Blood Rites (20 page)

“Get down!” Hillary screamed and ran to the front door to bolt it. A second bullet smashed into the window enlarging the hole. Hillary leaned against the thickest part of the front door, fighting her panic, thinking of what had to be done. “Stay low, close to the walls,” she told the others.

Dickey scurried into the corner and hid in a pile of dirty sheets and towels. Patrick began to follow, fell and sat, as curious as he was frightened by this sudden danger. Alan slid closer to the protective stones of the fireplace, pulling Patrick with him.

Hillary leaned against the doorframe and considered her options as two more bullets shattered what was left of the window. In the sunlit silence that followed, she heard a car coming up the drive.

She ran to the broken window, slammed and locked the shutters, then risked a quick stretch to pull their rifle out of the cabinet beside it. More frightened then her charges, uncertain of what to do, she nonetheless crouched in the darkest corner of the kitchen, prepared to fire at anyone who tried to come through the door.

A fifth bullet hit something metal outside. Hillary looked out the narrow smoke-tinted front window and saw the driver hiding behind his car, his gun pulled as he scanned the hills above the house, ready to return fire.

She cracked open the door, certain she could slam it shut if she needed to. “Who are you?” she yelled.

The man tossed a leather wallet that landed on the steps. Hillary snatched it up as the man yelled his reply, “I’m Elliott Winston, FBI. I’ve been following the man up there. Is this where I find Dick Wells?”

Instead of answering, Hillary bolted the door.

“Is he telling the truth?” Alan asked.

“I don’t know,” Hillary admitted. “But he is firing at the man on the ridge.” She peeked out the window, saw the driver run for the protection of the recessed porch, heard another shot. The driver aimed and fired, then fell.

The shots stopped. The man lay on the steps outside the door trying to push himself upright. Hillary saw blood on his shirt and her natural need to help surfaced, overriding caution. She picked up the man’s wallet and tossed it to Alan. “Does this look like an FBI identification to you?”

Alan looked at it. “I don’t know, I never saw one before.”

They both stared at Patrick who was sitting in the center of the floor with his eyes closed, his body rigid with concentration. “Is the man outside going to hurt us?” Alan asked him.

Patrick, his mind drawn to the wounded gunman on the ridge, didn’t respond.

“I have the rifle. If we drag the man in and he tries anything, I can shoot him,” Hillary decided. She ordered Alan to open the door and pull the man inside.

Alan didn’t want to, but he didn’t want Hillary to think he was a coward either, so he did as she asked.

The moment the door opened, the man sprang and then he had a handgun pressed against Alan’s throat. Hillary, still gripping her rifle, backed away from the door as Alan, kicking uselessly, was dragged inside.

“Where’s Dick Wells?” the man asked.

“He’s not here,” Hillary answered. “He’s been gone for two days.”

“Where?”

“In the mountains.”

“When will he be back?”

“Tonight,” she replied, wondering if this lie would help them.

The man swore and his grip on Alan tightened. “Drop the rifle,” he said. When Hillary hesitated, he pointed the gun at Patrick. “Drop it or I’ll shoot him.”

Hillary had met men like this before and she knew he wasn’t bluffing. She did as he ordered and glared at him. He looked at her, her eyes and face so familiar, and recalled where he’d seen her before.

She blanched at the look he gave her. “Get the baby a blanket,” he told her. She rushed to get one, then wrapped the naked boy in it.

“Leave him,” the man ordered. “Now get a pen and paper. I want you to write something down.”

Hillary found a pen on the table. She turned to get paper from the desk when he picked up the Austra report. “Here, use the cover of . . .” He saw the firm’s name and scanned the room, looking for more clues to this riddle. Then he saw Helen’s self-portrait above the fireplace and everything fell into place as long as he didn’t try to see any logic in it. “Where’s Helen?” he asked.

“She went with the men,” Hillary said, praying he wouldn’t detect her lie when she should have been more concerned with the truth she just revealed.

Russ picked up both reports, ripped off the last page of one, and thrust them into Alan’s hand. “Don’t drop them,” he said and handed the paper to Hillary. “Write this: ‘Stephen Austra, I have . . .’ ”

“That isn’t his name,” Hillary interrupted.

Russ looked at the boy on the couch. The resemblance to his father in features and coloring was already startling. “Of course it is. Now write—‘I have Alan Wells and your son. I will trade them for Dick Wells at dawn tomorrow . . .’ ”

“I lied. They’re not due . . .”

“The hell you did! Keep writing . . . ‘at dawn tomorrow on the road south of Tupper. Drive toward town until you see my car. Come alone.’ ”

Hillary set it on the table, picked up Patrick, and carried him outside. The boy squinted in the sunlight and held tightly on to Hillary’s sweater as Russ ordered Alan into the front seat. The inside handle and lock button had been removed and he used the key to lock Alan in before opening the rear door.

“Put the baby in the back,” Russ ordered Hillary.

Hillary understood that she wasn’t going but she felt neither fear nor relief, only a sense of duty that made her ask, “Listen, mister. Do you know anything about caring for babies?”

“I don’t have to.” Russ intended to kill her but her expression reminded him of Helen’s painting. Though almost-grown girls could be a problem, he decided to take the risk.

As they drove away from the cabin, Patrick screeched. Hillary clamped a hand over his mouth and wrapped an arm around him. His fingers were hard and curled, his entire body tensed in impotent squirming rage. He pulled away from Hillary and screeched again.

“Shut that kid up,” Russ growled.

“He’s a baby. He’s upset,” Hillary retorted.

Russ lashed out, his fist pounding the side of Alan’s head. “Now listen to me, all of you. One of you acts up the nearest one to me gets it. Anyone who tries to escape gets shot. If you somehow make it, I’ll shoot the others, understand?”

Alan, a hand pressed against his head, nodded. Hillary responded with a soft “yes.” Even Patrick was silent, staring intently at the back of Russ’s head, trying to understand the trouble he’d caused.

Alan touched two fingers to his forehead, a signal to Patrick to enter his mind. He felt the usual buzzing, then Patrick’s confusion and anger as they merged. Carefully, using the simplest terms he could, Alan told Patrick that this was a bad man, someone who would hurt them if Patrick misbehaved. He asked the boy to not talk to Russ. He sensed Patrick resisting this so he added that they would try to get even with the man if they could. Patrick nodded and relaxed in Hillary’s arms. Hillary covered his face with the blanket and he slept on the long bumpy drive away from home.

II

Dickey didn’t move from his hiding place after the others left. Instead he lay among the sheets in a tight shivering ball of misery and loneliness. When he heard his mother come home he rushed out of the pile, wrapping his arms around her thighs, snuggling close, taking comfort in her scent and the brush of her mind against his.

Helen fought down her fear as she picked him up and cuddled him until his shaking ended, then asked what had happened here.

Dickey didn’t have words to explain so he showed her instead—the loud noise of the shots and vague images of how Alan and Hillary had been tricked, how he’d hidden and stayed hidden until everyone had gone, how through it all Patrick had been studying the wounded man on the ridge above them.

Helen’s mind, focused by anger, extended. The man was still alive! She changed into a black knit jumpsuit and a pair of thick-soled hiking boots, ordered Dickey to stay inside, and began her climb. As she scrambled with all her newfound speed toward the ridge, Helen deliberately ignored all her options save one—she had to find the children, and if it came to killing, she would follow Stephen’s advice. Justification should be easy when her family was in danger. As for strength, it would come, she felt it coming already—more strength than she needed.

Fight down the human emotions, hold them back
, she reminded herself.
And whatever you do, don’t touch more than you must. Don’t feel him die
.

The man lay facedown on the ridge. The bullet had passed through him, the blood on his back already dried by the hot afternoon sun. He’d been unconscious since he’d been shot but still struggled to live. She rolled him over and pulled him out of the sun, then, with efFort, ignored her fear and entered his mind. Outrage. Betrayal. Scenes from the recent past. He had only intended to help rob them, to get even for the destruction of his traps, but the man who had paid him to spy on . . .

No! She remembered the killer’s face—how she had felt when she looked into his pale eyes one afternoon of her New York reception. And now this monster had her son!

Movement had reopened the trapper’s wound. From the rate of bleeding, Helen didn’t think he would live much longer. His life called to her and its remnants would give her strength, she knew, enough to do whatever needed to be done. Nonetheless, she ignored this instinct, found the man’s pack, and wrapped him in his sleeping bag, then put water and his rifle within reach. Survival was in his hands, not hers. Though she sensed four-legged scavengers waiting for the shadows of nightfall, she left the trapper to the fate he deserved and returned to her frightened son. And if the trapper died, as she believed he would, she would not bury him. He was not her family, nor any longer her kind.

Helen worked throughout what remained of the afternoon as if nothing had happened, unloading the groceries, sweeping up the shattered glass, waiting for the power of the night and the hunt that she knew would come.

At dusk, after she’d nursed the bewildered lonely toddler who had followed her everywhere that afternoon, she went into the kitchen. A glass of the salty Tarda water did not quench her thirst, the cold soup she began to devour made her gag. Her body demanded life and the strength it gave to sustain her on this quest.

And food was all around her. She need only call and take. As Helen walked up the steep front steps, her mind moved through the woods. Life paused, waiting and dreading the insistence of her summons.

She chose a buck, large and strong, and as it walked into the clearing it smelled the frightening scent of guns and man and shivered in spite of its size and power.

When it moved within reach, her hands shot out, grabbing its legs, pulling them sideways, forcing it to fall beside her. All instinct, she rolled her body on top of it, holding it quiet, cherishing her lover—the life within it.

Its death strengthened her mind, made her body taut, ready for the hunt. It would begin soon. She had no doubt of this. A mother could always find her child.

III

Alan wasn’t sure how far they traveled on the twisting roads. They could have been sixty miles from the cabin or less than five when Russ pulled the car onto a narrow rutted drive barely visible from the road.

At the end of it Alan saw a metal storage shed, the remains of a burned-out cabin and a fire pit still smoldering from recent use. Russ tied Alan’s hands and feet before dragging him from the car to the flat ground near the fire, then ordered Hillary out of the back. He unlocked the shed door, pulled the sleeping toddler from Hillary’s arms, and tossed Patrick to a girl sitting on a sleeping bag inside. Patrick, startled awake, instinctively twisted to land on his hands and feet, and as the girl caught him one of Patrick’s sharp nails left a deep scratch on the side of her face.

“Look, Donna, the kid’s got claws,” Russ said and laughed as he slammed the shed door and locked it. He returned to the fire and faced Hillary. The smile vanished. “Tell me why Stephen Austra and Helen Wells are up here?”

Hillary stared at him, watching his anger grow. He seemed about to explode when she thought of an answer, “They’re artists. They’re working and raising a family.”

“I read their obituaries, girl. Why did they go to so much trouble?”

“They wanted to be left alone.”

Russ’s anger vanished and he looked at her with a good-natured grin. “You’re lying, of course. But you’ll tell me the truth, now or later.”

As she glared at him, he remembered where he’d seen that expression before. Ah, yes, he’d done the right thing in bringing her here. She flinched and his first swing hit only air. He gripped her shoulders, his fingers bruising her back. “Tell me.”

She raised her knee but he was faster and she fell with him above her onto the uneven, rocky ground. The force knocked the wind out of her and before she could catch her breath, he kissed her. Convinced escape was hopeless, she stopped her struggles. Her eyes focused on Alan who lay a few yards away straining on the ropes and she silently begged him to please, please just be quiet and look away.

After an hour, the beating started. Impatient, Russ hit Hillary too hard. She lost consciousness and Russ focused his attention on Alan.

When he heard Hillary start to scream, Patrick twisted out of Donna’s arms and beat his body against the door, clawing at its rough wood until it was streaked with blood from his fingers. He stopped after the sounds outside stopped and huddled, shaking with misery, against the door.

Donna slid over to him and picked him up. Using the dim light that leaked through a tiny wire-covered window in the back of the shed, she began pulling the larger splinters out of Patrick’s fingers. She didn’t notice she was crying until Patrick began licking the tears from her face. The toddler’s thin fingers lightly brushed Donna’s cheek and she held Patrick tightly. “You poor, scared thing,” she crooned, then added to herself, “What in the hell is Russ doing with a baby?”

“I am not a baby, Donna Harper,” Patrick declared in his precise singsong voice.