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40

The last thing Peanut Smoot thought he ought to do was to drive an hour down to South Carolina to deal with his kids. It wasn’t smart to be close to the kidnap victims until it was all over. It was just practical that the leader had to be protected for the good of the organization. He was tempted to go by Click’s, send him down there and put him in charge. He needed to get Buck the hell out of there. Dixie was capable of dealing with the pair herself with the twins helping, but she couldn’t do that and deal with Buck if he went off on a tear. However, despite Peanut’s best efforts to toughen Ferny Ernest, Click didn’t have the hardness the other kids had. It was better to keep Click away from violent situations because he had his mama’s squeamishness. If it wasn’t for his computering and other mind-necessary potential, the boy would be as useless as a milk bucket under a bull. The twins would do whatever you told them, but you had to make sure they had instructions they couldn’t screw up.

Peanut’s back was feeling better thanks to the pills, and the fire Sarnov had built in his gut was down to the glowing coals. He pulled over and backed into a driveway that had trees on both sides and waited there for fifteen minutes watching to see if anybody was following him. As far as he could tell, none of the people in the vehicles that passed by looked like cops in a hurry to keep up with him. He also checked the sky for helicopters. He pulled out of the driveway.

Peanut passed the Utzes’ store that was a half-mile from his tubular steel gate. Just past the store he took the left fork, drove to his gate, climbed out, unlocked the padlock, and pushed the gate open. He didn’t like getting mud on his best boots, but he was alone and had to get out of the truck. After he drove the truck in, he had to lock the gate back up and drive to the warehouse down the narrow road that was just a dirt path with some gravel scattered on it in places.

The four-wheelers were all parked in the open equipment shed outside the warehouse. Peanut looked into the shed and saw that Buck was roped to one of the support poles, his pants down around his ankles, his butt exposed. He reminded Peanut of a child who’s lost a game of cowboys and Indians. Buck knew the sound of Peanut’s truck and he didn’t turn his head to look at his father. The twins came out of the woods with their shotguns across their chests. They were smart enough to wait until they were sure Peanut was alone before showing themselves.

“What the almighty hell is this?” Peanut demanded, pointing at Buck’s backside.

“He was having a fit, Daddy,” Burt said.

Curt added, “We had to tie him up to calm him down. And he still ain’t calmed down.”

“Untie me,” Buck screamed. “You stupid chunks of pig vomit.”

“What kind of fit?” Peanut asked.

Curt said, “He was trying to screw that woman, beating her up and all like he does, and about to kill her.”

“He wanted to fight us about stopping him like Dixie said. He tried to hit Dixie, and we couldn’t let him do that,” Burt added.

“You should have hanged him by his goddamn neck,” Peanut said, glaring at Buck.

“You want us to hang him?” Curt asked disbelievingly.

“She wanted me to give it to her,” Buck yelled. “Been asking for it since she got here. It ain’t my fault.”

Peanut backhanded Buck, leaving a large red stain on his cheek. “Leave this mule tied up a while,” he ordered, storming over to the warehouse, unlocking the padlock with his key, and going inside.

Peanut flipped the breaker that turned on the lights inside the warehouse so he could see better. He saw that the dogs’ door was cracked open, and was glad somebody was thinking. Dixie opened the trailer door before her father got to the porch steps.

“Hey, Daddy!” she said excitedly. “I didn’t know you were coming out here.”

“The hell’s going on, Dixie?” He smelled bourbon, but didn’t say anything. She probably needed a belt after going up against her older brother.

“That damn Buck. He screwed her up bad,” Dixie muttered. “I came back with the twins after I found them, and I caught him in here beating the cold crap out of her. Had her on the danged island deal. He’d tore her clothes off and had his pants down ready to do it. I swear, as the Lord is my savior, he’d a killed her. And he’d a killed us if he could of for stopping him. You know how he gets, Daddy.”

“He said she was asking for it,” Peanut said, realizing as he said it how ridiculous it was.

“A classy woman like that would as soon back up to a billy goat as Buck. Nobody wants to get beat up and screwed with her baby right there. Buck ain’t right, Daddy.”

“He has issues, all right,” he agreed. “Where’s she at?”

“Your room.”

Peanut opened the door and looked in at a naked and trembling woman coiled up in his old bed. Her hair was matted with dried blood. He slid the door closed behind him, angry and thoroughly disgusted that his son couldn’t keep his pants on when it was so important to business.

“I thought I told you to keep her doped up on that stuff I gave you.”

“I did. But see, the bottle got left open somehow and it got knocked over in the sink. I give the kid a good dose of nighttime cold-and-fever medicine. It keeps him out for a few hours at a time. I could give her some, or I got some bourbon, I think.”

“You ain’t drinking on this job, are you?”

“You know I wouldn’t do that,” Dixie said defensively. “Just a bracer for my nerves.”

Peanut reached in his pocket and took out the pills he had for his back. “Mix up these in a shot of that cough medicine. Dose her good with that and I’ll run back up to the drugstore and get some more of the good stuff. She needs to be comatose. But for Christ’s sakes, put some clothes on her.”

“Like what?”

“Like a old T-shirt or something. She ain’t a wild damn animal. And if Buck comes back through that door, you kill the son of a bitch, and that’s my order. He wants the gal bad enough to defy me and he can just spend eternity with her taking a dirt nap. He sure as hell won’t ever do us any good if he don’t learn to control his urges.”

“He’s out of control sometimes, Daddy.”

“Look, Dixie, all you got to do is keep her and the kid out for a few hours. We’ll go on and get rid of them before sunrise. It’s too dangerous keeping them alive. But I was serious about Buck. We’re just gone overdose them with the good stuff. No sense in torturing the poor things without a reason.”

“It wouldn’t be Christian,” Dixie said. “Abusing them more than we have to.”

“Right.” Peanut kissed Dixie on the forehead. “I’m trusting you to do this right, girl. Just lay off the liquor till afterwards.”

Peanut went out into the warehouse, and as he passed the door to the storage room, he pounded on it, making a hollow drum sound, and he heard the dogs scurrying around, afraid—knowing it was him. They had been conditioned so that anybody, aside from the family, was food for them. They stayed in a steel room, ate out of ripped-open bags of dog food, lived in their own filth until one of the kids hosed it down. A vet had taken out their vocal cords when they were puppies. Peanut didn’t want his dogs to bark at intruders; he wanted them silent so if somebody broke into the warehouse looking to steal from the Smoots, they wouldn’t realize they were screwed until they were on the ground being torn limb from limb. Sure as dead’s cold, his dogs would do it right. Wasn’t like he hadn’t tested them before. He had been thinking that he might just try them out on Sarnov when he got a chance.

He wasn’t worried about the Dockery woman escaping, because between the dogs and the locked door, she couldn’t any more get out of here than she could turn herself into a cat. But if the dogs got her, there’d likely be blood evidence left in the dirt. He watched enough forensic TV shows to know what the cops could do with just a tiny amount of blood. Since this involved a federal judge, they’d use the FBI technicians to sift each dirt crumb for blood, he was sure of it.

Peanut went out the door, padlocking it behind him. He went directly to the shed and stood beside Buck, still lashed to the post. Peanut took out his knife, snapped it open, and showed Buck the blade so it reflected the light from the shed’s bare bulbs.

“I’m going to say this one time, son. If you never listened to me before, you better do it now.”

“Damn it, Daddy, I already told you—”

“Shut up and listen!” Peanut growled, putting the blade against his son’s throat. “By God, if you so much as go into that barn, and I mean step through that damned door right over there for any reason, I will kill you. You will stay right out here in this shed. You got that?”

Buck nodded his head, eyes downcast.

“It was her—”

“I don’t care if she sticks a tittie up to that padlock hole over there, you just look at it from way over here.”

The twins giggled.

Peanut cut the ropes, waited for Buck to pull up his pants, then handed him a twelve-gauge shotgun that was leaned against a four-wheeler.

“Come on, y’all,” Peanut told the twins. “I’ll give you a ride up to the gate.”

Burt and Curt climbed into the truck’s bed. Peanut looked in the rearview at Buck, who was in the shed shooting the bird at the twins for tying him up. He sure as hell wasn’t mad enough to tell his daddy to go screw himself. When Peanut got to the gate, he stopped for the twins to jump down from the bed and waited until Curt opened it up.

“Don’t either one of you move from right here until I get back. Anybody comes in through that gate that you don’t know, you shoot them. Hide over there together,” he said, pointing, “and watch the road. Anybody but me comes through the gate, blow their damned head off.” Peanut wanted the twins on the same side of the gate so in case they got excited and happened to shoot they wouldn’t risk killing one another.

“I mean anybody you don’t know. Strangers or cops.” Peanut drove through the gate, hoping they would do exactly as he told them. The twins were not retarded by a long shot, but they thought differently.

He prayed he hadn’t left any “idiot” loopholes they might fall through and do something disastrous. His father had often said that you can’t make anything foolproof, on account of fools are ingenious at finding new ways to mess things up. Boy, was that the truth.

41

When the man Lucy Dockery learned by eavesdropping was Dixie’s father arrived, she had already gathered herself together and had explored the room using the flashlight. She put her fingers over the lens to filter and concentrate the beam into a weak slit of light. While she’d been exploring, Lucy had touched enough to leave her fingerprints in enough places that no matter how well these people cleaned, they’d never erase them all. The door in her room, which she supposed was a required emergency exit, was padlocked.

The windows in the bedroom were covered with overlapping strips of duct tape to seal out all light. The room’s windows had heavy steel-screen shutters on them. She discovered that the lock hasp was being held fast by a several-inches-long, threaded machine bolt. A flat washer prevented the bolt’s head from falling straight through the steel ring. Getting the screen and the window open was a breeze. Lucy wished they had used a large nail, because a nail would have given her a tool, and she’d have been able to use it to put one of Buck’s eyes out, or give him a facial scar to remember her by. The window behind the mattress was very close to the warehouse’s wall, but she was sure that once she got the screen open she could slip out and drop to the ground without Dixie hearing her. She’d found a spray bottle of human scent killer that she could use. Once she got out of the trailer she would have to somehow seal the dogs in their room before they came out. The noise from the TV and the thick layer of dust should help cover her footsteps. If the dogs went into a barking frenzy and alerted Dixie, Lucy would have to defend herself as best she could with whatever she could lay her hands on. She had never heard the dogs bark or even growl, so she figured they were trained not to. She had to neutralize Dixie, Buck, and maybe the twins as well. She knew that she either had to overpower Dixie and get a key to the warehouse door, or neutralize Dixie and lure whoever was outside the warehouse inside so she could get out through the open door. Then she had to make sure they couldn’t get out and chase her to get a head start.

When Dixie’s father arrived, Lucy hid the flashlight under the mattress and curled up on the bed to play possum when he looked into her room. She hoped she looked worse to him than she was. Buck had bruised her up good, but with scalp wounds, bleeding is often disproportional to severity. If she was going to get away, they had to believe she was incapable of escaping.

Lucy was certain her father had the authorities searching for her and Elijah, but she couldn’t depend on help arriving in time, and couldn’t hold out any hope for a rescue.

Seconds after the man closed the door, he and Dixie moved into the kitchen. Lucy slipped off the bed and put her ear close to the base of the door and listened to their conversation. It confirmed what Buck had said about her future prospects, but now she knew they were going to kill Elijah, too. Now she no longer had anything to lose.

She didn’t have until Monday. She had a few hours at best. If Dixie’s father got more of the drug they had used on her, she had to act before he returned with it. Once they dosed her with that again, she would never be able to do anything but lie there unconscious until they . . . No. That wasn’t going to happen. At least not the way they planned. She wouldn’t go to her grave quietly or easily.

The makeshift dose that Dixie was going to use on her was a frightening thought, but she’d deal with that when the time came.

She waited for the door to the trailer to close before she sneaked the flashlight back out from under the mattress. Then she turned it on for a moment, slid the window carefully closed, put the flashlight back beneath the mattress, and lay on the bed. She had to make a plan, go through the options one by one.

She forced herself to concentrate, running through a mental list of what she had seen out in the warehouse, and how she could make use of those items for her and Eli’s flight.

She had no idea what was beyond the building’s walls, so once she was outside, she’d have to play it by ear.

Eleven-letter word for exiting hell.

DELIVERANCE