That makes me remember that I used to make them for Mom, and she'd sit and listen with me and say, Oh, I like that one, who is that? And she wasn't just playing along, she'd remember later. That memory hurts now, and it makes me feel sick and wrong for doing this. But it's not my fault.
Mom left us.
I go out onto the porch and sit down in the chair.
Lanny comes to a stop when she sees me, and I see her hesitate before she throws the stick again for Boot and nods to me. "Hey. What are you doing out here, goofus? It's cold."
"Reading," I tell her. It's not a lie. "What are you doing?"
She's got red in her cheeks, and I don't think it's from the cold. "Nothing."
"Meeting your girlfriend?"
"No!" she immediately shoots back, and in a way that I think might even be true. But the red in her cheeks gets darker. "Shut up, you don't even know what you're talking about. Besides, we know we're not supposed to go anywhere people can see us. Right?"
"Right. And we always do what we're supposed to do. Right?"
"Well, I do," she says, with an older sister's superiority. "You know, you're going to ruin your eyes squinting out here. It's dark."
"I was just going in," I tell her. "And that's not how you ruin your eyes. If you'd read more, you'd know that."
"Stop reading a book, is what I'm saying. Come on. Let's go in."
"Wait," I tell her. "Are you okay? Really? About Mom?"
"Sure," she says, and I see the stubborn shift of her chin, the angry level of her eyebrows. "I'm glad she's gone. We agreed. We talked about this, Connor."
"Do you want her to come back?" I ask her. "I don't mean now. I mean . . . like, someday."
"No. Never. She lied to us."
"Everybody lies," I say.
"Who told you that?"
"I heard Kezia saying it. Everybody lies."
"She means when they're talking to the cops. Not to their kids. Not to each other."
But you just lied to me about where you went. And I lied to you about the video. Everybody does lie. So now you're lying about that. It's making my head hurt, thinking about it. I miss Mom. I miss having a normal place to go where I knew it was safe.
I miss having a home. A for-real home.
I miss Mom.
No, I don't. I don't miss Mom. She's a liar and she left and I'm not going to cry about it, because crying doesn't fix things, it just makes a mess. Dad said that to me once, and like some of what he told me, it's even true.
I'm glad Lanny was doing something that made her feel better. My minutes I spend on that phone don't make me happy, exactly; they make me feel something, but it isn't that. I'm just less alone. Less confused.
Maybe I'm not built to be happy. Like Dad isn't. I want to ask Lanny about Dad, but I know she'll just yell at me and tell me Dad's a monster.
"Come on," Lanny tells me, and I follow her to the steps and up into the house. Boot follows us inside and runs to jump into his fleece bed next to the fireplace. I pat him on the head, and he gives me a lick before sitting up to look out the window.
Javier isn't inside. Well, he isn't anywhere I can see him, which isn't the same thing, I guess, but it feels weird. I go into my room and look out the window, and I see him out by the barn, pacing. He's talking on the phone. It seems kind of intense.
I feel like a ghost. Like nobody sees me anymore. Mom did, once. But Lanny just mostly sees me as someone who takes up space, I think. She still sometimes calls me ALB, Annoying Little Brother. Sometimes she means it.
I matter to Dad, though.
And though it isn't smart, I keep taking the phone out of my pocket, wondering what it would be like to hear his voice.
It's after dinner, and I'm in my room reading, when I overhear Lanny talking to Javier. It's not like she's particularly loud, and normally I wouldn't pay attention anyway, but she's talking about Dad. I guess Javier and Kezia are still trying to do therapy for us. I hate to tell them how long my sister resisted saying anything to anybody the last time she was seeing a counselor. She doesn't share.
Well, that's not really true. She doesn't share about herself. But she's sharing about me.
". . . not really a big deal for me," she's saying when I start listening and put my book facedown on my chest. "Dad, I mean. He never really scared me, exactly. He never cared much about me. It was always Connor more than anything else. He babied him, when he paid attention to anybody at all."
Liar, I think. The idea of Dad scares her a lot. And the rest, about me? That's kind of a lie, isn't it? I'm not sure. My memories of Dad all have a weird flexibility to them, like I might have made them up.
Maybe Lanny's are like that, too.
I can't make out what Javier says. He's farther away, and his voice is too low. But I can hear my sister's reply.
"He's always quiet, but since we left our house, it's been way worse. He's being weird. Maybe it's just that he's still dealing with being scared so bad, or maybe being in a strange place. I don't know. Connor never says what he feels. He can be kind of sneaky." She laughs a little, but it sounds flat.
Sneaky. She means like Dad.
I hate her in that instant. Pure, white hatred that makes me feel like I'm suffocating. You're the sneak. You snuck out over the fence today. Don't you dare say that.
I don't like being angry. It makes me cold again, and shaky, and I wish she'd stop talking.
But she goes on and says, "It's not Connor's fault. He always thought Dad was okay. Probably because Mom was always too worried to tell him the truth, all the truth. He's old enough now to know it. Dad's a monster. I'm never letting Connor go near him."
She says that like she's in charge.
She's not in charge.
As long as I have this phone, I'm in charge.
19
GWEN
I feel naked without my phone, small comfort though it is. The motel room feels cold and empty and generic, and Sam's gone too long. Way too long. I try watching TV, but everything irritates me. People treat life and death as entertainment, serial killers as a delicious Halloween joke, and it disgusts me. I watch part of a horror movie and feel dirty, and finally I end up staring blankly at the news, watching the slow disintegration of the world I used to know.
Sam finally calls me on the hotel phone. It's near midnight. I'm aching with exhaustion but too tense to sleep; I feel breathless as I grab the heavy receiver and lift it to my ear. It's old-style, tethered to the phone by the coiled cord, and I almost immediately pull the whole assembly off the table and onto the floor with a clang. "Hello? Shit! Sorry. Hello?"
There's static for a second, and I think that I've broken the damned thing, but then I hear Sam's voice. "Hey. I thought I'd better call."
He sounds odd. Maybe that's the poor connection, but I go still, as if I'm waiting for the hammer to fall. "What's wrong?"
"Weather's way worse now," he says. "I had to pull off the freeway, it's an ice rink. It might take me hours to get back. I just wanted you to know . . ."
"Know . . . ?" It feels like there's more there. More than he's saying.
"Not to expect me back until the morning," he says then. "I'm going to get a room here, try once the sun burns some of this mess off. Okay?"
"Does it matter?" I ask. "You don't have a choice, then I don't, either."
"Yeah," he says. "Sorry, Gwen. I'm really sorry."
I wonder, then, if he's really never coming back. I can't blame him if he's not, if he's changed his mind with a little distance and time. I'm a black hole of trouble and pain and need, and just being around me has to be agony for him right now. He deserves better than to be dragged into the hell I live in.
It doesn't really matter, I tell myself. I intended to go on with or without him.
"Okay," I say. I don't sound right, either. "It's fine. I'm fine. Thanks, Sam. For everything."
That's final. I hear the ending in the words, and it makes me catch my breath because though I hadn't believed anyt
hing else could ever touch me, this hurts. This time it leaves a scar.
"Gwen . . ." There's something in his voice, and I can feel him wanting to tell me--and then the silence stretches, rattled with static. "See you soon."
It feels false. I force a smile, because I know if you smile when you're talking on the phone, it sounds cheerier. Something about the shift in voice pitch. Nothing magical about it. "Okay," I tell him. "Be careful out there."
He doesn't wish me the same. A quick goodbye, and I'm listening to a dial tone. I slowly lower the phone into the cradle. The phone cord immediately coils up into an unmanageable knot, and I unplug it from the receiver and smooth it out until it slips free, then reconnect it.
A little order in a world spinning out of control.
I have a wild, dark need to call my kids. They wouldn't know this number. They might answer the call, and I'd get to hear one of their voices. I want that with such force it feels like I might burn up from the blaze of it.
I stretch back on the bed, turn on the TV, and wait. In the morning I'll make a plan.
In the morning, I'll find a way through this.
I try to stay awake but as the night drags on, my eyes drift shut. When I open them, I see Melvin Royal leaning over the bed.
He can't be here. He can't. I think for a beat that I'm imagining it, and that's long enough to cost me.
I go for my gun. It isn't where I left it. I spot it tossed on the other bed. Too far to reach.
I fight. My first punch, off balance and robbed of power by the springy mattress beneath me, still connects.
It knocks Melvin's face askew, and I pause for a dim second in horror. Unreality slips over me in a cold rush, and I feel my skin tighten, as if shrinking from the impossibility of it.
It isn't Melvin. It's someone wearing a fright mask of Melvin's face.
His punch doesn't have the disability of being thrown from a bed. It lands hard. The mattress does absorb some of the shock, but not enough. I'm dazed from the blow, and my ability to resist is down by half as he drags me off the bed and onto the carpeted floor, where he rolls me on my stomach. I use the chance to shove myself up, and I lift my right leg in a fast, vicious mule kick.
He's straddling me, but he's too far forward for the kick to do damage, and then he puts a knee in my back and forces me down again. I scrabble for anything I can reach, and I find the phone cord. I pull, and just like before, the whole thing crashes off the table. It hits my shoulder, but I hardly feel the pain. I grab for any part of it I can reach, find the weight of the ancient old device, and twist to swing it at his head.
He dodges backward, traps my left arm at the end of the swing, and wrenches until I drop the phone again.
He hasn't said a word, whoever he is. Not Melvin. He's wearing one of those ghastly Halloween masks that were sold for a couple of years after Melvin's show trial; my ex was a popular douchebag costume, especially among the frat boys. But seeing one in the flesh is a horrible shock.
Like a nightmare come to life.
I'm totally focused on fighting, but it hits me then: I'm in a motel. One that's likely at full capacity, thanks to the winter storm.
I open my mouth to scream bloody murder.
He jabs the contact points of a stun gun into the back of my neck, and the volts roll through me. The world doesn't go dark, it goes bright; every nerve in my body fires, and I see a volley of silent fireworks go off behind my eyes. The pain is familiar. I've been Tasered before. Hold on, hold on . . .
The second jolt, fired longer, puts me past any resistance.
I feel him manipulating me like a rag doll while I tremble. My hands are pinned behind me with some kind of cuffs. I'm picked up and thrown over his shoulder. He stops to take my gun, and my pack from where it leans, and he's out the door in seconds. He shuts the room and readjusts the mask so it hangs straight to conceal his face. I see a blur of rusted iron railing moving past. Sleet has left a thick, watery coating of ice on it. Sam and I took first-floor rooms this time, and just on the other side of the railing, the parking lot is full of parked, silent, ice-slicked vehicles. I see one or two lights on in rooms. I try to get myself together. Scream, I tell myself, but I can't. I can barely see. My body feels like a locked cage.
I feel my captor slip a little on the ice as he loads me in the rear cargo area of a van, and I hope he'll go down, but he catches himself on the open door. He climbs inside, drags me forward, and does something I can't see, but I feel a tug at my limp, bound hands. I hear a click. I'm lying on fraying carpet, but under that is cold metal.
I'm stupidly grateful when he grabs a thick fleece blanket and throws it over me. At least I'm not going to freeze to death.
Though that might be far kinder than what's in store for me now.
I don't have a phone. Sam isn't here.
No one will ever know where I've gone. Unless they review surveillance video, if there even is such a thing, they won't even know I didn't leave of my own accord.
My captor finishes, and I hear the hollow boom of doors slamming behind me. The van smells of rust, oil, old fried food. My body's starting to come back to me, and it hurts everywhere, but that storm is a summer rain compared to the fear that's choking me. I'm alone. I'm alone, and Sam won't know where I've gone.
A new thought crowds in, and it brings a bloody, ripping despair with it. Sam's odd behavior on the phone. His hesitations. What did he want to tell me? That they were coming for me?
Did Sam do this?
I try not to think about what's going to happen to me, but I can't avoid it. I know. I've seen the results of Melvin's frenzies. Tears leak from my aching eyes, and I realize I'm not crying for myself. I'm crying for my kids, who will never know how much I love them now. I'm disappearing into the dark. I will end up bones on the bottom of a lake, and they'll never find me.
Please, I pray to a God I can't be sure is listening. Please, don't let them think I abandoned them. Do what you want to me, but don't give them that pain. Let them know I fought for them. Please.
I hear him get in the driver's seat, and then, with a lurch, we're moving into the ice-locked night, and I don't know where we're going. The terror and shock are starting to recede just a little, enough to let me breathe. Let me think about what to do.
This is what you wanted, I tell myself. You wanted Melvin to come for you. Now you just have to live long enough to be useful to your kids.
Stay alive.
I can't depend on Sam now. I can't depend on anyone but myself. All my life has been coming to this.
I'm not ready.
But I begin.
20
SAM
"Steady," Mike says to me. "Stay focused."
I'm watching from the cold interior of his black Jeep. We're in a far corner of the lot, parked under a security spotlight that doesn't illuminate us, but blinds anyone looking that direction. Somehow, I wasn't surprised to find that Mike had come back to Knoxville; he'd known where we were heading when we left Wichita, and I thought he was tracking Gwen, waiting for the FBI evidence to come in that would let him get a federal warrant to arrest her.
But instead he's sitting with me in the freezing, icy night, watching as Gwen is abducted.
He's right to warn me, because it takes everything I have not to draw my gun and go shoot this man wearing a Melvin Royal rubber mask in the head, and then kick the guts out of him. My sick anger is pulsing in my head, ready to blow the top of it off.
It isn't just because he's beaten Gwen down enough to have her hanging limply on his shoulder, but because he wore that disguise to do it. It's fucking vile, and it makes me imagine what went through her mind when she saw it.
I've done this to her. I hate myself as much as I hate that asshole who's hurt her.
"It could still be him under that mask," I tell Mike. Words are tough right now, but I force them out anyway, so I don't lose it completely. "Melvin would think it's funny."
"Could be. Probably isn't. Just hang
in. She's all right. They want her alive." He cuts his gaze swiftly to me. I know he can see the rage. "You can call this anytime you want, Sam. Anytime."
I wish I already had. I've been second-guessing this decision from the moment I said yes. I'd never intended for Absalom to actually take Gwen, but for this to work they had to think that I was carrying through on the bargain. In the abstract, all it took was nerve.
In practice, I was watching a woman I still cared about get dragged away, limp and bloody, to what was certainly going to be her death, and this didn't feel like a clever gambit. It felt like I was complicit in her murder. If he gets away . . .
"He's not going anywhere," Mike says. His voice is calm and steady, and it helps tamp down my adrenaline shakes. "This ice will keep him slow and easy. We've got him whenever we want to take him. You know that. Don't blow it now. Did they send it yet?"
I check the tablet that I got at the coffee shop again. The battery's still at 80 percent. It's got a cell signal, but there are no new messages. Not yet. As soon as we have Melvin's location, we'll move. Christ, this is hard, watching this asshole take her. It wakes echoes of my sister, and they're trying to drown me.
I know Gwen's willing to risk herself. She'd be the first to tell me that. She'd look me in the eyes and tell me, Let me do this. She'd say that getting Melvin is the first, the only, priority we should have.
But it isn't, and knowing that breaks the shell of doubt I've grown around my feelings for her. Shatters it completely. Doesn't matter what she's done. It matters who she is, and how I feel about her.
Come on, you bastards. Send the message. The air's frigid, but I'm glad; I feel like my skin is on fire, and the pressure of fear for her is burning inside my chest like phosphorus. Every second they delay is another second she slides deeper into danger.
"We should move," I tell Mike. "If we lose her--"
"Not gonna lose her," Mike says. "I don't like using her as bait, but either she's the bravest goddamn woman I ever met or she's a psychopath, and either way it's the best move we can make. Let Absalom think they got her, they give up Melvin Royal, we get her back."