Run Rose Run(32)

She did indeed know, and she went limp. There was nothing more she could do. Realizing he’d broken her, the man let her go, and she fell to the floor, her cheek pressed against the carpet. The other man walked over so his boots were an inch from her face.

“Please don’t hurt me anymore,” she whispered.

“Hurt you?” The first man laughed. “This is just a friendly how-do-you-do,” he said. “If we really wanted to hurt you, you wouldn’t still be talking.”

“There’s a price for breaking the rules,” the other man said.

“No.” AnnieLee raised her head, and he cuffed it back down. She could taste blood in her mouth. “I’ll get you,” she said through clenched teeth. “Someday I will, so help me God.”

The boot pulled back, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Pain, excruciating pain, flashed on the side of her head as his foot made contact. Then—blackness.





Chapter

30



AnnieLee knocked on Ruthanna’s side door and then leaned against the railing in exhaustion. Every inch of her body ached, and the bruises she couldn’t see hurt worse than the bruises she could. Sometimes the deep ones took days to come to the surface.

The door opened. “Dear God,” Ruthanna gasped when she saw her. “What happened?”

AnnieLee quickly ducked past her into the kitchen, and then limped through the hall and into the closest of Ruthanna’s sitting rooms. She sank onto the velvet couch without being invited, arranging her limbs carefully to keep pressure off the sorest spots. Her head hurt, and sounds seemed muffled, as if she’d wrapped towels around her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Ruthanna, who’d followed her in, looking aghast. “I just really had to sit down.”

“Maya,” Ruthanna called without taking her eyes from AnnieLee’s face. “Can you get ice packs and Advil? And bring some water?”

AnnieLee heard a sound of assent from somewhere deep inside the huge house.

“What happened?” Ruthanna asked again.

AnnieLee looked down at her lap. “Strangers,” she said. That much was true, at least—she hadn’t known their names.

Ruthanna sank down on the cushion beside her. “What do you mean?”

AnnieLee shivered, and Ruthanna pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and gently draped it over her shoulders. “Maybe we should go to the hospital.”

“No, I’ll be okay.” AnnieLee tugged the blanket tighter around her neck. “I’ve had worse.” She took a deep breath, which made her ribs ache. “I got mugged,” she said. “Jumped by a bunch of kids.”

“Kids?” Ruthanna said, frowning.

“Yeah, big ones. Three of them.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No, they ran,” AnnieLee said, “and I couldn’t have said who they were or what they looked like. It was my own fault. I should’ve just given them my money instead of mouthing off the way I did.”

Now that the story had come to her, she could see the scene playing out just as she described it. How she’d walked down an empty street with her pockets bulging with tips, whistling as if she didn’t have a care in the world. How in the darkest stretch of the sidewalk, the first kid had jumped out in front of her and said in a low, cruel voice, Gimme all your money. How she’d gone to turn around and run, but suddenly there were two other kids behind her, and they’d caught her by the arms and held her. Gimme all your money.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Ruthanna said.

AnnieLee said, “I was dumb and stubborn. I didn’t think they’d jump me.” She squeezed her eyes shut and quickly apologized—to God, to Ruthanna, to the universe—for lying again.

Ruthanna got up and began pacing in circles around the couch. “This has something to do with Mikey Shumer. I know it.”

AnnieLee watched her go, marveling at how quickly she could walk in high heels, and who wore high heels at 9 a.m. anyway? Ruthanna’s toes were probably as black-and-blue as AnnieLee’s arms.

“No offense, Ms. Ryder,” AnnieLee said, “but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why would he want to beat me up if he says he wants to help me build my career?”

“I don’t claim to know how criminals think,” Ruthanna snapped. Stopping by the fireplace, she wrapped her fingers around the end of a poker as if she might use it to strike against the very idea of Mikey Shumer. Then she turned and stared at AnnieLee. “Have you heard from him lately?”

AnnieLee thought a moment before answering. “He left a message this morning.” She hadn’t returned any of his calls, but that hadn’t stopped him from making them, sometimes multiple times a day.

Ruthanna started pacing again, this time with the poker in her hand. “Maybe he thought he could scare you. Show you what could happen to girls who try to go it alone,” she said.

As ridiculous as it was, AnnieLee wished she could believe Ruthanna’s theory. It would be better to have a new enemy, wouldn’t it, instead of an old one? The demons of the past were the hardest to slay.

Maybe that could be a line for a song, she thought, and then pressed her thumbs into her aching temples.

Maya came into the room with water, Advil, Tylenol, aspirin, and an armful of hot and cold packs. “I didn’t know what you wanted, so I brought everything I could carry,” she said. “I’m so sorry you got hurt.” She turned to Ruthanna. “And hon, you better put that thing down before someone else gets hurt. Like you, when you trip in your heels and impale yourself.”