Chapter 19

Chapter

Nineteen

Nico felt dreadful. He hoped like crazy that Eden had received the note and she’d seen through his ruse. He also hoped Silas wasn’t going to return and shoot him—or feed him to the buzzards—or both. His head ached, he hurt all over, and smelled to high heaven—plus he was hungry, thirsty, and desperately needed to pee. How on earth did everything wind up going so poorly ? Just two days ago, I was planning a life with Eden and hopefully Matty, and now I’m not sure I’ll live to see tomorrow. One thing is certain, I don’t want to sit here like a captured rabbit and wait for that maniac to come back here and feed me to the desert scavengers.

The first order of business was that he needed to get himself free from these ropes. His hands were fastened to the wooden post, so that seemed like the logical place to begin. He pulled against the bonds, but they stayed tight. “Damned cattleman. He knows how to tie a rope,” he muttered. The next possibility might be the sturdiness of the beam itself. It looked somewhat rotten—as if maybe termites had invaded the wood. He wondered if the roof might cave in if he managed to knock it down. But there were other roof supports, so the horses in the barn ought to be safe enough. He began to knock against it with his shoulder. After a few agonizing minutes of that, the wood developed a decent crack. After a few more minutes, it splintered in two, and Nico raised up his hands and slid the rope off. He was still tied, but not tied to anything. Unfortunately, the part of the wood his neck was tied to went the wrong direction and pulled against him, nearly cutting off his air supply.

Now he could free his hands, but he was still stuck. He couldn’t bend over to untie his feet because he’d choke to death, and he couldn’t do anything to the rope around his neck except make it tighter. “What a pickle,” he grunted. The only problem he could do anything about was relieving his bursting bladder. So Nico undid his trousers and let fly with a gallon or so of urine—spraying it as far away from his feet as possible since he had no shoes. He had just finished tucking himself back in when Silas came trotting into the barn with his exhausted, sweaty horse whose sides were heaving. He’d obviously run the horse too hard and for too long.

Looking at the state of his barn and the rotten beam, Silas glared at Nico and shouted, “You’ve ruined my property! Now you’re gonna have to pay for that. ”

Nico was afraid to say anything because he could barely get enough air to breathe and definitely not enough to have a debate with an insane person. He kept his hands close to where he’d been tied, hoping Silas wouldn’t see that they were actually free from the wooden beam.

Ignoring Nico for the time being, Silas unsaddled his horse. Nico thought it was awful for the man to turn the horse into a stall without letting the horse cool down first. The animal needed to be walked around for a while to let his breathing go back to normal or he might end up sick. Just another thing about Silas Hatchett to hate.

Silas put away the tack and then approached Nico, pulling his gun out of his holster. With an evil grin, he started to flip his gun around with one of his twirly finger spins when… pow !

The gun went off.