Beth Anne blinked. She didn’t want to hunt. She didn’t want to kill anything, ever, not even the ugly black spiders that crawled through the kudzu or poked through the crack in her bedroom window. But she wouldn’t say anything.
Her daddy took her by the hand and suddenly stopped, pulling her quickly down beside him. She loved being close to him, shoulder to shoulder and sharing something mysterious.
“What are we looking for?”
It seemed like hours had passed and Beth Anne was getting bored. The heat was sticky, and mosquitoes the size of biplanes were slamming into her calves and making her itch.
“I’m bored, Daddy.”
He pressed a finger to his lips and shooshed her. Then, “Hunting isn’t quick work, Bethy. It’s not a dumb man’s game. First, you’ve got to watch and get to know your prey. Watch them where they live. You gotta be so quiet they don’t even know you’re there.”
He jutted his stubbled chin forward and Beth Anne saw where he was looking. There was a tiny shift in the tall fescue grass, something low to the ground that stopped, then shifted again. Beth Anne held her breath, her heart starting to beat.
“What is—?”
“Shh.” He held his finger to his lips. “Just watch. Always watch. Longer than you think you should. That way, they won’t even know you’re coming.” He pulled his gun closer to him, leveling it.
Beth Anne turned her eyes back to the twitch in the grass and lost her breath. A rabbit, not much bigger than one of her stuffed animals, scampered toward the clearing. His nose twitched against his nut-brown fur and he pushed back, standing on his haunches, the fur of his belly a pale, pale brown.
“No, Daddy.” Beth Anne’s protest was so soft she wasn’t even sure if she had said it out loud.
Her daddy cradled the butt of the gun and squinted one eye. “Don’t worry, Bethy. He won’t even know what hit him. He’s doing us a favor, and I promise, it won’t bother him none.”
The entire world slowed down. The rabbit’s ears poked straight up. His nose swished back and forth, the tall grass moving around him like ripples in a puddle. The click of the gun’s safety switching off was as loud as the shot.
“Beth Anne!” Her daddy’s voice roared in her already-ringing ears. Her eyes burned. Her nose was assaulted with the wicked stench of hot metal, of exploded gunpowder.
The gun dropped, flattening the grass, and Beth Anne’s daddy grabbed her hands in his, his palms cool against her singed ones.
“NEVER put your hands on the muzzle of a gun, you hear me? You could have gotten us both killed pushing away like that. What were you thinking? Look at your hands. Look at how red your palms are!”
But Beth Anne wouldn’t look at them. Her eyes were stuck on the rabbit as it scampered safely away.
Bex pressed her forehead against the carpet, trying to push the memory out of her mind. Her father had taken her hunting. Her father had told her that killing that rabbit “wouldn’t bother it none.” Bex shuddered. Did that prove anything? Did that prove her father was a murderer?
“Just watch. Always watch…”
Bex clenched her eyes shut and counted slowly until her breathing was at a normal cadence before pushing herself up and glancing out the window. The sedan was gone; the man watching her from the driver’s seat was gone—so why wasn’t the sickening feeling in her gut?
Thirteen
The yellow sunlight was nearly blinding when Bex opened her eyes. The man in the sedan seemed like the last remnants of a bad dream, but she checked out the window anyway, breathing contentedly when she saw that the street was empty. Her relief was short-lived when she turned around and glanced at the clock: eight forty.
“Oh my gosh!” She rifled through her clothes, jumping into her jeans and pulling on a T-shirt as she stumbled down the stairs. “I’m late. I’m so late!”
Denise and Michael sat at the table, staring at Bex with none of the urgency she felt.
“I slept through my alarm!”
“Oh, no, honey,” Denise said, standing. “I turned it off. You had a rough night. We thought you should take it easy today.”
“I’m not a fan of missing school, but I think Denise is right on this one. You’ll have an extra day so you can just relax and…regroup.”
Denise and Michael shared a glance, and Bex was struck with a sour feeling in her gut.
“I’m okay.”
Michael smoothed the newspaper in front of him under his palms and Bex could see that Darla was still on the front page, the same picture of her that the media and the school had been using, the same photo that looked so much like the girl with the scarf. She had to look away.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Bex forced herself to nod her head.
“Because you can stay here.” Michael was gesturing to the house, but the thought of hanging around alone there made Bex even more certain that she wanted to be anywhere else—even if that was at school.
Denise looked from Bex back to Michael. “If you’re absolutely sure…”
Bex nodded. “I am.”