Free Falling Hard and Fast by Kylie Brant Page B

right now, all but the one that most needs to be there. Donny Ray’s the meanest of the lot, and that’s not the only way he takes after his Great-uncle Carl. He has a habit of using his fists on Stacy, that wife of his. Everyone in town knows it.”
    Zoey rubbed at a point in the center of her forehead, where a headache was blooming. “Have you taken your concerns to the sheriff?”
    Snorting, Fern reached for her mug. “Shoot, folks don’t listen to an old woman’s ramblings. Didn’t do me no good when I told the law what happened to cause my husband’s death.”
    Because it gave her a reason not to respond, Zoey grasped her mug tightly in both hands and drank. She knew, somewhere in the distant corners of her mind, that the connection the older woman was trying to make lacked reason. But somehow, right now it was difficult to summon logic. Her thought processes seemed off-kilter—pleasantly so.
    Fern began to speak again, and Zoey focused on her mouth as it formed each word. Her voice seemed farther away, although the woman hadn’t moved. She frowned. How curious. Perhaps it was this slight buzzing in her head that made it harder to hear Fern. She propped both elbows on the table and rested her chin on her entwined fingers. The woman’s face drifted in and out of focus like a computer-generated three-dimensional image.
    â€œâ€™Course, folks said my Louis had some sickness. But I know what I know. Wasn’t nothing wrong with the man before Cain Rutherford fixed him with the evil eye over atthe tavern. He started feeling poorly that week, and never was the same after that. Less than a year later, he was dead.”
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    A vicious blade of sunlight probed beneath Zoey’s eyelids and seared her eyes. She groaned, awakening by slow, torturous increments. With each level of awareness came a gradual increase of nauseating sickness, until she lay there, fully awake and praying for a return to unconsciousness—preferably a permanent one.
    A raucous chorus of Black & Decker power tools was racketing in her head; her temples thudded painfully in rhythm with the cacophony. Her body felt leaden, immobile. Her first attempt to lift her head an inch from the pillow raised the decibel of pounding to such an excruciating crescendo, she quickly lay still again.
    She knew in that moment what it was to pray for death. For several minutes she lay motionless, trying to determine whether the massive headache or her heaving stomach was more likely to result in her immediate demise.
    Slowly, carefully, she turned her head, trying and failing to avoid provoking the rising tide of nausea. Upon completion of the single act, she rested against the pillow again. Because it seemed to be a relatively pain-free action, she opened her gritty eyes.
    From this position she could observe the reason she was unable to move. A heavy arm slung across her waist held her fixed in place. She slid her eyelids shut, relieved that some weird temporary paralysis wasn’t to blame. It was only a man’s arm.
    Her eyes flew open again.
    A man.
    With a loud shriek, she sat upright in bed and kicked with all her might at the immobile figure next to her, sending him into an ignominious heap on the floor. For the next few seconds the hammering in her temples and churning sickness in her stomach were secondary. She crouched on the bed, scrabbling to reach the lamp on the nearby table. Yanking its cord free, she held the lamp over her head threateningly.
    Cage looked up from his position on the floor, and his eyes widened. As he raised a hand to ward off her action, his voice was low and soothing: “Now, honey, if you throw that, someone’s gonna get hurt.”
    â€œYou’re damn right.” Her tone was grim as she hefted the lamp for better aim. “And I know who.”
    If he hadn’t been watching so closely, he might not have ducked in time. As it was, the lamp missed his head