Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(49)

I am glad I put those “ears” and “eyes” in your cottage. I just heard every word of every threat Chiles made against you. I’ve got the recording safe.

Good God in an evil world.

The third text read,

Oh, and some risqué recordings of you and Mahalia that I will erase.

The third text said,

What do you want for dinner? Dust Bunny likes my spaghetti and meatballs.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN




MAHALIA


I didn’t need to read Gideon’s text to know what had happened to him.

Kimball, Tazmin, and a few more wives and I watched Gideon march down the pathway with his belongings on his shoulder.

“See what you’ve done,” I hissed to Tazmin.

She seemed proud, though. “Why shouldn’t I have told? You’re going against everything we stand for, Mahalia! That’s adultery!”

“What’d she do?” asked Chastidee, an older sister-wife. She was a diehard Allred fan, and at the moment I wanted to throat punch her, as the teens say.

Tazmin’s nostrils flared righteously. “Let’s just say she was in a position with that Gideon man that should never be enacted in a moral and scrupulous home.”

“Oo, do tell!” chirped Emersyn.

Kimball grabbed my arm. “She’s not telling because there’s nothing to tell, right, Mahalia?”

“Well, I—”

“Come!” Kimball jerked me even harder, and we went onto the glassed-in sun porch. I was about to admit to the truth, but Kimball shut me up. From here we could see the cottage. Parley and Allred returned to it and were turning it upside-down, from what we could tell. A chair cushion went flying out the door, tumbling into my flowerbed of daisies. “Look, Mahalia. You know I don’t agree one dot with what Tazmin and Rayd went telling Allred.”

“Rayd? What in blue blazes? I assumed Tazmin had squealed, but Rayd?” Rayd was Kimball’s twelve-year-old son, and two of his friends had just been dragged off the compound to join the legions of Lost Boys “outside.”

Kimball folded her hands and looked at the floor. “I know. I tried to make him do penance for it, but he refused. He seems to think by ‘doing the right thing’ by Allred, Allred will let him stay here instead of taking him to join his friends.”

“Well!” I was incensed. “He can jolly well do that, then! He can stay here with his beloved Allred if he thinks that man will do right by him. But I’ve had my bags packed for days, Kimball. I’m just going to wait for a sign from Gideon, then Vonda and I are joining him at his house. You and Nyler and Zaylee are welcome to follow any time after. But Rayd can jolly well stay here. He’s getting old enough, anyway.”

“I know. I’m so, so sorry, Mahalia. I mean, Tazmin would’ve squealed like a pig anyway just to earn brownie points with Allred. But I’m surprised at Rayd.”

The two men stormed from the cottage now empty-handed. Allred was railing at Parley, and Parley was carrying that big-ass pistol he’d had pointed at Gideon’s head. Kimball and I cringed back against a potted plant.

“Do you think he’s coming in here?” whispered Kimball.

“I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts,” I whispered back. I looked down at my favorite sister-wife and saw that her very hair was trembling. Then I realized it was I who was shaking like a cat shitting a peach seed. I usually prided myself on my cool, but I was on the verge of seriously losing it.

My phone buzzed in my dress pocket. I thumbed the screen to life just as I heard the men barge into my kitchen. Women cried out, pots were tossed about, something glass crashed to the floor.

Hide this phone carefully so we can still communicate. Get out if you still can and come to me.

I didn’t have time to text back—in fact, Tazmin must’ve generously pointed the way for them—because the men came barreling into the sun room like they owned it. Which, in fact, Allred did. He technically owned everything in Cornucopia. It was a sham to make women believe they owned the homes they lived in. Gave them a sense of ownership when Allred acted like he’d given them something. I owned nothing but the items upstairs packed in suitcases. My vibrator, my bikini panties, my eyebrow powder, all these were symbols of the new life I hoped to have with Gideon.

In every decisive moment that defines one’s future, we have to leap into the dark, to act upon sketchy data. I had no way of knowing for a certain fact that Gideon would be there for me, that he’d follow through with such a monumental task as taking in me, my daughter, my friends, and yet more kids. An almighty Creator wouldn’t make us smart just to strike us idiotic in moments of sudden action. He wouldn’t give us eyes to see and ask us not to gaze at the mesas. But I had no time to sit around weighing evidence. I had made my decision awhile back.

And this was one such decisive moment.

What we decide to have faith in is the utmost mirror of who we are. I’d been looking into the glass darkly. And now I was seeing it face to face.

Allred pointed at me. “You’re coming with us. You too, Kimball. I don’t trust either one of you running around loose at the moment.”

I stood my ground, shielding Kimball with my—admittedly much larger—body. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Allred. I’ve had it with your abuse, your beatings, your sealing my daughter to a gross old man she doesn’t know.”