A Roux of Revenge (28 page)

She stretched and felt a muscle cramp in her midsection. She stopped and took a deep breath, willing the cramp to relax. Then she tried again. She felt the edge of the blade with her fingers and positioned her hands so the blade was against the binding. Slowly, she moved her hands back and forth,
hoping to make a dent in the hard material. The blade spun away. She felt a trickle of something warm. Blood. She had nicked her hand. She waited until the blades were still. Then she tried again, very slowly and carefully sawing the plastic strip against the edge of the blade. Whoever owned this mower had taken good care of it. The workings were oiled, and the blades were sharp. She moved her hands
back and forth, willing herself to be patient. This could work. Finally, she felt the binding release and fall away. She breathed deeply and inched away from the blades.

Once her hands were freed, removing the sack over her head was easy work. It was tied around her neck with a strip of cloth. Her fingers were stiff, but she easily undid the knots. She pulled the filthy fabric off her head
and opened her eyes as wide as she could. It was dark. She listened carefully for any sound that might indicate her captor was returning. She heard nothing.

She had to hurry. She had to escape before he returned. She twisted around, feeling the rope around her midsection. She reached up behind her. It was looped through a large eyehook in the wall. She felt the entire length of rope until
she found the knot. It was hard working with her hands above her head. Numbness threatened her fingers. She must remain steady, patient. If she could do that, she’d be able to escape. She found the main knot and, taking deep breaths to keep herself alert, worked at the knot until it gave way. Quickly, she unwrapped it from her body and threw it to the side.

Pushing herself carefully off the
floor, she stood. Blood rushed to her legs. Dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. Should she take the time to try to get the binding from her ankles? Or would he return before she could release her legs? A sound outside the building alerted her. Was he coming back? She listened again, terrified to even take a breath. A scurrying sound. Some small animal in the field. She breathed a sigh of relief
and sat heavily on the floor. She tried to line up the blade of the lawnmower with the binding around her ankles. One of her sneakers was still on her left foot; the other foot was bare. She felt carefully with her bare foot. She leaned on her hands and positioned her feet against the blade, again moving back and forth gently against the plastic binding. This would take a while even if she was
able to keep the blade from spinning around.

A noise. A car’s engine in the distance. She held very still. Her heart started to race wildly. A sudden panic took hold. She shouldn’t wait. She scrambled to her feet and, shuffling across the floor, moved slowly, hoping she wouldn’t faint. With her bare foot she felt splinters in the old wooden floor. Reaching out, she held her hands in front
of her as she moved. She only hoped she was going in the direction of the door. She thought she was. She remembered the sound of the door latch and was sure it was in this direction. If only there were a window, something that would allow moonlight to filter through. She reached the opposite side of the room and felt all around with her hands. There must be a door here. There had to be. She only felt
a flat surface. Desperately she moved to her left a few inches. Her fingers touched raised wood—a doorjamb. She moved again, shuffling her bound feet. She found the knob. She turned it and pulled it inward. The fresh night air caressed her face. The smell of earth and damp leaves. The outside. She had no idea where she was, but she was sure the cornfield was ahead of her. She could hear the shushing
sound as wind washed over the stalks. Was she on the other side of the field from the Harvest Festival? She almost cried with relief. She managed to sit on the threshold and felt the wooden step below her. She pushed herself off the threshold and stood on the ground. If she could somehow get across the cornfield, she could reach help.

She couldn’t walk, but she could take small jumps and shuffle
slowly. The corn stalks would hide her. She had gone several yards into the field when she heard the sound of an engine. A car was nearby on the road. Was he coming back? Panicking, she tried to move faster. She felt dizzy. The drug he had forced her to drink hadn’t completely worn off. She wanted to move faster, but the ground was uneven. Too late she realized she was losing her balance. She
was falling. She reached out to break her fall. Something sharp hit the side of her head and everything went black.

Chapter 40

N
O ONE SPOKE
a word as Lucky drove through the night, her headlights flashing against tree trunks as she navigated turns. She followed the Old Colonial Road out of town for several miles
and finally reached the turnoff the locals called the Pilgrim’s Trail. She and Jack had bundled up in warm jackets and taken three emergency flashlights and a battery-powered lantern from the storage closet at the Spoonful.

Lucky wondered if they had embarked on a fool’s errand. This was only a guess on Eamon’s part. He might have been correct when he thought Taran was spouting nonsense about
the Stones, but since no one had a better idea, it was worth a try.

She prayed Janie was safe. Even if they located Taran’s cache, they had no guarantee Janie was still alive or would be released unharmed when the kidnapper regained what he thought of as his rightful share. Was the theft of the van from the impound lot an effort to locate hidden cash? If Eamon truly had no knowledge, then
it was Taran’s partner in crime who had stolen it. But where else could Taran have hidden a large bundle? The travelers lived in such close quarters, it must have been impossible to keep a large amount of cash with him.

“Is this the way?” Eamon asked from the backseat.

“It is. This road is the long way there, and we’ll have to hike a bit. I thought it would be better than going near your
camp.”

She saw Eamon nod in her rearview mirror.

As teenagers, she and her friends would sometimes visit the Stones. There were legends galore about the structure—that a woman had hung herself there; that during a full moon the ground would ooze and pull visitors underground, never to be seen again. Some of the boys claimed they heard weird cries in the night. Invariably one of them would
tell ghost stories until the girls, laughing nervously, screamed for him to stop. One boy, she remembered, had been teased mercilessly. The others had picked on him until he agreed to spend a night alone at the Stones. In the light of day, it seemed ludicrous to believe in hauntings, but in the dark in the woods the energy that surrounded those rocks was palpable. That boy hadn’t returned the
following day, and his parents, worried sick, had learned what he had done. They found him in the clearing where the Stones stood just before dawn. He was terrified out of his mind. He would never say what had frightened him so much. Even the boys who had teased him let him be. As for herself, she had always felt a sinister presence around the ancient stone structure, as though the malevolent ghosts
of long ago people haunted the place.

Lucky put the car in low gear and proceeded slowly up the dirt trail, finally reaching an overgrown area where she could drive no farther. “It’s not far from here. We’ll have to walk the rest of the way,” she said.

“Be careful.” Jack turned around to address Eamon. “Stay as close as you can to the old path. There are some old artesian wells in this
area. The ground might not be stable.”

They climbed out of the car. Lucky heard scurrying in the underbrush. The moon was waxing but still in the first quarter. This would be a difficult search. She handed the flashlights to Jack and Eamon. “Let’s all stay close.”

She turned and detoured around the overgrown bushes, finding the well-worn path up the hill. Lucky led the way with Eamon taking
up the rear. They climbed single file, going slowly in deference to Jack, each of them shining light on the path ahead and pushing branches out of their way. No one, not even teenagers, Lucky realized, had taken this route to the Stones for a very long time.

She was the first to reach the clearing. A silent, unearthly edifice faced them, exactly as she remembered it from years before—a mystery
structure from a forgotten time. What people had built these? And marked them with strange symbols of a forgotten language? Huge flat stones piled upon each other created the outer walls of the structure. A layer of moss, grasses and ivy covered the outer roof. Lucky shone her flashlight at the entrance, a black maw to a frightening enclosure. The opening to the underground chamber was only six
feet in height, but inside, the ceiling, also created from huge stones, stood ten feet from the rock flooring.

They stood in silence, staring at the opening. All three flashlights were aimed at the rectangular entrance. The night had grown cold enough that their breath was visible in the air. The wind was stronger here at the top of the hill, creating an eerie moaning sound as it swept over
the nooks and crannies of the rocks.

“Where do we look?” Lucky asked.

Eamon paced around the structure more than half buried under the encroaching hillside. One wall, a partial wall and an opening were all that were visible. He shone his light over what he could see of the outside surface. He turned to them. “This vegetation hasn’t been disturbed, at least not for a long, long time. We
have to search inside.”

Lucky shuddered, frightened of going into the earth on a night like this.

Eamon must have noticed her reaction. “I’ll go first,” he said.

Jack and Lucky waited until the light of his torch had disappeared. They followed him through the outer door along a path that sloped downward into the chamber. The room they stood in was rectangular in shape. Lucky guessed
it was ten feet wide and fifteen feet long, half buried into the hillside.

“Where do we start?” Jack asked.

“Let’s go over the foundation stones. Look for any signs of digging or disturbance. If anything was buried here within the last few years, we might be able to see it. Look for any indication a stone was moved,” Eamon continued. “Let’s do this together. With three sources of light
and all of us focusing, we stand a better chance of not missing anything.”

Eamon moved to the far corner, and Jack and Lucky stood on either side of him as they methodically went over every square foot of the chamber. None of them noted any misaligned stones or disturbed earth. A half hour later they continued on to the sloping pathway of the chamber, examining it to no avail. Discouraged,
they returned to the lower chamber.

Lucky turned on the lantern and placed it on the stone floor. She shone her flashlight at the ceiling of the structure. “This place is amazing. I never fully appreciated this when I was a kid.”

Jack looked at her sharply. “And what were you doing here?”

Lucky smiled sheepishly. “Nothing much, just fooling around with the other kids.”

“Good thing
your parents didn’t find out. You’d a been grounded for life.”

Eamon shone his light at the opening to the world above. “These were constructed to allow the light of the rising sun to shine upon a particular spot at a certain time of year.”

“You mean the spring equinox?” Lucky asked.

Eamon smiled. “We celebrate Beltane, the beginning of summer, on the first day of May.”

“So if
the rising sun comes through that opening on a certain day, then . . .” Lucky turned in a half circle away from the opening and shone the light on a large square stone, slightly different in size and shape from the others surrounding it.

“That symbolism would appeal to Taran,” Eamon said, moving toward the square stone. He studied it, running his finger around the circumference of the rock.
“I do think this has been moved in the recent past. Look at this.” He pointed his flashlight to illuminate fresh scrape marks on the stone below.

Jack and Lucky moved closer and aimed their flashlights at the rock that Eamon struggled to dislodge. His face became red with the effort.

“My fingers are smaller. If you can move it just a little, I can reach into the groove and pull,” Lucky
said. “Jack, can you hold both flashlights so we can see what we’re doing?”

Jack nodded, and with a flashlight in each hand, he shone the light against the rock as Lucky and Eamon struggled. They heard a grinding sound, and suddenly the rock came away so quickly, it almost fell. It was only a few inches in thickness. Behind it was a small cavern. Eamon picked up his flashlight and aimed it
into the opening. They all saw a flash, a glint of something metallic.

“Here goes,” Eamon said. He reached inside and, grasping the object, dragged out a dark green box of sturdy metal, perhaps two feet in length and eight inches in height. He stared at the container for several seconds and took a deep breath. Lucky and Jack were silent, hoping that whatever they found would free Janie. Lifting
the heavy box out of the opening, Eamon placed it on the stone floor.

Lucky trained her flashlight on the box, as did Jack. The light reflected eerily off the metal where the paint had worn away, and danced around the walls of the chamber. The box was secured with a small hasp. Eamon tugged, and the lid came open with a screech, revealing stacks of bills held together with paper bands.