Ma was gone. She left for a while every evening for a spell, often to look for a man to bed. She was old and built like one of those big trucks, the eighteen-wheel kind she’d seen the couple times she’d been out to one of the big highways. Thick and sturdy, and liable to belch a blast of noxious steam if you got in her way. And yet there remained a number of local men more than willing to fuck her. It had a little to do with her position in the community, but Abby didn’t kid herself. She’d heard the
stories. Ma was a monster in the sack. The younger boys hereabouts spent their days ogling skinnier, fresher-faced girls, but many of them privately speculated in hushed, awed voices about what it might be like to be schooled in the ways of the flesh by Grandma Maynard.
Abby rocked and stared at the broken television. Her fingers curled tight around the arms of the rocker as she fantasized about heaving a brick through the cracked screen. It was a new notion, one simultaneously frightening and invested with a potential sense of liberation. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way, really. Chucking a brick through the blank screen wouldn’t change a damn thing, other than breaking the cursed thing’s hypnotic hold over her. She would still be here. Would still be a prisoner of her frustrations and feelings of failure. She would still sit here and rock, her already quietly desperate existence rendered an even duller shade of gray by the demolition of the thing that gave her dreams shape and form, that framed the yearnings of her imagination.
Ma would be gone for a while.
Maybe for a long while.
Thinking about it, Abby abruptly ceased rocking.
Yes.
The miserable old cunt was horny. More than usual. She’d been too busy for her evening excursions these last few days, spending endless hours cooking and cleaning, preparing everything just so for the big weekend feast. Ma was always ornery, but she’d been especially edgy today. Quicker with a backhand than usual—and much more ready to sting you with that poison tongue. But she’d finished the last of her major preparations this afternoon, and she’d soon departed with an uncharacteristic big smile on her face and a jug of whiskey in her hand.
Abby smiled.
Hell.
Ma might be gone all night.
She thought of the holiday dinner hanging on its chain in the cellar and felt a strange tingle of excitement. Strange, yes, but not a mystery. She knew what the tingle was. It was something she wasn’t supposed to feel. Not if she meant to stay right with the Lord. She glanced at the weathered old Bible propped on the little table to her left. She couldn’t read it, of course. Couldn’t read anything. But her daddy used to read it to her in halting, awkward tones when she was little. After he died, she slept with the old book for a time. But she took little comfort from it and soon discontinued the habit. She wondered what Pa would think if he could know some of her more shameful thoughts.
You know,
she thought.
She well remembered the feel of his broad, thick hand tanning her bony backside when she was a child. If anything, Luke Maynard had been even more willing to mete out punishment than Ma, which meant he was just about as fearsome as the devil himself.
But he’s gone. Gone forever.
And so, she reminded herself, was Ma. And, at least for a short time, Abby was free to do whatever she desired.
She rose from the rocking chair. Went to the kitchen. To the pantry. To the door beyond, and down the stairs to the cellar. The dinner raised its head as she approached and stared at her. She looked the same as always. Defiant, but weary. Every time she looked in the dinner’s eyes there was just a touch more of that weariness. Abby recognized the signs. This one was stronger than most, maybe was the strongest ever in her experience, but its fighting spirit was beginning to ebb. Soon it would resign itself to the inevitable.
Abby tugged its gag away from its mouth.
It heaved its usual big breath and glared at her. “What do you want? Come to beat me again?”
Abby’s heart was beating too fast.“If I help you escape, will you take me with you?”
The dinner’s unswerving gaze projected open disbelief. “You’re toying with me again, aren’t you?”
Abby shook her head.“No, ma’am.”
The dinner coughed. “Okay. What’s the catch? There is one, right?”
Abby nodded.
“Of course.” The dinner grimaced, glanced up at the manacles biting into its slim wrists. Then it looked at Abby and said,“Well…spell it out.”
Abby told it what she wanted.
The guarantee she needed.
A meager enough list of demands, she thought, considering the dinner’s only other option.
The dinner was silent for a long moment. It stared at the damp, earthen floor and thought about what it’d been told. After maybe a full minute, it raised its head and said, “You can’t just let me go now? While they’re away?”
Abby shook her head. “Tomorrow night, the night before the holiday feast. That’s the right time.”
The dinner made a sound of immense frustration.“But that makes no sense. We can be far away by the time they even realize we’re gone.”
Abby shrugged.“There are things you don’t understand yet. You’ll just have to trust me. Tomorrow night is perfect. I promise you.”
The dinner rolled its eyes. “Okay. Whatever. But you have to do something for me, too.”
“Oh?”
The dinner laughed. “Convince me. Make me believe you’re not just”—another, more pointed glance at its manacled wrists—“yanking my chain.”
Abby smiled.“Okay.”
She retrieved an old wicker chair from a dark corner of the cellar, set it in front of the dinner, and sat down.
Then she began to talk.
She spoke without interruption for a long time.
An hour or longer.
Telling the dinner all about her life.
She couldn’t stop thinking about her Prada bag. It was the real deal, not one of those knockoffs like the one she’d bought from a street vendor in Tijuana years ago. The fake had looked almost good enough to pass for the genuine article, but it began to fall apart after a few months. An end of the strap came loose first, which she reattached with messily applied epoxy. Not exactly a hip look. She could have replaced it with a cheaper, more eye-pleasing bag, but she clung to the cheap and battered Tijuana souvenir with a stubborn tenacity that earned endless withering comments from her friends. Then, less than a month ago, her mother took her out to dinner for her birthday. At some point between the end of their meal and the arrival of dessert, Jessica excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she returned, a little gift bag stuffed with brightly colored tissue paper sat in the middle of the table.
She hadn’t known what to expect. Some sort of necklace, maybe. Something silver. Cynthia Sloan knew her daughter preferred silvery jewelry to gold and had gone that route for more than one previous birthday. So
the expensive, genuine Prada bag had come as something of a surprise. More of a gasp-inducing shock, actually. Jessica wasn’t one to squeal and gush over gifts, even really nice ones, but she made an exception this time. It was a leather runway bag from the new fall collection. Cost? Who knew. Some ungodly amount. And then there was the card, with its longish, heartfelt note from her mother expressing deep love for her daughter, along with the wish that she’d been better able to express that love over the years. She should have known something big was up then, but she was too distracted by the check enclosed with the card. A check written in the amount of five thousand dollars—two grand of which she’d planned to hand over to Hoke today for the Falcon. The last time her mother had given her money had been for her eighteenth birthday, and that had been a hundred bucks. Big money to her at the time. She should have questioned the unusual extravagance, but she’d been too overwhelmed, too touched by the affection expressed in her mother’s note.
A week later, the day after Jessica finally deposited the check in her bank account, Cynthia Sloan shocked the whole family by killing herself, doing the job via a combination of pills and a deeply slashed wrist. No one knew why she’d done it. There’d been no fatal medical diagnosis. She hadn’t been having an affair. Her loving husband of thirty years had always treated her with great tenderness and care. The surviving Sloans had talked about it endlessly in the ensuing weeks, hashing out theory after theory, each more unlikely than the last, and had come up with nothing.
She was just gone, that’s all.
Gone, and never coming back.
Tears spilled from Jessica’s eyes as the memories assailed her. She nearly stumbled over a vine as she swiped at the
moisture with the back of a wrist. Spying a big rock ten yards to her left, she decided to take a break. Some time had passed since the last time she’d heard anything remotely like the sound of a pursuer. She could stop for a minute, long enough to get herself together, at least. She unslung the rifle, sat on the rock, and propped the weapon between her legs. She wiped the tears away and tried to make herself focus on the problem at hand.
Goddammit, she had to get that bag back.
And not just for sentimental reasons. Her wallet was in the bag, along with her driver’s license, social security card, and multiple credit cards. All but one of the credit cards was maxed out, though. And she wasn’t too worried about the possibility of identity theft. Somehow she doubted the ability of the mutant rednecks to do much damage in that regard. Shit, she doubted they could spell their own names. No, there was just one thing the bag contained that she really needed right now.
Her fucking cell phone.
Her ticket out of this nightmare, if she could just get her hands on it. But that would mean going back to the car. Back to where she’d first glimpsed the men the hunter had called the Kinchers. Those monsters. Just the thought of it made her shudder. A deliberate march back in that direction would be pure madness. She thought of the Kinchers some more and for the first time wondered what had become of Hoke. He wouldn’t have been able to take off running like she had, not after the hours spent in that cramped and filthy trunk. So they had either killed him or taken him somewhere. Either way, his current situation was even more dire than her own. The thought brought a small, trembling smile to her face. She hoped the Kinchers were running a redneck train on him even now, cornholing him endlessly with enormous, mutated cocks, making him scream and mewl like a baby as the
ceaseless pressure ruptured his rectum. This made her think of what Hoke had done to her earlier in the day and the smile disappeared.
Jessica glanced upward, narrowing her eyes against the glint of sunlight visible through the canopy of tree leaves. She had at least a couple hours of daylight left. And if she hoped to make any progress toward getting out of the woods before nightfall, she would need to get moving again.
She stood up and slung the rifle strap over her shoulder again. She turned in a slow circle and realized she was no longer sure what direction she’d been heading in before she stopped. Frustration assailed her again. She wasn’t a wilderness person. Nor did she have any survival skills, despite her father’s oft-repeated advice over the years that she needed to prepare herself for a coming global catastrophe. She loved her dad, but the career military man bought into certain strains of right-wing paranoia a touch too enthusiastically for her taste. He honestly believed some form of apocalypse was right around the corner. Pure nonsense, of course, but now she wished she’d taken him up on his frequent offers to teach her basic survival skills. They sure as shit would come in handy right about now.
The hell with it,
she thought.
She stopped turning, picked a direction, and started walking. She still didn’t know where she was going, but had a vague sense the direction was still carrying her away from the clearing from which she’d fled. A vague sense wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than nothing at all.
She walked maybe fifteen more minutes before the thickness of the forest began to recede. The trees were less densely bunched. The undergrowth wasn’t so profuse, and there were almost no bushes. A few minutes later
her breath caught in her throat as she glimpsed the dark outline of a smallish structure visible through the line of trees just ahead of her. She walked ten more yards and stood behind a tall tree at the edge of another clearing, this one a good bit larger than the one where she’d meant to execute Hoke. A decrepit shack sat in the approximate center of the clearing. She had come upon the cabin from the side, but from this vantage point she could see a lone man sitting in a wicker chair on the cabin’s sagging porch. A pickup truck that looked like it could be from the 1950s was parked in front of the cabin. Though the truck was ancient, it didn’t quite have the look of a long-unused relic.
Please let it run.
There was no one else in the clearing. No one visible, at least. Could be there was someone in the shack. A woman preparing an evening dinner, maybe. Or there could be someone sitting in another chair on the opposite side of the long porch. But these considerations couldn’t deter Jessica.
This was her chance.
And maybe the only one she would get.
She unslung the rifle and slid a finger through the trigger guard. Staying behind the line of trees, she moved twenty yards to her right until the man disappeared from sight. She didn’t want him to see her until she was right on top of him. Until the barrel of the rifle was in his fucking face.
He would have no choice but to turn over the keys to the truck. There would then be the matter of whether to kill him or subdue him until she was gone, but she wouldn’t think about that until the time came.
She took a deep breath.
Gripped the rifle a little tighter.
And stepped into the clearing.
Megan Phillips emerged from the line of trees, skipped over the shallow ditch, and stood with her hands on her hips in the middle of the two-lane road.
She thought,
What now?
For the next several moments, the raw, blinding terror that had driven her into the woods went dormant as she considered her next move. She was even able to set aside her desperate concern for Pete during this brief time. These feelings hadn’t deserted her. Not at all. They were just…on hold. It was sort of blissful, in a strange, bittersweet way. It was a fragile feeling, one she knew would shatter with the merest wrong nudge, but she meant to savor it while she was able.
She stared at the locked-up general store on the other side of the street. Maybe she should break a window, get inside the store. There would be a phone somewhere in there, surely, and she could use it to dial the local sheriff’s office or 911. Would they have the 911 system in this ultra-rural shithole? She’d always taken the system’s seemingly ubiquitous nature for granted. But she’d never lived in an area where the general population density wasn’t in the millions. And most of the places she’d visited on vacation were much more developed than this…town? Did it even qualify as a town? She wasn’t sure. A glance in either direction showed only more woods and winding stretches of gray asphalt. The general store
was the only building in sight. Say she did manage to get inside the store and find a phone—how long would it take the local authorities to drag their asses out here? The return of one or more of the men who’d taken Pete ahead of the arrival of the law was certainly well within the realm of possibility.
And what then?
They’d grab her, too.
And that would be that, the end for her and Pete. They’d be raped and murdered. Then tossed in some pit and doused in lime. Or they’d be kept for a time as sex slaves. Maybe for years. Why not? Who would ever find them out here? No one who cared about them knew where they were.
Okay, so the hell with the breaking-and-entering idea. The whole notion had been absurd from the start anyway. Sweet little Megan Phillips, former cheerleader turned neohippy, chucking a rock or brick through the window of a store?
As if.
Megan turned to the right and stared at the empty road. This was the way the rednecks had gone. The way Pete had gone. He was out there somewhere, maybe still unconscious, maybe awake now and suffering God only knew what manner of indignity or violation. Some of the desperate, gnawing terror began to creep back in then. New tears bloomed in her eyes.
“Oh, Pete…”
She started walking. She had no way of knowing where they’d taken him, of course. It could be anywhere. But she couldn’t just keep standing there. Walking was at least doing something. And maybe she’d get lucky, spot some kind of clue, or spy a likely destination for the kidnappers. It made no logical sense. She wasn’t a detective. And she wasn’t psychic. She couldn’t see through walls or read
minds. But it was better than nothing, better than just waiting around for something to happen.
At first she walked straight down the middle of the road, the soles of her shoes scuffing the faded yellow line. She moved to the shoulder when it occurred to her this would be a good way to get mowed down by a speeding driver coming blind around a bend. And getting turned into road pizza wouldn’t do Pete a damned bit of good.
She walked and walked. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. And still there’d been no hint of civilization. No other cars or trucks had come along. She recalled that sense of eerie aloneness she’d experienced after getting out of the Jetta in the general-store parking lot, as if she were the lone survivor of some unknown apocalyptic event. The feeling returned now, more intense than before. She glanced over her shoulder. The general store had disappeared from view. It was just her and this stretch of gray road winding through a thick wilderness.
The summer sun was hot on her skin. Sweat beaded on her brow. She pulled up her hair and arranged it in a loose knot at the back of her head. She was glad for the thin, breathable fabric of the skimpy halter she’d worn, but wished she’d put on shorts this morning instead of the tight jeans that felt so constricting now. She mopped sweat from her brow with the back of a hand and wiped the moisture on the jeans. She wished for a knife or a pair of scissors. She could duck into the woods and strip out of the jeans to cut off the legs, turn them into shorts. What a relief that would be. Then she thought of other things she might do with a knife or scissors and her thoughts darkened. She imagined slitting the throat of the fat man with a knife. Pictured herself plunging the scissor blades into his eyes. She could almost taste his blood, almost hear his screams. The violent fantasies triggered a reflexive sense of repulsion, but this was short-lived. She
summoned the images again, and this time they stoked her anger and added fuel to her determination to find and free Pete.
She kept walking.
In a few minutes she noted the sun glinting off something some twenty yards ahead. She couldn’t immediately discern what it was. Her curiosity piqued, she quickened her step and soon paused to pick up the object.
Frowning, she turned it over in her hands. “Huh. Weird.”
It was a piece of a woman’s wallet, made of lime green leather, with a removable section that included sleeves for credit cards and a clear plastic frame for a driver’s license. The wallet contained a platinum Visa card and a license for a woman named Michelle Runyon. Michelle was pretty, with long, glossy, dark hair, pouting lips, and cheekbones a
Vogue
model would kill for. She was from Philadelphia. The ID gave her height as five feet seven and her weight as one twenty. She had brown eyes, and her date of birth was 7-11-1983.
Two years older than me.
Megan stared at the picture of the beautiful young woman and felt a fresh sense of dread as she wondered what had become of Michelle. She looked back the way she’d come. Maybe Michelle had stopped at the Hopkins Bend General Store. And maybe those horrible men just hadn’t been able to stop themselves. After all, how often would anyone who looked like Michelle show up here? So maybe they’d taken her. And maybe she’d chucked her wallet out the window of their dirty old van as they’d taken her to the same place they’d just taken Pete. An act of desperation. Maybe someone who could help her would find it someday? And if she couldn’t be helped, maybe her body could be found and given a proper burial. Megan shuddered as she thought about it. The theory
felt right to her on a primal level. She was convinced it was close to what had happened.
She examined the wallet a little more closely. It was coated in dust, but did not appear to have endured the ravages of time and weather. Her thumb traced the edge of Michelle’s delicate jawline.
“I’ll find you if I can, Michelle. You and Pete.”
As she stared at the woman’s lovely image, something disturbing began to flutter around the edges of her consciousness. She frowned, struggling to get a hold on whatever it was. And then she had it. Her eyes widened. She looked at Michelle’s image and thought of her own driver’s license.
Soon the men who’d taken Pete would find her purse in the Jetta and see her license photo.
They would realize Pete had not been traveling alone.
They would be coming back this way.
Soon.
And
fast.
The sound of an approaching car made her jump. She scanned the road ahead and didn’t see anything. The noise grew louder and she realized it was coming from behind her. She turned and her heart leaped with joy at the sight of the slowing law vehicle.
She sniffled.“Oh, thank God.”
She shoved Michelle’s ID and wallet into her rear pocket as the car pulled up alongside her. The emblem on the door identified the vehicle as belonging to the Hopkins Bend Sheriff’s Department. A door opened on the other side of the car. A man in a tan uniform stepped out and stared across the roof at her. He was stocky and just shy of six feet. Glasses with reflective lenses covered his eyes. A brown hat sat atop his head. He had a thick, salt-and-pepper mustache. A toothpick jutted from a corner of his mouth.
He spat the toothpick out and said,“Trouble, miss?”
Megan opened her mouth to tell the man about what had happened to Pete, but a rush of emotion surged within her and she choked on the first word. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized the extent to which she’d been holding everything in. Hot tears cascaded down her cheeks as she struggled to speak.
The man came around the car and took her into his arms. She fell against him and sobbed into his jacket. He patted her back and said,“There, there. It’s gonna be okay. You get it out.”
Megan regained some semblance of control. She scolded herself. Right now Pete needed help, not tears. She broke the man’s embrace and moved back a step. She swiped at her eyes and said,“I’m okay.”
He folded his arms and stared at her. “Start from the beginning.” He smiled.“When you’re ready.”
Megan heaved a big breath, psyched herself up, and told him everything she could remember about the incident at the general store. The man lifted a hand and stroked his chin as she talked.
When she was finished, he nodded and said, “You’re talkin’ about the Preston boys.”
Megan shrugged.“I don’t know their names. Just what they did. You sound like you know them. Any idea where they might have taken Pete?”
The man unfolded his arms and grinned. “Well, ma’am. Here’s the thing. The Preston boys have a first-rate reputation in these parts. I don’t for a minute believe they’d do what you’re sayin’ they done.”
Megan gaped at him.“Wh-what?”
“Matter of fact, it sounds kinda like crazy talk to me. Are you on drugs?”
Megan made a sound of disbelief.“Oh…my…God. Are you serious?”
The man’s expression turned hard.“Dead serious.” He placed a hand on the butt of his holstered pistol. “I’m gonna need you to turn around and brace your hands against the roof of the vehicle while I pat you down.”
Megan took an instinctive, unconscious step backward. “You can’t—”
The man yanked his pistol from the holster and aimed it at her in a rigid, two-handed stance. His voice lashed out at her. “DON’T MAKE ME SAY IT AGAIN! TURN AROUND AND BRACE YOUR HANDS AGAINST THE ROOF OF THE VEHICLE! NOW!”
Shaking, Megan did as she was told. Tears filled her eyes again.
What else could she do?
Oh, God. Please help me.
The man stepped into position behind her and knelt. His rough hands patted their way up the length of one leg and then up the other. He then stood and slipped a hand between her legs. His fingers flexed and pushed hard against her. She sniffled. More tears came. He pushed his crotch against her upthrust ass and she felt his bulging erection. Megan’s whole body shook. She couldn’t believe this was happening. This man was an agent of the law. He was supposed to be helping her. Instead he was…
assaulting
her. The man’s fingers pushed more insistently against her vagina a time or two before slipping away to roam over the front of her body. His hands cupped each of her breasts in turn, squeezing them roughly.
Then he abruptly pushed away from her.
His fingers plucked something from her pocket.
Megan gulped.
The wallet.
Before she could even begin to contemplate what he would make of that, he was wrenching her hands up behind her back and slapping on handcuffs.
He leaned into her again, whispered in her ear. “I’ve got you now, bitch. Got you good. That woman’s been missing for weeks. I’m arresting you for suspicion of kidnapping and murder.”
Megan opened her mouth to protest, but he shut her up with a swat to the back of the head. He opened the back of the cruiser and shoved her inside. After he threw the door shut, he lit up a cigarette and took his time about getting back behind the wheel.
When he was in the car again, he turned in his seat and grinned at her. “Don’t you worry none about those federal and state charges, little lady.” He chuckled. “Out here, we believe the local law knows best.”
He laughed again and blew cigarette smoke at her through the security screen. Then he settled himself behind the wheel, put the car in gear, and did a three-point turn in the middle of the road.
Megan fell sideways on the seat, felt the warm leather press against her wet cheek as still more tears came.
The car drove back in the direction from which it had come.
Toward the sheriff’s office, maybe.
Away from Pete.
Megan closed her eyes and wondered if this nightmare would ever end.