Ruthless (2 page)

The smoky smell hits me first.

A campfire.

I look up.

The Wolfman is right there, cooking meat over an open fire.

Five Years Ago

HER PARENTS ARE FIGHTING ABOUT
money again.

The girl is in a stall, standing ankle deep in clean shavings, pretending to brush her immaculate horse. She stands behind him, using him as a blind. She can't see her parents, and they can't see her. But she can't shut out sound.

The conflict is in perpetual motion, never ceasing. She's used to the fighting, desensitized, like a horse that's been made to walk over a tarp over and over again until it's no longer scared. But somehow, when she wasn't looking, hope for peace made its way through the cracks again, looking for the sun and a place to bloom. The hope came back because the girl had qualified for Worlds. All that money spent on horse shows had paid off, and they were here now, in Oklahoma City.

The fight began upon arrival. They learned they'd been assigned a stall in Barn 5A, far from everything. It didn't bother the girl. What did a few
hundred feet matter when you were at Worlds? The best barns were dominated by the famous pro trainers with their curtains and potted plants and fountains and golf carts. The girl had one horse, one class to compete in, and her mother was her trainer. Of course they were stuck in no-man's-land.

But she knows their agitation over Barn 5A has nothing to do with her. It's a symbol of her mom's failure to make a lasting success of her early triumphs. She should be a big-deal trainer by now, with big-deal clients and big-deal horses. Instead, all her students are local kids taking riding lessons on the weekends. Every year the horse side of the ranch loses money. Lots and lots of money.

The girl understands all that.

But she can't help wishing that qualifying had been good enough. She'd allowed herself to hope that making it to Worlds as a twelve-year-old on a three-year-old horse would be enough to make them happy. It feels painfully naive in retrospect.

The horse turns to look at the girl. He is big and sweet and compliant, but she's been brushing the same spot on his shoulder for ten minutes, and his skin is irritated.

“I'm sorry, Tucker,” the girl whispers. She shifts down a foot, turning her attention to his back, and he sighs, content once more.

Even quieter, she whispers to herself, “Just go away, go away, go away.” She doesn't need to be that quiet. They can't hear her.

CHAPTER THREE

NOW IS NO TIME TO
hesitate and I don't. I bolt away from the cabin, ignoring the pain in my pumping right arm, ignoring my churning stomach. Racing past the Wolfman, I risk a glance in his eyes and see nothing. Not surprise, not worry, not urgency, not even anger. They're empty. Far emptier than any animal's eyes. Those empty eyes, more than anything, frighten me into running faster. Faster than I ever thought I could run.

And I'm fast.

But something catches my foot.

A root? Dear God, no, not a root. Did I trip on a root?

I look back.

No, my foot is in his hand. He's flat out on his stomach; he worked for it, but still—how did he do that? How could such a big man move so fast? Bafflement gives way to raw terror as he pulls me to him.

I start screaming no. I hear myself scream. Over and over again I scream no, but it's like someone else is moving my mouth, making my voice box work. He tells me to shut up, but the words are from another world. He puts his hand over my mouth.

The feel of his hand touching my face brings my mind and my brain back together, and I bite him. Hard.

He grabs my throat with his other hand.

With one finger pointing in my face, he says, “Stop.”

I bite him again.

“If you don't stop, I squeeze until you die.”

He gives me a sample. He's not wrong. He will squeeze until I die. I don't even think it would be hard for him. Not on any level.

“Will you stop?”

I nod yes.

He takes me by the nape of my neck and drags me toward his campfire. My face is shoved into leaf litter and black mountain soil as he fetches his steak, one-handed. The sounds of sizzling meat, clinking utensils, and tinfoil are strangely homey. He heaves me to my feet, and his strength overwhelms me yet again. I watch, feeling helpless, as he casually kicks dirt into the fire to snuff it out. How responsible of him.

Once done, he pulls me back toward the cabin's front door. I glance around as we walk. I see no signs of a real road anywhere nearby. No other houses. No sounds. There's nothing here but forest, the moss-eaten cabin, and the old truck out front. Now that I can see it, I remember that truck. Peeling red paint, rust. Late-seventies Chevy.

Wolfman undoes the barricade on the front door and shoves
me into the cabin. Just as quick, he whirls me around to face the rudimentary kitchen. As I spin, I catch sight of something important. Keys hanging on a small nail next to the front window.

In one smooth motion, he pushes me into a chair at the ­little kitchen table, sets down his steak, and picks up a gun. I wish with all my might I'd seen the gun before he picked it up. But I didn't know it was there, hidden in the mountains of trash, and he moved so quickly. I lost my chance, and now I'm staring down the barrel of a stout-looking .45. He sits down opposite me.

I still can't remember his name.

Silence. He watches me. I want to look down, block my eyes from his, but it's too important that I learn all I can. His face is impassive, his body a hulking granite boulder, but his hands are trembling. That more than anything scares me. A part of me wants him to speak, break the tension of the quiet. The other part of me wants him to never say anything.

“I want you to know something,” he says. His eyes may be empty, but his voice is full. He's saying something he thinks is important. “I did not want to come back here. Do you understand me?”

I have no idea what I should say. “I don't think I do.”

“I didn't want to come back here. I'd stopped coming. Do you understand me?”

There's impatience behind his words, but I think pretending to understand will only make things worse. “I don't.”

“I've been clean for a long time. Made a promise to myself, more importantly, made a promise to somebody else. I hate to tell you this, because you're already so high on yourself.” He pauses for
emphasis, and then I hear the rage. “So damn high on ­yourself.”

This man hates me in a way I didn't know was possible. Another wave of adrenaline floods my system, and it's like my body is overwhelmed, put into slow motion. Every second is longer, more ­frozen.

“But sometimes things need to be done and promises need to be broken. And so here we are.”

“We don't have to be here,” I offer.

He points at me, like an angry principal. “You have to learn that you're not special.”

“I don't think I'm special.”

He smacks me hard across the face. I had no idea his arm was long enough to reach across the table.

“No lying.”

A weird whining fills my ears, and my body goes from slow motion to hyperkinetic freak-out. My heart, my sweat, my nerves, my muscles all burst to life and frantically move in place. There's nowhere to go, but everything squirms and writhes inside me, as though individual bits of me are trying to escape.

“What I'd like to know is, how come a little girl like yourself is in charge of business decisions at a multimillion-dollar facility?”

I almost protest, but Wolfman said no lying. “I'm not in charge, but I have input because I bring a lot of money into the farm. I'm our best advertisement.”

“Some things you're in charge of. You're the sole voice of authority.”

There's a vague feeling I'm missing something important, that
I'm not thinking clearly through all the stress. “I manage the girls who feed at the barn, teach them how and make sure they do it right. I guess I'm in charge of that.”

“You're also in charge of who gets fired at a moment's notice. Or did your daddy lie when he said you made the call to fire me?”

A strange melting sensation happens inside me. How could my father be so stupid?

“He said you thought I wasn't right, that I scared you. Was he lying?” Wolfman raises his right hand, ready to strike. “Was he lying?”

“No.”

“So you agree you are in charge. Do you think it's right, for a little girl to be in charge like that?”

It's a strange question for me to hear and harder for me to process.

“Answer. Do you think you should be in charge?”

“I'm trying.”

Another crack across the head. This one is worse. “You're not trying! You're not saying anything. Do you think you should be in charge?”

“Yes!” He's reopened the wound on my scalp. Blood trickles into my eyes, so I squeeze the lids shut tight. “Because there's nobody else.”

There's a long pause. That second hit has me spinning around even as I sit still. My closed eyes are only making it worse, but there's a steady drip of blood. I open them, not wanting to vomit.

Through the red haze of my blood I see a strange expression on his face. His eyes have come alive, and I don't like it at all. He's getting off on this now in a way he wasn't before. My first thought is that my honesty is feeding him in a bad, bad way, and my second thought is not to question my gut.

“These are going to be very good days,” he says to me.

An hour has passed without conversation. I watched Wolfman eat his steak and drink can after can of cheap beer. He doesn't seem drunk, but there's a blurriness about his eyes that disturbs me. It feels like he's getting ready to enjoy something.

Anxiety wants to take me over, but I fight it back. I think I learned something in our first conversation. He wants to break me down, get to the core of me. My truth is his crack. No more of that. No more playing this game by his rules. From now on he'll know only what I want him to know. From now on I stay in control. That's what's going to get me out of here.

Wolfman clears everything off the table except his gun. That he keeps close at hand. There is a sense of ceremony about his actions. My stomach tightens up. We are about to begin.

From the back of his jeans he retrieves two objects. One is a mini spiral-bound notebook. The other is my cell phone. He then pulls a pair of foldable reading glasses from his shirt pocket. He puts them on, letting them rest low on his nose, and uses both hands to flip through the notebook. The notebook is nearly filled with neat, tiny print, and it takes some time for him to find what he's looking for.

Once he's found his spot, he pauses to look at me over his glasses. This is clearly a planned performance, but he's trying to pull off an air of spontaneity. “I think you're going to be my hardest case yet. But you will learn in the end. They all do.”

Hardest case yet.
I'm not the first. I already knew this, and yet hearing it said so starkly sends a surge of bile up my throat. I swallow hard to keep from gagging.

“I know you, Ruth Ann Carver. I know you better than you know yourself. You think you do things right. You think you're a paragon of right living. This is a self-told lie, one bolstered by your coddling parents and grandparents.”

A spike of rage joins my fear. Say what you want about me, but nobody speaks ill of my family.

“Your
coddling
parents and grandparents,” he says again, “who shelter you from the truth. Now, I'm a reasonable man, and do not expect you to simply take my word for it.”

His gaze returns to the little notebook. He clears his throat and begins reading. “‘Nine a.m. on October seventh. Young blond girl asks for help with horse. Target replies, “I don't have time for you. In this barn, you either sink or swim.”'”

His strange wolf eyes bear into mine, searching for my reaction. I don't want to feel ashamed; I don't want to feel anything. I want to stay in strict control. But I do remember saying that. The girl, Natalie, wouldn't stop pestering me. If I stopped to help her every time she asked for help, I wouldn't get my own work done.

“‘Nine thirty a.m. on October seventh. Young blond girl goes to
the other teens to complain about Target. Other teens say, “Don't worry about Ruthless.”'”

I had no idea they called me that. It doesn't entirely surprise me. What's hitting me harder is the label he's given me: Target.

“They went on to say that you weren't nice to anyone, cared only about winning, and had no friends.”

But I
do
have friends. Not many. Mostly just Becca and ­Courtney, because Becca swims and Courtney plays soccer, and they know what it is to give your life to your sport. But it's not like we never have fun. We do. We just put our sports first. And there's Caleb. I'll always have my Caleb.

“They went on to tell the young blond girl to stick with them, as they all have fun together at the horse shows, root each other on, and ignore you.”

Which is fine by me. I don't go to competitions to play around. I go to win.

“‘Nine forty-five a.m. on October seventh. Target's mother walks in on conversation. Young blond girl relays Target's words. Target's mother says, “It's my fault she's nasty. Blame me.”'”

Again he looks to me, waiting to see my expression. I do everything I can to keep my face set, but my cheeks grow warm, something he can probably see. My pale, freckly skin glows like a neon light when I blush. Would Mom really say that? It can't be the truth. She wouldn't sell me out like that.

“‘Eight a.m. on October eighth. Target's mother asks ­Target's father to talk to Target about the way she treats riding students at the barn. Target's father says, “It's not worth getting into World War Three
over. You know how she is; if she thinks she's right, she'll fight to the death, and she always thinks she's right. You try dealing with her this time. See how you like it.”'”

Do my parents really talk like this behind my back? I don't want to believe Dad would say those things. It especially hurts that he said it where this man could hear him. He let this hired hand, this monster, know exactly what he thought of me. But I do believe it, because it makes sense. He's always the one who talks to me, and I always defend myself. I just didn't know he considered me such a burden.

“‘Four p.m. on October tenth. Caleb helped Target (at her request) with chores for several hours. Then he wanted her company. Target asked him to leave and then complained to the mother that he had overstayed his welcome. Target is a user.'”

But Caleb will stay forever if I don't ask him to leave! We're best friends; I help him out too. Sometimes. I'll help if he asks for it, anyway. It's always been like this. This is how we are.

The Wolfman picks up my cell phone. “I found this to be of interest.” He holds up the phone and shows a picture of me and Becca at her mom's pool. We're in bikinis. “You sent this photo to Caleb. And also this one, and this, and this,” he says, scrolling down. “You use him whenever you're feeling insecure. You know he is going to tell you you're beautiful. You know Caleb's feelings go beyond friendship and use this knowledge to your advantage. I suspect you have feelings for him, but you'd never date him. You're ashamed of him because he's a redneck and lives in a trailer.”