The Innocents Read Online Free

shoot.”
    “Y’all have that kind of trust?”
    Lillie didn’t answer as she walked. The woods filled with the high whine of a four-wheeler motor, growing closer as Lillie and Reggie followed the narrow path downhill. Lillie knew the trail, linking up to the dirt road to the south and Quinn’s pond farther up to the west. The path had been smooth and well worn from Hondo, but now also from Jason Colson’s three horses.
    “Norwood’s coming.”
    “How do you know?” Reggie said.
    “’Cause this is the only way out of the woods,” she said. “Quinn must’ve shaken him loose.”
    “Can we shoot him?”
    “I’d rather not,” Lillie said. Walking and searching, trying to find a little cover in the woods, seeing a tangle of wild privet and thinking it was a fine spot. “Too much paperwork. Unless the bastard asks for it.”
    “If it wasn’t Quinn shooting,” Reggie said.
    “You stand by that fallen tree,” Lillie said. “He comes up this path with that shotgun and you do what needs to be done.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Advanced police tactic,” she said, reaching down and finding a fallen oak limb. She lifted it up, not rotten, with plenty of heft. She knocked the bark off the limb and found a narrow spot to grip.
    “You’re going to knock his ass off that four-wheeler,” Reggie said, “aren’t you?”
    “He’ll cut up this hill and be looking straight at you.”
    Reggie nodded, unlatching his Glock and aiming it toward the buzzing sound. Lillie moved behind the privet with the heavy limb in both hands, chocked up high for good measure. As he hit the tree line from the open pasture, zipping up the hill, Lillie noticed D. J. Norwood was grinning and yelling, the twelve-gauge laying prone across the handlebars.
    “Here we go,” Lillie said.
    Reggie stepped out onto the path and yelled for him to stop. Norwood gave another rebel yell and gunned it as Lillie stepped free and swunghard.

3
    Y ou think he’s come to yet?” Anna Lee asked Quinn. Both of them in his farmhouse kitchen, grilling two venison steaks in peppers and onions in a black skillet. He added a little more salt and pepper, charring them in a stick of fresh butter.
    “He was awake when Reggie Caruthers hauled him off,” Quinn said. “He was making all kinds of threats to Lillie, saying that she’d broken his jaw. Calling her a crazy-ass dyke bitch.”
    “Did she break it?”
    “I sure hope so,” Quinn said.
    “You don’t mean that.”
    Quinn didn’t answer, turning the steak, checking it with a fork. Still a little too bloody for his taste.
    “Something a-matter?”
    “Thought you were going to bring Shelby with you?”
    “Shelby’s five and easily confused,” she said. “Besides, she’s with Luke this weekend.”
    “Does Luke know where you are?”
    “We’re separated,” Anna Lee said. “I don’t need to check in with him. We’ve been through all this crap before. Until things are done, I don’t want her thinking that she’s got two daddies.”
    “I’m not backing up,” Quinn said. He turned the steaks, getting a nice sear on both, the smell of burning meat, onions, and butter filling his kitchen. He reached for a cold Budweiser and took a sip.
    Anna Lee, in cutoff jeans and an OLE MISS BASEBALL T-shirt, leaned against the kitchen counter. She’d grown her strawberry blonde hair out long that summer and her skin had a burnished red-brown glow, making the freckles even more pronounced. As she moved and stretched, the gray T-shirt rode up a bit on her flat stomach.
    “I know,” she said.
    “I know what I want.”
    “So do I.”
    “But what?”
    “Luke knew you were coming back home,” she said. “He was worried you’d want me and Shelby to leave with you.”
    “That’s crazy,” Quinn said. “Luke might realize I have two aging parents and a crazy sister to look after. Not to mention a wandering cattle dog.”
    “He believes the only reason you came back to Jericho was for me. And,