The Ranger - Ace Atkins [64]
Smoke curled and snaked from the barn.
And a few minutes later the barn exploded, emptying the trailers as men ran down to the fire. A couple of them shooting into the flames, as if bullets would stop it.
Quinn watched as Gowrie, shirtless and sweating, worked to fill buckets from the creek.
“I think you got a celebration goin’ on,” the doctor said, not looking at all excited about the prospect. All that shooting and yelling.
“They always shoot guns and blow shit up,” Lena said, the baby suckling at her breast, the doctor telling her how all that worked. “It’s not on account of me.”
The doctor leaned forward on the bloody bed, head in hands.
“What’s the matter?” Lena asked.
“Your boyfriend won’t let us leave,” Luke said. He had soft green eyes and nice teeth.
“He ain’t my boyfriend.”
“Where’s the child’s father?”
“County jail.”
“Of course.” The doctor nodded and stood, peering outside a dirty window, shaking his head more and pacing. “We got to get you to a hospital.”
“I feel fine. Let me sleep. Jesus.”
“You’re losing a ton of blood, and that son of a bitch out there said I was to attend to you here,” the doctor said, sitting down on the mattress and bloodied sheets, feeling for her free wrist and pulse and then holding her hand. “He said he doesn’t want the police. I didn’t say anything about the police.”
“Gowrie hates government.”
“No kidding,” the doctor said. “He said he’d like nothing more than to blow my fucking brains out.”
“You married?” Lena asked, feeling light-headed, stroking that little pink baby, wanting like hell to leave with this doctor. “You have a nice face. Such a nice face.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine, fine, fine.”
“You look white as a sheet.”
“I just dropped a child,” Lena said, speaking so low she wasn’t sure she had spoken at all. “Takes some out of you.”
“You have a phone?” the doctor asked. “Gowrie pitched mine in the woods.”
She shook her head, smiling at the doc some more and then smiling down at the baby’s face, touching its nose and little ears, feeling such a strange damn connection. Lena closed her eyes. “Ain’t she pretty?”
“Do you have a phone? Listen to me. Wake up.”
“Won’t do you no good,” Lena said, eyes closed and feeling at peace, smiling big. “Phones don’t work in the hills. You can’t get no signal. It’s like being on the moon. I said that you have a nice face. You heard that?”
Quinn sprinted from the concealment of the woods to the trailer, holding the rifle in his right hand. He made it to the steps, not a shot fired, no one even spotting him. He looked up into the woods to where Boom waited.
He nodded, not seeing his friend but knowing he was there.
Quinn tossed the rifle over his shoulder and grabbed the .45 before he kicked in the front door and checked all corners for movement. A ragged couch and chairs, trash bags and stuffed animals.
No one.
He made his way down the narrow hallway, kicking in another door to find Luke Stevens in a dress shirt spotted in blood. Luke looked up and smiled.
“You hurt?”
Luke shook his head.
“Anna Lee called.”
Luke nodded. Quinn didn’t expect a thank-you as he opened the door wide to see the girl lying in the bed, more blood around the sheets. She looked to be about twelve, with her hair matted around her white face, holding a child that could be her sister.
Her face and throat had been drained of all color. Her eyes were glass.
Luke cleaned his hands on a towel. “Can you get us out? I got a gun in my face. A goddamn gun.”
“Can she be moved?”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Come on. Boom’s watching our back.”
“Quinn?” Luke asked, touching his arm.
Quinn looked at him.
“They won’t let us go.”
“They got more troubles.”
“Where’s y’all’s truck?”
“A mile down the road,” Quinn said. “You hold the baby. I’ll carry the girl.”
22
“You carried her the whole way?” Lillie asked.
“That girl didn’t weigh a hundred pounds without that baby in her,” he said. “When you