Chapter 9 - The Creek Road Trap
Two days later, the trap closed on Rhonda from a direction she never anticipated.
The grand jury subpoena had yielded its fruit. Sheriff Miller’s deputies had pulled two months of text messages from Rhonda’s phone. Not only had she texted Toby Vance instructions on how to set the fire ("*Make sure the kiln shed goes up first so the lumber is ruined before the trucks come*"), but they found something far worse.
For the past four years, Rhonda had been skimming money from Arlin’s livestock brokerage account, falsifying purchase orders, and depositing the proceeds into a private account under an alias at a credit union in Stillwater.
Arlin wasn't just broke because of his own bad investments; his own eldest daughter had been systematically bleeding him dry while convincing him that I was the greedy one trying to steal his legacy.
The afternoon the arrest warrant was signed, I was driving my truck down Creek Road, heading back from the feed store with a bale of straw for the garden.
The road was narrow, bordered on both sides by deep ditches filled with spring water and tall cattails.
Suddenly, a silver grill filled my rearview mirror.
It was Rhonda’s Suburban. She was riding my bumper, barely two feet from my tailgate, her high beams flashing in the late afternoon glare.
My heart leaped into my throat. "Not today," I whispered, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
She pulled out into the oncoming lane, accelerating hard, trying to draw level with me. Through her tinted passenger window, I could see her—hair wild, eyes wide and bloodshot, screaming obscenities through the glass.
She jerked her wheel to the right, deliberately ramming her heavy front fender into the driver's side door of my pickup.
The impact sounded like a gunshot. The steering wheel violently twisted in my hands, the truck sliding sideways across the slick gravel. I fought the slide, pumping the brakes, keeping the front wheels pointed down the center of the lane as the ditch yawned dangerously close to my tires.
Rhonda pulled ahead, swung her heavy SUV across both lanes, and slammed on her brakes, completely barricading the narrow road.
I brought my truck to a shuddering halt ten yards away, dust billowing around the cab like a brown curtain.
Rhonda kicked her door open and stumbled out. She was holding a heavy steel tire iron in her right hand, her face distorted by absolute, unhinged madness.
"You ruined me!" she screamed, her voice cracking into a ragged screech. "The sheriff took my house! They're taking my boys! You took my daddy, you took my money, and now you took my whole life!"
She came toward my truck, swinging the tire iron in wide, clumsy arcs.
I didn't cower. I reached into the glove compartment, pulled out the heavy can of bear-deterrent pepper spray Aaron had insisted I keep in the truck, and stepped out onto the gravel.
"Drop the iron, Rhonda!" I shouted, keeping the truck door between us as a shield. "The sheriff has your texts! You did this to yourself!"
"I’ll kill you first!" she roared, charging the last ten feet, raising the iron over her head to bring it down on my windshield.
I didn't hesitate. I pressed the heavy plastic trigger.
An orange, pressurized cloud of concentrated capsaicin erupted from the canister, hitting Rhonda dead in the face at fifteen feet.
The transformation was instantaneous.
Rhonda’s scream was cut short by a violent, choking gasp. The tire iron flew from her hand, clattering harmlessly onto the gravel. She collapsed onto her knees, clawing at her eyes, coughing so hard she vomited into the red dirt at the edge of the road.
"My eyes! Oh God, my eyes!" she shrieked, writhing on the ground, rolling over onto her back like a wounded animal.
I stood there, holding the canister, my chest heaving, the wind whipping my hair across my face.
Around the bend of Creek Road, the sirens wailed.
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Two sheriff’s cruisers, led by Miller himself, skidded to a halt behind Rhonda’s barricade, their blue lights slicing through the settling dust.
Deputies poured out with weapons drawn, but there was no fight left to be had. Within seconds, Rhonda was in handcuffs, sobbing and coughing into the gravel, completely broken.
