Excerpt from Barbed Wire Heart by Tess Sharpe, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I try to tell myself my eyes are playing tricks on me.

But deep down, I know better.

A few minutes later—it seems like forever, my breath and the chirp of the crickets echoing in my ears—the outside barn light snaps off, and darkness creeps through the trees, spreading across the property.

I should climb down and run into my room and shut the door and pull my quilts over my head. I should pretend I never saw those feet being dragged across the ground.

I don't, though.

Instead I climb down the tree and head toward the barn.

I could say I regret the choice, looking back, but that's just foolishness.

I had to learn somehow. What he was. What I would be.

This was how for me.

* * *

I sneak 'round the back of the barn, where the cedar planks are pockmarked with holes. They give a terrible view into the barn, but it's the best I can do. Kneeling down in the dirt, I push my cheek against the wood, angling my head to peep through the biggest hole I can find. I'm breathing too quick still, my heart rabbit-fast under my skin, my mouth dry from the air whooshing in and out.

At first, I can't see Daddy at all. All I see is the old tractor he has stored in here, and the smashed-up quad he crashed last summer. A bare bulb strung up from an orange cord swings gently back and forth from one of the beams and that's when I hear it: his voice.

"You're going to tell me what I wanna know," Daddy says. There's a rummaging sound, like he's going through the red toolbox in the corner. And sure enough, after a few seconds pass, he finally comes into view, a screwdriver in his hand. Shadows lengthen across Daddy as he moves away from my hiding spot, turning the screwdriver in his hand over and over as he walks back behind the tractor, disappearing from view. A groaning sound fills the air.

It's not Daddy.

It's whoever he brought in here. And they're hurt.

Daddy hurt them.

It's strange to think of Daddy's hands, big and strong and calloused, so good at hugs and tugging at the end of my braid, doing that.

"You're gonna tell me what I wanna know," Daddy says. "We can do it easy or hard. Your choice, Ben."

"Fuck you," a second voice—Ben—slurs.

"Tell me," Daddy says.

"Not gonna tell you shit." There's a wet, rattling sound, like he's coughing up more than spit.

"Okay then," Daddy says. The shadows stretch above the tractor, a blurred glimpse of his arm as he shoves forward, sharp and fast. The sound that comes next, a gritted-out groan that punches out of Ben, makes the hair on the back of my neck raise.

"That's going to stay in there until you tell me what I want to know," Daddy says, and I realize he means the screwdriver.

Black spots crowd along the edges of my vision. I have to plant both palms in the dirt and concentrate, slow myself down so I don't faint. My eyes feel like they're about to pop out of my head, and my cheek presses hard against the pecky cedar siding. I want to run away. I have to stay and see what happens.

"Tell me," Daddy says.

"No."

Daddy straightens, coming back into view, and from this angle, I can see he's digging in his back pocket. He comes up with the antler-handle knife he sharpens every Sunday without fail. He flips it open, eight inches of deadly steel shining in the barn light and tests it on his thumbnail. "Let's try something different."

Daddy kneels again, disappearing; the shadowy blur of his arm comes up and then down again. Ben's sound is even worse this time, no gritted teeth, no effort to suppress the scream.

I don't close my eyes or hide my face or do anything that I should.

I keep my eyes wide open.

Excerpted from Barbed Wire Heart by Tess Sharpe. Copyright © 2018 by Tess Sharpe. Excerpted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.