“Okay, thank you.” I knew I wasn’t going to hear from Carlees again, and I didn’t think I could stand to. He wouldn’t be so nice once he knew what had happened.
I was sitting there, looking at Edrard’s phone, when the bathroom door opened and a woman said, “What the—who—uh, Rick?”
I stood up and turned around, just as Rhys came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. The woman was in a towel, too, with another wrapped around her hair.
“Jesus Christ, Zee. I was seriously getting worried,” he said. Then he looked at the stuff I’d gathered up to pack. “Where are Gentry and Edrard?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t—” I had to take a deep breath, because I wasn’t ready for how big the lie needed to be. “They wouldn’t let me go. They left me in Murfreesboro. They left me there and they never came back.”
“What are you talking about? They left you?”
“They decided it was too dangerous. They didn’t want me to go. I was supposed to wait for them, but they didn’t come back.”
“God, if they were smart, they ditched you there and drove back to Wichita,” Rhys said. As shitty as that was, it was true. They should’ve done that. “How did you get back?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. They left me with Gentry’s truck, and the two of them went in Edrard’s truck, and they didn’t come back. I just called Gentry’s brother. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Wait, what about your cousin?”
“He stayed in Murfreesboro with me,” I said.
Rhys started pacing up and down, still in his towel, while the woman stared at him, then me, then him. I went back to packing.
“This is your fault,” he said. “This is all your fault.”
“I know. Of course, it’s my fault.”
“We need to call the police and tell them what kind of crazy-ass thing you talked Gentry and Edrard into.”
“Rick, do you think we should—”
“Will you shut up, Tiffany? I need to think.”
Tiffany winced, but instead of getting mad, she shuffled back to the bathroom and, after a minute, turned on the blow-dryer. I stuffed a few more things in Gentry’s bag and zipped it up.
“I’m calling the police.” Rhys picked up his phone off the dresser. “You can explain it to them.”
“Yeah, well, I hope you don’t mind getting arrested, because they’ll arrest you, too.”
“Why would they arrest me?”
“You were here when we planned it,” I said.
“I fucking was not!”
The hair dryer cut off and Tiffany said, “Rick, is everything okay?”
“Dry your goddamn hair, Tiff,” he said.
She turned the dryer back on, maybe just as white noise to drown us out.
“You planned it,” Rhys said. “And you and Gentry both told me not to call the police.”
“For the same reason I’m telling you not to call the police now,” I said. “I’m going to have a lot of questions to answer anyway and, unless you want to answer a lot of questions, you should stay out of it.”
“You deserve to go to jail.”
I couldn’t argue with him, so I did something I hated myself for. There was going to be a lot more of that in my future.
“Please, I am begging you not to call the police. If I go to jail, there’s going to be nobody to take care of my mother, who is disabled, and nobody to take care of my nephew, who is only five. Because if Gentry and Edrard didn’t come back, I don’t think my sister is coming back. For all I know she’s dead. And I can’t—” I couldn’t cry on command and I was too scared to cry for real, because I wasn’t sure I could stop if I got started. I took a step closer to Rhys, who backed up against the dresser like I’d threatened him. I took another couple steps until we were face-to-face.
“I can’t abandon them. Please. What do you want? Money? I can get you some money. Do you want me to beg you?” I got down on my knees, even though I wasn’t sure how I would get back up. A bolt of pain ran up my leg, and a muscle spasm followed it, so that it felt like my phoenix was coming to life. “Okay, I’m begging you. Whatever you want. Just please don’t call the cops.”
Rhys looked down at me the way men like him always looked down at me. Somewhere between contempt and curiosity with a side of maybe. Honestly, I think if Tiffany hadn’t been there, he would have made me suck him off.
“Jesus Christ. We have to call somebody,” he said, but he put his phone back on the dresser. We meant me.
“I already called Gentry’s brother. Should I call Rosalinda?”
“God. I guess so. I need to get out of here. If we’re not telling the police, I’m going home. I can’t have anything to do with this. Whatever happens with Gentry and Edrard, this is your fuckup. This is on you.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Tiff, are you ready to go?” he yelled.
The hair dryer turned off and she said, “Sure. I can be ready in a couple minutes.”
Apparently Tiff was the same kind of sucker as LaReigne. She’d driven all that way to let Rhys talk like shit to her.
To give them a chance to get dressed, I went out and got in the truck. I’d brought Gentry and Edrard’s phones with me, but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to turn Edrard’s phone on. I imagined the kind of text messages his wife had been sending him for the last twelve hours. Surely she’d been expecting to hear from him. In Gentry’s contacts she was under D for Dame Rosalinda.
I was prepared for her to think I was Gentry, like Carlees had, and when she answered, she said, “What have you done with my husband?”
I told her exactly what I’d told Carlees, but it was harder, knowing how badly Edrard had been hurt. She yelled at me, but after I told her I didn’t know what happened, she got so quiet.
“If they got arrested will he get to call me? He probably doesn’t even know my number if he doesn’t have his phone. Who should I call?”
“Hang on,” I said. “Let me see if I can find a number.”
I left her on the line and pulled up the Internet, to look up the number for the Little River County sheriff. I gave her the number four or five times, because she kept jumbling them up when she repeated them back. It made me feel like a monster. An odious serpent. I had come to her house and stolen her husband, and now I was toying with her.