Sticks and Stones (21 page)

He looked just as surprised as her.

“Sandra?” he asked, like he was making sure, and then he was looking back in distaste and grabbing her arm, leading her out. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t be in here.”

“I was looking for you.”

“Why?” He gripped her arm and started off down the sidewalk. He walked fast and she had to jog every two steps, keeping up with those long legs.

“What happened?” she gasped and tugged at her arm until he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Jack?” she asked. “Was it… Did she—”

“I –
Jesus
,” he sounded angry, hands tangling up in his hair. There wasn’t much to grip, just muss it around a bit. He looked frustrated and plain old sick and tired. “I saw the marks. She came up to me – and my first reaction was
cute
. Legs up to here. Long neck. Nice lips. But you just—” Jack swept one hand out. The gesture was short and angry, eyes full of
something
when he looked at her. “You make me doubt everyone.
Everything
. So, of course, I
looked
. And I saw the fucking tracks on her arms. This is all – I
can’
t
…” His throat closed off, voice strained as he glanced away, like he didn’t know whether to keep yelling or just give up in defeat. “Damnit, Sandra. I can’t look at a person without wondering if they’re someone you saw me kill.”

She reached for him, going for his shoulder, but Jack was moving again. “Hey,” she called after him, jogging to catch up. “
Wait
for me. You know that’s not what I wanted. I want you guys safe, you know, not…” She glanced sideways at him.

“I
know
. I do. It’s just… It’s all I see now. I go in for a drink and end up wondering if something horrible’s going to happen. Like maybe that guy’s gonna get my knife in him one day. Or the bartender’s going to get gunned down. Or the girl…” He laughed, harsh and bitter. “And this time I was right… She
was
the one. It’s so stupid.”

“It’s not.”

“I hate it here.” His voice was strong, tired and heavy, and Sandra wanted to tell him that so did she.

All she said was, “Yeah,” just as low and weary.

“I want to leave this craphole.”

“Okay.” Sandra closed her eyes and tried to find her balance, tried not to feel so relieved. “I’ll let Danny know.”

He kicked an old beer can, crushed and lettering faded. It scraped loud across the cement. “When d’you think we can leave?”

“Soon,” she whispered.
Please, soon
.

“Good,” Jack said and Sandra closed her eyes, let Jack’s booted steps lead her along.

“Yeah,” she whispered again.

“Hey,” Jack echoed her quiet tone, fingers to her arm. “It’ll be okay, right? I didn’t go home with her. So far … so far, we’ve done good, right?”

“So far.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack grinned and shrugged. “Maybe I’m starting to believe Danny, too.”

Her laugh hurt. He moved in and she saw Jack’s kiss coming from a mile away. He sure looked surprised when her hand stopped him. “Why not—?” he began to say, but she was already looking back to home, back to Danny. Jack sighed an explosive breath.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Sandra tried her best not to meet his eye, quickening her pace.

He kept up fine. “Always knew he’d steal my girl.” He didn’t sound all that upset. Sandra didn’t bother to point out that she hadn’t been his girl for a really long time. It didn’t seem all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Jack shook his head and this time his laugh didn’t seem to hurt nearly half as much. They were both smiling by the time they reached home. Danny met them at the door. Sandra packed the bags as the boys packed the car. Somewhere out there, a baby boy was going to go missing. Elizabeth would rename him Robert. She’d take him home. And he’d cry. Eventually, he’d end up exactly like the six other boys Elizabeth Rightly had taken away.

Sandra snapped the front door shut behind her and joined the boys by the car.

Danny slammed the trunk shut and they got in and drove away.

They’d find her and that baby boy. And Sandra wouldn’t let her own boys fall.

Chapter Twenty-One

They were
in a small town seven miles outside the northern border when Jack disappeared.

He went out for lunch and never returned. It took five hours for Sandra and Danny to return to the motel, no leads and no clues. Danny sat on the edge of the messy bed, head in his hands and staring at the vomit green carpet. The wallpaper sported tiny cartoon palm trees and the chair Sandra sat in creaked. She stared at the ugly brown painting on the wall and tried to think very, very hard.

She hadn’t dreamed this.

Jack had gone for lunch. He’d left the restaurant and then…

And then nothing.

Her head felt raw, like she’d scrubbed it with vinegar. She wanted to crack herself open, peer into all the little nooks, as if that would magically let her see what was going on. “I didn’t see this,” she said out loud.

Danny swallowed and rubbed his hands across his face, cheeks and chin full-on dark with fast-growing stubble. “We’ll find him.”

Except Jack wasn’t dumb, as irrational as he sometimes was. He was a fighter. He wouldn’t just go down. He would’ve made a scene.

Sandra fell back against her chair, wood creaking loudly. They’d questioned the waitstaff, found out when Jack had been in – found out who he’d ordered from and who he’d flirted with. It hadn’t helped. He was simply gone.

“We’ve missed something.”

“What? There’s here and there’s there and there isn’t much else in between.”

Sandra’s hands jittered across her knees. “Okay,” she said. She got up, grabbed her coat and snagged Danny by the shirt sleeve. He could’ve stopped her, but he followed when she tugged, closing up the room and remembering the car keys – didn’t even ask why.

They drove to the restaurant in silence. They parked in silence and got out in silence and Danny followed her out into the middle of the lot. Sandra couldn’t feel a thing. It made her chest clench, her fingers, too; tight fists that nearly hurt.

I
can do this
, she thought. She had to. This was like Danny getting hurt, way back when, something she
should
’ve
seen, something she should have stopped. She wouldn’t let this be too late. Like it had been for Lem.

Sandra let her eyes wander over cracked pavement, a sea of gray and pebbled stones. Danny hovered at her back, far away as though he worried he’d interfere if he moved too close. Unwilling to take that chance. He hadn’t taken his jacket and stood with his arms crossed, wind buffeting his shirt and pulling the fabric tight. He looked properly hopeful and completely ass-tired and Sandra forced her eyes back to the ground. No one from the diner came out to talk to them or make them go away and she counted that as a small blessing.

It took ten minutes to find something. Sandra’s stomach dropped as she turned. Precariously balanced and crouching, her shoulder blades itched as Danny moved up behind her. The blood trailed a short distance – disappeared at one of the empty parking spaces. Danny’s silence felt like a horrible thing.

She knew it was Jack’s blood.

Her hands shook. Her knee buckled out of place, slid to the side, and her hands fell to the ground. The parking lot was gritty beneath her fingers. Slowly, she reached forward.

She was tall, standing, the wind ripping into her face and her hands. There was a grin on her face –
Jack’s
face – he was talking to someone. There was a glare in her eyes. Too bright. It was a man. His smile was wide – bright-toothed. Familiar to her. His jacket was old black leather, jeans just as beat up and torn.

“Sure,” Jack was saying, Sandra playing catch-up.

“Thank you. Really.” The speaker looked down, head turned. His hair was dark, shaggy cut hanging just over his ears. His side-eyed gaze was just as dark. “They said the tow truck will take half an hour to get here. I’d rather not wait, you know?”

Sandra felt her cheeks stretch, her teeth show, grinning. “I know what I’m doing. I used to be a mech—”

The world went black and Sandra cried out, hands going to the back of her head. Danny was at her side, kneeling now, hand on her arm. “What was it?” Her fingers combed through her hair, looking for blood, but there was just Jack’s. There. At her knees.

One person for distraction. Another from behind.

“What was it?” Danny asked again, urgency making her look up. She thought her eyes told the whole story because Danny stood, so fast that Sandra was sure she’d blacked out, lost seconds. But she was still on her knees, still holding herself upright, and Danny’s jaw was tight, anger burning bright and deep.

“Someone saw something,” he said and Sandra didn’t envy whoever he got hold of first; his fists looked ready to fly. “It was right here. They
saw
something.”

Sandra’s knees creaked as she got to her feet. Her head felt wooly. There was no blood on the back of her head, but she’d felt the hit all the same. “I’ll check around back,” she said when Danny made a move toward the restaurant’s front door. He nodded, went inside, and Sandra used the nearest car to prop herself up, leaving a sweaty handprint behind.

As soon as she could stand straight, Sandra snuck a look around back. There were no windows on the right edge of the building, just a rough expanse of stucco and two great big garbage bins. There was a metal door further back. A sandy-haired man in an apron smoked a cigarette there.

She startled him when she got close. Or maybe it was the cigarette burning his hand that startled him.

There was a smear of red high on the thigh of his jeans.

If Danny were there, he would’ve thrown a punch, gotten the man down to the ground, hooked a leg and held him there, made him talk until they found out where they’d taken Jack. What they had done.
Why
.

Sandra went for his balls.

Then she gripped the back of his neck as he went down.

And got nothing.

A sound came out of her, frustrated and high, but all he did was wheeze, turn a bit on his side and curl up with his eyes closed.

Sandra kicked him once more, made sure he wasn’t going to get up, and then went to find Danny.

~

“Where is he?”

Daniel’s mask was in place. His knife, too. It was a good thing there’d been no windows behind the restaurant – though Sandra assumed everyone there would suspect them anyway. They’d put up too much of a fuss to escape notice. And now, with Fred Phyllis missing
(or so his license said)
, someone would come looking.

They wouldn’t be found, of course.

Sandra had gone back, gotten the car, moved it, taken everything out of the motel room and left the key behind. They were in the woods behind the restaurant. Far enough away that the car wouldn’t be seen.

Far enough Fred wouldn’t be heard, either.

“Where,” Danny said, “is my brother?”

Fred spit blood. There was a bruise on his temple from where Danny had knocked him out. He was having trouble tracking and kept tugging against the ropes holding him tied to the tree. He wasn’t feeling it yet, but he would. Sandra had felt rope burns enough to know.

“Where is he?” Danny snarled.

Show your belly
, Sandra thought. Fred shook his head and sneered.

Danny hadn’t hurt him yet, not any more than it had taken to get the man somewhere they could question him, but Sandra didn’t expect that to last long. Fred snarled, strained against the restraints, saying “Fuck you,” and “I ain’t telling you nothing,” saying a lot without ever saying anything at all.

Daniel picked up his knife, circled the man, kept his voice deep down low. “You tell me what I want to know.”

“Fuck you,” Fred said again. He didn’t have that big of a vocabulary or much creativity. “You won’t do anything to me. You don’t have the balls.”

Daniel smiled and with his knife drew a long line of red through Freddy’s shirt.

Fred didn’t stay strong for long. He didn’t stay silent either. And Danny didn’t do much, but it was enough to make Sandra back up, get worried, get scared, because she hadn’t seen
any
of this but it felt like being at a precipice. And when they fell, there wouldn’t be any going back.

“Fuck man,” Fred said, and he had one more line of red, not hurt badly, but he was squealing all the same, so terrified that there were rings of white around his eyes. He wasn’t so tough at all and Sandra figured she should’ve known that. What kind of man hit someone from behind?

“I just did it for the cash. I wasn’t serious about the whole thing, I swear! He said he was getting back at some asshole for stealing his girl. I just dropped him, then went back inside. I don’t know where your brother is, okay? I don’t know!”

“It wasn’t serious?” Danny asked. His voice was extra quiet, skittering across Sandra’s nerves and sticking her hair up all over her neck. “You’ve got his blood on your pants.”

Fred didn’t know when to shut up, “Got it on my hands, too.”

Danny’s face went blank. And when they walked away, Fred Phyllis wasn’t dead, but it seemed like a close thing. Even if it wasn’t.

Really, Danny had barely touched him.

Sandra’s stare followed him all the way back to the car. Pine needles made their footsteps hushed. The wind cut deep. The air felt damp, the beginnings of rain. She was tempted to wipe a hand across her face, but she’d gotten mud on her fingers from the trees and the ground and the rope she’d helped loosen from Fred, telling him to count to five hundred before he made a move.

If you don’t
, Danny had said
, I’ll
come back and you’ll dig your own grave
.

She thought he was scared enough to listen.

Danny wouldn’t look at her. “I know,” he said when the car came into view. He’d been dangerously close.

“As long as you know,” she said.

The car had golden pine needles on the trunk.
Tamarack
trees
, she thought. Autumn should’ve felt vivid, colorful, but everything here just felt old with decay.

Danny unlocked the car, got in; Sandra followed. They sat. Too long. But neither knew where to go. Jack was still missing and their life was in duffel bags, packed up in the back seat. She hadn’t dreamt a thing, and Danny’s fingers were seized permanently around the wheel, and Jack hadn’t had time to leave a clue.

The clock was counting down the seconds.

Sometimes, Sandra thought about the dream, about how it felt as though the world was waiting for them to fail.

“Drive,” she finally said. “Just drive.”

It was all they could do.

~

They returned to the motel.

Sandra was worried that Jack would phone. She was worried he’d gotten away and didn’t know where to find them.

Danny ran a hand over his face, swung the wheel and turned the car around. Checkout wasn’t until noon the next day.

Back at the room, Danny picked the lock. They found themselves back in their spots, one on the bed and the one in the rickety chair. The carpet was even more nauseating now. The room felt hot, stifling after being outside in the sharp breeze. The air was dead, smelling faintly of old cigarettes.

Eventually, Daniel went out to the car, brought in his bag with their guns stashed inside and sat down to clean them. He sharpened his knife, too, a grating rasp of the whetstone. His pointed look said she should clean her weapons as well, get ready, because they might be going off to war.

Sandra hadn’t touched her gun since she’d stopped thinking of shooting it. Shooting
them
. She didn’t look at it unless they made her. And they weren’t cruel enough to do that.

Rasp-rasp
of the knife blade and Sandra burrowed into her shirt, into the jacket she still wore, hating the sound. Danny had cut Fred and Dan Murray had cut her. And now someone was probably cutting Jack.

“He’ll be fine,” Daniel said. It was all he ever seemed to say. Sandra wished she could believe it.

The knock at the door startled them both. Daniel palmed one gun, hid it against his leg and threw the corner of the blanket over the weapons on the bed. He half hid behind the frame as he answered – not in front of the door in case whoever it was had a gun like him.

He didn’t. It was the manager or the kid of the manager, some snot-nosed boy barely out of his teens, annoyed at having to play messenger. Sandra wasn’t all that much older than him, but she felt aged by decades. The kid glared at Danny, didn’t know he had a gun so close to him, might have had more respect if he had.

He’d already be dead if her
boys had gone the way of her dreams.

“You’ve got a message,” he said, face sporting a permanent scowl. “Your brother called. He left this.” He held out a paper with a messy scrawl of blue ink. “Said he’d be at this address. Come pick him up.” He turned around, returning to the office, and Danny shut the door, paper clutched tight in his hand.

“Not Jack.”

“Not Jack,” he agreed.

They packed up the guns, Sandra got her knife, and they locked the room all over again. “Still think he’s okay?” she asked.

This time Danny didn’t answer.

~

It was a house. It edged on an abandoned lot. There was a parking lot behind it, completely empty of cars and full of weeds and cracked asphalt, and nothing on the other side except the road that curved around. “Trap,” Danny said. They were the first words he’d spoken in half an hour and Sandra nodded, worrying the edge of her shirt between her fingers. They drove past, stuck behind a blue van with rusted fenders, and parked up the road next to an out-of-business dry-cleaner. Then they followed the sidewalk and Sandra wished there was a back alley to hide themselves in.

Whoever it was, he’d chosen well.

They stood at the fence and looked carefully. They couldn’t see movement. “What do we do?” Sandra asked, feeling lost. The boys had never taught her how to sneak up on an enemy. Lem hadn’t either. She felt like she was going to let them down.

Again, Danny didn’t answer. She took that to mean he didn’t know either. She felt like someone should have a plan.