Mom Abandoned Me to Save Herself novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Same Road

"Rowena," he said. "Get in the car."

His voice was the same one he used on TV. Patient. Kind.

My mother didn't move.

"Sweetheart. You're confused. These people have filled your head with filth. Come home and we'll talk about it."

Behind him, his men were out of the SUVs. Eight of them, maybe ten, with their guns up.

The man with the shaved head stood at his shoulder.

Alastair's men stood in a line in front of the shed. Nobody's finger was off a trigger.

The nine women were behind them, on the bench, holding each other.

Eighteen years ago, a wire crate sat on this road thirty feet from here.

"No," my mother said.

Lucius tilted his head, exactly the way he'd tilted it at me through the bars.

"No?"

"You sold me."

"I saved you."

"You sold me for nine thousand dollars, and then you came up here with cameras and saved me."

His face didn't change at all. That was the worst part, the same as always.

"Get in the car, Rowena, or I will put you in it."

The pistol came up another inch.

Augustus stepped in front of her.

He didn't hurry. He just walked over and stood there in his borrowed jacket, with his arms at his sides and his mother behind him.

"Move, son."

"I called your phone," Augustus said. "The one in your desk. Wednesday before last. You picked up."

For the first time, something moved in Lucius's face.

"You said, 'Who gave you this number?'"

"Move."

"No."

I walked out from behind the line.

Alastair said my name. I kept walking.

I stopped halfway between the shed and the SUVs, where every one of his men could see me.

I held up the paper in its square of plastic.

"This came out of a tobacco tin in that last cabin," I said, loud enough to carry. "It's a bill of sale for his wife. Nine thousand dollars."

I turned so the men on the left could see it, then the right.

"Every one of you has wondered what happened to the last driver who asked a question."

The man with the shaved head looked at the paper.

Then he looked at Lucius.

"She found his manifests," I said. "So he sold her. That's what he does to people who know too much. You all know too much."

Nobody said anything.

Down the hollow, a siren started.

Then another one. Then too many to count.

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