The Reckless Oath We Made

“No, she isn’t, because Molly’s dead. Somebody murdered Molly.”

“No, she stayed behind in Nebraska. Conrad’s going to go meet her.”

“Nobody’s going to meet her!” I yelled. “One of your boyfriend’s buddies murdered her. Or maybe he murdered her. Maybe you’re next. And did you think I would hand Marcus over to some stranger? Because fuck that really fucking hard.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” LaReigne whispered to Tague. Where she had her hands pressed to his side, blood was seeping out between her fingers.

“We’re leaving now. Right now.”

“No, I can’t. We’ll figure out a way. You don’t understand, Zee. Loudon is going to get paroled and as soon as he does, I’ll have to share custody with him. I can’t do that.”

“You won’t be sharing custody with anybody, if you don’t come with me right fucking now. We can still figure something out, but only if we go,” I said.

“I can’t leave him.” She was crying and looking down at Tague, so I grabbed a handful of her hair to turn her head and make her look at me.

“You’re not leaving Marcus! They took him away! The Gills took him away! So you are fucking coming home and getting him back!” That was all I could think of: if she went to prison, the Gills would get to keep Marcus. It made me feel like my heart was on fire. “You don’t just get to abandon your family.”

As soon as I let go of her hair, she went back to looking at Tague and saying, “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

I took ahold of the waist of her jeans with both hands to move her, but she fought so hard I had to squat down and dig my heels in to keep ahold of her. Gentry was pacing, waiting for us, scratching his neck and holding his sword. I really, really wished that he would finish Tague off, because I felt like maybe Tague being good and dead would clarify a few things.

“This is not Beauty and the Beast! He’s not going to magically change from a fucking Nazi into a prince, just because you love him,” I said.

“He’s not a Nazi. He’s made mistakes, but he’s a good man. I love him. He’s going to take care of me the way Loudon never—”

“Loudon? Fuck you! I took care of you. I took care of you and Marcus.”

“You smothered me. You don’t even have your own life. You were there all the time! I never got to be alone.”

“Because you needed me! Because you and Marcus are my life,” I yelled. “When did I get to be alone?”

“Well, you can be alone now!” LaReigne said.

“My lady.” Gentry raised his voice enough to cut through our shouting.

Hearing how freaked out he was killed my anger. LaReigne dug her fingers into the grass, still trying to get away from me. I let her go. Then all I had left was fear.

“Please, LaReigne. If you stay here, you’re going to prison. Even if you didn’t help them escape, it’s going to look that way. When the cops show up and you’re here crying over this piece of shit, it won’t matter whether you’re innocent. I don’t even care if you are, but you can’t stay here. Please.”

Maybe I would have gone on begging her until the cops showed up, but we heard more gunshots from the woods. They were close together, rapid-fire, and they echoed back across the valley.

“Lady Zhorzha, by the oath I made, I beg thee come with me,” Gentry said.

Thee. That meant just me. Whether he meant it that way or not, I knew he was right. If I stayed, I was going to end up in prison, too. Nobody would believe I’d come there to rescue LaReigne. They would think I was in on it. And if I went to prison, Mom would be alone in the world, Marcus would grow up in the Gills’ house, and I would never get to see him again.

Gentry gave me his hand and pulled me to my feet. We left LaReigne there with her head down next to Tague’s, crying and whispering to him.

Where we went into the woods, I could see there’d been a fight. There were broken branches, scuff marks in the pine needles, and blood. More blood. Twenty or thirty feet further, Conrad Ligett was lying facedown in a puddle of blood. It wasn’t Dirk or Edrard, so we kept going.

Even with a bullet in his leg, Gentry was faster and stronger than me. I’d wrecked my hip fighting with LaReigne, and my foot was numb, so every step of the way, Gentry was pulling me and holding me up, and all the time blood was running down his leg.

I’d told him I could walk from the truck to the cabin, but for some stupid reason I’d never thought about the fact that I would have to walk both ways. Thinking I should tell Edrard we were coming, I pulled the phone out of my pocket. Somewhere along the way it had gotten disconnected, so I redialed the other burner number. There was no voicemail, so it kept ringing as we got closer to the trucks. Finally, he picked up.

“Jesus Christ,” Dirk said. “Where are you? You gotta get up here. They shot Edrard.”

“Go. I’m coming as fast as I can.” I let go of Gentry’s hand and he ran ahead of me.

I was still dragging myself up the hill when I heard Gentry’s voice over the phone.

“Edrard, my brother,” he said. Like a coward, I hung up before I could hear anything else. A couple minutes later, I got there anyway and saw what had happened.

Edrard was lying next to the open door of his truck, with Gentry and Dirk kneeling on either side of him. Gentry had pulled his blouse off and was pressing it against Edrard’s stomach, but there was so much blood. We’d left Tague and Scanlon at the cabin, and Dirk must have killed Ligett down the hill. The fourth one—Gentry had said there were four—had followed Edrard to the trucks. Edrard had put two arrows in him, one in his leg and one in his shoulder. Not to kill. The guy had an AR-15 kind of rifle, and even with two arrows in him, he’d managed to shoot Edrard. Dirk must have finished the guy off with a bullet to the head.

Out of the cab of Edrard’s truck, I grabbed anything that looked like it could be used as a bandage—an old beach towel, a T-shirt—and tossed it out to Gentry, who was doing the only thing he could, applying pressure to the wound. I did the only thing I knew to do. I unlocked Gentry’s truck and got a tampon out of my backpack. It wouldn’t do anything for Edrard, but it would work for Gentry. I’d read it in some survivalist book that said as the tampon swelled up, it would put pressure on the bleeding arteries. I knelt down next to Gentry and ripped open the edges of the hole in his pants. I didn’t ask him. I just unwrapped the tampon and jammed it into the hole in his leg. Based on the sound he made, it hurt a lot, but he didn’t stop me, so I pushed it in until the string was hanging out.

I thought it might bother me, but I’d been practicing for that ever since I got my period for the first time. I just didn’t know it.