Page 39 of Backtrack

“Trust me,” Duvall said. “Put it on. Things go wrong, kid. You never let ’em see your face, even if you’re gonna kill ’em.”

Boards creaked on the porch. Pink took one last look, craning his neck to see her at the front door.

“She’s fiddling with her keys.”

Duvall adjusted the idiotic nightgown around his eyes. He looked like one of those ninja assassins in that movieKiller Elite, except with lace.

“Come on kid,” he said, leading the way to the front door. “You and your box cutter are batter up.”

CHAPTER 14

Sue Bryant’s brown paper grocery sack was starting to rip by the time she reached her front door. Probably the fresh zucchini sweating through. She was a Parker County farm girl, born and raised. It felt like a sin to buy produce from Safeway, but this hellfire summer had dried her garden to ashes. She set down the groceries on the porch and discovered the culprit causing the bag’s imminent failure—the braided chew toy she’d picked up in the pet aisle. Any toy had to be tough to stand up to her pup’s teeth. This one was the size of a Frisbee, like an oversize rawhide doughnut. Her boy deserved something special after what he’d been through. She unlocked the door, then bumped it open with her hip.

Groceries in one hand, rawhide doughnut in the other, she turned her back to the door and gazed toward the main road before going inside. She and her Ray Gene had only been married three years. The sight of his old truck coming up the lane still made her giddy—but who she wanted to see cross the cattle guard today was their German shepherd, Bear. The dog had been at the veterinarian’s clinic for three days, recovering from a nasty run-in with a rattlesnake that cost him his right eye.

She was thinking about how they’d almost lost him when she stepped inside her house. The hairs on the back of her arms stood up; the front room was oddly cool for this time of day—like Ray Gene had forgotten to pull the bedroom door closed when he went to work.

The two men were on top of her before she saw them. The smaller one had her black nightgown on his head! Her nightgown.

He slapped the groceries out of her hand and lunged. She jumped backward. Surprise curdled to terror.

She cursed, screamed, not out of fear but from anger. She lashed out with the only weapon at hand, the braided rawhide chew toy. The first blow took the smaller man across the nose. He screamed, clawing at her with both hands. She hit him again, two wild jabs, but both connected directly to his face. She felt the rawhide impact flesh beneath the nylon gown. He staggered backward, tumbling out the door behind her.

The big guy lumbered in from her left, reaching with one hand while he held a halter top … no, one of her bras over his face with the other. His makeshift mask must have come off in the attack.

Sue swung wildly, raging like she had when she’d chopped the rattlesnake that had bitten Bear to pieces with her hoe.

She missed completely.

The big guy hiding behind her bra grabbed her by the shirt, growling something. She couldn’t understand it but knew it was a threat. Of course it was a threat. These assholes were in her house, wearing her underwear over their faces.

The big guy yanked her closer, ripping the sleeve off her shirt. A horn honked outside. Tires spun on gravel.

Sue screamed, clawing with one hand while striking out over and over with the chew toy—now a broken shard of rawhide. “My husband is going to kick your ass!” she barked, but it came out as a garbled mess on the back of her scream.

The big guy cursed again, punching her hard in the shoulder before grabbing a handful of her collar.

She gagged, choking, trying to pull away. The big guy must have dropped the bra. It didn’t matter. He was using two hands now, one to choke the life out of her, the other to punch her repeatedly in the arm and ribs.

Then the collar tore away from her shirt, and she fell away, gasping for air, scrambling backward out the door like a crawfish. There was a hoe out on the porch somewhere, the same hoe she’d used to kill the snake. If these bastards wanted to kill her, they were going to have to work for it.

The world closed in around her, like she was looking through a cardboard tube. Sounds were muffled and syrup slow. Had she heard a car door? Or was it just her runaway heartbeat? Intending to scramble off the porch, she rolled onto all fours and turned just in time to see her beautiful one-eyed German shepherd clear the steps with one jump and fly past.

Behind her, one of the intruders gave a garbled cry. “Holy shit!”

Bear hit the door hard, bouncing backward as the outlaws tried to slam it shut.

Sue reached out for the dog’s collar, but it pulled away. “Bear, no!”

Claws clacked against the porch as Bear scrambled for the door again, ninety pounds of heat-seeking missile, hell-bent on destroying whoever had been manhandling his mama.

Ray Gene Bryant baled out of the pickup and sprinted to the porch. He grabbed his wife under both arms and dragged her to the safety of his vehicle.

“Bear!” she cried. “They’ll kill him! He’s half blind.”

Ray Gene situated his wife behind the rear tire, where she was relatively protected in case the men had guns, all the while keeping the front door in view. He took her left hand and pulled it across to her right arm.

She looked up at him like he was crazy. “What are you doing?”