Unsound (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (13 page)

Somewhere in my intuition, I’d come up with an idea—an idea that, if I could infect him with it, would change everything. The idea was coupled with emotion:
hope that he would live
. And if he were going to live . . . I could live.

“No more talking,” he said, and I knew the seed was planted. I shut my mouth and let it take root.

Ideas are viruses. They clamp on, drill through the epidural layer of denial and defenses, inject their DNA into the host cell, and then wait for baby viruses to be treacherously birthed. Good ideas are the ones that are hardest to shake and are the most compelling. The idea that Russell Pruitt might not be dying had timeless appeal.

No one wants to know they’re dying. In fact, we’re all wired to hate that idea very much.

I walked ahead of Russell Pruitt, the rope tied around my wrist, on the trail toward the far side of the bowl of the crater. According to the map, it was a traverse of four miles to Holua Cabin, and I could see most of it was going to be sand.

Russell Pruitt’s ability to tolerate this hike would have a great deal to do with whether or not he allowed my offer of hope to take up mental residence; thus it behooved me to make sure he wasn’t overexerting himself. Every five or ten minutes, as we headed back into the main crater well, I found a reason to stop. A rock in my shoe. Wheezing (not much acting needed) and dehydration. Mismatched backpack strap length. Et cetera.

At each of these stops, I checked his color and how tired he seemed—and he was fine, a towering kid with Coke-bottle glasses and a backpack the size of
Kansas who hadn’t yet broken a sweat. Heart condition or not, he was twentysomething years old. I was the pushing fifty-year-old alcoholic divorcée who’d been drinking her meals and abusing Advil. My liver was probably shot to hell. I might be the one dying.

Bent over, trying to adjust my sock through the toe of my boot, it occurred to me that if I stressed him and he had one of his attacks, I’d be in a position to get away. I could just ditch my pack and run for it. Yeah, it wouldn’t be pretty getting my butt out of the crater with no water, but with the consequences as dire as they were, I could get my hustle on and do it.

Suddenly it occurred to me that by infecting Russell Pruitt with hope, I’d done the same to myself. I’d cast the die in the direction of staying tied to his side like a not-very-happy mule on a trail ride, carrying a pack and a bad attitude.

That’s the thing about ideas. They’re free radicals, not controllable, and by trying to convince Russell Pruitt he could live, I’d “caught” that hope myself—one possible future that might well backfire. Caring that he lived, I might find myself unable to do what needed to be done—from untying myself to using the butcher knife whose handle was rubbing a blister on the back of my shoulder.

Thinking clearly about all the options was the way to stay in control, I decided, my eyes on the gray sand in front of me. I couldn’t be overinvested in any one scenario of running away, disabling, killing, or even having Russell Pruitt walk out with me alive. I’d stay alert, and I’d take the path that offered the best chance of survival.

I’d have to know it when I saw it and be ready to act instantly.

The thought brought my heart rate up and sweat poured out of my pores, releasing that awful body odor born of booze and exertion. I straightened up, stopped, reached back for my water bottle.

“Thirsty.”

“You look like hell,” Russell Pruitt said. “Maybe you’re the one dying.”

I tipped back my head and laughed to hear my earlier thought so perfectly echoed, and he shook his head and strode by me. The rope yanked on my wrist, and I stumbled after him.

With Russell Pruitt setting the pace, we were definitely moving. Every time I tried to slow down, the rope yanked tight on my wrist, tugging me forward. I stumbled on at my top speed for a half hour at least. His heart seemed fine—it was mine that was overexerting. Finally, totally winded and facing a steep black-sand incline that wound up and around yet another multicolored cinder cone, I dug my heels in like the aforementioned mule. “Please. I need a break.”

“All right.”

Russell Pruitt steered us to the side of the path, where he helped me by lifting my pack and setting it on a boulder. We’d eaten a breakfast he fixed at the cabin of oatmeal and boiled prunes that he’d spiced deliciously with cinnamon, but I was a little embarrassed to hear my stomach rumble loudly—and in another odd echo of our bodily functions, his belly rumbled too.

We grinned spontaneously—and Russell Pruitt opened his enormous pack. “I have a treat I’ve been saving for you.”

He extracted a Tupperware container and opened it. Resting inside on a paper doily, shiny with glaze, plump with raisins, was a cinnamon roll.

Cinnamon rolls had been my favorite breakfast for twenty years, on a Sunday morning with Richard and Chris, drinking our coffee and reading the morning papers . . . I felt tears prickle my eyes as he handed me the Tupperware. I leaned over, putting my nose into the container, inhaling the sweet, sugary fragrance laden with memories.

“I can’t believe you brought this.”

“I was going to torture you with it,” Russell Pruitt said, blinking rapidly behind his thick glasses. “I was going to get you really hungry and eat it in front of you, reminding you of your family and all you’d lost and would never see again. But I realized you’re already starving, you’re already grieving for all you’ve lost, and it just didn’t seem fun anymore.”

I couldn’t take a bite of the cinnamon roll. I was crying too hard.

He took it out of my hands, put the top on and set it aside, and then he slung a huge arm around my shoulder and hauled me against his side. My head leaned on his chest, and I heard the thump and swish of his great big enlarged heart, and I cried some more onto his shirt.

He wasn’t a psychopath. He cared about me, felt empathy for me.

“Is everything okay?” A tenor voice, concerned, unfamiliar. I opened my streaming eyes, peered through my unspeakable greasy hair, still clamped against Russell Pruitt’s side.

Two male hikers stood in front of us. They wore matching Columbia hiking outfits, with sleek little backpacks and black hiking poles. Perfectly groomed, tanned, gleaming with health, they were as matched as a pair of Dobermans. I resented the intrusion and reminded myself I was supposed to be ready to act on my own behalf with agility and ruthlessness.

“My mom’s grieving,” Russell Pruitt said, his giant’s voice pitched low. “We’ve been scattering my dad’s ashes on the trail all morning.”

That’s when I realized I’d succumbed to Stockholm syndrome.

I kept my face against his shirt, the tears congealing on my cheeks at the ease and potency of his lie. Maybe he was a psychopath after all—how could he be so kind and yet such an agile liar? Which of the behaviors was being put on, or were they all?

“So sorry for your loss,” one of the hikers said.

“That’s a beautiful thing to do. Take care,” echoed the other, and I felt the shift in Russell Pruitt’s weight that told me he’d lifted a hand to wave to them.

I kept myself very still.

“They’re gone.” Russell Pruitt’s voice really did have a texture to it, a heft like a complex fisherman’s sweater, especially when heard through the barrel of his chest. I sat back up.

“I’ll take that cinnamon roll now,” I said, my voice cold. I brushed the tears off my cheeks. “You sure are a good liar.”

“What was I supposed to say?” He snorted, but he sounded hurt. I told myself to remember how easily he’d lied when I met him at the door of the cabin. He was a bundle of contradictions: one moment sabotaging my sobriety by brute force, the next helping with my backpack. One moment cooking delicious oatmeal, the next tying me to him with a rope.

Russell Pruitt was so much more than he appeared to be.

He handed me the Tupperware, and I looked up the hill the hikers were doing at speed, watching their neat rear ends and glossy poles disappear over the top of the ridge. I would need my energy, now more than ever.

I ate the cinnamon roll in a few quick, hard bites, ignoring the explosion of flavor and the way the raisins burst against my tongue. I wouldn’t have eaten it at all if I didn’t need the energy, I told myself. I would be prepared to act on my own behalf with speed and ruthlessness. I didn’t need to fall prey any longer to the emotional dependency pattern of
Stockholm, in which hostages and kidnap victims developed attachment to their captors.

“Let’s get going,” I said. I hoisted the pack and set off with renewed vigor.

“That sugar really gave you some juice,” Russell Pruitt said after a long moment. “Wish I had one more for the hike out. I hear the Switchbacks Trail is pretty strenuous.”

I didn’t reply, preoccupied with the changes that had been subtly happening between us—the adjustment of our body rhythms to be in tune. The gradual shedding of layers of defense and pretense into self-disclosure. I’d accepted my captivity and stopped trying to run after being prevented a few times (albeit violently) and begun to have a motherly concern for Russell Pruitt’s health.

His virus had infected me as effectively as mine had him.

I’d stopped noticing our surroundings, but as my frenzied thoughts wound to their sorry conclusion, I came back into my body and the mechanics of the hike. Weight on my tender back. Boots rubbing. Deep breathing as I did the hill as best I could, determined not to be yanked along behind my captor anymore.

Stockholm syndrome has to be confronted head-on with facts, I told myself sternly, even as I considered telling Russell Pruitt that if he left me alone at the end of the hike, I would never tell anyone what had happened. I would even help find him medical and mental health support.

Then you’ll have a crazy man with a fixation roaming around free to attack you or someone else.
Constance’s voice.

The fine-grained volcanic sand puffed up like breath with every step. The vivid streaks of color on the hill we were traversing were bright red, sienna, umber, mustard, and the red-purple of old blood. The sky above was a depthless, blind blue, unmarked by clouds.

I could hear Russell Pruitt panting behind me.

Good
.
I hope he drops dead.

Guilt stabbed me, but I pushed through it.
Constance was right. Pruitt was not my son, my friend, or even my client. He was a kidnapper, a psychological torturer, a sick bastard who somehow blamed me for the ills of his own life. Russell Pruitt was my enemy.

And you better not forget it again,
my dead twin concluded.

I felt angry, finally, and that gave me an additional burst of energy. At the top of the hill, I stopped. It wasn’t really a choice. I was tasting blood in the back of my throat. I bent over with my hands on my knees, looking back down the long gray trail, rainbow-colored cinder cone, and wide-open sky.

Fucking Maui, so distracting with its scenery, as if nightmares don’t come true right here in the middle of beauty.
Constance’s voice was definitely getting louder.

Russell Pruitt had kept up with me, but it had cost him. He was pale, with greasy sweat sliding down his massive cheeks. “Wish I’d had a cinnamon roll too,” he said with a flash of smile. His teeth were normal sized in his overlarge face, giving a fun-house-mirror effect.

I smiled back, because it was important that he think nothing had changed between us. We stood side by side, and I noticed how he copied my posture—a primary way to establish a connection with another person was to imitate their body language, and he’d been doing that since he ambushed me.

Russell Pruitt wasn’t just good at cooking and hacking computers. He was damn good at psychology too.

“Seems like you didn’t like what I told those hikers,” Pruitt said. “What would you like me to tell anyone else we meet?”

“The truth.” I kept my voice soft, with a trace of humor.

“Ha. Good one.” He seemed piqued, and turned and got a head start on the trail. My rope jerked tight and reminded me I was a prisoner.

I walked along behind him as we wound down into the central bowl of the crater. Mounds and formations created an undulating topography of lava in various states of degradation. The piercing sky blazed sun down on us, but wind whipped the warmth away before it could be felt, making the temperature perfect for hiking.

We passed a wooden barrier circling a deep hole marked
danger
. Mildly curious, I wished I could look into the pit, see into that deep lava tube. I wished yet again that I was alone, beginning to feel better from my acute withdrawals, that I was making this trek as I’d planned—a woman overcoming her past and her present.

Maybe that’s what I was doing—only now I was doing it in the shadow of Russell Pruitt.

We entered a valley area with massed clouds ahead. This side of the crater was older. The cloud forest on the sides of Haleakala had pushed uphill and crested into a broken rift of the volcano, moving into the crater and taming the raw lava by inches. From the trail, I could look down the valley formed by the disintegrated side of the volcano into jungle pouring all the way down to the far blue ocean.