Page 138 of Wild Sanctuary

And although I’ve not prayed in thirty goddamn years, I find myself praying now.

Please, Daisy. Please, hold on.

I’m coming, baby.

32

DAISY

Bare feet on sunbaked dirt, a paring knife in my back pocket, and in the equipment barn ahead of me is a half-deaf man with a radio and the only chance I have left.

My soles slap the ground and pain shoots straight up my shins, but slow is dead, so I don’t slow.

It’s two hundred yards to the equipment barn. In the midday sun, barefoot, it might as well be two miles.

I throw one look over my shoulder, around fifty yards out from the house. The back door is still banging on its spring, and no one’s on the porch.

Yet.

My heart lodges in my throat as I turn forward and push harder, because if I can see the porch, then they can see me.

I hear the music before he comes into view. It’s Johnny Cash, ‘The Man Comes Around,’ threading out of the open barn doors. That radio has lived on a nail by the barn wall since I was small enough to sit on the bench beside it, and I have never in my entire life been so grateful to hear Johnny Cash sing about the end of the world.

Halfway across the yard, I can see him through the barn doors, hunched under the hood of the F-250, cap pushed back on his head the way he wears it when he’s listening for something. His good ear is dropped toward the engine block, every ounce of his attention inside that motor.

I scream his name.

Nothing.

With seventy yards to close, I try again.

“Dave.”

Fifty.

I holler at the top of my lungs.

“DAVE—”

His head comes up out of the engine bay like a man surfacing from deep water. For one breath, he stares at me like he can’t make sense of what he’s seeing, but that changes when his eyes meet mine.

He drops the rag he’s holding into the engine bay and comes around the front of the truck at a speed a man his age should not be able to manage.

When I clear the barn doors, my feet hit the concrete pad, and the cooling relief nearly brings me to my knees. He’s there before I can fall.

“Daisy.” His hands come up to my shoulders, steadying me. “Breathe, girl.”

I can’t.

“Marcus.” It comes out broken, between rasping breaths that burn my chest. “Marcus is in the house. He killed my dad, Dave. He killed Bill.”

His fingers tighten on my shoulders as he blinks in disbelief before his jaw clenches, decision made.

“He alone?” he questions through gritted teeth.

I shake my head. “Stan Cutter’s with him. He’s got a gun.”

“Stanley.” There’s a flash of recognition across his face. “Goddammit, Stanley.”