Jama swerved to miss a dog, honked at it, glanced at it in the rearview mirror. “That looked like Monty’s hunting hound.”
“Probably is. He wanders away sometimes. Monty likes to hunt on Andy Griswold’s property, so Humphrey knows the area. There’s no leash law in River Dance. I suppose there should be, but you know Humphrey, he loves to wander.”
Jama cast Fran a quick look, saw that she was gazing at the Missouri River to the left. Her lips curved downward, her eyes seemed to have dulled in the past few minutes. For all the talk about not worrying, she appeared less than serene. And then she saw Jama’s expression.
“Okay, you caught me.”
“You doing okay?” Jama asked.
“I’ll be fine. How about you? It can’t be easy, making the kinds of decisions you have to make.”
“All that expensive training has its advantages. If I had worried about every patient I saw during residency, I’d have been no good to anyone.”
“But this is Monty,” Fran said gently.
“As I said, that’s where the training kicks in. I’ve seen enough cases like Monty’s to be able to read signs that might not be immediately apparent to others.” She thought about the nurse who had questioned her skills.
Jama glanced toward the river—that steady, curving constant in her life. The Missouri River Valley, lush and fertile, contained the winding force of nature with some difficulty. The flatlands produced high yields when the weather cooperated, but the farmers had to “get while the gettin’ was good,” as Monty would sometimes say. Flooding could wipe out a season of work in a few hours.
Farming was always a risky endeavor, though Monty had done well over the years, supporting his family in comfort through hard work.
Much like medicine. It was never a sure thing.
Jama cast another glance at her foster mom. Monty would be okay. He had to be okay.
Chapter Eight
D oriann’s lungs felt filled with the hot glue Aunt Renee used for the homeschool art projects. From behind the bush that didn’t hide anything, she watched the two creeps approach. They looked bigger and scarier than they had in the truck.
They were mad, for one thing. Both kinds of mad—crazy mad and angry mad. And they shouted at each other while they called for her. How stupid. As if she was going to answer them? Run to them through the trees like a lost puppy?
Strange, all that brush had seemed so much thicker when she was trying to push through it. Now, with the sun higher, it seemed that she could see for miles in every direction. Which meant, so could the goons.
Clancy stepped around a tree branch, and looked in Doriann’s direction. Toast. She was—
Deb swore loudly. “You just had to go after the dog, didn’t you? Swerve off the road and nearly get us all killed. I guess you know she’s gonna find the cops and lead them straight to us.”
Clancy turned an ugly look on Deb. “That stupid kid’s not even gonna find her own way out of this jungle.”
“You’d better hope not,” Deb muttered. “If that frost hits tonight, we could all freeze to death.”
“What frost?”
“Don’t you ever listen to the weather report? There’s supposed to be a killing frost tonight that could wipe out all this year’s crops. Where do you live, in a tree stump? The kid could freeze to death.”
“Then that’ll be one more problem we don’t have to deal with. I’ve got enough to worry about. I’m soaking, I’m starved, and I need a hit.”
Deb swore again. She did a lot of that. “You think you’re the most important person in the world?”
Doriann saw their heads appear more clearly over some bushes as they drew closer. She saw Clancy give Deb that ugly look again. Deb was too stupid to back away.
He grabbed her by her shirt with one hand and socked her in the face with the other. Doriann heard the smack of flesh, Deb’s low grunts. “I’m the only person in the world.” Clancy growled the words like a mad dog.
Doriann caught her breath. There was a fiend in that man, and for once, Deb apparently agreed with her. She said nothing.
“All the rest are slobs and morons who don’t deserve to live,” he said.
Doriann cringed.
He shoved Deb to the ground. She grunted again, and stayed where she was. Maybe she wasn’t as stupid as Doriann had thought.
“Well, this slob plans to live whether I deserve it or not.” Deb didn’t sound so sure of herself now. Her voice shook a little. “I need a place to crash and I need it soon. We can’t sleep in the truck now that you’ve decided it would make a good submarine.”
“It’s my truck, isn’t it?” Clancy snapped, his voice still hard and dark.
Deb slowly got to her feet, then walked in the other direction. “No, it’s a stolen truck.”
“It’s mine now,” Clancy called after her. “I can do what I want with my things, just like I can do what I want with you, and with the kid. Out here in these woods, there ain’t nothing you can do about it. I’m going to find little Dori, and then her self-righteous daddy’s going to be sorry he tried to ruin my life.”
Doriann couldn’t breathe. She felt like a hardening clay model, ready for the kiln. Deb wasn’t looking as scary right now. Sure, she looked as if she ate kids for breakfast—but that couldn’t be true, because she was too skinny. And her teeth were too bad.
“Did you see that old abandoned barn a couple of miles up the road before you ran us off?” Deb called over her shoulder.
“I didn’t run us off the road, you and the kid did that. I was doin’ fine till you grabbed the wheel.”
Deb stopped suddenly, and Doriann froze as the woman turned facing directly toward her. But she didn’t look up. She sat down on a fallen log. “I’m going to crash. We need to find a place. That barn would—”
“You can’t.”
Deb didn’t look at him. Instead, she spread her hands out and studied them. Scraggly strands of blond hair fell into her face, mingling with the blood on her cheek.
“You’re not forgetting what the brat said, are you?” he asked. “There’s stuff in the area, and I’d bet she knows who has it. We won’t have to crash if we can—”
“I don’t see her anywhere, do you?”
Without warning, Clancy stalked over to Deb and grabbed her by her shirt again, jerking her up. “Get out there and start looking.”
Doriann shrank as small as she could get, and prayed harder than she ever had in her life.
After
