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.Then he walked over to the jail cell and pushed the desk aside.Lands and Moe both stood up, unsure of what would happen next.Tanner pointed to Lands.“Just you.”Moe started to sit back down and then hesitated.Tanner stared hard at him.“The honor system, remember?”He sat.Brother Lands stepped out from the cell.“We’re not bad men,” he said.“Men who do bad things are bad men.”Lands started to argue the point, but was interrupted when Tanner grabbed his hair and pulled him around front.“Hey,” he said, “what do you think—” He was cut short by the bloody metal gaff being hooked into his open mouth.The sharp tip pressed against the back of his throat, causing him to gag.Tanner stood behind him, one hand gripping Lands’ hair, the other choked up on the handle of the gaff.“The time for talking is over,” he said, pushing Lands ahead of him.“If you cause me even the slightest grief, I’ll trout you in front of God and everyone.”Samantha stood motionless, like a rabbit refusing to accept that it had been seen, even as a hawk swooped in for the kill.Without standing up from the porch swing, Hokies waved for her to come closer.It was a soft beckoning, like she was calling over a neighbor to share a cup of iced tea.Samantha turned and looked back over her shoulder toward the side of the house.Going that way wasn’t an option now that she had been seen.If the woman sounded the alarm, she would be running right into the thick of them.She turned around and weighed her chances of getting to the trees.They weren’t that far, a couple of hundred feet maybe.“I can make it,” she whispered.“I can.”She broke away from the house and ran.Hokies was on her feet and giving chase before she had even taken five steps.Samantha had never won a race in her entire life, not even on track and field day against kids who were a grade behind her.She had always chalked the losses up to being small for her age, but the truth was she never really believed that she could win.Today was different.Today she had no choice.She sprinted with a strength she had never felt before, her legs pumping up and down and her arms swinging back and forth.Even though Hokies was easily a foot taller, she beat the woman to the trees by nearly two full seconds.As soon as he entered the tree line, Samantha ducked under a large briar, spun around a pine tree, and plowed through waist high bushes.Hokies was right behind her but ran neck first into the hanging briar.The sharp barbs pierced her skin, and she nearly fell backward as she stopped dead in her tracks, screaming in pain.“Come back here!” she shrieked.Samantha never looked back, ducking and dodging her way through the intricate maze of trees and brush.Carefully pulling the briars away from her skin, Hokies turned back toward her house.“Come quick!” she shouted.“The girl! She’s over here!”Tanner pushed Brother Lands out of the sheriff’s office, one hand on the gaff, and the other gripping the crown of the man’s hair.A tall Mexican man stood a few feet away, his back facing the door to the courthouse.He held a Remington 1100, 12-gauge shotgun and wore bandolier of ammunition hanging diagonally across his chest like Pancho Villa.With a thirty-inch barrel and a total length of almost five feet, the shotgun seemed enormous in the confines of the building’s entryway.As soon as they stepped out, Pancho said, “What the hell do you have in his mouth?”Tanner pulled lightly on the hook.“This is what I call ‘life insurance.’”The man suddenly seemed uncertain.He hadn’t expected to see Lands come out of the room, and certainly not with a giant hook in his mouth.“What do you want?”Tanner shrugged.“Nothing really.I came out to tell you that the girl’s gone.”“Bullshit.She’s inside.”Tanner eased the hook forward about an inch, and pulled back on Lands’ hair, like he was a talking puppet.“Tell him.”“She’s gone,” he gurgled.“Out the window.”Pancho leaned around, trying to peer into the sheriff’s office.“It’s true,” said Tanner.“Now the question is what do we do next?”Before Pancho could answer, a bony man with a mop of red hair burst through the courthouse door.“She’s running.” He struggled to catch his breath and get the words out.“Through the trees behind the courthouse.”Tanner immediately drove Brother Lands forward, the gaff cutting into the back of his throat.They slammed into Pancho, pressing him against the courthouse wall and pushing the shotgun barrel high into the air.The red-haired man came up behind Tanner, but he hesitated with his arms outstretched, unsure of exactly what to do with a man who was twice his size.Tanner answered the question for him by spinning around with an elbow strike to the side of the man’s head.The single blow took his legs out from under him, and he collapsed onto the floor.Pancho shouted for Brother Lands to get off him, but the gaff was still cutting into his mouth, and he couldn’t move in any direction without it slicing deeper into his throat.Tanner whipped the handle end of the gaff around like a pugil stick, catching Pancho in the eye [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]