Buddy, chin on the floor, neck at an uncomfortable angle, stared at Anna. He'd said nothing since reviving. Said nothing and missed nothing.
Beth folded back the clean canvas tarp Buddy had kept over the spot-less, dustless floor. A square of flooring about eighteen inches on a side had been rough-cut from the planks with a chainsaw. A long hinge, the kind used on big cabinet doors, ran along one side. Opposite that was a heavy dead-bolt. Strips of rubber were nailed onto the door overlapping the cuts. Why Buddy had needed to seal cracks so narrow nothing larger than a cockroach could escape through them, Anna couldn't guess.
Beth squatted, staring at the crude trapdoor. "This was the sky."
"Don't open it!" Alexis cried, as if once the trap were opened all the light and life of the world would be sucked down it.
Beth shot the bolt. It moved quietly, effortlessly. She seemed surprised by this.
"No!" Alexis wailed. Buddy never moved, never blinked. Beth raised the door, using the bolt as a handle.
The smell of a cesspit poured upward, that uniquely foul odor of human degradation masquerading as human waste. The stink was so thick Anna half believed she could see it, a black fog threatening to poi-son them all. In a swift move she kicked the trap shut. The rubber gaskets snapped in place. Hell was once again trapped below.
"That's where you were kept," she said flatly. It must have given Buddy such joy to know the children being so desperately sought were under the feet of the searchers the whole time, that while two armed rangers slept in the next room he could bring out one of his victims, rape her and put her back. That must have been especially piquant. How-smart he must have felt, how powerful, how superior.
Rage burned the stench from Anna's nostrils and for a moment she saw red. Literally. The room filled with a mist the color of fresh blood and a sound like that of a winter sea. What she'd assumed all her life was a metaphor was instead a rare phenomenon.
Till it passed she stood perfectly still, afraid, should she move, she would spontaneously combust and burn down this filthy cabin and the man who'd made it so. The psychic fire died, leaving cold ash. Vision cleared, then super-cleared, the edges of objects hyperdefined, human features thrown into high relief.
The piece of rope she'd sought had found its way into her hand. She returned to the main room and squatted in front of Buddy, close enough he had to crank his neck to look up at her.
"There's a theory in psychology circles that people tend to manifest their internal lives in the external world. Those whose minds are dark and chaotic live in lightless messy houses. You. This cabin. Neat as a pin for the public. A festering sewer beneath."
Having delivered this clinical observation, she continued to look down at him for a few beats of her heart. His cheek was on the worn planking, his neck twisted and kinked as he stared up at her with one eye. He resembled nothing in nature, not a snake or a toad or a wounded bird. Not a person. He didn't look human to Anna, but like a soulless alien from a sci-fi movie who'd taken on human form.
It was easy to kill things like that. Was this how he saw her, the girls, the boys he'd killed back East, how he saw everyone but himself?
The loneliness of it struck her with sufficient force a teaspoon's worth of the cold ash within her soul stirred, an ember of humanity glowed. Not enough to pity him but enough to let him live.
Buddy said nothing, just watched as she hobbled him and pulled him to his feet. In the predawn chill the four of them began the long walk out. Anna sent Buddy first, hands cuffed behind his back, steps limited by the eighteen-inch hobble rope, the tail of which she carried that she might trip him should he run. Unorthodox, possibly against park regulations, but with three adolescents, all traumatized, one armed and missing, she chose to err on the side of caution. Alexis and Beth followed her with instructions to stay close; instructions they obeyed with such zeal they trod on her heels more than once. She didn't complain. In arranging their order of egress from the backcountry, Anna had felt she was back in the fourth grade with the story problem of how to get the fox, the goose and the bag of corn across the river in a boat that could only carry one of them at a time, without somebody eating somebody or something. If she put the girls first they would be vulnerable to Buddy behind them. She didn't want them between her and the prisoner, yet if they trailed, they would be vulnerable to Candace should she be stalking them. Close on her heels was the best of the bad choices.
Anna kept the pace slow both for the girls and to minimize the num-ber of times the prisoner tripped and fell, but she didn't make any rest stops. The girls needed to get out. Buddy needed to be put behind bars. Rita's body needed to be recovered before the scavengers did too much damage. Rangers needed to be sent in to find Candace, a task Anna dreaded. She'd already shot the child once; she was craven enough to hope her generally beat-up condition would get her excluded from the search.
They met no one on the trail, which was a blessing. By the time they reached the final descent to Bear Lake, the sun was rising over the hills to the east. Another blessing. The end of the journey and the coming of the light gave new energy. Anna heard Alexis and Beth talking quietly behind her. Even Buddy, though he'd yet to say a single word, seemed to be standing a little straighter, tripping less often.
Maybe monsters did want to get caught, Anna thought wearily. Maybe he's feeling the same relief at the end of it as the rest of us.
Not so.
'Ah," he said and stopped.
Anna's mind, already in the parking lot stuffing him into the cage of her patrol car, took half a second to register what was happening. Because she'd been expecting it for two hours, when a childish voice addressed them from behind her left shoulder, she wasn't the least bit surprised. There was nothing she could have done to guard against it and she wasted no time in self-recrimination. She'd gambled Candace hadn't the strength or speed to make it down the Bear Lake trail ahead of them. She'd gam-bled the girl hadn't the mental clarity or emotional stability to stage an effective ambush.
Both had been good bets. On both counts she'd lost.
"I'm going to shoot everybody," Candace said. "We can't go out. I'm going to shoot you all now." Her voice was toneless and tight.
"Not right now," Anna said gently. "You can shoot everybody in a minute, okay? No hurry. We're not going anywhere."
Candace would be standing behind the information sign where the trail forked, Anna guessed. Ideal cover, the sign was eight feet high and at least that long, built like the fake walls police and rangers sometimes used in training.
"Can I turn around?" she asked politely.
"I guess."
"No." This was Buddy. He turned slowly, smiling.
"No," Candace echoed.
"You don't want to shoot everybody," Buddy said past Anna's shoulder. "You want to shoot who I tell you to shoot. You shoot everybody, then you're alone. They lock you up. You've been locked up. Do you want to have to do it again?"
Candace didn't answer. It wasn't a question, it was a threat. Though she had the gun and the cover and he was cuffed and hobbled, Buddy was still the figure of absolute authority: omniscient, omnipotent.
He shifted his gaze to meet Anna's. "You're never as smart as you think you are, isn't that right? How that must have blighted your life." The smile flickered but didn't go out. "Drop the rope and hobble and give the short girl the cuff keys."
"Not on your life."
"My life? My life? How about their lives? Shoot the tall one," he ordered. Without hesitation Candace pulled the trigger. Spinning, Anna fell to her knees and pulled her weapon, training it on the northern edge of the wooden sign.
Candace wasn't visible. Freedom, escape, safety so close, Beth and Alexis had fallen several yards behind. When the gun went off they'd not had the sense to drop for cover if the bullet had missed them, or fall down if they'd been shot. Leaning together for support, they hid their eyes on one another's shoulders.
Another report gutted the stillness of morning. This shot was wild but not by much; Anna saw bark splinter from a pine four feet from where
Alexis' pancreas was located. Anna could have shot back. Her bullet would easily penetrate the wood of the sign and anyone standing behind it. But she wasn't sure where Candace stood or if she were standing.
'All right!" she yelled. "All right. Stop her."
"Stop," Buddy nearly whispered into the bleeding silence, enjoying his power, showing off. "Now you drop the rope."
Anna let go of the line connected to his hobble.
"Give a girl the cuff key and the gun."
"Why? You took the magazine. I can't use it to bluff you."
"Because you didn't look like you were bluffing. Hand it over or she kills you all." He said each word distinctly, as if he spoke to an idiot.
"You're going to kill us all anyway," Anna said.
"Not all. Just you. And not right away. I wish the pleasure of your com-pany till we leave the park. You'll be sacrificing yourself to save the lives of three innocent children. Well, two damaged children and one budding psychopath, but the idea's the same. And who knows what clever escapes you'll come up with given that much time, that many more minutes of life? I can practically smell you salivating from here."
Anna hesitated. If she'd been by herself she would have tried taking Buddy down, using him as a shield as he was so fond of doing with others. Or she'd have run into the trees. A weak and shaken girl, even as close as she was, wasn't much of a marksman. Anna might get shot but probably not killed.
But she wasn't alone and, in a crunch, Anna suspected Beth and Alexis would follow Buddy's orders rather than hers. She wasn't the one who would kill them for disobeying. So much for sparing the rod.
Buddy's eyes slid to where Candace hid with a pistol and nearly forty rounds of ammunition. He'd give the order. He had nothing to win by bluffing and time was running out. He would be as aware as she that two gunshots this close to a campground in a national park would not go unremarked. Now that most tents housed two or three cell phones, the shots would be reported the moment a signal could be found.
"Fine," Anna said, and unsnapped the keeper on her holster.
"No. The short girl will get it. And the key."
For a moment Anna empathized with the docility of the girls. For a moment it seemed right, wise even. This man, this creature, could not be beaten. The fates themselves had decreed his darkness unstoppable, that he be placed on earth to try men's souls, to force one to make increasingly hideous and futile choices till the only choice left was death.
Beth took Anna's gun, fished the tiny handcuff key from her pocket and walked them to Buddy. As she reached him Candace stepped from behind the sign. She had moved from one side to the other. Before, she'd been behind Anna; now, she was in front of her at Buddy's elbow. He ordered Beth to give Candace Anna's gun. For a moment Anna dared hope the frail girl wouldn't have the strength to hold them both, but she found it somehow. While Beth unlocked Buddy's handcuffs, Candace held the barrel to the temple of the girl she'd grown up playing dolls with, held it just as Buddy had held it to her temple at Loomis Lake.
Anna grieved for the seconds while Candace was moving from one end of the sign to the other, moments Anna could have put her one bullet to good use, but the girl's sneakers made no sound on the asphalt. Anna had never known she'd moved till she reappeared by Buddy.
Every cloud, Anna thought as she realized that she was now between Alexis and both pistols. There was one choice for life left.
'Alexis," she said softly. "Run into the trees now. Now." Anna didn't choose to call attention to herself by turning and she didn't hear any movement. "Run or die," she hissed.
Alexis ran. Cuffs still dangling from one wrist, Buddy snatched a pistol from Candace, grabbed a handful of Beth's hair and jerked her to her knees, the barrel rammed into the soft cheek.
His mask-masks-were disintegrating. It was becoming possible to read his face as desperation ate away layer upon layer of deception. Anna watched his narrowing options flicker through his mind as his eyes flick-ered from Beth to Anna to the woods where Alexis had disappeared.
Time was short. Campers would soon be wandering to the trailhead or returning to their cars. More shots fired would raise the level of alarm, hasten the process. He dropped the idea of trying to coerce Alexis out of hiding.
"Car keys?" he snarled at Anna.
"Top of the left front tire."
"Get the car," he ordered Candace. "The patrol car." There weren't many visitors and Anna's NFS patrol vehicle was easy enough to spot. Candace, the gun with its single chambered round dangling at her side like a forgotten toy, moved toward the car with a robot's measured pace.
"Walk ahead," Buddy told Anna. To convince her to do as she was told, he jammed the barrel of his 9 mm into Beth's cheek so hard Anna heard the crepitus of broken teeth through the soft tissue. The girl made no sound. Her four weeks of "training" was coming back to her. Eight or ten steps into the parking lot, Anna was told to stop.
