“I’ll go. I’ll go. Please stop.” Drake waited a moment, then he felt tears hit the hand that was holding onto Fred’s throat.
“Give me your gun and I’ll let you loose,” Drake promised.
“I don’t have one.”
Drake dug in harder.
“It’s in the glove box.”
What a dumbshit. He’d had his gun where it wasn’t readily available.
“Open the driver’s side door and get out of the car when I let you loose, Fred. Then go to the hood of the car and assume the position.”
“I’ll do anything. Just stop hurting me.”
More tears hit Drake’s hand. He released Fred and prayed he wouldn’t make a play for the gun in the glovebox. Not that he’d have a problem subduing the asshat. Nope, he just wanted Fred to be conscious and able to drive back to Kentucky in the next ten minutes.
Fred opened the car door and was soon pressed spread-eagled over the hood of the car. Drake leaned over the front seat and pulled Fred’s pistol out of the glovebox. He then got out of the car and frisked Fred and found a switchblade in his boot.
“Pop the trunk of the car,” Drake directed, wanting to see if there were any more weapons.
The smell of body odor assaulted him when the trunk opened.
“My God man, haven’t you heard of deodorant?” Drake demanded. It had been rank in the car as the man sweated, but the pile of dirty laundry made him gag.
“I was going to go to the laundry-mat,” Fred defended himself.
“Just get home to Kentucky and burn your clothes, you can’t save them. If I see you here again, you’re going to be the first one I target. Are we clear?”
Fred nodded.
“Say the words. Are we clear?”
“Yes. I’m leaving town now. Can I have my gun?” he asked, proving just how stupid he was.
Drake shook his head and pointed to the open car door. “You’ve got one minute for me to see taillights. Otherwise you’ll be wishing Huey was here.”
Fred stood there looking at him.
“One, two, three,” Drake started counting, and Fred scrambled towards the driver’s seat. He hit his knee against the door. Once again, Drake had to listen to him whine. Fred gunned the car trying to get it to go. It was obvious the parking brake was on, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to press on the accelerator. God, he’d be lucky to make it out of Sevier County, let alone back home to Kentucky. Finally, Fred figured out his problem and the car lurched forward, and he did a fast U-turn. It had taken longer than the allotted time, but Drake always gave extra consideration to the chronically stupid.
He turned to his sister’s house and saw the curtain in the front room window flutter. He took out his cell phone. He didn’t want to be knocking on Trenda’s front door without her knowing who it was. Not under these circumstances.
As soon as she picked up, she was talking. “I saw the show. Come on inside. But take it easy. Bella’s not used to men.”
Drake wasn’t worried, he was good with kids. Hell, Sophia’s little half-sister, Louisa, loved him, and she was a year younger than Bella. This was going to be a piece of cake.
***
“Trenda, has she been a-b-u-s-e-d?” he asked, spelling out the last word.
He watched as his dark-haired sister sighed.
“No. It was the men who ransacked the house. She’s been trembling ever since. Before that, she hadn’t been around men, so this sent her into a tailspin.” Trenda Jean hugged her three-year-old daughter even closer, keeping Bella’s face pressed against her neck, so the child didn’t see him. “I’ll be back soon. I’m going to get us packed.”
He nodded and watched as the next oldest Avery child took her little girl with her down the hall. He got up from the loveseat where he had been sitting and looked around the living room. There were pictures all over the place. Each and every one of his many sister’s accomplishments were depicted on these walls and shelves.
He saw where Maddie had come in second in a piano recital. Zoe had won the hundred-meter dash in high school. There was a team picture of Chloe’s softball team when they made it to State her senior year. There were pictures of Piper in her high school play, and a newspaper clipping of Evie when she had collected the most money for the local food pantry.
Just as he was walking by the Wall of Honor, he saw a shelf with a picture of his football team. It was his team from high school when they had made All State Champions. He’d played fullback, and had won MVP that last game. Then he saw a picture from when he was in fourth grade. Great, it was one of Mom’s famous bowl haircuts. The woman would literally take one of her mixing bowls and put it over his head to cut his hair, and Trenda had that picture up for everybody to see. Thank God, his mother had never done that to any of the girls. Of course, they just had to run around with their hair pinched tight into braids that would hang down to their butts. Drake chuckled to himself. How many times did he have to beat on some kid who had pulled his sister’s braids?