“Chump change,” he told Angelica. “This ain’t money.”

“We don’t need much money, ”Angelica told him. “The house and land are paid off, and I can grow and preserve most of the food we need. ”

“What about money for vacations?” Blake responded. “Health care? Savings? Did you think of that?”

“We’ll be saving money, sweetie,” Angelica replied softly. “I can make a lot of the other household items we need. Soaps, shampoos, lard, medicines. My grandmother taught me how to do all of that. We can live a simple life and raise a family, the way our Cherokee ancestors did for generations.”

“Hmm,” Blake snorted. “Yeah, well, look where that got them.”

Angelica longed for nothing more than her husband and a child to hold and care for, to share her life with. She had dreamed that now she would finally be blessed with the child and that it would bring Blake back to her, but he seemed to want more.

“We need some real money, Angelica. I ain’t gonna be running through the woods with a spear chasing deer! Maybe we won’t be rich, but we can’t live on nothing neither. And so far that’s what I’m making on these deliveries. Nothing.”

Blake thought the deliveries were beneath him at first, Angelica recalled, but after the first month that changed. Something inspired him. He became so enthused, even ecstatic. It was right after he began selling to Nick Vegas at The Federal. Angelica thought it must have made Blake feel important selling to such a celebrity. She liked that; she wanted her man to feel important. But lately his enthusiasm had turned into stress. As Angelica watched Blake struggle with his identity, she felt that she had to give him some space. Her father had been a devout Baptist, and Angelica remembered the lessons from the book of Timothy concerning the role of man and woman in the household. Timothy 2:12 said, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

Angelica knew how to be patient. She could be quiet. She knew that when the baby came, Blake would come back and be the husband she needed. The father that her baby needed. As Angelica stepped away from the raised bed, she felt a tiny kick in her left side, burst a huge smile, and began back down to the trail to the house.

Chapter 4

As the shot that killed his father rang through the forest, Ozzie’s first thought was that the truck had backfired. But the truck wasn’t moving or even running, and the men stood over his father who lay motionless on the ground. Paralyzed by fear, his entire body trembled as even his eyes were too afraid to blink. He stared through the dense brush at his father, saying to himself, Get up dad. Get up!

Ozzie flicked his eyes to Isabella, held captive in a caged area where she was forced to look at Eduardo and watch the men. Being careful not to look in Ozzie’s direction, she fixed her eyes on Felipe, who had been startled awake by the ruckus and stood in his shack. Eduardo’s bloody body lay in the mud between him and Isabella. With Isabella restrained, the men walked cautiously over to Eduardo.

“Make sure he’s good and dead,” the tallest one, Jesse, said to another young man wearing a Bass Pro Shop camo cap. “You know how them troublemakers in those horror movies always look like they’re dead but they ain’t. So go on now, and make sure!”

Shane removed his Bass Pro Shop cap and wiped his brow. He returned the cap to his head and walked to Eduardo, leaned in close, and placed the end of the rifle barrel to his back. He shoved the tip into him, poking him in several spots and stopped when he was satisfied that Eduardo wasn’t a horror flick Houdini. Shane tried to hide his sigh of relief as he stepped back.

“This un’s deader than a deep fried turkey,” Shane pronounced. “Now what?”

Jesse looked at Isabella, seeing the fear in her eyes, but she was of no concern at the moment. She waited helplessly to see what would happen next, praying that the worst was over. What could be worse than what happened to Eduardo? She wondered.

“Well,” Jesse said in a language that neither Isabella, Felipe, nor Ozzie could understand, “Let’s just haul his ass out of here.” Shane and the other fellow, Terry, each grabbed two of Eduardo’s limbs and strained to lift him, while Jesse returned Isabella to her quarters at gunpoint before tossing his phone in the truck.

“Good God, he’s heavy!” Terry said.

A tumultuous crash from behind startled them. Shane dropped Eduardo’s deadweight against Isabella’s cage, causing Terry to lose his grip. Eduardo’s eyes were still open, his face pressed against the cage inches from Isabella as his body splayed prone in the mud.

“Shit!” Jesse exclaimed as he turned and saw Felipe barreling at the three of them, his eyes deranged and his intentions clear. Felipe’s momentum slammed his body into Terry and pummeled him into the ground. Wild with uncontrollable rage, Felipe tore into Terry with all he had, looking to inflict pain on his taller adversary. Jesse and Shane, momentarily shell-shocked, stood by dumbfounded. Jesse came to his senses, ran and grabbed a 2x4 leaning against the shack, and slammed Felipe in the head, but not before he had bitten half of Terry’s ear off.

“OH GOD!” Terry exclaimed, realizing at once that he could only fully hear his scream from one ear. “Jesus Fucking Christ, what happened? What the fuck happened to my ear?”

Jesse leaned down to look at Terry’s ear. “Holy crap,” he said, as he wiped the blood from Terry’s ear on his jacket sleeve. “Looks like Mike Tyson done got a hold of you!”

Felipe rolled on the ground, dazed and moaning. Terry moved his bloody hand around the right side of his head and felt his ear in disbelief. “He bit my right ear off. Damn it, kill that sumbitch too!”

“NO!” Jesse barked. “Blake said what we’re here to do. He wants that big un killed and that’s it. For now.”

“But he bit my ear off!”

Jesse thought for a moment. “Well...I s’pose we ought to learn him some manners then.”

Felipe was helpless and barely on the verge of consciousness as Shane and Jesse rolled him face up. Jesse straddled him and looked at Terry while Shane helped hold Felipe in check. “Hand me your Bowie knife,” Jesse said to Terry.

Terry had one hand to his ear, covered in blood. Ashamed of how much squealing he had done, he calmed himself enough to hand his knife to Jesse, who took the knife, flipped it upside down and held it in a hammer grip with the steely tip facing down. Without hesitation, Jesse put the tip of the knife on Felipe’s forehead immediately over his left eye and drew a diagonal slit to the underside of his right eye. Felipe screamed in agony and tried to bolt upright.

“Hold him,” Jesse commanded to Shane before returning his attention to Felipe. “I ain’t done with you yet, boy.” He then put the knife above the right eye and drew a diagonal slit to the underside of the left eye, forming a gruesome, bloody X right between Felipe’s eyes. Blood spurted out onto Jesse’s hands and blue jacket.

“Let that be a reminder to you, you black sumbitch. You tussle with any of us again I’ll put a bullet right there,” Jesse said as he touched the tip of the knife to the wound’s intersection between Felipe’s eyes. Felipe panted, his eyes were wide with fear. He was terrified to keep them open but even more afraid to close them. Isabella paced with disbelief inside the cage, not knowing what to do. Eduardo’s dead eyes staring at her from her feet, Felipe beaten, screaming and tortured and poor Oz...

No! Isabella thought to herself as she saw Ozzie move. Panic had spurred him out of hiding, now standing out in the open fifty yards away, looking straight at the captors. Please Ozzie, PLEASE, don’t move!