The Captive Page 12

  Brooke tore a match off and struck it, held it to the siding.

  “There,” Anita said, as the wood caught.

  The fire spread like a blush.

  EMILY TOLD THEM they’d been foolish. There would be no mystery about who had set fire to Delia Cawley’s home with her in it. The town could use this fresh violence as an excuse to hold Edmund even longer. Callum, on the other hand, was moved to the point of tears, grinning wetly up at them from his bed.

  “That’s just the oxy,” Anita said.

  That night, Brooke didn’t sleep. She paced the property, checking the trip wires, making sure the cameras on the perimeter were broadcasting to the old smartphone Robin had rigged for the purpose. She moved the Rottweilers close to the house and sat on the porch with a handgun, watching the phone obsessively.

  Brooke had done what loyalty required of her. She had honored Edmund’s trust. So why was she sick with shame, gnawed by images of Delia burning in her house? Such weakness could serve no purpose other than to distress her. Better she should return to the calm place, or else the mindless anger that had propelled her to Delia’s in the first place. But neither calm nor anger would come. All she felt was trapped.

  The Hollands had changed. It had happened so gradually that everything seemed normal, but when Brooke looked at herself now, she saw how survival had warped her—all of them—past sovereignty into something more brutal.

  Between the house and the drive shed, Emily’s vegetable garden had grown full and high with summer. Lettuce, peas, Swiss chard, beet greens, each leaf with a skin-like sheen, as creased as the palm of an old hand. Brooke loved her family; she couldn’t help it. Whatever Edmund and Emily asked of her, she knew she would give.

  But not Robin. Sitting in the dark, watching the phone and listening for the dogs, Brooke decided that Robin must not end up trapped, as she was. He wasn’t like the rest of them, built to fight. If Edmund could be jailed, if Callum could be gunned down, if Brooke herself could be so twisted up with guilt that she would gladly have sunk beneath the earth in the garden, what odds did her little brother stand?

  He could still live a different life. He still had a chance.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Jay reported that Delia had survived. She’d climbed through an upstairs window and made it out with some bad burns and a fracture. Her house was destroyed, but she was believed to be staying with Frank Jr. and Angeline and their boys across town.

  Brooke should have been as disgusted by this news as Anita. Instead, while her sister stormed off to the lab with Jay to conceive new and better ways of disabling the Cawleys, Brooke could barely conceal her relief.

  It was a reprieve. She made up her mind not to waste it.

  She found Robin sitting on the lawn with Aaron. The little boy was wrapped comfortably around his uncle. It was a hot afternoon, storm clouds crowding in, rolling distant thunder.

  “You have to go,” Brooke said to Robin, pitching her voice low. Emily and Pauline were in the house, changing Callum’s bandages.

  “Where?” Robin was only half listening as he bounced Aaron in his lap.

  “People are getting through all the time now.”

  “What do you mean?” He turned to look at her.

  “The city, Rob.”

  He widened his eyes.

  “Leave?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  “They have school,” Brooke said. “And jobs, and proper Internet. Phones that can actually call someone.” She twitched the old smartphone in her hand. When the camera stream dropped out, the phone would revert to searching for a cell signal, running out its charge looking for something that wasn’t there.

  Aaron’s attention was caught by the phone and he reached for it. Brooke let him look at the home screen: the famous picture of them at the Warren—Emily in the truck bed with her children around her, Robin present in the shape of her shirt.

  “Dad would kill me,” Robin said.

  “Go before he’s out.”

  Robin’s brow furrowed. “Will you come too?”

  Brooke shook her head and watched her brother’s face fall.

  “But you’ll be okay,” she assured him. “You’ve got money set aside. You can figure it out. Take a computer, or a phone. You can look up what you need to know.”

  “Why can’t you come?” he asked.

  Brooke looked out over the property that had been in the Holland family for generations. The garden’s listing scarecrow—a pitchfork dressed every spring in a new set of cast-off clothing—the drive shed with its columns of black names, the line of tall basswood trees that hid the road, the distant miles of blue-green forest threaded by the silver ribbon of the Warren: a landscape so well known to her that it felt like looking in a mirror.

  “I can’t leave now,” Brooke said.

  Aaron lost interest in the phone and squirmed out of Robin’s arms to stand wobbling on the grass. Robin offered him a hand for balance, but Aaron ignored it, stepping forward with an expression of grim resolve, so much like Callum. He fell back on his diaper-padded bum and looked back at them, as if unsure whether to cry.

  “It’s okay,” Robin said.

  Aaron, reassured, got back to his feet. Step, step, fall.

  Brooke watched her young nephew toddle awkwardly forward. The thunder rolled closer.

  Step, step, step, fall.

  10

  Someone was shaking her. A red glare swept across her closed eyelids.

  “Wake up! Wake up, Brooke!”

  “What? What? I’m not asleep.”

  “They’re gone. The kids are gone.”

  “Where?” Brooke sat up, squinting. The beam of the flashlight jerked away, illuminating the duck blind’s plastic sides.

  Milo held the flap of the blind open, shining the flashlight out on falling rain. It was still dark. “I don’t see any tracks.”

  “They’re outside? They’ll get soaked.” Brooke moved to the entrance, shoving aside the remains of last night’s disgusting dinner. Then she noticed that the sleeping bags were gone. And the girls’ boots. And one of the packs.

  “They’re gone, Brooke,” Milo repeated.

  Brooke grabbed the flashlight from him and searched the shelter. The rifle was there, but the girls had taken the first aid kit, their spare clothes, half the food and water. The rain tapping hollowly on the plastic sheet must have masked the sound of their preparations.

  “They can’t be gone,” Brooke said. “They can’t.”

  “I knew something like this would happen,” Milo said.

  “Then why didn’t you say something?”

  “I did! I told you it was a mistake to keep going. They wouldn’t have run away if you hadn’t—”

  “Cawley’s out there, Milo.”

  “No more Cawley! Drop it, Brooke. He’s gone. He’s halfway to jail by now. It’s the kids you have to think about. You scared the shit out of them. Would you snap out of it? Forget about Cawley.”

  “But, Milo, he’ll—”

  “They’re trying to go home. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If we retrace our steps from yesterday, we’ll catch up with them.”

  Milo snatched the flashlight back and pushed out of the shelter with the remaining pack.

  Brooke sat paralyzed by panic, watching the flashlight sweep across the darkness outside. She couldn’t have lost them. She couldn’t. The only thing that mattered, gone while she slept.

  They had no idea what they were walking into.

  Brooke felt on the platform for the rifle and threw herself out the door of the shelter, following the flashlight that was now bobbing away through the trees.

  The heavy rain had erased any tracks the girls might have left. Brooke and Milo didn’t speak as they moved north through the trees. The swamp was their only landmark. Brooke prayed that they would catch up with the girls before it curved and they had to decide whether to follow it or set off through undistinguishable forest.

  The rain turned to sleet and then snow, c
utting their visibility to a few yards. They called out for Holly and Sal as they jogged alongside the swamp. Brooke knew it was reckless to reveal themselves so loudly when Cawley could be anywhere, but the snow was now falling so heavily that they might otherwise pass within twenty feet of the girls and not know it. Anyway, she thought grimly, if Cawley did hear them, at least it would draw his attention away from the kids.

  Dawn came, dim and dreary through the snow, and the edge of the swamp curved westward. Here, if Holly had her bearings right, she would have left the swamp behind and struck a path through the forest.

  “Sal’s so slow, we should have caught up to them by now,” Milo said. “I can’t see anything in this snow. We should split up so we can cover more ground.”

  “No,” Brooke said, her eyes sweeping the ground in the weak light. She looked for places where trees had sheltered the ground from snow. No footprint. No strand of hair caught by a low branch. “How would we find each other again?”

  “We can meet in Buffalo Cross,” Milo said. “At the Legion. Whoever finds the girls takes them there and waits for the other.”

  “And what if Delia’s still there?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman at the Legion. I told you.” Though now Brooke couldn’t remember actually saying the words out loud.

  “You saw someone at the Legion?” Milo squinted through the snow. “Who’s Delia?”

  “Forget it. We can’t split up. If Cawley finds you, and I’ve got the gun—”

  “God, Brooke! Enough about Cawley! That’s not going to happen. Do you understand me? That’s not real. Something’s wrong with you. You should be worrying about finding the girls before they’re completely lost. And we stand a better chance of that apart. I’m going this way.” He gestured into the trees.

  “I can’t let you do that.” Brooke focused on the ground. She surveyed it inch by inch for a clue. She saw bear scat next to an uprooted stump. Bears would be slow and logy this time of year, heading into hibernation. Bears weren’t the threat.

  “No one’s letting anyone anything, Brooke,” Milo said. “I’ll see you in Buffalo Cross.”

  “Shh,” Brooke said, holding up a hand. A short distance away, just visible in the increasing light of morning, was a dark heap at the base of a pine tree. The heap wasn’t moving; still, Brooke crept toward it with the gun raised.

  The boot heels at an awkward angle, the plaid fleece collar collecting snow.

  Lorne was face down on the ground with three dark bullet holes through his coat. Brooke reached down to feel for a pulse. The stubbled skin of his throat was already cold.

  “Damn it,” she said.

  “Is that—” Milo broke off.

  The deputy had been shot in the back, at close range. The snow had covered all signs of the struggle except one: in a sheltered place below a thick-boughed spruce, Brooke found horse tracks angling north into the trees, toward the highway.

  The hip holster where Lorne had worn his revolver was empty.

  THEY RAN, SLOWING to a walk only when their lungs burned and then speeding up as soon as they could breathe again. By the time the snow stopped, they were clear of the forest, climbing through open hills where copses of pine stood like dark arrows against the white. They had come this way the day before, but snow had changed the landscape, and Brooke couldn’t be sure these were the same hills.

  Brooke stopped to take her bearings on a stretch of hillside where a boulder stood in the lea of a bald maple. It was an hour past dawn. There was a brighter patch behind the clouds off to the right: east. That meant they were walking north, as they should be, aiming for the highway. So where were the girls?

  “There’s someone on that ridge,” Milo said.

  Brooke turned. Across a wide lap of snow to the west was a rocky spine that ran down the next hill all the way to the forest; on the ridge, moving south, was a mounted figure. They were too far to see the rider’s face, but the horse was big—a draft horse with a pale coat.

  Brooke crouched slowly, motioning to Milo to do the same.

  “You think it’s him?” Milo squinted across the hillside at the rider descending the ridge.

  “It’s not him,” Brooke said. “It’s her.” She unslung her rifle and sighted. Too far.

  She’d be exposed if she crossed the open hillside and came at Delia straight on. Brooke scanned the dark line of trees that curved along the base of the hill all the way to the opposite ridge. Something moved near the base of two tall hemlocks. A bit of red, a shape. A face—two faces.

  “It’s them!” Brooke gasped. Holly and Sal were right at the edge of the woods. They must have followed the swamp too far west. “There. Those two tall trees at the edge of the forest. See? Holly’s red scarf. Can you see them?”

  Milo climbed the boulder to get a better view. In a panic, Brooke remembered Delia on the ridge opposite. Before she could warn Milo down from the boulder, a shot split the air and he fell back on the ground.

  “Milo!” Brooke dove to where he lay. “Where is it?” Even as she asked him, she could see the hole in his sleeve, blood beginning to stain the snow under his arm. She noted absently that the angle of the shot seemed wrong.

  “Something hit me,” Milo said, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Stay down,” Brooke said.

  She twisted around. The girls had vanished: where she’d seen them, there were only trees.

  No, no, no!

  But of course they would have taken cover when they heard the shot. Brooke marked the two tall hemlocks; she just had to find that spot and follow their trail. She glanced to the opposite ridge, empty now.

  She turned quickly back to Milo and opened his jacket. The wound had clipped his forearm. There was an inch-wide crater of missing flesh, but it hadn’t hit the bone, and the bleeding would stop with pressure. She noted again the angle of the shot, all wrong for Delia’s position. Unzipping her coat, she tore a strip from her T-shirt, wrapped the fabric hastily above Milo’s elbow, and yanked tight.

  “Pack it with snow,” she said. “Put pressure on it.”

  “Did someone shoot me?”

  “Listen, Milo: the kids. If I don’t come back, you have to get the kids.”

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “I’m going after them. If something happens— Do you understand? Get the kids if I don’t come back. You saw where they were. Take them to Maxwell.”

  Milo tried to say something. Brooke turned away. There was no time. She shimmied away from the crest of the hill to avoid being seen and sprinted toward the woods. After thirty or forty yards, she crept back to look again.

  The snowy slope was empty and trackless. Delia had not reappeared on the other ridge. She considered the direction of the shot that had hit Milo; it could only have come from the forest. There was someone else here: Cawley.

  Brooke burst from her hiding place and ran, crossing the exposed flank of the hill in plain view. If he was in there, she needed to know where.

  The first shot came in seconds, disappearing in a puff of snow a few feet ahead of her. Now she knew his position: this side of the hemlocks, at least a quarter mile closer than Holly and Sal. Brooke ran faster, making steadily for the trees. Two shots, three, four. A bullet grazed her pant leg, missing the flesh.

  The shots stopped as she entered the forest and bent her path west toward Cawley. The snow muffled her footsteps, but it also made her unsure of the ground. Twice, she stumbled in an unexpected hole. Zero chance she’d get in a shot with the rifle before he heard her coming. And at this range, the revolver, quick to draw and to fire, would give him the advantage.

  She came to a place where the ground was trampled: Cawley had shot from here, and then moved once Brooke reached the woods. Why?

  The edge of the forest hid the hemlocks from here, but Cawley would have been able to see Delia. And Delia’s trajectory would have sent her far to the other side of the hemlocks. It was possible that neither of them had seen the kids.
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br />   The stallion’s hoofprints led into the trees. Cawley was luring Brooke in against the swamp, increasing his cover and shrinking her chances of escape while Delia boxed her in from behind.

  If Brooke followed, it would mean abandoning Holly and Sal.

  But if she went to Holly and Sal now, her trail through the snow would lead anyone else right to them.

  For a moment, Brooke was still.

  Milo knew where to look. Milo, whom she’d left bleeding and vulnerable in the snow. He just had to stay out of sight until it was safe. If he waited for Delia to pass down the ridge and into the woods before he went to the girls, he could get them to Buffalo Cross and away.

  How would he explain why she’d left them?

  That didn’t matter. As long as he took them north while Brooke moved south, drawing the danger with her.

  It felt so wrong to leave them, so unbearably wrong that Brooke moaned, folding in on herself. Their faces. The smell of their hair. The smell of their hands. Their weight, as babies. As toddlers. Their voices. Their soft touch in the dark a thousand times, when they’d called out and she’d gone to them.

  Grief dragged through her body as she thought of all the ways she should have been better, the kind of mother they deserved.

  She could see no alternative.

  She hoisted her rifle and stepped onto Cawley’s trail.

  11

  The stallion’s hoofprints ended half a mile in, at the swamp. A line of bent and leaning reeds showed where Cawley had ridden into reflectionless black water, where Brooke could not follow. She stood looking out at the gray spurs that had once been trees. She would have to circuit the swamp to find Cawley’s exit point, and all the while she would be ignorant of his position, whether he’d waded clear through to the other side or circled back to come at her from behind, whether he would go east or west.

  One or the other, she told herself. Just choose.

  Brooke turned east. If nothing else, she might lead Cawley and Delia that much farther from the children.

  She kept the edge of the swamp in view, walking in the trees, where she’d have some chance of cover if Cawley came at her from the water. Some way along the broad belly of the swamp, she took note of a granite escarpment that slanted away into the forest. Hardly any snow had settled on the steep rock face. She passed it and, a hundred feet farther on, veered toward the swamp, stepping into the reeds until dark water seeped up in her footprints. Then she walked backwards along her own trail, weighting her steps onto her toes. When she got to the escarpment, she stepped sideways onto a lip of the bare rock.