Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) (27 page)

Two white men stood beside an open side entrance that I hadn’t noticed on my blind flight out here. They both grinned, but not in a friendly way. The man holding my arm was tall and thin, with dusty clothes and limp hair that bore the imprint of a hat brim.

The other man—the man with the deeper voice—was thicker and paler and he had a shaved head. He wore pressed jeans and a checkered shirt and spoke first. “Sorry, miss. You scared us. We aren’t used to strangers out here where they aren’t invited. You here for the party?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes.”

Tall guy loosened his grip on me some but didn’t let go.

“Didn’t you see the ‘no trespassing’ signs?” He pointed back toward the house. A metal pole with a rectangular sign jutted up from the ground. It did say No Trespassing in black letters against a white background.

My heart galloped in my ears. I struggled for composure, for the bravado that had always sustained me, like when I faced down a drunken two-hundred-pound Neanderthal from the Tarleton rodeo team who had mistaken my decision not to knee him in the balls the first time he’d groped me as weakness. He didn’t get a third chance.

I straightened my shoulders. “No, I didn’t. I’m so sorry. I was looking for a private place to make a call.” I held up my phone.

Tall guy snatched it from me. “Let’s see.” After a few swipes and taps, he said, “Huh. Nothing here.”

I had to convince them I was harmless. “I know. I’ve got man troubles. I got out here and lost my nerve.” I lifted my shoulders in a “silly little me” gesture.

“What’s your name?” tall guy asked.

“Emily. I’m a friend of Paul’s.”

“Ah, shit, Tanner, she’s that nosey Texas woman he told us about. The one that works for the lawyer.”

Tanner, the thicker, paler man, narrowed his eyes.

I forced out a hollow laugh. “That’s me! See, I’m his friend. I’m sorry I came out here, guys, really. I won’t do it again.”

Inside, my heart twisted. Paul was dirty, and he was talking about me to his henchman—and not in a nice way.

Tanner thwacked my phone against his palm a couple of times. And then I heard a child’s scream, high-pitched, soul wrenching. My face reacted before I could steel my features, and I knew how I looked. Scared. Horrified. Concerned.

Dangerous.

“Fuck,” Tanner said.

He ripped off his snap front shirt, revealing a plain white T underneath it. He whipped the shirt over my mouth, muffling me, as he reached into his pocket and pulled something oblong out and jammed a sharp point at one end of it into my arm, all in a series of deft motions.

“Whaaa—”

I felt myself crumpling to the ground, but not before my eyes locked on Tanner’s left arm. At his tattoo.

“East Side . . .” I whispered. But before I finished my thought, the world went black.

I opened my eyes but saw nothing. The smell of dust filled my nose. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, but still I could barely see. Everything looked so indistinct. I shook my head, trying to fix my vision, but all it did was make me nauseous and create blurry after-images of the things I couldn’t make out anyway. Where was I?

“Lady?”

A little girl’s voice, clear and close. I turned my face toward the sound and saw a darker blob near what seemed to be the floor.

“Yes, hello.”

“You okay?”

I tried to reach toward her, but couldn’t move my hands. I pulled harder and realized they were fastened together with something rough. “I’m okay, but I can’t see you very well. And I’m tied up.” I closed my eyes again.

“I see you, but the mans tie my hands. When I first here, I no can see. The bad man stick me. It make me sleepy and sick.”

Her voice was heavily accented with the sounds of Mexican Spanish.

“Yeah, me, too.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on calming down. I needed to be in the moment, be aware. To think things through. Like, how does a blind idiot who’s gotten herself knocked out for the second time in a week free herself and a little girl out of hand bindings? I shifted my feet and groaned. And foot bindings.

“Sweetie? Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes.” She stopped speaking then said, “I’m scared.”

“Me, too, but that’s okay. My name is Emily. What’s yours?”

There was a long pause.

“Sweetie, are you there?”

“I call myself Betsy.”

Her English grammar came out as a literal translation of the way it would be said in Spanish. How formal, how cute, how painfully sincere. My heart leaned toward her and I wished I could hug her. Heck, I wished she could hug me.

“Betsy. Okay, well I’m starting to feel a little bit better, and I’m going to need your help getting us out of here. Can you help me?”

“I try. How?”

“I’m figuring that out right now. Are your feet tied up?”

“Yes.”

“Can you roll over to me long ways?”

“Roll like log?”

“Exactly, like a log.”

“I can!”

I heard the sound of a little body rolling across the floor to me, and I smiled, despite our circumstances. The kid was charming. I opened my eyes again and realized my vision was clearing. I saw her small body and long black hair.

“I’m here!”

“Very good. I want to untie your hands. Can you roll behind me and put your hands against mine, so I can feel the knot in the rope they tied yours with?”

“I try.”

Her bright little voice sounded so can-do. I smiled. She pushed the rope around her wrists into my hands.

My fingers worked it as I talked to her. “So, Betsy, tell me about how you got here and where you’re from.”

I found the end of the tough twine and worked my fingers to the knot. I needed to loosen the piece across the top into a loop, then push the stiff twine back through.

“From Mexico with Mama and Papa. We hide in a truck with chickens and lizards.”

The twine was so tight that I couldn’t get it to budge, and I had no leverage. I pushed and pushed and was finally able to wedge my thumbnail between the strands. I wiggled my thumb back and forth, up and down, back and forth, up and down. The twine strands gripped each other as if with pinchers. Was it loosening? I couldn’t tell. Back and forth, up and down. Finally, I felt the tiniest of gives and gave a little gasp.

“What?”

“Hold really still. I think I’m getting it.”

Back and forth, up and down. Another tiny slip. Back and forth, up and down.

“How you get here?”

“By being really dumb.”

Back and forth, up and down. I now had the whole tip of my thumb in the loop, thank God, because I couldn’t keep doing this much longer. My thumbnail was about to come off. I put my wrist into the movement as I answered her.

Now I worked the end of the twine through my hard-won loop. I felt the knot. At least two more. I ignored the pain in my thumbnail and started wedging my nail in again.

“You pretty, Miss.”

I grunted. “Thank you, sweetie. I can’t wait to see you once we are both untied. My eyes have started working again.”

And were adjusting to the dark of the room, lit only by waning light from two high windows, too high, I saw, for me to reach.

Five minutes later I got my thumb tip through, and gritted my teeth in agony. I didn’t want to see my poor thumb. I could feel the shredded skin on either side of my nail with my forefinger. It felt like hamburger. After another three minutes, I had one loop left to go. I switched to my left hand. It was slower, but at least I had the hang of it.

“Done.”

“You did it!” Betsy said. I heard rustling behind me. “My hands hurt.”

“I’ll bet they do. Can you undo mine now, please?” Urgency strained my voice. The process had taken far longer than I’d hoped, and now that I could see the door, I expected it to burst open any moment with Tanner and Skinny Guy. All this would be for nothing.

I felt her fingers go to work. “Too tight. I can’t.”

Of course. Her little fingers weren’t as strong as mine. I scanned the empty room, looking for some kind of tool. But it was just us, four walls, and a concrete floor. I frowned, concentrating as I took inventory, then I smiled. I did have something. Saved by my own vanity and how oblivious men are to all it takes to make a woman a goddess.

“Reach up into my hair and pull out one of my bobby pins. You can slide one into the knot to help you loosen it.”

“Bobby pins?”

“Hair pins. Pins in my hair.”

Small hands picked through my hair. Even in these circumstances, it was a lovely feeling. I felt a pin pull free.

“Got it.”

“Great. See if you can stick the whole thing between the edges of the top knot.”

She made little grunts and I felt pressure, this way and that. “I did it! I got it!”

“Good girl. Okay, wiggle it and move it around to make the knot looser. You can keep doing it until it’s big enough to pull open.”

More pressure. I listened for footsteps outside our door, my mouth dry as wood shavings. The pressure on my wrists changed and I felt grating as one strand of twine slid its way out of the first knot.

“I do it again.”

“You’re awesome. Thank you.” The tension of listening was making it hard to breath. Faster, I prayed. Faster.

“One more.”

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing Betsy and me together. Help me to help her. Amen.

The rough twine abraded my wrist as Betsy pulled it off altogether.

“You did it! Now I’m going to have to give you a big hug.”

I wheeled around and saw for the first time the girl I’d been working with and talking to. Pink Barbie pj’s, big black eyes, and long black hair. One of the three little girls I had watched giggle on a couch in Amarillo, the one who had shown me her favorite doll, a child whose picture Victoria sent me and I kept on my phone. Valentina Perez, who it seemed was calling herself Betsy. My heart roared.

She threw her arms around me. “You the lady who knows my mommy, right?”

There was no time for questions now. I hugged her tightly for a brief second, my emotions raw and swollen, then let her go. “I am, and I’ve been looking for you. I’m so glad to see you! Now, we need to hurry, so let’s untie our own feet.”

I grabbed one of my bobby pins to help me with the knots this time, because, as I had suspected, my thumb was pulp. I made fast work of them.

Valentina aka Betsy had made good progress on her own knots.

“Want me to finish that?”

She nodded and I quickly freed her legs.

“Okay, now, stay close behind me, and don’t make a sound.”

I palmed the bobby pins and dropped them in my skirt pocket for later, just in case. We stood and faced the door. I held my breath as I tried the handle. Locked. Time for the bobby pin after all? I eyed the door handle but there was no lock in it. I looked closely at the jamb and just made out the dark presence of a thrown deadbolt, from the other side. No bobby pin was going to solve this problem. I stood staring, thinking, despairing, when the lock snapped back and the handle turned. I clapped one hand over my mouth to stifle my scream and threw the other in front of Betsy as the door opened slowly toward us.

***

A ghostly figure stood in the doorway, light behind it, a finger across its lips. Male or female, I couldn’t tell, but it was slight and tall for a woman or short for a man, with some kind of enormous thing on its head. Its body was clad in a white mesh suit, with a black skirt nearly to the top of knee-high buckskin moccasins. Its face was ghostly white with an animal hide mask over the nose. The drawing, I realized. It was like the figure from Valentina’s—or Betsy’s—crayon drawing in the apartment back in Amarillo.

Behind me, Betsy clung to my skirt, her head against my hip. My arm slipped around her shoulders like I’d been protecting her all her life.

“It’s okay,” Betsy said. She stepped around me. “She’s my friend.”

The figure nodded. It pointed down the hall and whispered in a low voice, “Go, quickly, out and left to the stable. There’s a horse ready for you there.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“My backpack?” Betsy asked.

“Do you know where it is?”

She shook her head.

“We’ll look for it later. Now, we have to go.”

Betsy ran to the figure and hugged it hard. “Bye, friend.”

I snatched her hand before she’d removed her arms from the apparition. “Let’s run.”

But as I stood close to the figure, I suddenly realized I knew her, and as our eyes met she knew it, too. Stella. Paul’s daughter. I didn’t have time to analyze the hows and whys. I nodded at her, and we ran.

I pulled Betsy behind me so hard that she was practically aloft. I tried to run silently in my high-heeled cowboy boots on the concrete floor, but they clomped alarmingly. I fought through the cobwebs in my brain, trying to shake off the lethargy of Tanner’s drug. It felt like I’d spent days as a captive in that room, but I realized only hours had passed. Lights still twinkled from the back patio of Paul’s house, and party sounds floated toward us .We raced through the dark out of the office building and to our left.

“Hey! Stop right there!” a deep male voice yelled.

It sounded like Tanner, but I wasn’t turning around to verify. My boots were so loud I couldn’t hear his steps, but he had to be closing in on us. I couldn’t go faster than Betsy was able. Suddenly, the stable loomed ahead, close, its opening a black cutout in green metal sides. We burst in, and a startled nicker to my right stopped me short. A saddled horse. I pulled the reins from a hitching post and jumped on. I held out my hand to Betsy.

“I’m scared,” she cried.

“I’ve got you,” I said. “I promise.”

She grasped my hand and I pulled her up with strength I didn’t know I had. The horse snorted and hopped as Betsy’s small body landed belly first across the saddle horn in front of me. She cried out, and I pulled her upright and slung her leg across the horse. A figure grew larger in front of the backlights from the ranch house. I would have to rush him with the horse, but I knew he’d go for help after we got away. I scanned the barn frantically for a club or a whip or, or, or . . . but all I saw was a lasso hanging from a peg on the wall. Well, it would have to do. I wheeled the horse, grabbed the rope, wrapped its end around the saddle horn feverishly, whacking poor Betsy over and over in the process, but the brave little girl didn’t make a sound. I gave the horse a sharp kick.

“Yah!”

The horse bolted from the barn, straight at Tanner. I held onto the reins and Betsy with my left arm and swung a loop around and around over my head with my right. I guided the horse with knee pressure and my body weight as I leaned to the left, and Tanner scrambled away from us. The horse responded, moving in unison with me. I could thank God later for a well-trained quarter horse, but for now we were nearly upon Tanner. He ducked, reaching for his hip.

Gun.

I let my loop fly, the hiss of rope gliding off my fingers. In slow motion, it sailed through the dark and over the unsuspecting Tanner. I gave it a jerk as it settled over him, and wrapped the lasso around the saddle horn.

“Back, back,” I ordered, throwing my weight against the back of the saddle, pulling firmly with the reins.

The horse all but sat on its rump as it stopped, then began backing quickly. Tanner hit the dirt, his arms immobilized. He grunted, loudly, then cussed me at the top of his lungs as the horse dragged him through the dust and gravel.

“Betsy, sit here, and hold on to this horn. I have to tie him up so he won’t follow us.”

I could see the huge round whites of her eyes. She nodded, speechless. I ripped the tie-down rope from where it was fastened. Later, I’d have to thank God for well-outfitted tack. I ran to Tanner, who was still slowly being dragged by my new favorite horse.

“You bitch,” he said.

I lashed his feet together, then dragged them up behind his rump and caught his hands in the same tie-down, rendering him helpless. When I’d finished, I jumped up and threw both hands in the air automatically, to signal I was done, but there was no official dropping the flag and timing my efforts, and this was no rodeo. I pulled my arms down and pretended I hadn’t just done that.

I looked down at Tanner. “Looks like you’re the bitch to me.”

I searched the ground behind him for the gun I’d seen him draw. I caught a glint of light ten yards back. I trotted out and grabbed the six-shot pistol. 357 Magnum. I checked that the safety was on and then stuck it in the tight waistband of my skirt. I took the horse by the bridle and guided him as he dragged Tanner into the barn. That was better, but still, the man could squeal for help. I needed something to use to gag him. I took off a boot and hooked two fingers through the tear in the knee of my tights and ripped until I had the whole lower section off. I jammed my foot back into the boot then leaned over and pinched Tanner’s nose shut until he had to open his mouth to breathe, and I shoved my stocking in, moving fast to avoid his teeth. Then I unfastened the lasso from the saddle horn, tied it to a post, and pulled the barn door shut as I led the horse out with Betsy astride him.