“I’m Ervin Abellard. Friend and roommate to Phoebe here.”
Copperman’s eyes bounced frantically inside their sockets. “Did you record me? Without my permission?”
“Oklahoma’s a one-party consent state, ma’am. All’s I need’s one of y’all to be okay with it. How you feel about me recording, Bee?”
“I feel great about it, Vin,” Phoebe answered with a grin. Her voice shook a little; blossoming victory had flooded her veins with adrenaline. “Did you get anything good?”
“Well, let’s see.” He tucked up close and started the video, canting his phone so all three could see.
The audio was soft, but it was clear. Even better: Phoebe had stood in place, at a distance and shown no hostile or threatening expression or gesture. Copperman, on the other hand, surged forward and got right in Phoebe’s face, and when Vin turned the sound up, every word the woman had snarled was clear.
Now that woman crossed her arms and attempted an unimpressed look. “I don’t know what you think that will do for you,” she huffed.
Vin slipped Phoebe a sly wink. “You know, Bee, I was thinking—what if we put this video on the ranch’s TikTok? I bet it’ll go viral and push the fundraising over the top. People love a David and Goliath story, yeah?”
“Yeah, they do,” Phoebe said, turning a smile on Lydia Copperman. “We can put it on Insta, too. Almost all our donors follow us in one of those places. A lot of big names in Oklahoma philanthropy.” She leaned in close to Copperman, as if she had a secret meant for her alone. “I’m totally going to do it, by the way. I wonder what your friends in high places will think about it. I wonder what the governor will think about you using him to threaten me—and everybody knowing about it. Doesn’t make him look great, either, if you think about it. I’m sure he’ll be happy about that.”
“You insignificant little shit!” Copperman snapped—but she looked scared.
A scared UberKaren was dangerous, too, but Phoebe wasn’t worried. She could see the defeat in the woman’s eyes.
“I can’t let you talk to my friend that way, ma’am,” Vin said. “I’m gonna need you to apologize now.”
Phoebe nearly laughed—but she saw how she could both protect herself and give Lydia Copperman just enough of an out to quell any urge she might have for mutually assured destruction.
It had occurred to her that she might be able to use this moment to get Copperman to pay for the balance of the roof replacement—which would only be fair, considering she’d caused the unnecessary and maliciously nit-picky inspection to happen. But Phoebe decided against it. The Bulls had helped her get a good deal on a new roof, and she could handle it without anything from this woman. That was the more powerful feeling.
No, she needed only one thing from this entitled bitch.
“I don’t need an apology. You wouldn’t mean it any more than I would, and I honestly don’t give a fuck if you’re sorry. I just need you to go away and stay out of my life, and out of my way.”
“That’s all?” Copperman asked warily—and Phoebe grinned. She really had this woman by the nape, didn’t she?
“That’s all. Get the fuck out of my life and stay the fuck out of my way.”
Copperman sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “And the video?”
“Oh, I’m keeping it. It’s insurance. If you call off your dogs at the health department, and you stay away from me and the ranch, leave my donors alone, I won’t post it. But if you make one more move to hurt me, ever, I will put this video everywhere I can think of.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
Phoebe’s grin grew so wide her cheeks ached. “You don’t. You’re gonna have to trust me anyway.”
It would have, should have, ended right there. Lydia Copperman should have taken her L and slunk off to her two-hundred-thousand-dollar SUV and hurried back to where she belonged.
Instead, in an apparent fit of desperation, she lunged at Vin, her hands thrown forward like talons, and tried to wrest the phone from him.
Vin tried to simultaneously duck and swing out of her way, but his prosthetic leg didn’t have that kind of agility. It folded, and he fell, knocking his head on a stall door as he went down.
Stunned, Phoebe watched all that happen as if in slow motion. It had been a single second, two at the most, but it seemed to have taken full minutes.
Vin landed, then lay still. The blow to his head had knocked him out. His phone slipped from his hand and skidded a few inches away on the concrete floor of the main aisle.
Copperman dived for it, and Phoebe dived after her. She grabbed that bitch by the French twist and yanked her backward. Copperman screamed and swung around, her fingers hooked like claws again, and Phoebe just barely ducked as those claws swept across her cheek, missing her eye by the width of an eyelash.
Then they were both in the fight of their lives, rolling around on the floor, punching, pulling, screaming, grunting. Phoebe was trained in hand-to-hand combat, but Copperman was surprisingly strong. Her desperation had turned her into an animal.
But Phoebe was desperate, too, and Vin was hurt. Lydia Copperman had hurt him. She was the enemy.
The stable faded away, and Phoebe was rolling around in hot sand. Gunfire and explosions erupted around her. She was a soldier in battle, with fallen comrades all around her, and she fought with that fire.
Eventually, the desert was satisfied and receded from her consciousness. She was in the stable again, fighting Lydia Copperman. She realized that she wasn’t getting hit back anymore, and her senses fell into place. She stopped and reared back, scooting out of the field of engagement until her back slammed up against a stall door.
Lydia Copperman lay on the stable floor, unconscious. Her face was a bloody, swollen mess. Phoebe’s gloves were soaked with blood, and she felt warm, viscous drips slipping down her cheeks and neck.
Vin’s phone lay about six feet away. A large black hand reached for it and picked it up; he was awake.
“You okay?” she asked him. Her voice sounded strange in her head.
“Yeah,” he said and set his free hand on the back of his head. “Gonna have a lump like a baseball back here, and my stump fuckin’ hurts getting wrenched like that, but I’m okay. You?”
Phoebe wiped blood from her face. She had some scratches, deep enough to bleed, but otherwise she felt fine. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Vin nodded at the unconscious woman sprawled between them. “What about her?”
Lydia Copperman had not moved. Phoebe considered her still form, sprawled in an awkward twist across the aisle. Something about it seemed wrong.
Though she’d been wounded in Afghanistan before she’d been there a year, she’d been in plenty of engagements with the enemy in the months she was there. She’d seen plenty of bodies, friend and foe, unconscious and unalive.
She’d learned that there was a visible difference between an unconscious body and an unalive one. She couldn’t explain exactly what the difference was—a change in the skin, perhaps, or a difference in the form of the musculature, something—but the difference was there, and they’d all known about it. They’d saved soldiers who were hardly more than torsos because they could see the difference. They’d mourned bodies that seemed unharmed because they’d known it was too late. Probably it was the reason she’d been saved herself, buried under the gruesome detritus of her squadmates.