He wanted to argue with me, I could see it in his eyes, but he didn’t. Instead, we worked the knots. Preacher’s gun dangled from a shoulder holster. I had no way to protect myself if he decided to draw it.
I gently gripped the sides of my father’s face and turned his head toward me. “Can you stand?”
My father nodded weakly, a firmer grip on consciousness now. We helped him to his feet.
He cleared his throat and spit blood into the corner of the shed.
I put his arm over my shoulder and helped him to his feet. “Let’s get you back to the house.”
Inside, we found Cammie rifling through kitchen cabinets. Half the drawers were open, too. Her daughter (Darby, I learned) sat on a stool in front of the kitchen island, watching her mother.
Cammie looked up from under the sink when we came through the door. “Holy shit, he’s still alive?”
She rushed over to us. “My God, Eddie. What did they do to you? Sit him down. I found a first-aid kit.”
We helped my father to the living room and sat him down in one of the leather chairs.
The dead man was gone.
So was Stella.
“Where is Stella?”
Cammie knelt at the chair, opened the plastic box, found some cotton balls and antiseptic, and went to work on my father’s face. “I helped her to one of the bedrooms.”
I frowned. “You didn’t—”
“Touch her? No. I wore a pair of those.” She pointed to our box of latex gloves on the counter. “I found them in your car.”
“You went through our stuff?”
“You stole them from my house,” she countered. “Stella told me to wear them, told me where they were.”
My father sucked a breath in between pursed lips. He pressed a hand against his abdomen. “I think he broke a few of my ribs.”
Cammie shook her head. “Christ, we need to take his shirt off. That fucking bastard did a number on him.”
Preacher hovered over us. “I caught him on the phone, Cammie.”
“You didn’tcatchme doing anything.”
“I heard it ring,” Cammie said. She turned and glared at me. “You answered? Are you fucking crazy?”
“You heard the phone ring all the way in here? I was out in the woodshed.”
She went back to my father’s face. He winced as she dabbed at a cut above his left eye. “There are extensions all over the house, every room. They all rang. Was it him? That kid, David?”
“No.”
Preacher clucked his tongue. “We need to tie him up, like Hobson. If it was Pickford, he wouldn’t tell us. He may not even remember. This is a shit show.”
I stood and got in his face. “You’re not tying anyone up.”
Preacher laughed. “You’re stopping me? Now I’m gonna do it just to see what kind of moves you’ve got.”
“Both of you, put the testosterone away,” Cammie said, working the last button on my father’s shirt. She peeled the material back. His entire midsection was black and blue. Higher up on the left, the skin was red and angry. “Oh, man. Definitely a few broken ribs.” She snapped her fingers toward the first-aid kit. “Somebody hand me that roll of gauze.”
I handed it to her, and she looked back at my father. “Eddie, I’m gonna wrap your ribs, but I’m going to keep it loose. I don’t want to restrict your breathing. If I go too tight, it might feel better, but that increases the chances of one of those bone fragments puncturing one of your lungs.” She gently pressed on his midsection, her fingers walking over the dark skin, making note of my father’s reactions. “Looks like we’ve got two broken on the upper left and one down low on the right. I need you to lean forward a bit.”
