Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (11 page)

The dude’s boots appeared before her eyes. A swarm of swear words, more felt than heard, pelted her, from Reg’s direction.

For the second time that night, Heath listened for her daughter’s heartbeat. “Thank God,” she said as she heard it, strong and regular, if too fast. “I’m squashing you,” she muttered and tried to lever herself off her daughter. Her arms had as much strength as overcooked pasta noodles. Consciousness teetered on blades of agony. Terrified she would fall and suffocate Elizabeth, she croaked, “Help me! Help me, you goddam bastards.”

The goddam bastards ignored her. “Please,” Heath begged, not even hating herself for groveling. Hands closed coolly around her shoulders. Leah helped her roll free of Elizabeth.

“She’s alive,” Heath said. “Listen to her heart.”

“Okay,” Leah murmured. Heath couldn’t bear to take her eyes off of Elizabeth. Leah retrieved the camp chair, set it beside Elizabeth’s body, then helped Heath into it.

Heath could feel the thugs as thick and dangerous clouds above her, like the shadows of coming storms. Shutting them from her mind, she concentrated on Elizabeth. “Wait!” she said as Leah started to roll the girl over.

Wiping her face hard to stir up the memories, she again saw the dude’s giant fist smash into Elizabeth, once in the side and again in the face. If E’s spine had been damaged, it would be near the base of the skull in the first three or four vertebrae. Climb guides were well versed in the emergency treatment of back and head injuries. Heath dug for the old knowledge. “Stabilize her head,” she said finally. “Ease your arms under her so her head and neck are cradled by your forearms, then drag her by the collar of her jacket.”

Washing garbage.

The phrase shot into Heath’s mind so jarringly she could see the words in the air between her and Leah. Stabilize the neck of a kidnap victim who would be moved or shot the following morning. If she was lucky. If not, the dude would take up where he left off.

It ain’t over till it’s over,
came another cliché, and Heath let go of futility. The fat lady could sing and be damned, she thought. Anna was out there. As long as that was the case, only a coward or a fool would give in.

“I need a sleeping bag,” Heath snapped without looking to see who heard, then waited for the expected blow.

Instead, the dude said, “Sean.”

Pot-gut leading, Sean brought a sleeping bag into Heath’s peripheral vision, dragging it by the tail like a great blue neon worm.

“Leah, could you lay it out beside E? I’ll stabilize her neck, then we can roll her together.”

“Mom?” Elizabeth was coming around.

“Don’t try and sit up,” Heath begged.

Elizabeth sat up.

“I guess you were right about the running thing,” she said. “I could be halfway to somewhere by now.”

“Damn straight,” Heath said, but she was too delirious with joy that Elizabeth was alive to put any power behind it. “Sit still,” she ordered as she ran her hands over E’s body and face.

“Broken rib or two,” Heath said when she’d finished. “That’s my best guess. Your nose isn’t broken, nor the bones around your eyes. Most of the blood is from the cut over your right eye. His ring must have gouged the skin there.”

Elizabeth leaned over and threw up a thin stream of bile.

SEVENTEEN

Anna was too far away, and the light was too fickle, for her to tell if there was blood in Elizabeth’s vomit. Taking comfort where she could, she rejoiced that the girl could sit up without assistance and speak in coherent sentences.

High sorrowful howling drilled through the cold night air.

“Fucking wolves!” Anna heard Reg yell. Then came the din of a gun firing wildly as he shot into the trees surrounding the camp.

Abruptly, the howling ceased.

It had been howling, not barking, yet Anna knew it was Wily. He’d reached back into his ancestry, leaned his head back, and howled with such heartbreak she wanted to howl with him.

From much farther away, howls began to haunt the night. Wild wolves answering the sorrowful call of their civilized brother. Reg’s gun hand shook. He reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out another magazine.

The dude stared at him. Reg didn’t acknowledge the look, but he didn’t begin firing into the dark again either.

Elizabeth was alive. Even had she been dead or dying, there was nothing more Anna could do. Her eyes were too full of filth even to watch and weep. Using the cries of her friends and the excited gabble of the thugs as cover noise, she crawled into the greater darkness in search of Wily.

She did not find Wily; Wily found her. He had dragged himself nearly to the camp, and his family. The thumping of his tail on pine needles announced his presence. Anna felt for him. The familiar touch of his fur, and the lack of any warm wet places on his hide, reassured her he’d not been hit by a stray bullet. Cross-legged, she gathered him onto her lap. Wily found her eyes and began licking. “Gross,” she whispered, but she didn’t stop him. His tongue was soft and wet and felt good cleaning what had to be a double handful of cockleburs from beneath her eyelids.

Jimmy was yelling about having shot a wolf. The wolves—the real wolves—were miles away. Much as she’d love to see a wolf, a half-blind woman and lame dog might look sort of tempting. Regardless of the logic, she wasn’t afraid. Part of her believed wolves, mountain lions, bears—all the creatures of the wilds—would give her a bye. Too much Disney as a girl, she suspected, the creatures of the forest nestling in Snow White’s skirts.

“You hit shit, dickwad,” Sean said.

“Let’s go,” Anna whispered in Wily’s ear. Tail feathers brushed over her forearm where it curled around his hindquarters. Eyes still stinging and tearing, Anna worked her way to her feet in stages. With no light to tell up from down, she was afraid she might fall. Enough strange noises and eventually even these thugs would get suspicious a creature other than a windigo or a wolf skulked in these woods. Once sure of her footing, she bent down and lifted up Wily. Wily wasn’t a big dog; still, he weighed close to thirty-five pounds. That was the upper limit Anna allowed herself in a backpack if she was going any distance.

Clutching the compliant dog, she made her way slowly away from the river deeper into the trees. Every few steps she looked back to see if the glow of the campfire could still be seen. It was the only way she could judge whether she and Wily would be out of sight of the thugs when the sun rose.

When the orange glow was entirely swallowed, and Wily’s weight had grown onerous, Anna stumbled into the umpteenth dead-and-down tree and declared it home for the night. Sitting on it, she swung her legs over, then slid to the ground. Wily’s weight resting on her thighs, her back against the log, they shared body heat. Fatigue and shock helped Morpheus drag her fast and deep into sleep.

*   *   *

Approaching footsteps woke
her. Gray diffuse light proclaimed coming sunrise. Their cloak of invisibility was gone for another twelve hours. A growl, more vibration than sound, came from beneath her hand. Wily neither let the growl grow, nor did he bark. Anna should have been surprised, but she wasn’t. By the glare of an LED light, she had seen inside him, and he inside her. They were comrades in arms. Words no longer mattered.

The steps closed in on the log she and the dog sheltered behind. After hours immobile, on the cold ground, with thirty-five pounds of dog flesh on her legs, Anna doubted she would have a chance leaping to her feet and running. Even if the thug didn’t shoot her in the back, he’d catch her almost immediately.

Playing bunny rabbit, she closed her eyes and hugged Wily. Bracken snapped. Asters, touched by frost, creaked as the man came closer. He wasn’t hollering to his pals. He wasn’t trying to move quietly. Ergo, he didn’t know Anna was there, didn’t know the bunny was frozen just beyond the log, its furry little brain convinced if it remained still enough the hawk would not see it.

The footsteps halted. Anna hadn’t the courage to open her eyes. Whoever it was was standing right on the other side of the log. The top of her head would be visible. Red-with-gray hair, a mess from her nightly adventures—the crown of her head might pass for a spray of lichen or frost-burned weeds. Thinking weedy thoughts, she waited for the cry of denunciation that would end her freedom and Wily’s life.

What came was the gentle sound of splashing, an intermittent stream of water striking an uneven surface. A thug was pissing on her tree. Explosive giggles threatened to boil up her throat, hysteria trying to burst forth. With an effort she kept breathing slowly and made not a sound. To calm herself, she imagined that the urination was intermittent because the bastard had prostate cancer. Advanced prostate cancer.

Eventually her listening was rewarded by the zip of a zipper and the noise of footsteps retreating through the snap, crackle, and pop of the frost-rimed undergrowth. Cold as she was, much as she, too, felt the need to empty her bladder, she dared not move until there was sufficient racket from the kidnappers and the others to cover the racket of getting herself and the dog up off the ground and into the day.

Losing their trail, or keeping up with the thugs, was not a concern. Regardless of no food and a gimpy dog, the day she could not follow a pack of city boys through the woods would be the day she’d find an ice floe upon which to sit and wait for a polar bear with her name on it.

EIGHTEEN

Katie, Elizabeth, and Leah lay on one sleeping bag, another spread over them. Jimmy was on watch. The dude had retired to the woods for his morning ablutions. Heath sat in her camp chair. She had not slept.

By the grace of God, Elizabeth was not badly injured. Her back and right thigh were bruised, and her stomach was sore to the touch. Her face was an advertisement for obedience: the right eye swollen shut, the lid shiny and veined as a peeled grape. Lips were clown-sized, the lower split and seamed with black blood.

Her teeth were all accounted for; the vision in her left eye was unimpaired, no blurriness, and she had no signs of mental confusion. She had slept without signs of nightmare.

The dude had not hit any vital organs. Not for a moment did Heath doubt he knew how to beat a person to death with his fists. She was convinced he had pulled his punches. Not because he harbored any vestiges of goodness, but because he needed Elizabeth mobile.

The damages Heath had not yet been able to measure were those to Elizabeth’s spirit, her sense of self. As a child she had had that systematically taken from her by a psychopath who’d abducted and imprisoned her and two other girls for several weeks.

With the help of an excellent therapist, and an internal strength Heath could only marvel at in a child so young, Elizabeth had not only recovered but built a new self that was strong and brave. The “brave” she had proven last night. What the dude’s beating had left of the “strong” remained to be seen.

E’s spirit was not the only one in imminent danger. After the aborted escape attempt, Leah would not speak a single word. Nor would she meet Heath’s eyes, or anyone else’s, for that matter. This went beyond her normal self-absorption. Heath wondered if she was ashamed that her wealth had attracted the thugs to the party.

As she thought of the scientist, Leah’s eyes opened. From habit, Heath whispered, “Good morning.”

“Why didn’t you send Katie with your daughter?” Leah whispered back with a malice that took Heath off guard. “They never would have shot me.”

So that was why Leah had turned to ice. Heath bit back the urge to snarl, “Without you, none of this would be happening.” Instead, she said, “I couldn’t reach Katie.”

“Elizabeth could have woken her.”

The horrible truth was, Heath had never given Katie a thought. Elizabeth had taken up all of her mental energy. “Did Katie rat E out?” she snapped before she could stop herself. “She saw what Elizabeth was doing.”

Leah reached for her glasses and put them on. “She didn’t see,” she said flatly.

Heath was not sure of that.

“I know she didn’t,” Heath lied. As Benjamin Franklin had said, if they didn’t hang together, they would all hang separately. “I should have tried to get them both out of camp. We have to stick together if we’re going to make it.”

Before Leah could take the white flag—or burn it—the dude returned to camp.

“We leave in twenty minutes,” he said. “Do what you need to do.”

Breakfast was whatever cold canned food had escaped the conflagration of the previous night. Sean, Reg, and Jimmy fished the food from the cans with their fingers and stuffed it into their mouths. None of the captives were offered food. There wasn’t enough for eight when four of them were swine.

Elizabeth managed to snag a can of peaches. She offered it unopened to Leah. Heath was so proud of her she felt tears prickle in the corners of her eyes.

Their trek along the river the previous day hadn’t taught the thugs they needed to carry water. When they thirsted, they drank from the Fox. They would have headed cross-country with nothing but hostages and what was in their bellies, had Heath not found the courage to speak up before the water bottles were destroyed along with everything else.

Personally, she would have loved to see them perish of dehydration, but the minute they got thirsty, they would suck down the water she, the girls, and Leah carried. Heath consolidated their water into two of the bottles, then gave the remaining two to the dude, who sent Jimmy and Sean to fill them. The water filter had gone into the fire.

Heath could, and did, hope the unfiltered river water would give them many nasty parasites. Sadly, there was no hope it would cause them to die miserable deaths.

Leah rescued a loaf of bread, lunch meat, and Katie’s day pack. The dude turned the pack inside out. Finding it empty, he let them use it to carry the food and water.

For the morning’s ablutions, the cable ties binding the girls’ hands were cut. Such was their relief, it leaked over into the realms of gratitude. This was ameliorated by the fact that the dude did not let them retire to the privacy of the woods to relieve themselves. After some negotiation, he permitted Leah to dig a shallow hole and two to stand as a human screen while another used it. During her backcountry career, Heath had lost most of her delicacy in the area of toileting. If she had to go, she would declare any small shrub as sufficient screening and do what needed to be done. What modesty had survived the outdoor life was destroyed when her back was broken and she was, for a time, dependent on others for everything.