Chapter Twenty-Five

Jesse

Oland was back up quickly, slamming his elbow into my stomach and sending me backward, bent over.

“You stupid bastard,” he shouted. “You broke my nose again!”

“Good thing you’re ugly. No one can tell,” I said.

Oland let out a growl and dove after me. I sidestepped him, and he tripped over my outstretched foot, landing hard on the concrete. Behind me, Lacey screamed, beginning as a high-pitched wail and descending into a hate-filled yell. She whacked me with her palm in the back, and I turned to face her.

“Leave him alone, you idiot,” she shouted.

“Why?” I said. “Because he’s your boyfriend? Is that why you want me to stop?”

I could sense movement behind me, and I turned, putting up my fists in a boxing stance before Oland could swing. I ducked it and threw a left to his stomach, returning the favor, and he stumbled away a few steps.

“I said stop it,” Lacey shouted, clearly used to getting her way when she ordered people around like children. “Oland, stop!”

“I’m not stopping,” he grunted. “I’m going to kick his ass!”

“You sure about that?” I shot back. “Looks like you’re the one getting their ass kicked, pal.”

He charged again, but this time threw his whole body at me in a football tackle. I wasn’t able to completely evade him, and he got his arm around my foot, tripping me. I went down to one knee, and he yanked himself to his feet, tackling me again. We both hit the concrete hard, and I felt my forehead drag against it.

Oland’s hands reached for my eyes, but I kicked at him, and he changed tactics, throwing fists into my shoulder and arm. I tried to headbutt him again, but he was too far away, and I felt an elbow smash into my lip instead. Dazed, I fell back a bit, and he pounced, mounting me and throwing punches at my head. Some ricocheted off the top of my skull, and others were blocked by me getting my arms up, but a few got through, rocking me and cracking something under my eye.

An alligator roll was enough to get him off me, and I scrambled to my feet, diving at him with my knee toward his head. It connected, and he went down, and it was my turn to rain fists down on his head. But it didn’t last long. Lacey grabbed me from behind, yanking on my hair and slamming her closed fist into the side of my face.

I got to my feet and wiggled away from her, refusing to put my hands on a woman no matter what she was doing, and turned my attention back to Oland. I kicked him hard in the stomach, and he rolled away before I caught sight of Lacey airborne out of the corner of my eye. I tried to move out of the way, but her fingers were out like claws, and she caught my face with them, slicing down my nose and cheek and taking a hunk of skin with her.

“Why didn’t you just pay me?” she shouted. “We’d have your fucking ranch and you would finally pay for being such a womanizer.”

“Excuse me?” I said, stepping back a few feet to catch my breath and check how much blood was coming out of my face. “You wanted the ranch?”

“The ranch that should belong to us,” Oland said, standing. “The Andersons. Your grandfather stole that land.”

“The hell he did,” I said. “He bought it fair and square, and your grandfather tried to start a damn war about it.”

“Liar,” Oland said. “All you Galloway boys do is lie.”

“All you Anderson boys do is bully,” I said. “But you can’t bully me anymore. I don’t have anything to lose.”

“I’ll take that ranch from you,” Oland said. “One way or the other.”

“Like hell you will,” I said.

We both charged at the same time, fists flying, and it was me who rocked him first. He tried to take a step back, but I hit him with an uppercut that sent him flying, landing on the hood of his unmarked car and sliding off and to the ground, motionless.

I turned to Lacey, who was backing away now. She had tears in her eyes, but I knew they were just crocodile tears. She was only sorry she’d gotten caught.

“You tried to ruin my life,” I said. “And for what?”

“You shouldn’t have ghosted me, Jesse,” she said. “I would have been such a good girlfriend to you. I would have loved you. I would have even been permissive if that’s what you needed. But no. You had to go shack up with that Garafalo girl. That whore.”

“All this?” I thundered. “All this because I dumped you ten years ago? Are you insane?”

Suddenly, she stopped backing up. A wry smile crossed her lips.

“No. I’m not insane. But I will win.”

I barely felt the thump in the back of my head before the lights went out.

I came to a while later, how long I didn’t know. I was in the back of a car, my head throbbing. Sticky blood had dried cold to the back of my neck and down my shirt. I had been tossed into the backseat of a car unceremoniously, and it was driving fast down what sounded like a gravel road.

“What do we do?” I heard Lacey demand. “Oland, what do we do? You killed him!”

“I know,” he grumbled. “I know, dammit. Just let me think.”

“We don’t have time to think!” she shouted hysterically. “How am I going to get any money if he’s dead , Oland? They will figure it out! We will go to prison!”

“No, we won’t!” he shouted. “Just shut up for one damn second, woman!”

“Stop calling me woman,” she snapped back. “You know I hate that!”

“There are bigger problems right now than my choice of words, woman ,” he screamed.

The voices got quiet for a long moment, and I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I tried not to respond, but I didn’t really need to do anything. My body wasn’t responding to any of my commands. My eyes wouldn’t even open. All I could do was listen.

“Does he have a pulse?” Oland asked, grimly.

Cold, shaking hands reached for my neck and missed completely, but held themselves on a random part of my throat.

“I don’t feel one,” she said. “Oh God, you killed him. You killed him, Oland.”

“We. We killed him,” he said. “This has to be we from now on, or else both of us are going to burn for it, you understand? It doesn’t matter if I hit him with the gun or you did. The fact is, he got hit, he went down, and his skull must have cracked. So we have to find a way to get out of this mess.”

“How?” she said, her voice quiet now. “How are we going to get out of this? What about our life?”

“We will have our life,” he said. “All three of us. On the ranch. Like we planned. But first, we need to dump this body. Then we need to call Arn and have him and Eugene clean the scene where he was bleeding so much. If they can get that clean before someone notices Jesse’s missing, we might be able to come up with a story as to how he got out here.”

“Maybe… maybe he pissed off someone,” she said. “Maybe he got in trouble with the mob.”

“In Texas?” he shot back incredulously. “No. Not the mob. Jesus. No. Maybe… maybe he made one of his brothers angry. What if he tried to hit on Amber? What if it was Luke that killed him?”

“It would be easier to get the ranch,” she said, sounding excited now. “He’s the only one who could really fight us. Maybe he also knew Jesse was going to get sued and lose part of it to us. So he killed him.”

“I like it,” Oland said. “All right, we dump him here. Come on.”

The car came to a stop, and I tried desperately to get my eyes to open. They refused, just like the rest of my body, to cooperate. Instead, Oland lifted me like a sack of potatoes and carried me through crunching brush for a few moments. Then he dropped me hard. I hit the ground and tried to suppress any sound from coming out of me.

“All right,” Oland said from above me. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait.”

It was Lacey. Her voice was distant. Cold.

“Wait what?” Oland said. “We need to get out of here before someone sees my car.”

“No,” she said. “You need to shoot him. We need to be sure.”

“Excuse me?”

Panic went up my spine. I needed to get up. I had to get my body working again.

“You need to shoot him. In the head. Make sure he’s dead.”

Oland made a disgusted sound and seemed to pace for a moment.

“Lacey, I can’t shoot him.”

“Why? Are you a coward? Don’t you love me?”

“Of course, I love you, dammit!” His voice echoed through the air as I struggled to move anything. A finger bent. It wasn’t much, but it was something. “I love you with my whole heart, Lacey. But I can’t shoot him. All I have is my service pistol. They could trace the bullet.”

“What kind of a cop are you that you only have one gun?” she growled. “Jesus. I’d shoot him if you had something.”

Someone was stomping toward me, and then yanked me over to lay flat on my back. Thick, meaty fingers pressed against my neck. It was close enough to my pulse that I held my breath in anticipation, but they moved away quickly and the footsteps began to move away.

“He’s dead, Lacey. Come on. Let’s get out of here. This will all be over tomorrow.”

I waited until I heard the car pull away, and well past the time that I’d last heard their engine.

Then I tried to open my eyes again.

And the world came into light, with a large red tint.