Run to Ground(96)
“Thank you,” Sherry said, and the small part of Jules’s brain that wasn’t screaming with fear marveled at how polite her captor was. “Now come this way, please.” She gestured toward the back.
Jules’s knees wanted to fold, to soften and place her on the floor, but she stiffened, forcing her legs to carry her as she walked in front of Sherry toward the counter. It was harder not being able to see Sherry, just knowing that she was right behind her, holding a gun pointed at Jules’s back. Her skin felt itchy with nerves, her body knowing that something very bad could happen at any second, but she couldn’t brace herself for it.
“What do you want?” she asked, more so Sherry would speak than wanting to know. Having the silent, menacing presence behind her was too nerve-racking. She needed Sherry to talk, to make some sort of sound.
At first, it seemed Jules’s plan wasn’t going to work, but then Sherry finally answered, “I’m never going to get what I want.”
That was unhelpfully cryptic, Jules thought semihysterically. She frantically searched her brain for words, for the right statement or question or argument to make Sherry see Jules as a person, as someone with a right to her life.
If she died, what would happen to Sam and Ty and Tio and Dee? It wasn’t just fear that was circling inside of Jules, twisting like a cyclone. There was also rage. How dare Sherry threaten to take Jules away from her family? How dare she hold a gun on her? Just a jerk of her finger, and Jules would be gone, leaving her sister and brothers to suffer…again. And Theo—
She sharply cut off that train of potential grief.
As she shuffled forward, trying to move as slowly as possible without getting shot, Jules welcomed the anger. It ate away the fear and sharpened her mind. She needed to be smart, to get through this so she could stay alive and give her siblings that chance at a new life she’d promised them. And as crazy as it was, she wanted to give this thing with Theo a chance to survive.
“Do you have a reason for doing this?” she asked out loud. Jules was proud that she sounded so strong, so undaunted. “Or are you just flat-out bat-shit crazy?”
From the hissing inhale behind her, it seemed Jules had struck a nerve. “I’m not crazy.”
“So what’s your justification?” Jules demanded, righteous anger flowing through her and giving her courage. “What’s so important that you can blow up our barn and shoot Norman and risk my life for it? Risk my brothers’ and sister’s lives? What?”
“He took him from me!” Just like that, the politeness, the calm, was gone, and Sherry was full-out yelling. The fear returned as Jules imagined the gun swinging with Sherry’s hand as she gestured wildly. It would be so easy for Sherry’s finger to jerk back, sending a bullet tearing through Jules, through her back, her spine, her lungs, her heart…
“Who did?” Jules came to a stop as she tried to make her tone even, but it was hard with anger and fear warring inside of her. “Who took him?” And what does that have to do with me?
“Theo.” She spat out the name, punctuating it with a jab of the gun barrel in Jules’s back. “Theodore Bosco.”
Jules cried out, as much from the surprise of the sudden, violent contact as from pain, stumbling forward a step to escape the pressure on her spine. “Theo?” she repeated, panting, once she was able to speak again. “Who took Theo from you?”
“No!” Sherry shouted, making Jules’s whole body contract in anticipation of the shot. Sherry didn’t fire, though…not yet. “Theo is not the good guy. Everyone thinks he’s a hero, but he’s not. He’s not.”
Even though Jules knew she should try to pander to the woman pointing a gun at her back, she just couldn’t say it, couldn’t agree with her. “Theo is a hero. He saved me, my sister, my brother, and Hugh from that gunman.”
“You were never in any danger,” Sherry scoffed. “No civilians were. And Hugh was supposed to die.”
All the air left Jules’s lungs in a whoosh. “What?” she finally managed to croak as realization began to seep into her brain. “You know who the shooter is?”
“Keep moving.” Sherry’s words, accompanied by another jab of the gun to her spine, made Jules realize she’d come to a halt again in front of the entrance to the kitchen. Jules pushed through the door as her thoughts bounced wildly with escape plans. Images of her shoving the swinging door back in Sherry’s startled face or cracking her over the head with a sheet pan ran through her brain in the half second it took to pass through into the kitchen. The proximity of the gun—and the blatant scariness of the gun—kept her docile, though, at least externally.