to kick the side window out, but then she got sick and threw up in the barf bag that Novalene had the good sense to bring along.
“Daddy is going to hate me. He loves my brother, but then Joseph is perfect and never does anything wrong. I wish he would die so Daddy would love me.”
“That’s your problem.” Elijah didn’t care right then if she hadn’t been loved enough or potty-trained right, or if her brother had wings and a halo.
“If you would take advantage of group sessions and your counseling, you might get over that feeling,” Novalene told her.
“Counselors are stupid,” Lauren said and stared out the window. “Take me back. I’ll be good.”
“Can’t do that,” Elijah said as he eased into a parking space behind the jail. Two deputies waited beside a patrol car and started walking toward them. “Looks like your dad has already arranged something.”
“I hope someone sets fire to Piney Wood and you all die,” Lauren hissed.
Elijah rolled down the window and said, “We’re delivering Lauren Fielding into your care.”
A deputy slid open the side door and held out a pair of cuffs. “Young lady, your father has instructed us to take you back to the airport, where he will have a private plane waiting to take you to a rehab center.”
Elijah got out of the van and walked around the front of it.
“Is Daddy going to be on the plane?” Lauren asked as she slid out of the seat.
“Fancy ties you got there,” the deputy chuckled as he fastened the cuffs around Lauren’s wrists before he untied the apron and tossed it in the back seat.
“No, ma’am,” the other deputy answered. “He’s sending your brother to accompany you. Are you going to go quietly?”
“Yes, I’ll be a good girl.” Lauren almost sounded like a sweet little mistreated child. “Just don’t make me go back to Piney Wood. They abuse all us girls at that place.”
The deputy winked at Elijah as he escorted Lauren to their unit. “That’s a shame. Deputy Jones will get your bag, and hopefully this next place will be nicer to you.”
“Well, that’s that,” Elijah said as he got back into the vehicle with Novalene. To his surprise, his hands trembled when he put the van in gear and drove out of the parking lot. Elijah didn’t handle failure well, and he felt as if he’d failed Lauren. As he drove north, he thought back to the time when he’d flown out to get his teammates. He didn’t know at that point how many were hurt, if any were dead, or exactly what he was going to find. The only information he had was that there had been an explosion and Matty, their corpsman, was hurt too badly to render help to the others. The picture of Buddy and Tim running across the ground between those two mountains was forever burned into his brain. Elijah had smelled fresh blood many times, but anytime he thought of that day when three of his teammates were killed, the metallic smell that filled his nostrils always came back to his mind.
“Where’s Tim and Matty?” Elijah had yelled over the whirring noise of the blades.
“They’re right behind us. Their Humvee got hit. Matty’s hurt bad,” Buddy answered. “But he’s alive.”
Tim was a huge man, six foot four and weighing in at 280 pounds, but there wasn’t a spare bit of fat on his body. He carried Matty like a baby across the desolate field that day and held him all the way back to base. Elijah could still hear his deep southern voice telling Matty to hang on.
“Elijah’s going to get us back to safety. You’re going to be fine. Open your eyes. Look at me,” Tim kept repeating.
But Elijah didn’t make it in time, and Matty was declared dead on arrival at the base. And Elijah had always wondered if those few extra minutes without refueling the chopper might have made the difference.
“I feel like a complete failure.” Novalene’s voice brought him out of the past and back to the present. “This is my first time ever to lose a girl, and she slapped Mary. I’m sick to my stomach over that. I keep asking myself if something I did or didn’t do caused her to flip out like that. Should I have gone easier on her over the cigarettes?”
“Don’t beat yourself up. Like Henry said, some folks can’t be helped. Maybe Lauren will get some good professional help at this new place.” Elijah