"How 'bout we have some fun?" he said, grabbing her and holding her shoulders with both hands.
"Slow down, honey," she said as he pawed at her. She was within striking distance now, as he fumbled to open the front of her dress. Almost without thinking, she swung her right hand, a powerful forehand winner. The two-pound rasp caught Keith Summerland smack on the left ear. He let out a howl, went backwards, and dropped to his knees. She stepped back in horror and for a brief moment watched as he held his head, moaning. Then she stepped around him and ran across the asphalt toward the limo, pausing on the way to kick off the damn platform shoes. Victoria reached out and opened the back door and peered in at Dakota. She looked horrible: A light film of sweat covered her swollen bruised face.
"Oh, my God," Victoria whispered, "what did they do to you? Can you walk?"
"Don't know," Dakota said. "Pull me out."
Victoria reached in, took Dakota's hand, and pulled her out of the car, then walked with an arm around her, steadying her as they left the lot. Dakota glanced over at Keith. He was struggling to get to his feet, dizzy and totally out of it. He didn't see them leave.
"Let's go," Victoria said, hurrying Dakota away and up the street to the Winnebago. "I never hit anybody before," Victoria added.
"Good… start…" Dakota mumbled. Once they got into the motor home, Victoria settled her on the sofa next to the wounded terrier. Dakota was looking at Victoria with new respect.
Twenty minutes later, Victoria found the small, one-story Livingston Hospital. The E.R. attendants took one look and got Dakota on a gurney, rushing her into Emergency while Victoria picked up Roger-the-Dodger and carried him gingerly inside. She filled out the admitting slip for Dakota, using her own mother's maiden name, Barker. Then she got a nurse to take a look at Roger.
"What happened to him?" the sympathetic woman asked. "He looks like he's been shot."
"I don't know. I found him outside her house. I think her boyfriend may have beaten her and shot the poor dog," Victoria lied, wishing she was as good as Beano at spur-of-the-moment bullshit.
"I'll get Dr. Cotton to take a look at him," she said.
Two hours later Dakota was rushed into Emergency Surgery. Her spleen had been leaking blood into her abdomen for at least twelve hours. Her blood count and blood pressure were so low, they were life threatening.
When the doctor came out after the surgery, he looked worried. "She lost a lot of blood. She went into cardiac arrest on the table from low BP. We removed her spleen, pumped her full of plasma. She's been stabilized, but… I don't know…"
"How long till you can tell?" Victoria asked.
"I let God sort out the close ones," the doctor said. "I've called the police. She was obviously beaten, so I'm going to need your statement. They're on their way."
"I'll be glad to talk to them," Victoria said, but she knew she had to get out of there before the police came. Once they started asking questions, they'd sense her complicity. She needed to get Roger, so she wandered the sterile linoleum corridors, asking for Dr. Cotton. She finally found a plain-faced young woman M.D. in a doctors' lounge, holding Roger-the-Dodger and talking softly to him. His entire back end was now bandaged in white adhesive.
"Is he your dog?" she said accusingly, as Victoria moved into the small room.
"No, my friend's dog."
"This dog was shot," the doctor said angrily. "A large caliber, from the look of it."
"Oh," Victoria said. She wanted to get the hell out of there, so she reached out and took Roger out of the doctor's arms.
"I shouldn't have sewn him up. I'm a doctor, not a veterinarian, but I love animals and I couldn't leave him like that. He needs a vet's prescription-some strong antibiotics for possible infection," she lectured. And then mercifully, her beeper went off. "Excuse me, don't leave," she said and moved out of the room.
As soon as she was gone, Victoria took Roger and carried him out of the small hospital and into the Winnebago. She pulled the motor home out of the parking lot just as a police black-and-white arrived. The old Victoria would have glanced away in fear, but the new emerging one waved confidently at the cops, then turned left and sped away into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Four.
THEY HEARD A BANGING ON THE WAREHOUSE DOOR and, when Steve moved to open it, he found Keith Summerland standing there with blood all over the side of his head. When Tommy saw him, he immediately moved to the door. "The fuck happened to you?"
"She hit me," Keith said, still holding his bleeding ear. He had decided not to tell Tommy he had been away from the car, trying to put a juke on a girl whose car had stalled.
"I told ya to be careful a'her," Tommy said. He moved out quickly and looked at the empty lot and limousine. There was no sign of Dakota. He knew if she had hit Keith and escaped, there was a chance she would call the law. "Let's go, alla you," he said, waving the gun.
They all moved out of the warehouse toward the limo. Tommy glowered at Keith, whose ear was still leaking blood.
"You get the fuck away from me, you dumb asshole," he shouted at Keith. "What was you doin'? Tryin' t'give her a feel?"
"No, Tommy, I just turned around for a minute and-"
"Shut the fuck up. Get away from me. Joe was right to fire you. I'll deal with you later." Tommy pushed the huge man toward the gate. He was in a hurry to get out of there before the cops arrived.
Beano had wondered how it would be possible for Dakota to hit Keith Summerland and do that much damage. She seemed almost unable to talk, let alone knock this 250-pound monster silly. Then, as Beano was looking across the pavement, something glinted in the overhead light. When he looked closer, he saw what it was…
A plastic platform heel. He smiled to himself. Good girl, Vicky, he thought.
Tommy pushed him into the back of the limo next to Steve and Duffy. He made Jimmy ride in front with Wade. They pulled out, leaving Keith Summerland by the gate, still holding the side of his head and wondering what he was going to do next.
In the back seat of the limo everybody rode in silence. Beano pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at Tommy, whose expression said nothing.
"Whatta ya looking at?" Tommy finally snapped.
"Well, sir… uh… not to be indelicate, but… uh, well, the people at the field where we're going, they don't know there's oil down there, and it would be helpful if they weren't alerted to that fact. We drilled a slim hole, like Donovan said… only six-eighths of an inch, and we capped it off 'cause we don't want them to know we proved the field."
"So, we ain't gonna tell 'em," Tommy said.
"I've been fired. If I go out there with a crowd of people looking around, they're bound t'figure something's funny."
"So, you don't want me to see this field?" he said accusingly.
"No… it's not that, it's just… if I'm looking around out there, they're gonna get suspicious. If we just stayed in the car and sorta drove around, it might be better."
"I don't know yet what we're gonna do, so shut the fuck up," Tommy said. "You're givin' me a migraine."
They arrived at Oak Crest at a little past midnight, and drove around Carl Harper's alfalfa field. In the full moonlight, they could see the freshly painted pipes and cisterns, all dressed up in their new rust-red Fentress County Petroleum color. A big FCP amp;G shone in white block letters on the top of the large cistern by the road. Tommy turned on the dome light in the limo and got out the beautiful glossy oil-company brochure that Beano had printed. He looked carefully at all the colorful pictures of the painted pipes and cisterns; then he looked back out the window at the same pipes and cisterns in the field.