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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?

“Daddy’s sure gonna be pissed.”

She wore no expression at all.

*   *   *

They headed back up the way they’d come down, a straight shot north on Highway 1 driving back to the interstate. Only this time John Wesley was behind the wheel, the driver’s seat pushed as far forward as he could, TJ laying down in the back pulling a torn piece of blanket around her leg. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but she wasn’t about to stop, not with the law coming up behind them looking to put her away for two killings and now the burning mess they’d left back on Grand Isle. She just knew they’d blame her for that, too.

“Am I going too fast?” John Wesley asked.

“You’re driving just right.”

“Does it hurt much?”

“Don’t hurt at all.”

“Where we going?”

“Don’t know,” TJ said. “But we’ll sure know it when we get there.”

TJ bit down hard as she tied that cloth as tight as it would go, knowing the bone wasn’t broke but she was bleeding like a stuck pig. She hadn’t seen all that had gone on back at that stilt house, the dead man lying in the street and that stinky midget dragging Chastity Bloodgood out from under the house. Lillie Virgil and Quinn Colson so focused on the burning house and the Nixes that they didn’t even see her and John Wesley make their way from house to house along that canal until they could cross back behind them and get in Graham’s Land Cruiser. She didn’t know where they were going, but they sure as hell weren’t going back to New Orleans.

The pain didn’t really get to her until they got about ten miles outside town to somewhere that looked like nowhere with no buildings, no signs, no trees, nothing but big ole factories belching smoke up into the gray skies. It was then that her daddy come to her, sitting just as clear as day down by her feet, smiling across at his little girl in all that hurt, his golden mustache and mullet damn near perfect.

One more mile to go, Bug.

I’m worn out.

Your old daddy got worn out, too, and got hisself drowned hanging upside down in a crik.

Why’d you leave me? Momma wasn’t cut out for this.

Like Bret Michaels sang, “every rose got its thorns.”

I love you.

Love you, too, Bug. And don’t you ever forget it.