Free Hot Enough to Kill by Paula Boyd Page A

breaths but said nothing. She did, however, let me scoot her toward the end of the table. I brushed aside more glass and situated Lucille beside Jerry. I knew to elevate the injured area above the heart, but in this case the injured area was the heart. A cold shiver went through me but I refused to even think of how bad it could be. I pressed a stack of towels to his chest and placed Lucille's hand on it. "You've got to keep pressure here, Mother," I said, looking directly into her eyes. "Do you understand?"
She blinked and swallowed, then took a couple quick short breaths and nodded.
"Pressure, Mother. Push down hard on the towels. I'm going to call for an ambulance. I'll be right back."
I jumped up, ran across the room, grabbed the phone off the wall and punched in 9-1-1.
Even before the recorded voice came on, I remembered: 911 doesn't mean a damn thing in Kickapoo, Texas.
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
    Deputy Leroy Harper finally caught up with me about six hours later outside the intensive care ward at the Redwater Falls General Hospital. He'd been picking at me like a determined magpie, and after a half-hour, his charm was wearing mighty thin. Thin enough that I had gone from really annoyed to seriously pissed.
    "Dammit, Leroy, I've told you at least eight times what happened. Unless you were playing with yourself instead of writing down what I said, you can read your notes--again and again if it turns you on. Now, go away."
    He closed his little spiral notebook and stuffed it into the back pocket of his brown uniform pants. "You've sure gotten yourself a filthy mouth since you left here, Jolene."
    "Maybe I've just been hanging out with the wrong crowd for about the last thirty minutes."
    He snorted as if he recognized he was being insulted, but not confidently enough that he knew the specifics. "You always did think you were so uppity. You and that Kathleen Jessup did nothing but make fun of me all through school. But she ain't here to pal up with you against me. No, ma'am, you ain't so uppity now. You have to answer to me, Jolene Jackson. It's the law."
    I hadn't thought about Kat in ages, although I knew she was one of the few others who had escaped Kickapoo. Last I'd heard she was an attorney in Dallas. A big move on all levels, and a connection I was going to need if I became compelled to shut Leroy Harper's mouth for him.
    At about six-two and two-hundred-fifty pounds, Leroy had made a fine linebacker for the Kickapoo Coyotes, but somebody needed to tell him that the game ended twenty-five years ago and he could quit mauling everybody in his path. He hadn't exactly been ugly back then, but not cute either. A big old, pale blond-headed kid with way more brawn than brains would be a kind description. If you put it that way, he really hadn't changed much, except that now he was an adult redneck on a power trip. He also carried a gun. And even after all these years, he still had me lined up in his cross hairs.
    "Don't you have something better to do than stand around here and annoy me?" I said for at least the fifteenth time.
    Leroy crossed his big fat arms and stepped his ham hock thighs apart. "Funny, ain't it? You thought you were such hot shit back then and now you'll be jumping whenever I say so." He grinned, exposing an amazingly intact set of tobacco-stained teeth.
    A year ahead of me in school, Leroy always thought rather highly of himself. I, however, thought he was an idiot, and would have rather dated the Pillsbury Dough Boy. My mistake was in telling him so. And Leroy had not forgotten. "Tell you what, Leroy," I'm going to try this one more time, so listen real careful-like, 'kay?" I ignored his glare. "Turn around, walk out the door, get on the elevator--"
    "I'm acting sheriff, Jolene. I can stay here all day if I want, and I might just do that because I think you're holding out on me."
    "What exactly could I be holding out, Leroy? That I saw a man in the bushes wearing a ski mask, but he took