He stood, holding the broken table leg with its bent crown of nail. He leaned as far as he could. The nail caught the edge of the lampshade and came free. He tried again, pulling the lampshade toward him, every muscle straining against his chains.
The lamp tottered and it fell to the floor.
Darkness. But he saw as the light died where the lamp fell. He groped in the dark, used the nail to catch the lampshade now on the floor. He could feel the counter tension of the lamp’s power cord, still mired in the outlet. If the lamp’s cord broke he was finished.
The lampshade crumpled, but he kept pulling on the top of the lamp. He heard the plug fall to the wooden floor. Breathless, he pulled the cord toward him.
His fingertips caressed the narrow edges of the plug’s metal tips. Thin and strong.
Luke inched to the bed leg. Groping in the dark, he wedged the plug against the groove in the bolt.
The screw turned.
He fought down the hammer in his heart. He worked with the calm of a jeweler setting a tiny stone. Don’t rush, don’t lose patience.
He pulled the first screw free. It worked. Four screws on each base of the cot’s legs. Sixteen screws total. Fifteen to go.
He worked steadily in the darkness, without panic. He unscrewed the first leg and worked the chain loose. Moved to the second. Now the back legs of the bed were both free. He started on the third leg. Then the fourth. His fingertips felt raw.
And with the last leg removed, he shivered in relief. He staggered to the far wall, the chains still on his ankles and wrists, but free from the bed.
The barest glimmer of light began to touch the edge of the curtains.
Flashlights?
Whoever was coming would hear him, running with the clinking shackles. He remembered Eric had taken the keys to unlock the shackles from underneath the flowerpot. God only knew if Eric or Aubrey had returned them.
If he went out the front door whoever was coming would see him. He opened the room’s door, shuffled toward the back door. He tested it. Locked. He undid the deadbolt, eased the door open, and waddled out, trying to keep the chains silent.
He closed the door behind him.
The night lay heavy and dark against the trees. The rain had stopped, and the wind hissed in the pines. Luke could hear voices and footsteps on gravel. A man. A woman. For a crazy moment he thought Eric and Aubrey had returned. But too much time had passed, and they had been far too anxious to escape and leave him to his fate.
‘Here’s the problem with blowing up casinos,’ the man said. A bit of complaint in his voice. ‘It’s mostly going to affect just one industry.’
‘No,’ the woman said. ‘It makes entertainment venues likely targets. There’s a trickle-down effect, to theme parks, movie houses, resorts …’
They clearly weren’t cops coming to rescue him. Blowing up casinos sounded like a plan hatched by one of his Night Road buddies. His heart boomed in his chest.
Luke heard another mumbled cursing - from the woman - and then the key working the lock, the front door opening.
Luke ran along the edge of the house, toward the front door, clutching the chains closer to him. He lay in the dirt close to the cabin. Risked a look around the corner. The front door was open and light came from the rectangle of the door. The flowerpot had been moved from its base.
Maybe the keys to the shackles were still there, waiting for Henry if he’d changed his mind about the ransom. He stood, slowly, trying to see if he could spot a silvery glint on the step.
‘We’re screwed,’ he heard the woman say. She had a low, raspy voice. ‘Or maybe he was never here.’
‘Someone was chained to that bed. He dismantled it. We better report in,’ the man answered in a heavy baritone.
‘He’s in chains, he can’t have gotten far,’ she said. Her tone was like an echo in a cave of wet stone.
‘Maybe someone came and collected him. Whoever grabbed him changed their mind, took him again.’
‘No, Mouser,’ he heard the woman say. ‘They would’ve just unlocked him or killed him on the bed. Luke pulled an escape trick.’ He heard a foot kick at the broken desk.
Mouser? And this woman knew Luke’s name.
Luke put his eye back to the cabin’s corner. It wouldn’t take them long to search the upstairs and the downstairs. Maybe just a couple of minutes. He’d have a few seconds alone with the keys, if they were still under the flowerpot. Then he could run like hell, vanish into the woods.
The woman stepped out onto the front step. She was tall, thin, wearing jeans. From the light inside the cabin, he could see a crown of dyed white hair and a thin tracery of scar along her jawline. She held a gun in her hand and a flashlight in the other. She walked toward the woods. Away from him.
Luke would wait for the trees to swallow the woman, and then he’d hurry and retrieve the keys to the chains if they were there. At least get his legs free. Then he could run.
She stepped into the heavy darkness of the trees.
He turtled toward the flowerpot, trying to move quietly enough where the crinkle of the chains sounded like the wind nuzzling the pines.
Luke knelt by the flowerpot. He heard the man call out from deep inside the house, ‘There’s food in the fridge.’
He tipped over the flowerpot. The keys to the shackles were gone.
Behind him the woman called, ‘You’re not very smart, are you?’
‘I guess not.’ Luke stood and faced her.
The woman wasn’t even bothering to point the gun at him. She walked close to him, and aimed the flashlight into his face. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way. I’m amazed you even got halfway free.’
So close, he thought. He noticed she wasn’t aiming the gun at him and wondered if she even considered him a threat. In a flash he thought: you’ve studied these people but you’ve never faced them. This is different than reading a book or a loudmouth posting on the web. You can’t analyze them, you just have to fight them. Because you know what they’re like. Single-minded. Brutal. Reasoning hadn’t worked with Eric; it wouldn’t work with these two.
Luke felt the quiet scholar in him easing backward, something new and primal emerging.
‘Mouser, he’s out here. Still in chains. Looks like he’s auditioning for
A Christmas Carol
.’ She laughed, a glassy sick giggle. ‘He looks like Jacob Marley. C’m’ere, schoolboy.’
Luke jumped at her, hammering into her before she could lift the gun, shoving the flashlight so it smacked her in the face. He fell to the grass with her and lassoed a length of the chain around her neck. She swung the gun at him, nailing him in the head, but he was tall and strong and desperate. He got her in front of him, the chain a choker across her throat. He knocked her down, pried the gun from her fingers as he yanked her back to her feet.
The man - Mouser - rushed into the doorway. He aimed his gun at Luke’s head. ‘Let her go.’
‘No. She comes with me.’ His voice broke, like a teenage boy’s. Luke put the gun on her head. The chain was a twisted braid in his left fist, the gun in his right hand. Don’t think, just do.
Mouser lowered the gun and Luke saw the gesture for what the woman’s laughter was - a sign of contempt. This couple weren’t remotely afraid of him, not even with him having a gun.
‘So you stay there,’ Luke said to him. ‘All right?’
‘Luke Dantry,’ Mouser said. ‘We’re here from your stepdad. Here to help you, find out who took you.’
‘You’re not the police,’ Luke said.
‘No, we’re better. Don’t be a stupid kid. Let her go and we’ll call him.’
But they were talking about bombing casinos and resorts. ‘I just want the keys to these shackles,’ Luke said.
‘You don’t know what a can of kick-ass you just opened up on yourself.’ Mouser sat on the porch step, with a sign of anticipation. Ready for the show to begin.
It was not what Luke expected. ‘Where are the keys?’ he yelled. The woman began to choke and he realized how tight the chain was across her throat. He eased his grip. But barely.
‘I’m going to …
obliterate
… you,’ the woman said.
‘Snow means what she says,’ Mouser added.
‘Where are the keys?’ Luke yelled again at Mouser. He tightened the chain again.
The woman pointed at Mouser. ‘His pocket.’
‘Toss the keys to her,’ Luke said.
Mouser didn’t stand. ‘Snow? How you want to go here?’
‘Give him the keys,’ Snow said.
‘Whatever you say,’ Mouser lumbered to his feet, dug in his pockets and tossed the keys. Snow caught them deftly.
‘Unlock me. The feet first.’
‘You think you’re smart because you escaped from a bed?’ She unlocked the chains binding his feet. Her skin was cool against his ankles. He pulled her back straight to him; she didn’t resist. He kicked the shackles free.
‘Be still and I’ll unlock your hands,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll play for real, schoolboy.’
If he lowered the chain from her throat she could fight him, even with the gun. Their confidence was daunting. He tightened the chain around her throat again, just enough to pull her close. ‘Not quite yet,’ Luke said. ‘Let’s walk to your car.’
‘Mouser has the car keys.’
‘Car keys,’ he called.
‘No,’ Mouser said. ‘Come on, Snow, enough. Let’s get going before the sky opens up again.’
Snow stayed still. ‘I just wanted to see what he’d try. What he’d do. It’s like watching a hamster work a maze.’
‘I’m going to shoot you is what I’ll do,’ Luke said.
‘Then shoot,’ she said. Her calm was maddening.
‘I … I need you alive for now. You come with me to the car.’
‘And we’ll be hot-wiring it?’ she asked. ‘You saw that in a movie, right, schoolboy?’
‘Come on.’ He gave the chains a harder pull than he meant to and she gagged.
‘For every second of pain you cause me, I will give you an hour of it.’ The icy tone of her promise chilled his skin. He shouldn’t be afraid of her but he was.
‘Maybe he doesn’t have the keys to toss me. Maybe you do,’ he said in a harsh whisper in her ear. ‘You. Mouse!’
‘Mouser.’
‘Whatever. You stay on the porch. I see you come off, I shoot her.’
‘How you want to play it, Snow?’ he asked again. The rain started again, hissing in the pines, thunder booming in the distance.
‘Do as he says,’ Snow said.
They hurried backward down the long path toward where he and Eric had come through the gate. The rain boomed out of the clouds, thick again. Mud sucked at their shoes, darkness drank them up except when the lightning flashed in the wet heavens.
Luke blinked, trying to keep sight of Mouser, looking back over his shoulder toward the gate. The metal chains grew slick in his grasp, from sweat or rain.
‘Empty your pockets.’
‘I don’t …’
‘Shut up! Prove to me you don’t have the keys. Pull out your pockets.’
Snow made a little grunt of anger and jammed her hand into her pocket. She stumbled against the gun and he pulled the gun away from her head. Suddenly she lashed her head back to catch him in the face. He tottered and she pivoted and powered him into the mud. The hand holding the gun slid deep into the muck. She wrenched free of the chains, nearly breaking his arm. She aimed a brutal kick at his head but he rolled and caught it on the upper back. He raised the mudglopped gun but she knocked it free from his hand, with a savage and precise kick. The gun was gone.
No gun. She was screaming for Mouser.
He lashed the chains at her face, she ducked back and fell, and he turned and ran. Away from the gate, from the glow of the automatic light. Into the rain-drenched blackness.
The grass rolled down a slight incline toward a dense grove of pines. He dodged around the trees; the faint glimmer from the gate lights receded.
He had no light for his path except the inconstant slash of lightning. He stumbled and fell, ran ten more feet into a pine, the bark scraping his cheek. Lightning again showed him an opening in the growth and he ran toward it. He spotted the silvery barbs of a wire fence. He eased below the bottom strand, sliding in the mud, slicking him from head to foot.
Luke stumbled past the fence and back into a stretch of unpaved road. Roads led, eventually, to people. He tried to get his bearings. To his right, the road bent into the darkness where he’d run from. To his left the road went straight. Toward civilization.
He ran hard to the left, grateful for the clean, smooth unobstructed line. He was tired of dodging pines.
He ran. Aware of nothing but the bright pain in his legs and the pounding in his chest and the chains weighing his arms down.
Suddenly headlights exploded into life behind him, a loud growl of tires speeding. Engine revving. The lights, low to the ground, cut across him, pushing him to run faster, as if the light had weight. The car accelerated toward him. He powered hard to the right. A gully cut down along the side of the road, topped by another wire fence. The car couldn’t go across the gully.
He slid down into the mossy-wet ditch, hauled himself up the side and skidded under another wire fence. The pine growth was heavy here. The rain strengthened, the wind rose. He bounced off the trees, trying to run as fast as he could. He roped the chains around his arms to silence their clinking.
He could hear the sound of pursuit behind him, moving past the trees, running. Suddenly a flashlight sparked on, caught his shoulders in its glow as he ran up to a jumble of fallen pines. He slid under the brush and where his leg had just been he heard a pop like a bullet. But it couldn’t fly straight, not in this rain.
A scream gelled in his throat and he moaned it away. He scrabbled into the earth and slid under the pyramid of tumbled, fallen pine trunks - there was a narrow passageway, formed by nature. Hoping to God he wasn’t sliding into a dead end, or a rattler’s nest. He saw an opening, slithered through it, staggered to his feet.
He ran, for several more minutes, before he collapsed against a heavy trunk.
Gasping, nearly drunk with exhaustion, he heard an engine ahead of him.
Soaked to the skin, he followed the fading roar. A minute later he stumbled out into another road. Paved. A painted line gleamed on the center, under a heavy cover of incessant rain. A highway or farm-to-market road. In the far distance he saw red taillights, a car. Inching into another lane because of a dark shape huddled on the road’s shoulder.