Joe rotated on his heels and looked around. “Where are they now?” he asked, suddenly aware of how vulnerable the both of them were since they were bathed in light from the spotlight.
“Luckily, I made Brenda fall into the hole and I’m pretty sure she broke her neck. I hit Eldon on the head with a thirty-pound rock. They’re both still down there,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder. “Eldon’s probably dead by now. I hope Brenda is alive a while longer. She needs to know what it feels like to be kept prisoner in a damned hole in the ground.”
“Liv, you have to be kidding me, right?” Joe asked. “They’re both in that root cellar?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re okay?”
“I think I can say I am,” she said, closing her eyes and squeezing two more tears out. “I’m probably going to be half crazy, though.”
Joe stood and walked around her to the open cellar doors. The pump truck was backed up to it so that the discharge valve was poised over the opening.
Liv said, “They were gonna pour raw sewage in that hole and drown me. Then they were going to fill it up. That was going to be my grave. They were all ready to do it when I yanked on the dinner bucket rope and pulled Brenda in on top of me. That’s how she broke her neck. When Eldon came down to check on her, I brained him.”
Joe paused and looked back at Liv. She was rattled enough that she could be saying just about anything.
But when he shined his flashlight into the root cellar, he saw that she was telling the truth. Eldon lay on top of Brenda, apparently pinning her down. Their bodies were in the shape of an X. Eldon’s entire head was black with blood.
“I was going to open that valve,” Liv said from behind him. “I was going to smother them with everything they have in that truck, but then you showed up.”
“Glad I did,” Joe said.
“We could still do it.”
“Let’s not.”
“Whatever you do, don’t go down there,” she said. “They may look harmless, but those are two of the most dangerous psychotics you’ll ever run across, especially Brenda. Just leave them where they are.”
Joe said, “What you did . . . you are one tough lady.”
“I am,” she said.
Joe said, “The sheriff is on his way. I’m sure he’ll call the EMTs. Those two may be rotten, but we don’t just leave people in a hole.”
“That’s what they did to me,” Liv said. Then: “What day is it?”
Joe had to think about it. “Monday, March Twenty-fourth.”
“I was down there for six days,” Liv said. “This was going to be my last night on earth.”
Joe shook his head. It was a lot to take in.
She raised her hands to the sides of her face in alarm. “They’re not all dead, though. Bull is out there somewhere and he should be back any minute for dinner. He never misses dinner. I thought when I saw your truck out there, it was him.”
“You don’t have to worry about him,” Joe said. “He’s going to miss dinner tonight.”
“Good,” she said. She didn’t ask any more.
“What about Cora Lee?” Joe asked.
“Cora Lee is gone. She took off for good.”
“And Dallas?”
“Dallas is out riding a snowmobile somewhere.”
“Now?”
“That’s what Brenda said.”
Joe shouldered his shotgun and turned toward the mountains. He searched the far-off black timber for a single headlamp that would indicate Dallas coming home.
“They killed Nate,” Liv said softly.
“You mean they shot him,” Joe said. “Nate’s alive.”
“He is?” Liv said, getting to her feet. “My God. I had no idea. Where is he now?”
“It’s not all good news,” Joe said, telling her about Nate’s condition in the hospital in Billings.
“I tried to see him when we went to visit April,” Joe said.
Liv nodded. Her face was suddenly troubled and she closed the gap between them. “It was Dallas who hurt your daughter. Brenda told me.”
Joe remained still.
“She said Dallas did something to your daughter, so they had to protect him. She said Eldon and Bull pulled his shoulder out of the socket and beat him up so he’d look more injured than he was. And they lured Nate and me up here so they could take Nate out before he could help you find the asshole who hurt April.”
Joe was tight-lipped when he asked, “Did she say what Dallas did to April?”
“No. But I’m guessing you already know.”
Joe said, “I do,” but he could barely hear himself over the roaring in his ears.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” she said. “I’m sorry for you and I’m sorry for Nate and I’m sorry for me.”
Then she pointed toward the root cellar. “I’m not sorry for them. That’s one toxic white trash family that’s better off dead. Let’s open the valve.”
For a second, Joe considered doing it. But when he looked over her shoulder and saw a long stream of vehicles coming from the direction of Saddlestring, he said, “You stay right here. Don’t open the valve. Just tell the sheriff everything you told me.”
She said, “You’re going after him, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Before you do, tell me what happened to Bull.”
Joe nodded his head in the direction of the F-250. “Bull’s body is in the back of his pickup. He fired on me and I killed him.”
“Is that what happened to your face?”
Joe reached up and touched the bandage. He’d forgotten about his wound. He nodded his head.
“Stay right here, Liv.”
He turned on his heel and strode toward Eldon’s equipment shed. He remembered seeing the trailer with two snowmobiles. He heard Liv behind him. She was standing over the opening of the root cellar, shouting down into it.
“Did you hear that, Brenda? Eldon’s brains are bashed out. Bull’s deader than hell. And your precious Dallas is next.”
Joe paused and looked over his shoulder to make sure Liv wasn’t trying to unscrew the valve. She wasn’t. She was bending over the opening with her hands on her hips.
“Look up at me, Brenda. I want to see your eyes. I want you to see that I’m up here and you’re down there and I’m ferocious. Ferocious!
“Oh, and your pork chops weren’t really that good. Neither was the fried chicken. My mama can run circles around you in the kitchen, and so would I.”
Joe thought, Pork chops? Fried chicken?
But there was no doubt in his mind that Liv was ferocious.
—
IT WAS THE SECOND TIME in recent memory that he’d found himself roaring through a winter forest on a borrowed snowmobile. This time, though, he was barely in control of his anger.
Dallas was easy to follow. There was only one snowmobile track that left the compound, crossing the sagebrush bench toward the mountains, and Joe rode right on top of it. He’d strapped the shotgun across the cowl with bungee cords. He’d not even bothered with snowmobile boots or a suit since the temperature was already rising above freezing after the storm passed.
He thought of April in the hospital bed, Dallas grinning at him with his boxlike smile, and Liv Brannan shouting like the devil herself into the hole in the ground.
He’d already killed one Cates brother tonight, and the two monsters who’d conceived him were crumpled on the floor of a root cellar.
—
THE TRACK VEERED as it got within a quarter mile of the timber on the side of the mountain. For whatever reason, Dallas had made a sudden turn. Joe overshot it but was soon back on his trail.
It wasn’t long before Joe saw why Dallas had changed direction.