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Back The Heathens
Chapters (33)
  1. ALSO BY ACE ATKINS
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  33. What’s next onyour reading list?

“We need to run,” Chastity said, wiping at her face with her tattered shirt. “Right now. And real fast.”

TJ pulled at the girl, stashed the gun into her jeans, and headed back to the stolen car and John Wesley. Her feet sloshed through the puddles as the gunshots rang in her ears.

Not much farther. Not much farther and they’d be safe.

TWENTY-THREE

It was a full forty-eight hours later before Lillie saw the footage of TJ Byrd and Chastity Bloodgood at the truck stop. She and Charlie Hodge had concentrated much of their efforts in Texarkana at the lovely Tri-State Motel and multiple visits with Ladarius McCade. But that kid, God love him, would not break. Whether true or not, right or wrong, he would not give up his girl. When she did ID TJ and Chastity from the security video, she and Charlie were off, only eighty miles south to Shreveport, Louisiana, or what Lillie liked to call the armpit of the South.

The witness was most surely dead, a prime specimen of man named Floyd Eugene Hicks. Most of the folks at the truck stop didn’t recall the girls, either, besides a woman named Gladys—why the fuck were waitresses always given names like that?—who recalled Chastity Bloodgood being a surly little bitch who told her to mind her own damn business and didn’t even leave a tip.

“That’s a hell of a rig, though,” Charlie Hodge said.

The cops hadn’t moved the Purple People Eater from the lot, still parked in the same place with crime scene tape marking the unceremonious spot where Floyd Eugene Hicks bled out, facedown in a puddle of rainwater and diesel. The sad end to a glorious working man who dabbled in a little pedophilia and sex trafficking on the side. Six-four and three hundred thirty pounds of whale blubber. Lillie was sure the shitbirds would fly slow and low at half-wing today, crying tears of pain that such a man left the earth.

“Kid did pretty good with a .38,” Lillie said. “Someone that young should’ve missed. Only she looked to get him where it counted.”

“Locals think the kids robbed him.”

“That sound right to you?”

“Nope,” Lillie said. “You saw his priors. This sick fucker probably tried to get them into his cab. Maybe he did.”

“Only one way to find out,” Charlie said.

Lillie opened up the driver’s door. Damn. The smell was something to behold. To describe it wouldn’t do the rank scent justice.

“Lord God Almighty,” Charlie said.

“Not exactly red roses and French perfume.”