Ruthless Read Free Page A

that I can use it. With all ten fingers at my disposal, I examine my face and almost weep with relief. It’s a vet-wrap blindfold. The clingy, neon pink bandage I’ve been using on Tucker’s injured hoof. I’m not blind. I’m just bound.
    It’s never easy to find the end of vet wrap, and right now it’s almost impossible. In the past I’ve had nothing but appreciation for how it molds onto the body like a second skin. I claw at it, desperate. Find the source of my concussion, a deep gash across the top of my scalp. A tear forms in the bandage, giving me leverage. Wolfman must have used an entire roll on my head.
    There, it’s off. I can open my eyes.
    I’m in a small cabin.
    Garbage covers everything. Moldering pizza boxes, cans of beer so old the sun has bleached the labels, rags soaked in gun oil.
    I work on freeing my feet while glancing up every couple of seconds. I don’t see him anywhere. Thick, ugly curtains obscure most of the view, but I can catch glimpses of a forest thick with pine and mountain laurel, rhododendron and muscadine vines. I’m inthe Blue Ridge, maybe even the Great Smoky Mountains. I am far, far from home.
    On my feet now, my body running on panic like it’s rocket fuel, I check the front door. It’s barred shut from the outside.
    I check the back pocket of my jeans. My phone is gone. As I search for a side door, I remember where I’m supposed to be. It’s fall break, and I should be at the beach with Courtney and Becca.
    I find a side door. It’s solid and barricaded, like the front.
    We were going to meet up at Becca’s house, then road-trip over to her dad’s place on the coast. They have to have missed me by now, called my parents. Called Caleb. Oh, my redneck best friend Caleb, God bless you and your obscene collection of hunting rifles.
    Yes, people will be out searching for me.
    Not here, though. No one will think to look for me here.
    It doesn’t matter. I’ll live in the woods if I have to. Find my way to a highway. Find my way to the people looking for me.
    There are no other doors. Time to break something. I choose the back wall’s lowest window, use my good arm to grab my wooden chair, and heave it through the glass. The amount of noise it makes shocks me. I kick out the remaining shards, then scramble through. It’s a bigger drop than I anticipated, but I don’t pause, launching myself out of the godforsaken cabin. After a bad stumble, I pop up to my feet and I’m ready to run.
    The smoky smell hits me first.
    A campfire.
    I look up.
    The Wolfman is right there, cooking meat over an open fire.

Five Years Ago
    HER PARENTS ARE FIGHTING ABOUT money again.
    The girl is in a stall, standing ankle deep in clean shavings, pretending to brush her immaculate horse. She stands behind him, using him as a blind. She can’t see her parents, and they can’t see her. But she can’t shut out sound.
    The conflict is in perpetual motion, never ceasing. She’s used to the fighting, desensitized, like a horse that’s been made to walk over a tarp over and over again until it’s no longer scared. But somehow, when she wasn’t looking, hope for peace made its way through the cracks again, looking for the sun and a place to bloom. The hope came back because the girl had qualified for Worlds. All that money spent on horse shows had paid off, and they were here now, in Oklahoma City.
    The fight began upon arrival. They learned they’d been assigned a stall in Barn 5A, far from everything. It didn’t bother the girl. What did a few hundred feet matter when you were at Worlds? The best barns were dominated by the famous pro trainers with their curtains and potted plants and fountains and golf carts. The girl had one horse, one class to compete in, and her mother was her trainer. Of course they were stuck in no-man’s-land.
    But she knows their agitation over Barn 5A has nothing