the passenger window of the GTO, shattering the glass. He grabbed the woman sitting there by collar of her denim jacket and pulled her toward him, blood running from his split knuckles.
Preacher got to him first.
Hobson had the woman I could only assume was Cammie Brotherton halfway out the window, when Preacher slammed into him with the force of a truck, sending both men to the pavement. Hobson’s head cracked against the concrete. This should have knocked him out, but only dazed him for a moment—he slammed the palms of his hands into Preacher’s ears, then brought his knee up into Preacher’s groin. The angle was all wrong and the blow glanced off, catching Preacher in the thigh instead.
Hobson twisted, somehow managed to plant both his feet on the ground, and pushed up. Preacher had been about to deliver a punch, but the movement threw off his balance. Hobson used the momentum to roll, taking Preacher with him, somehow ending up on top. Hobson’s hands were around Preacher’s neck in an instant, squeezing the life from him.
I grabbed Hobson around the waist and tried to pull him back, but he wouldn’t release his grip. His arms were like lead.
In the middle of all this, Cammie had scrambled out of the car with a pump action shotgun. She chambered a shell and pointed the barrel at Hobson’s head.
Hobson’s head swiveled, following the sound. When he saw Cammie holding the shotgun, he released his grip on Preacher’s neck, shrugged me off, and lunged at her. If I hadn’t grabbed his leg, he surely would have reached her, but instead he lost his balance and cracked into the concrete.
“What am I doing here, Preacher?” Cammie took two steps back, the barrel again pointing at Hobson’s head.
“Shoot him!” Preacher tried to shout this out, but the words came in a gravelly whisper, his throat still fighting for air.
I pulled Hobson back, grabbed his other leg. “He doesn’t understand! David did something to him!”
I had no idea if Cammie knew David Pickford, but she did know Dewey Hobson, and I think that was the only thing that prevented her from pulling the trigger. She spun the shotgun around and brought the butt of the stock down hard on the side of the man’s head—two hits, fast and hard. He collapsed, unconscious.
Preacher sat up, out of breath and beat. He rubbed at his sore neck. “Get him inside. We gotta tie him up.”
From the back seat of the GTO, a little girl poked her head up—all long blond hair and blue eyes.
8
Fogel shook her head and stomped across the large white room to the door at the back. She found it to be locked. She beat on it with the back of her fist. “Open this door immediately!”
Back at the reception desk, the blonde was on her phone again. Crouched over the desk, half standing, speaking to someone.
