Devil's Oven by Laura Benedict Page A

of an angel and extended her arms to him like a child.
    Tripp was certain he had been here before, but he couldn’t remember when.
    He knelt to take her in his arms. Sliding one arm beneath her neck—her skin was as cool as marble against his arm—and the other beneath her knees, he lifted her. She weighed almost nothing, as he had known she would. Beef jerky and corn chips, Dwight had said, and obviously not much of either. She nestled against him, resting her head on his biceps. As he carried her down the trail, he breathed in the scent of her. She smelled of the woods—green, fragrant, deep woods—after a heavy rain. But there was something else, too. Woodsmoke.
    Neither of them spoke.
    He wasn’t sure where they would go. He only knew there was a building sense of urgency in his chest.
    The trees fell away behind them as they reached the trail’s head. Tripp looked to the sky, stunned to find it was once again filled with bright sunlight.
    The girl tensed in his arms and began to struggle. When he looked down at her, he saw that her eyes were now green and she was no longer smiling. Her hair, which had been soft like ebony silk, was now red and coarse against his skin.
    “Put me down,” Lila said.
     

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
     
    Bud grabbed the ostrich-leather briefcase he had never much cared for from the truck’s passenger seat. Like any gift from Lila, he made generous use of it and kept any unflattering opinion he had about it to himself. But given that it contained a hundred and fifty thousand in cash at that moment, he would have preferred it to look less expensive, less conspicuous.
    He felt like hell after the long, restless night with Lila. After the troopers left, she had spent most of the day in bed, watching television and reading. She had no interest at all in what the police had asked him. It was as though she wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. But when they both went to bed that night, she had struggled in her sleep, constantly talking beside him as she slept. The words were unclear, but she sounded angry, sometimes frightened.
    The scene at the trucking office was similarly chaotic. The two secretaries were doing their best to keep up with the tight logistics schedule that Claude had set up for the week. Everyone was grateful at how organized Claude had been, but it didn’t make them feel any better. Claude was the guy everyone liked.
    Bud crossed The Twilight Club’s back parking lot, anxious to get inside. Beneath his jacket and sport shirt, his skin wore a layer of cooling sweat. If the manager of the Mountain Fidelity Bank’s main branch weren’t one of his hunting buddies, he knew he would have been in much rougher shape. Not just anyone would have cashed that kind of check with only a day’s notice. Another bank officer would have hinted that Bud should get caught up on the loans the bank had already made to his businesses before he walked out of the building with that much cash.
    In many ways he felt lucky, despite the fact his entire life was imploding. He had even gotten the money from his old man with a smaller-than-usual amount of bullshit harassment. His father’s low-key response might have had something to do with dropping testosterone levels and his shrinking frame. Old age wasn’t being kind to him.
    He let himself in the club’s back door and found Dwight headed into the office with a box of lightbulbs. Dwight squinted against the flare of sunlight from the open door.
    “Dwight, buddy!” he said. “How’s it hangin’ today?”
    “Three overheads burned out,” Dwight said. “Everything working out at the truck office?”
    “I got the best people in the world working for me,” Bud said, meaning it.
    He followed Dwight through the doorway and laid the briefcase on his desk casually, as though it contained nothing more significant than his lunch.
    “Anything in the mail?”
    “Crap,” Dwight said. “Some wholesale dildo catalog, like we’re one of those G.D.