“Shut up!” Black Shirt slapped Charlotte across the face.
Samantha grabbed her. She was sobbing, shaking, screaming.
“Gamma,” Samantha whispered.
Charlie clung to her sister. She turned her head. She made herself look at her mother, because she wanted to make sure she never forgot what these fuckers had done.
Bright white bone. Pieces of heart and lung. Cords of tendon and arteries and veins and life spilled out of her gaping wounds.
Bon Jovi yelled, “Jesus Christ, Zach!”
Charlie kept herself still, unresponsive. She was never going to give herself away ever again.
Zachariah Culpepper.
She had read his case files. Rusty had represented him at least four times. Gamma had said just last night that if Zach Culpepper paid his bills, the family wouldn’t have to live at the farmhouse.
“Fuck!” Zach was staring at Samantha. She had read the files, too. “Fuck!”
“Mama …” Charlie said, trying to distract them, to convince Zach that she didn’t know. “Mama, Mama, Mama …”
“It’s all right.” Samantha tried to soothe.
“It ain’t all right.” Zach threw his mask on the floor. He had raccoon eyes from Gamma’s blood. He looked like his mugshot, but uglier. “God dammit! What’d you have to use my name for, boy?”
“I d-didn’t—” Bon Jovi stammered. “I’m sorry.”
“We won’t tell.” Samantha was looking down at the floor like it wasn’t too late. “We won’t say anything. I promise.”
“Girl, I just blew your mama to bits. You really think you’re walking out of here alive?”
“No,” Bon Jovi said. “That’s not what we came for.”
“I came here to erase some bills, boy,” Zach said. “Now I’m thinking it’s me that Rusty Quinn’s gotta pay.”
“No,” Bon Jovi repeated. “I told you—”
Zach shut him up by jamming the shotgun into his face. “You ain’t seein’ the big picture here. We gotta get outta town, and that takes a hell of a lot of money. Everybody knows Rusty Quinn keeps cash in his house.”
“The house burned down,” Samantha said. “Everything burned down.”
“Fuck!” Zach screamed. “Fuck!” He pushed Bon Jovi into the hallway. He kept the shotgun pointed at Samantha’s head, his finger on the trigger.
“No!” Charlie pulled her sister down to the floor, away from the shotgun. She felt grit on her knees. Shattered bone riddled the floor. She looked at Gamma. She took her waxy, white hand. The heat had already left her body. She whispered, “Don’t be dead, Mama. Please. I love you. I love you so much.”
She heard Zach say, “Why you actin’ like you don’t know how this is gonna end?”
Sam tugged at Charlie’s arm. “Charlie, get up.”
Zach said, “We ain’t leaving this place without you getting some blood on your hands, too.”
Sam repeated, “Charlie, get up.”
“I can’t.” She was trying to hear what Bon Jovi was saying. “I can’t let—”
Samantha practically picked her up and put her back in the chair. “Run when you can,” she whispered to Charlie, the same thing Gamma had tried to tell her. “Don’t look back. Just run.”
“What’re you two saying?” Zach walked back to the table. His boots crunched something on the floor. He pressed the shotgun to Sam’s forehead. Charlie could see pieces of Gamma stuck to the barrel.
He asked Sam, “What did you tell her to do? Make a run for it? Try to get away?”
Charlie made a noise in her throat, trying to divert his attention.
Zach kept the shotgun on Sam, but he smiled at Charlie, showing a row of crooked, stained teeth. “What’d she tell you to do, baby doll?”
Charlie tried not to think about the way his voice changed when he talked to her.
“Come on, honey.” Zach stared at her chest. He licked his lips again. “Ain’t we gonna be friends?”
“S-stop,” Sam said. The shotgun was pressed so hard into her forehead that a trickle of blood seeped out. “Leave her alone.”
“Was I talking to you, bitch?” Zach leaned into the shotgun. Sam’s head tilted back from the pressure. “Was I?”
Sam’s jaw tightened. Her fists clenched. It was like watching a pot finally come to boil, except it was rage bubbling up inside of her. She shouted, “You leave us alone, Zachariah Culpepper.”
Zach shifted his weight back on his heels, startled by her defiance.
Sam said, “I know exactly who you are, you fucking pervert.”
He gripped the shotgun in his hands. His lip curled. “I’m gonna peel off your eyelids so you can watch me slice out your sister’s cherry with my knife.”
They glared at each other. Sam wasn’t going to back down. Charlie had seen her like this before, that look she got in her eyes when she wasn’t going to listen to anybody. Except this wasn’t Rusty, or the mean girls at school. This was a man with a shotgun, with a temper, who had almost beaten another man to death last year.
Charlie had seen the photos in Rusty’s files. She had read the police report. Zachariah had fractured the guy’s skull with his bare hands.
A whimper came out of Charlie’s mouth.
“Zach,” Bon Jovi said. “Come on, man.”
Charlie waited for Sam to look away, but she didn’t. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
Bon Jovi said, “We had a deal, all right?”
Zach didn’t move. None of them moved.
“We had a deal,” Bon Jovi repeated.
“Sure.” Zach tossed the shotgun to Bon Jovi. “A man’s only as good as his word.”
He acted like he was going to walk away, but his hand moved fast, like a rattlesnake striking. He grabbed Sam’s face and pushed her so hard back into the sink that her head clanged against the cast iron.
“No!” Charlie screamed.
“You think I’m a pervert now?” Zach was so close to Sam that his spit globbed onto her face. “You got something else to say about me?”
Sam’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t scream. She grabbed at his arm with her hands, scratching, clawing, but Zach’s fingernails were digging into her eyeballs. Blood cried down like tears. Sam’s feet kicked out. She gasped for air.
“Stop it!” Charlie jumped on Zach’s back, punching him with her fists. “Stop!”
He threw her across the room. Charlie’s head smacked into the wall like a clattering bell. Her vision doubled, but then it sharpened on Sam. Zach had left her on the floor. Blood streamed down her cheeks, pooled into the collar of her shirt.
“Sammy!” Charlie cried. She tried to look at Sam’s eyes, to see the damage he had done. “Sam? Look at me. Can you see? Look at me, please!”
Carefully, Sam tried to open her eyelids. They were torn like pieces of wet paper.
Zach said, “What the fuck is this?”
The bathroom faucet hammer. He picked it up off the floor. He winked at Charlie. “Wonder what I can do with this?”
“Enough!” Bon Jovi snatched away the hammer and threw it down the hallway.
Zach shrugged. “Just having a little fun, brother.”
“Both of you stand up,” Bon Jovi said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Charlie didn’t move. Sam blinked away blood.