The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,108
naught but a shotgun.”
“Did you see my sister?” I said.
“Nay, my lady.” He pulled out his burner phone and thumbed it on. “But when I spied into the window, I saw this.”
“Oh my god. You looked in the windows?”
“Yea, for I would see as much as I might, and they keepen no watch upon the south.”
He’d taken the picture through a gap at the bottom of the curtains. I could make out the shape of a couch and an old TV and a rocking chair. Tossed over the back of the rocking chair was a piece of pink fabric. None of those men owned a size extra-small pink fleece jacket with fairy wings embroidered on the back, but LaReigne did. She kept it in her car, and there was no reason for it to be there unless she was, too.
Relief and fear had a little tug o’ war going in my heart. She was there, she was alive, and we were about to do something probably stupid and dangerous to get her back.
“My lady, art thou ready?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
“Master Dirk? Sir Edrard?”
“I’m ready,” Edrard said.
“Shit, yeah, let’s do this thing.” Maybe Dirk was bluffing, but he sounded surer of himself than Edrard and I did.
Gentry passed his phone to Edrard, and we all fell in line behind him. Edrard peeled off first, when we were still a hundred yards out, to take up his position on the high spot Gentry had picked out for him. I called Edrard’s phone and, when he answered, Gentry, Dirk, and I walked on with the line open.
When we reached the road that went to the cabin, we left Dirk to stand watch. The sun was at the top of the trees, and we were only forty or fifty yards from the cabin. Gentry stepped out into the middle of the road, so I did, too. Then we started walking.
At twenty yards, the man on the porch finally noticed us. He stood up and lifted the shotgun he’d had across his lap. It was only a shotgun, though, and at that distance, I wasn’t worried. When we were ten yards away, I recognized the man on the porch. Conrad Ligett. He yelled back into the house through the open screen door: “Scanlon! Get out here.”
Gentry and I stopped about fifteen feet from the front porch. The man named Scanlon stepped outside and, for a minute, he and Ligett just looked at us. We obviously weren’t cops, but we weren’t obviously anything else, either.
“You folks need to get on outta here,” Ligett said. “You’re trespassing and about to get yourselves shot.”
“I’m here to get my sister, LaReigne.”
“I don’t know nothing about that. Get the fuck off my land.”
“I’m not expecting anything for free. I’m willing to pay to get my sister back.” I’d practiced it in my head during the drive, but it was happening so fast I wasn’t sure I was saying what I’d planned to say. I felt like there was a time delay between my brain and my mouth.
“What makes you think your sister’s here?” Scanlon said.
“Because that fucker is here.” I pointed at Ligett. “Conrad, right? You’ve been on the news. If you’re here, I figure my sister’s here, too. I’m willing to pay you all fifty thousand dollars to get her back. It’s cash. Used bills. Unmarked. Untraceable.”
“Fifty grand?” Scanlon said. “Fuck if you have fifty grand. I bet you don’t have a hundred bucks to your name.”
“Let me show it to you.”
“Yeah, why don’t you do that?” Until then, Scanlon had had his gun down by his side, but he brought it up and pointed it at us. Gentry tensed up beside me.
I pulled the phone out of my pocket and opened the photos app. I took a dozen steps closer to the cabin porch, Gentry right next to me, and held the phone out.
As crazy as it was, we’d taken the pictures in the Sonic parking lot. I’d laid the cash on the hood of Gentry’s truck and posed with it. One pic with the fifty thousand, another with the almost ninety-five thousand, in case I needed it.
“That photo was taken today. There’s the money,” I said.
“What’s to stop me from shooting the both of you and taking it?” Scanlon was still pointing his gun at me, and I hoped I didn’t look as terrified as I felt.
“Because if you shoot me, my friend up on the hill is gonna put a couple arrows in you, and burn this