I gulp air. “We set you up,” I croak. “That kid didn’t see anything. We knew you’d show.” I cough. “Cops are outside.”

“Well, aren’t you a smart little bitch?” Cruelty and a barely controlled rage glints in his eyes. We stare at each other while the storm rages on. A few feet away, Jack Warner groans in agony. Then Barbereaux smiles. “If you’re talking about that hayseed fuck in the barn, he’s dead.”

Skid. I stare at him, outrage billowing through me with such force my entire body trembles with it. Not Skid. Not one of my own. My brain chants the words like a mantra. And in that moment, I know I could kill this man with my bare hands if given the chance.

Somehow I muster the presence of mind to keep him talking. “It’s over,” I tell him. “We know about you and Mary Plank. She kept a diary.” I barely hear my own voice above the roar of blood through my veins. “She wrote about you.”

His eyes sharpen and for the first time I see uncertainty. He didn’t know about the journal. I’ve got his full attention now, so I keep going. “We know what you did to her. We know everything.”

“She was dumber than a box of rocks,” he says. “Had the mentality of a ten-year-old.”

“She was just a kid.”

“She liked to fuck.”

“She loved you.”

His smile chills me. “If she’d named me in some book, we wouldn’t be here, you lying bitch.”

He slaps me open-handed in the face, then rises and walks over to Warner, taking the shotgun with him. I use that moment to take a quick physical inventory. My head throbs where he hit me with the stock. I think of the .22 mini-magnum strapped to my thigh, the knife in my boot, and I realize I still have a chance to get out of this alive. I push myself to a sitting position, then get to my feet. The room dips and spins, so I hold on to the counter for support.

A few feet away, Barbereaux bends and pulls Warner to his feet. Warner groans. “I need to go to the hospital.”

“I’ll get you there, buddy. Just hang tight. Let me figure out what to do with the bitch, and then we’ll go.”

The other man is too weak to stand, so Barbereaux yanks out a chair, muscles him into it, then turns to me, thrusts the shotgun at me. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”