Page 48 of Dread

He dialed one-handed. Waited three rings.

“Anonymous tip,” he said, when the line connected. “Domestic disturbance, possible kidnapping in progress. Farmhouse off the gravel spur north of Route 9, four miles east of the co-op. Shouting, a woman’s voice. That’s all I’ve got.” He gave the mile marker twice, slow, like a man reading it off a sign rather than memory. Then he ended the call and put the phone away before dispatch could ask a second question.

“Twenty minutes,” he said, to no one and everyone. “We’re gone before headlights hit that driveway.”

Marcus made a sound against the floorboards, something between a laugh and a cough. “You’re not going to kill me.”

“No,” Fox agreed as he tied Marcus’ hands to a support beam, pulling his shoulders back tight against the wood. A fact, not a mercy. “Dead, you’re a story somebody has to explain. Alive, you’re a parole violation and a prosecutor who doesn’t need our help making it stick. Three years left on your original sentence, stacked under whatever’s coming next. You’re going to disappear back into your cell for a lot longer than you were ever going to make it on the outside, and nobody’s going to ask a single question about what happened here.” He shifted his knee, just enough to make a point of it. “And if you go to the cops with a story about how we caught you and did this to you? They’ll likely give us a medal. Or ask for our testimony against you for what you did here -- which would add a felony conviction to your sentence. Either way, sure won’t help your case any.”

“And when -- if -- you get out again?” I added, “You even think about coming after Katy again? No one will ever find your body.”

The room settled. The bulb swung on its wire, casting shadows that jumped and steadied and jumped again. Katy was still on the floor, her wrists bound, the cut above her eye still running, and I was beside her before my brain registered the transition from standing to kneeling, the medical bag open on the floorboards, my hands already moving.

Trauma shears from the side pouch. I cut the electrical cord where it wrapped her wrists, the nylon blades parting the insulation with a sound that was almost gentle, and her hands came free -- raw, abraded, the skin beneath the cord angry and bleeding in places where she’d pulled against it. I didn’t pause to examine. Moved to her face. My palm against the cut above her eyebrow, applying pressure, feeling the wound through my skin -- superficial, thank Christ, no underlying fracture, the bleeding already slowing as the vessels constricted under compression.

Two fingers to her throat. Carotid pulse -- strong, rapid, the particular hammer of adrenaline working through a system that had been running on fear for longer than it was designed to. Her pupils were equal and reactive. Respirations twenty-two, shallow but improving as my hand rested on her sternum and she felt the contact and something in her diaphragm remembered how to exhale.

“Katy.” I said her name firmly enough to pull her attention toward me. “I’ve got you. Look at me.”

She did. Her blue-gray eyes focused on my face, the left partially obscured by dried blood along her lid. For a second, she only stared at me, as if she needed the evidence that I was actually there. Then her expression crumpled. She leaned forward and buried her face against my shoulder, gripping the front of my shirt while a violent shudder went through her. I wrapped my arms around her and held on until it passed.

I held her. One arm around her shoulders, my palm flat against her back where her spine met her ribs, feeling the rise and fall of each breath as it found its rhythm. The cut above her eye had stopped bleeding. The abraded wrists would need antiseptic and gauze. Her lip was split at the corner -- a small laceration, clean-edged, the kind that would heal without intervention if kept clean -- and I noted each injury with the same thoroughness I brought to everything, because lists were how I functioned when the rest of me wanted to burn the world down.

Fox stepped outside. I heard the radio crackle -- his voice, low and clipped, reporting status to Cotton at the compound -- and then the sound of gravel under boots as he moved away from the doorway to give us the room the moment required. He’d call it in from a burner phone on the way back, I knew, anonymous just enough for dispatch to send a unit -- an address, a description, a stranger’s tip about a woman’s cry -- so that by the time a county cruiser found the farmhouse, it would find Marcus alone with an injury he couldn’t explain and a story that wouldn’t hold. Not that payphones were easy to find these days, but we still had a few in the area.

Hornet’s stocky frame filled the doorway, the shotgun now slung across his back, and his gaze moved from the ex on the floor to Katy against my shoulder to the medical bag open on the boards, and whatever he saw there -- the blood, the cord, the shape of a woman who had been taken and recovered -- he received without comment. He nodded once, tight, and stepped back into the dark.

I helped Katy to her feet, keeping an arm around her waist while she steadied herself. Her legs trembled beneath her at first, but after a moment she managed to stand without buckling. I stayed close, supporting as much of her weight as she gave me, my palm resting between her shoulder blades while she got herself moving.

We walked out of the farmhouse together. Cool air met us outside, carrying the smell of dry grass and rain somewhere in the distance. Katy drew a deep breath and pressed closer to my side. She didn’t look back at the house or ask what was happening with Marcus. She kept one hand curled into my shirt and walked with me toward the others, relying on my arm around her waist when her steps faltered.

Fox’s truck sat where we’d left it, the parking lights still on, casting a faint amber glow across the gravel. I helped Katy into the passenger seat -- my hand under her elbow, steadying, same as I steadied elderly patients on exam tables -- and she sank into the leather with a sound that was half-sigh, half something older. I closed the door, rounded the hood, and slid behind the wheel because Fox was already in the back, his radio in his hand, his eyes on the tree line where Hornet’s van had reappeared with its headlights off and its engine barely above idle.

Two miles down the county road a cruiser passed us going the other direction -- light bar dark, in no hurry yet. I didn’t slow down. Didn’t speed up. Just drove, both hands on the wheel, needing the plain mechanics of the road to keep my hands occupied while the rest of me caught up with what had just happened.

The convoy rolled east toward the compound. I drove. Katy sat pressed against my side, my hand on her back the entire way -- palm flat between her shoulder blades, feeling each breath as it came and went, counting them without meaning to, the rhythm gradually slowing as Route 9 unspooled ahead of us and the county gave way to trees and the trees gave way to the compound fence visible as a dark line against the Missouri sky.

The gate swung open as we approached. Cotton stood beside it, one hand on the chain, his green gaze tracking each vehicle as it passed, and when Fox’s truck rolled through, that gaze found mine through the windshield and held for a beat that contained everything two men who had seen worse could say to each other without words.

The compound was fully lit when we came through the gate. Sodium fixtures illuminated the gravel lanes, the clubhouse porch, and the houses beyond it. Our house sat fifty yards ahead, light showing through the windows. I looked at it and thought of Ellie asleep inside, of breakfast at the kitchen table and coloring books left where they didn’t belong, of all the ordinary things waiting on the other side of the front door.

Katy reached across the seat and took my hand. Her fingers were cold, the knuckles scraped raw where the cord had rubbed against them. She threaded them through mine and tightened her grip. I turned my hand around hers, careful of the damaged skin, and kept it there for the rest of the short drive. After everything that had happened tonight, neither of us needed to explain why.

The truck stopped at the base of the clubhouse steps. Fox got out immediately and headed toward Hornet’s van, already issuing instructions about whatever needed handling next. I went around to Katy’s side and helped her down. She was steadier than she’d been at the farmhouse, though she leaned into me when we started walking. I put my arm around her waist and matched my pace to hers as we crossed the gravel toward the house. She’d been taken from us that afternoon. Now I was bringing her home.

Ellie’s voice reached us before we reached the porch. High, clear, carrying through the screen door in a stream of words about rocks and turtles and whether Doc was coming back for dinner. Katy’s breath caught once against my collarbone -- a small, fractured sound that might have been laughter or might have been anything else entirely. Then we were through the door and the house took us in like houses do when they’ve been waiting. Katy stayed close as we moved farther into the house. After the farmhouse, the familiar rooms looked almost painfully ordinary -- the couch, Ellie’s things scattered where she’d left them, two mugs still sitting on the kitchen table from earlier. Nothing here knew how close we’d come to losing all of it.

I locked the door behind us and turned to Katy. She was bruised, exhausted, and standing in front of me when there had been moments tonight when I hadn’t known if I would get that privilege again. I reached for her hand, careful of the raw skin across her knuckles, and she gave me her fingers without hesitation.

She was here. We were home. Tonight, I needed nothing more than that.

Chapter Sixteen

Katy

The kitchen held that warmth of a house that had been lived in. Morning light through the window above the sink caught the steam rising off the toast and turned it amber, and I stood at the counter with Ellie’s lunchbox open on the Formica and the smell of peanut butter filling my sinuses in a way that was almost aggressive for seven in the morning.

Dread’s clinic mug sat by the sink. Rinsed, not washed, the practicality of a man who believed dishes could wait until evening if the morning demanded otherwise. The fruit-shaped magnets held Ellie’s drawings to the refrigerator -- the dinosaur that looked suspiciously like a motorcycle, the food groups poster with apples crossed out in red crayon, the half-finished landscape of a house that had started as somewhere else entirely and ended up looking exactly like this one.