Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can - By Kat Martin Page 0,81
tiny cabin. Reaching beneath the bed Claire had hastily made in a failed attempt to hide the fact they were sleeping together, Ben pulled out the canvas bag that held his weapons and unzipped the top.
Brodie whistled. “Looks like you came prepared, all right. That AR looks mighty fetching.” He had a slight drawl Ben had noticed before. It was more pronounced now that he was home.
“She’s all yours and that Beretta nine mil, if you want it.”
“Sweet.”
“Now all we need to do is figure a way to get through four miles of bayou without being seen, get Sam away from at least half a dozen armed men and find our way back through the swamp in the dark without getting lost.”
Ty just grinned. “Sounds like a good time to me.”
* * *
“Get back to work. You been loafin’ long enough.” Mace Bragg stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Sam where he sat in the shade eating some jerky and a piece of Aggie’s bread. Mace was big. He had dirty brown hair down to his shoulders he tied back with a piece of leather, and sometimes he got food in his beard.
Aggie said he was the oldest. He sure was the meanest. He’d been spittin’ mad the night Troy and Duke had brought Sam into the camp. Mace said it was a stupid thing to do.
But Troy said Sam would be a big help to Aggie. He said she’d always wanted a kid and now she had one. Aggie didn’t have a husband anymore. She’d told Sam her Dooley had been killed in a hunting accident ten years ago.
Sam started walking ahead of Mace, Pepper dogging his heels. Dogging. At home he would have laughed at the joke he’d just made. It didn’t seem funny now. He followed Mace to the pit he was digging for a new outhouse. The old one stunk something awful and it was full of flies and there was a spider in the corner. At least the new one oughta smell better.
As he headed down the path, he glanced at the tangle of vines and muddy, slow-moving water at the edge of the compound, and a shiver ran through him.
There were all kinds of scary creatures in the swamp. Besides the ugly snake he’d seen, there were big hairy rats, and hornets’ nests as big as basketballs. Last night for supper, Aggie fixed a kind of stew called gumbo made with alligator meat. Yuck.
It didn’t really taste that bad, he just didn’t like to think of eating something that looked like a giant lizard. Or getting eaten by one if he ever got brave enough to run away.
Yesterday Troy’s youngest brother, Luke, had shown him a gator he said was twelve feet long. It just lay there pretending to be a log, its beady eyes watching as it waited for some poor animal to get too close.
Sam jumped down in the hole and wiped his hands on his jeans. They were so dirty they were stiff, but Aggie only washed once a week, in some kind of old-fashioned white machine with a roller that squeezed the water out of the clothes.
Pepper lay down in the shade a few feet away as Sam picked up the shovel and started digging. The blisters on his hands had broken yesterday. Aggie had put on some kind of gross-smelling salve but now they were bleeding again.
“Boy’s doin’ the best he can,” Luke said as he walked up next to Mace. He was tall but kind of skinny, the nicest of the Braggs. Him and Aggie. “He’s new to all this, ya know.”
“What I know is that fool of a brother of yours should never have brung him here in the first place. Now we’re stuck with him. One more mouth to feed.”
“Sam carries his weight.”
“Maybe so, but he ain’t real kin. And look at them eyes. Spawn of Satan, you ask me.”
They went on arguing but Sam stopped listening. Instead, he imagined taking a long hot shower, like when he came home from an afternoon at the beach with his mom and Claire. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see the ocean, listen to the waves.
Mace leaned down and cuffed him. “Pay attention. I got more work for you when you’re finished.”
Sam swallowed. The beach was a million miles away. He might never see the ocean again. Maybe when he got bigger, he’d be strong enough to make it out of the bayou.