“I’m doing nothing until you level with me and tell me what happened. Did you force that girl?”

Neal’s shoulders rose in a tense shrug. “Things got a little rough.” Quickly he added, “But I know she wanted it.”

“What about Hutch and Lamar?”

“They wanted a piece, too.” He grinned. “I’m not selfish.”

Ivan almost backhanded him for his insolence, then decided not to expend the energy and lowered his raised hand. “Hutch, I can see. But I can’t imagine that titmouse of Myrajane’s forcing himself between a girl’s legs.”

“Lamar needed some egging on, but he did all right.”

There was a knock at the door. They turned to see their housekeeper, Eula, standing on the threshold. “Will y’all be wanting your mornin’ coffee now, Mr. Patchett?”

“No!” Ivan barked. “I’ll tell you when I want my coffee.”

“Yessir. Just askin’.”

She withdrew. Ivan stared at the empty doorway for a moment, then said to Neal, “Why didn’t y’all go to nigger town and pick a gal who would keep her trap shut? Why’d you have to poke that Sperry girl?”

“She had it coming, that’s why.”

“Christ, what a mess.”

Neal, seeming unconcerned, moved to the bed and stepped into the jeans he’d slung over the footboard the night before. “What’re you going to do, Daddy?”

“I don’t know yet. Let me think.” Ivan paced the length of the bed. “They could lock you away for quite a spell on a rape conviction, you know.”

“Why, that’s crap,” Neal stammered. “That’s bullshit. They can’t send a guy to prison for screwing a girl who damn well needed to be screwed.”

Ivan said, “I know that and you know that. We just gotta make certain everybody else feels the way we do.”

“Well, I’m not going to jail, that’s for damn sure. In jail the niggers fuck white boys in the ass. You’ve got to do something, Daddy.”

“Shut up and let me think!” Ivan shouted. Then suddenly he slapped Neal hard across the face. “You little bastard. You perfectly ruined my day.”

* * *

Jade rested her head on her folded arms on the table in the interrogation room. The backs of her eyelids were hot and gritty. She had been kept at the courthouse all night. She had been allowed to go to the restroom only once, and then a deputy had escorted her there and back. It was as though she were under arrest, while, to her knowledge, nothing had been done to apprehend her attackers.

She had told Sheriff Jolly her story twice, keeping her descriptions precise. During the second telling, she hadn’t altered a single word from the first. Her remarkable memory had always served her wel

l in school. Tonight, she had used it to give an accurate account of the gang rape. No matter how embarrassing the details, she hadn’t glossed over them.

Without being abusive, the sheriff had tried to confound her. “Jade, Hutch was at home when I left a while ago.”

“I don’t know where he is now. I only know where he was and what he was doing about seven o’clock this evening.”

“That’s when you say it happened?”

“That is when it happened. Hutch wasn’t at home then, was he?”

“He came in around nine and said he’d been out with Neal and Lamar.”

“He had been. They raped me.”

Fritz had dragged a large hand down his ruddy face, stretching the loose skin. “How do you account for the time between seven o’clock, when the alleged rape took place, and the time you arrived at the hospital, which was…” He consulted the deputy’s spiral notebook. “You got to the hospital at eleven-thirty-four.”

“For a long time after they left me, I lay there. Then I crawled to the highway. When the car came up behind me—”

Tags: Sandra Brown Romance
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