“Help me, Lord,” she whispered, and managed to roll over onto her belly without sliding farther down.

Gritting her teeth against the pain in her shoulders, Melissa pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and started making her way back up the slope, grabbing at anything she could to anchor her as she crawled.

She didn’t know she was crying, or that her body was covered in countless bleeding scratches. She was alive, which was all that mattered.

* * *

Hoover had seen the trunk lid fly up, but thought it was from the impact of hitting the pothole. When he took off and it slammed back down, he just kept driving. He knew the cops weren’t far behind because he was beginning to hear the faint sound of sirens, but he was almost to Aunt Sugar’s house. When he saw the curve in the road, he breathed a sigh of relief. Home was just beyond it.

He saw the rooftop as he took the curve, but when he drove up into the yard and saw Aunt Sugar sitting out on her porch, he frowned. She looked fit to be tied, which meant they’d told her he was coming. So what! She could get glad in the same shoes she got mad in.

Hoover stomped the brakes and then killed the engine. He couldn’t drive any farther, but he had another card to play. His hostage. Aunt Sugar would surely help him if he promised to let the woman go.

Sugar stood up as he got out of the car, and the swagger in his steps ended when he saw her aiming a shotgun at him.

“You don’t come a step closer, Hoover Slade. You have brought shame once again to my name, and I’m done with you and your worthless brother. You git, or I swear to God, I’ll shoot you where you stand and those cops I hear coming can have what’s left of you.”

Hoover aimed the remote at the car without looking behind him. When he heard the trunk lid pop up, he started backing up.

“You might think again,” he said, but when he backed into the car and turned around and saw the trunk was empty, he let out a cry of disbelief. “What the f—”

Sugar fired a shot over his head. “Shut your filthy mouth and run, boy. Run like you never ran before, or sit down and wait for the cops. You choose.”

Hoover shook a fist at her, cursing her and the ground she stood on, but when she aimed the shotgun straight at him, he turned and ran—straight toward the trees just beyond the barn and down to the creek, where he jumped into the swift flow of runoff and kept moving upward.

Sugar sat down and laid the shotgun back at her feet, then set her jaw, glaring down the road and waiting for her peaceful little home to be invaded by the law. She’d never be able to hold her head up in church again.