Despite all her experience sparring with men, Lana had never been in a situation that had turned truly violent. There had been shouting. There had been smashed vases. Once, there was hot coffee poured into her favorite white patent-leather pumps. But Lana’s adversaries tended to draw the line at hitting women.
Which is why Lana was woefully unprepared when Martin’s open hand reached her cheekbone. There was a crack of stinging pressure. The room started to spin. She felt herself slide away from him, away from all of them, toward the cold dirt floor.
It was impossible to think clearly over the ocean of hurt, impossible to contemplate where precisely she’d gone wrong in her attempt to trap him. But she knew one glorious thing. Above the pain, riding the crest of the shock waves ricocheting through her body, was a feeling of triumph. Lana’s final thought was simple: she’d gotten it right.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Beth stared in horror at the pile of linen and high heels on the ground where her mother had been. Her medical training told her that Lana wasn’t likely to die from a single slap. But her eyes and her heart were shouting something different. Lana wasn’t moving. Wasn’t groaning. Her wig had shaken loose, lying next to her like a dead animal, exposing her wiry hair and tender scalp. Even in the darkness, the mark on her cheek blazed bright red.
Beth was too focused on Lana to have a clear view of what happened next. There was a burst of motion, and then, in the corner of her eye, she saw Jack launch herself at Martin, running headfirst toward his stomach like a bull. He stepped to the side, and Jack’s momentum pulled her past him. She tripped, pitching forward, then banged into the sidewall of the barn with a sickening thud.
“Martin!” Diana’s voice reverberated with anger, and a thin sliver of fear.
He brushed off his sleeve, clenched and opened his fist. “She can’t talk about Mom that way,” he spat. “She doesn’t know what we . . .”
Beth covered Lana’s body protectively, using her arms to try to block out his look of disgust. She wanted to go to Jack, who was now staggering to a crouch, holding her right knee, but Lana needed her more. Beth could see the adrenaline pumping in her daughter’s flushed face. Jack looked bruised. But not broken.
Lana was another story. She made no movement, no reaction to Beth’s warm hands or whispered words.
Martin turned to his sister. “Let’s go.”
Diana looked at her brother. “Lana needs medical attention,” she said. Her face looked hot, and her British accent had disappeared. “And you, you need . . .”
“What?” He scowled at her.
“You need to explain what the hell just happened.”
Beth turned her head at a rustle of movement from outside the barn. Was it possible Lana had been telling the truth, and the sheriffs were on their way? She peered out into the darkness, praying it was a human, not a raccoon or coyote. But there was no one. No more sounds. Nothing.
Martin grunted. “Why don’t you explain, huh?” He stepped up to his sister, towering over her. “Why you let that rat, that boy, back into our home. Why I found him lording it up at the dining room table that Friday morning, all pleased with himself, while I’m busting my ass to keep the ranch from falling apart and find a buyer so we don’t have to break our backs the way Dad did all those years. You know Ricardo told me he was happy to see me? He told me about his precious Verdadera Libertad. Big grin on his face, couldn’t wait to show me the drawings, all these small plots with priority for Mexicans and Filipinos and Natives and everyone who ever got their land stolen. He’s going on and on with this bleeding-heart bullshit, even suggested that he and I go to Bayshore Oaks to talk to Dad about it together. Please. I couldn’t wait to wipe the smile off that shit-eater’s face.”
“So you killed him?” Diana’s voice was low, her face ashen.
“I protected what’s ours. I took out the trash. Like our father should have done thirty years ago.”
Beth didn’t know what Martin was talking about. But it didn’t matter. Not compared to her family getting out of there. Jack was leaning against the wall near the door, which was good, but she was still clutching her knee, and Beth wasn’t sure whether she could walk. While Martin and his sister argued, Beth scanned the barn, looking for something useful, something within reach. All she saw were shadows.
“What about Daddy?” Diana asked. Her voice was a broken whisper.
Martin’s eyes went dark. “I went to see him the next day. I asked him about the project.”
“And?”
“He was going to take away the ranch from us, Di. Our inheritance. Your children’s inheritance. I tried to talk sense into him, but you know how he gets when he’s set on something—”
Some part of Beth knew that if Martin confessed to killing his own father, he’d never let them out of there. She imagined Mr. Rhoads in his little room at Bayshore Oaks facing his wild-eyed son, his aggrieved, furious son, with stubborn calm. With kindness. And it not being enough.
She looked toward the open door of the barn. Toward freedom, blocked by Martin. Then she looked at Jack in the corner, slumped against the wall below the lofted kayak. And she had an idea.
“Martin,” she called out. Her voice sounded scared, but she had to try. “Let’s just put this behind us, okay? I’m going to help Lana get to the hospital. You and your sister can sell the ranch. Like you wanted. And Jack’s going to get her boat.” Beth looked at her injured daughter, trying by sheer force of will to make her words sink in. “Just breathe, Jack. Focus on the boat. We’re all going to move past this.”
“No one’s going anywhere,” Martin growled. It was as if he’d barely registered her words. He was fixated on Diana, she on him, each of them searching the other for answers.
But Jack was the one Beth was counting on to hear her. To understand.
Jack nodded slightly and pulled herself away from the wall slowly, holding her hands out in front of her.
Martin turned toward her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just getting the life jacket,” Jack said. “As a pillow, for my grandma’s head.”
Beth watched as Jack half limped, half crept to the life jacket hanging on the wall. She tossed it back to Beth.
“Stay there,” Martin barked.
Jack shrank back, as if pinned to the wall. She shifted her weight. She stayed.
Beth wedged the life jacket under Lana’s head. Lana let out a low, gravelly wheeze, somewhere between a breath and a moan.
“This is crazy,” Diana said. “I’m calling the cops.”
“Like hell you are,” Martin said. He grabbed his sister by the wrist and dragged her into the darkness of a stall, reemerging with a strange, plasticky gun. It was black and orange, small in his hand. Was it a toy? Beth couldn’t be sure. Diana looked terrified. And the twelve-gauge shell he loaded into it certainly looked real.
“Get out here, Di,” he said. “On the floor.”
His sister shuffled out of the stall and knelt, shaking, in the middle of the barn.
He waved the gun around, pointing it in Beth and Lana’s direction. “None of you move,” he said. “I’d hate to see someone get hurt.”
*
The first thing Lana saw when she woke up was the gun. Two guns, three maybe, floating in the air in a ghostly flurry of hands. Her left eye didn’t seem to be working properly. And her head was pounding. Not her forehead, like she was used to, from the medicine and fatigue and too-tight wig caps. This pain was in the back, deep-seated, where her skull met her neck.
She tried to sit up. No luck. For a terrifying moment, she was afraid she’d somehow landed back on the kitchen floor of her Santa Monica condo, that she’d fallen into some kind of cosmic wormhole and would have to relive the past five months all over again. But that didn’t make sense. There was only the chilly barn, the amber light, and the raging figure who was rapidly resolving from four men to two, to one.