Page 3 of Long Pig
Where the entrance met the highway, a young Native woman had her thumb out. She looked cold, wrapped in a threadbare hoodie, and Butch almost broke his own rule.
Almost.
The freezer had limited space. He liked keeping things tidy and manageable. Even though it was in a hidden compartment under the sleeper, he didn’t take risks. Every now and then, authorities checked loads, and while he had the paperwork for the items he hauled, he wasn’t about to invite scrutiny.
Still, she was a plump thing.
Butch tightened his grip on the wheel and forced himself to turn away.
Inside the truck stop, he wandered the aisles, his eyes glazing over the usual fare: day-old hot dogs, trucker pills, the rotating hot case of mystery meat. His hand hovered over a bag of pork rinds, and he smirked.
Humans share 98% of their DNA with pigs, and that thought gave him an internal grin.
Back in the truck, Butch ran his tongue over his teeth. He took care of them; brushed and flossed religiously. He wasn’t like the cedar rats who let their mouths rot, their smiles turning to blackened stumps out in the area he lived.
The Hogg family had been the worst of them: backwoods filth living too damn close to his place, attracting attention he didn’t want or need. If the old woman hadn’t handled the problem, Butch had planned to.
He liked things quiet. He had his secrets.
He gave the side of his rig a satisfied slap, the metal ringing hollow. Ron was tucked away, packed up neat. The boy had been on the skinny side, but not every cut needed to be thick.
Butch popped a pork rind into his mouth and bit down, the crunch loud in the silence.
Damn shame people didn’t appreciate good meat anymore. Most didn’t think about it. Most didn’t know that if you smoked the slab just right, it tasted exactly like bacon.
Chapter One
Bury the Dead
Willow
Willow wiped her brow and took a long pull from the water bottle at her waist, securing it again afterward. Her Rottweiler, Max, ran over, and she removed a bottle from his harness. She then stretched a flattened rubber cup to hold water. When it was full, she rested it on the boulder and took a seat a foot away.
She looked out at the property, admiring the beauty. Some might not see it in the high desert landscape filled with cedar and shaggy bark trees, boulders, and rock, with little color until the sun went down and the earth was bathed in shades of red, orange, and yellow.
“It’s hotter than I thought it would be,” she complained to Max.
He looked up from the water, large drips falling off his muzzle, and went back to drinking.
She was searching for property markers. The fourth marker was hiding somewhere in the vicinity, and she couldn’t find it. Her grandmother had left a map and given the general location, which was where Willow had concentrated her search. The small metal spike with the property number stamped intothe top had to be here somewhere. She’d had to dig around for the first one, and she had a feeling this one would be as difficult.
After raising her hand to her eyes, she scanned the area again. For as far as she could see, mountainous boulders spread before her. On the other side of the hidden marker was BLM land, which stood for Bureau of Land Management. It was the government agency that managed over 245 million acres of public land. They used it for recreation, grazing, mining, and conservation, though the land out here was so out of the way, only the cattle found it.
Willow had been studying everything she could lay her hands on about the area she now called home. It was better than dwelling on the bad things. Dale, her only friend and also her housemate, told her that one day things would go her way. He believed in patience.
Since her grandmother, Joan, died, Willow had a dream. Not an actual dream and maybe goal was a better term. She wanted to use Joan’s property, now hers, to help women and children who went through similar circumstances to her own.
A year ago, she and Dale had christened the ranch Joan’s Legacy. The goal hadn’t gone the way she hoped. Dale was a retired sheriff’s deputy, and he thought he could help her find women who needed a short-term place to recover or hide.
The hurdle to help others was too high. After years of abuse, when Willow was fifteen, she killed her father. The jury didn’t buy the abuse defense, and she went to prison until she turned twenty-five. The last seven years of her confinement had been spent in an adult women’s prison. It was a terrible place, filled with very strict rules and worse, hopelessness.
When she got out, Dale, a friend of her grandmother’s, helped her change her name and become a new person. Her new life of good intent went to hell when he spoke with someone he knew from the women’s safehouse in Pinetop, an hour’s driveaway. The woman, Liz, had to know more about Willow, and she gave Dale a stack of paperwork for Willow to fill out.
When he arrived back at the ranch, Willow knew by the look on his face that his news wasn’t good.
“There’s a page for you to list your criminal history,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice. “If you lie, chances are good they’ll find out. Your name change holds up for people in town but won’t pass a thorough background check.”
Willow would carry the weight of killing her father her entire life, and there was no way to shake it. Her dream was shattered by a stack of paperwork.