Disturbance

FORTY-SIX

Streams fed by snowmelt are usually calmer in the morning, but that didn’t mean the stream we followed was sluggish. In several places, it narrowed and flowed in pounding rapids. At one of these points, almost all of the rocks were wet and mossy, making progress so difficult I expected at any moment to be seriously injured in a fall.

I heard Kai swearing and turned just in time to see him slip on a wet stone. He moved from rounded slick rock to rounded slick rock, higher, lower, left, then right, swaying and trying to counterbalance with his uninjured arm before he finally recovered his balance. In a different situation, I might have found it comedic, but either because I thought my pride would soon “goeth before” a similar loss of balance of my own or because I could see the experience had truly left him shaken, I didn’t even crack a smile.

Parrish looked back at us, but he had missed the acrobatics. “Hurry up!” he said and moved on.

I nearly advised Kai to take his arm out of the sling to aid in his balance, then asked myself why I wanted to do anything to help him out. I turned back toward Parrish and kept moving. I forced myself to recall the manner in which Kai had awakened me that morning, to think of the young women he had killed. If he dashed his brains out on a rock, it would be to my advantage, right? I could hardly claim that I had his best interests in mind. If I got my way, he’d be captured and imprisoned for life at best-disabled or dead if the cavalry never showed up. Whoever the cavalry was going to be at this point. I had a nasty feeling I wasn’t going to be able to wait to find out.

I decided to take a risk. “We could move faster if my hands were untied,” I called to Parrish.

He looked back at me. “Nice try.” He kept moving.

I tore at the tape with my teeth every time Kai became too distracted with keeping his balance to watch me.

I hadn’t made much progress when we reached a point where Parrish wanted to cross the stream. It wasn’t a bad choice, all in all-the stream had widened and slowed, but judging by the movement of leaves and twigs going by, the current was still strong. It was also deeper and rockier than I wanted to try with my hands bound together. The depth was a little more than knee-high, every inch of it undoubtedly icy cold.

If we had been friends doing some hiking together, things might have gone differently. There are strategies for fording streams as a team-such as crossing with arms linked or crabbing parallel to the flow-but Parrish wasn’t used to playing well with others.

Nor did he advise his son to get a branch to use as a walking stick, as he himself had done some way back. The stick would aid him in crossing-it would help with keeping balance, with testing depth, and testing how solidly placed any stepping-stones in the streambed were. And it could make it easier to move in the pressure of the stream’s current by parting its flow as he stepped behind it.

He did take his socks off and put his boots back on, and Kai, watching him, did the same. No one gave a damn if I was going to get blisters, so my hands stayed tied and my socks on.

Parrish unsnapped the sternum support and hip belt on his pack and said to Kai, “Be sure to keep her covered. This is where she’s most likely to try something.”

He began crossing.

If Parrish had looked closely, he would have seen that Kai, who had removed his arm from the sling by then and retied his boots, had been so involved in those processes that he hadn’t seen his father unstrap his pack.

I hesitated, then said, “Kai-”

“Fuck you,” he said. “I’m not going to cut your hands free.”

That nearly settled it for me, but I kept my temper and said, “Fine. But you’re more likely to drown if you fall into the stream with a belted pack on. Think about it.”

He eyed me suspiciously, then said, “It’s not deep. Get going.”

So I rucked my parka up as best as I could and waded in. The shock of the cold water took my breath away, and I felt the hard push of the current, but it wasn’t too strong to stand up in. I was worried that if my feet and legs grew numb I’d make a misstep, but I didn’t want to move so fast I’d lose my balance.

Kai stepped in and swore, something he did continuously and violently as we made our way, but he stayed as close as he could to me.

We were over halfway across when he suddenly lost his balance. He rocked forward and back and forward again, and made a grab for me with his right hand. That was the injured arm, or he might have succeeded in pulling both of us in. Instead, he missed, toppled over, and went in face-first.

The stream wasn’t all that deep there, but depth is far from the only danger in water that is moving. His two biggest pieces of luck were that he wasn’t hit by debris and that the current wasn’t strong enough to easily sweep him away-although it definitely made it hard for someone with weight on his back to stand up again. Kai was young and muscular, and under other circumstances, with some effort he probably could have struggled back to his feet, even on the rocky streambed. But the pack, with the shovel inside, made that much harder. The injury to his right arm, the coldness of the water, even the loose sling-all combined to make the task even more difficult.

He rolled and flailed and eventually got his nose and mouth out of the water. His face was covered in blood. He coughed and spluttered and flailed some more without regaining his feet.

Parrish hurried back, but I was nearer. I thought of leaving Kai there, of making a run for it. For that matter, it probably wouldn’t have been all that hard to drown him while he struggled half-stunned in that turtle-on-its-back position. He was close to doing that without any assistance. He saw me, though, and reached a hand out. I told myself, as I took hold of that hand, that it was my only real choice. Parrish had a clear shot and would have killed me without hesitation if I had tried to run for it or harmed his child. I knew, even at the time, that wasn’t why I chose not to just stand there and let someone drown in front of me.

I grabbed onto him and pulled back, keeping his face out of the water as I tried to reach the releases on the pack’s straps-all the while struggling to maintain my own balance.

Parrish reached us and helped Kai regain his feet, then shepherded him to the other bank, leaving me to fend for myself. I joined them there, cold and far more wet than I wanted to be, although at least the water-repellent parka had stayed dry.

Again, I thought of bolting, but Parrish was watching me now, aiming his gun at me. If I got closer, I could probably disarm him, but then what?

I made a show of stretching and looked around. No real cover.

Kai lay on his side, coughing, vomiting up water. Given the bacteria count in many mountain streams, he might not need to have drowned.

And what if you have allowed him to live so that he can go out and torture and kill another dozen women?

I felt my stomach churn.

“Come here,” Parrish said.

Reluctantly, I moved closer.

“Hold out your hands.”

I did, and he holstered his gun and removed a knife-a strange knife with a thin, long blade-from his pack. He swiftly cut through the tape between my wrists, then held the tip of the knife under my jaw, just shy of the soft skin there.

“You are going to take this pack off him. You are going to care for his wounds, and you are going to help me get him to shelter. If you try to fuck with me or Kai in any way, I will make you incredibly sorry for it.”

He didn’t wait for or want a reply from me. He moved out of reach, nodded toward Kai, and said, “Get him into a condition that will allow us to move out of here, and quickly.”

A tall order, but I did as he asked. I found myself willing to ignore almost all the first aid training I’d ever had. I found a water bottle, didn’t check to see if the water in it was sterilized, and told Kai to drink from it. I used water from the stream to rinse off the cuts on his forehead. I dried his face and taped a big pad of gauze on the worst cut, the only one still bleeding. I paid no heed to concerns about sterile conditions, hand washing, hypothermia, head injuries, blisters, or even athlete’s foot. Let him suffer.

While I worked on Kai, Parrish looked toward the stream, walked to its edge, stared, then walked back. He paced this distance several times, then suddenly seemed resigned. I wasn’t sure what that was about.

Parrish walked back over to us, and together we helped Kai to his feet. Kai leaned on me while Parrish carried Kai’s pack in his free hand-the shovel had been lost out of it, and God knew I wasn’t going to point that out or go looking for it.

We hadn’t gone far before it was apparent that Kai was more bruised and shaken than seriously hurt. Foreheads can produce dramatic bleeding, but he didn’t show any signs of concussion, although those might appear later.

His skin was blue, though, and he shivered.

“Do you have a change of clothes in your pack?” I asked.

“He’ll be able to change his clothes not far from here,” Parrish said. “He’ll warm up as we move. Or maybe I should have you strip and give him your clothes.”

I ignored him. As we walked, Kai clung to me, in a way that both unsettled me and at first made it difficult to move. He seemed to figure out fairly quickly that he needed to loosen his hold at least a little, and he did so, but he kept his uninjured left arm around my shoulders.

We walked upstream, past a place where we could have stayed dry by crossing on a fallen log, a fact that made Kai shoot Parrish a dirty look. Not long after that, Kai played with my hair. I stepped away from him. He smiled but didn’t try to put his arm around me again. I felt queasy.

We reached a point where trees hid the sheer rock face from view. We left the stream and walked along the foot of this cliff. Moving was good-I warmed up a little.

Not much farther in, Parrish called a halt and told me to give Kai a boost up the rock face to a ledge. It was about ten feet above us.

“How is he supposed to reach that ledge with an injured arm?”

He sighed. “Do not try my patience. Give him a boost.”

For his part, Kai obeyed without hesitation. He struggled to pull himself up, but other than giving a grunt of pain as he rolled onto the ledge, he didn’t complain. He peered over the edge, his face pale, awaiting orders.

“Get the ladder,” Parrish said. “Anchor it the way I showed you at the lodge. And while you’re back there, get one of the other guns. Try not to lose this one. Tomorrow I’m going to send you in after the one you dropped into the water, and the shovel, too.”

So-that explained Parrish’s unhappy pacing near the stream.

Kai’s eyes widened at Parrish’s threat, but he scrambled to his feet. I heard scraping sounds, and a few minutes later, he dropped the ladder down. It was a fire escape ladder, the kind people keep in the bedrooms of two-story homes. Parrish tested it, then began calling more instructions up to Kai.

“I’m going to change,” Kai said. “I’m freezing.”

Parrish scowled up toward the ledge, but Kai had already retreated from view.

I was on the ground but knew I would soon be asked to climb into God knew what kind of lair Parrish had set up. He and his son had made it clear that they planned to torture me, sexually assault me, and kill me. If not there, at whatever other hideout he had in mind.

My hands and feet were free. Donovan was nowhere nearby. Kai was above me and injured and not in view.

I had one opponent, and he was reaching for me.

I made my move, a technique known in Kenpo as Covering the Flame. Rachel had been convinced-given who might be after me-that I needed to know this one, and she’d made me practice it again and again.

That practice allowed my next series of movements to go by in seconds. As Parrish stepped forward, I evaded his reaching left hand and continued moving, stepping with my left foot to his right side-his semiautomatic was held in his right hand.

Now facing his right side, I used my left hand to immediately take hold of the back of his right wrist in an iron grip. He began pulling the trigger, firing wildly, but I was outside his range, controlling his aim with control of his wrist. I used that grip to move him off balance even as I rapidly raised my own right hand to my shoulder. I pivoted on my left foot as I stepped forward with my right, landing my right foot behind his right leg, never letting go of his wrist. I brought my right arm in hard to bend his hand in, so that I now pinned the wrist of his gun hand with the bones of my right wrist and used my forearm to force his hand toward his shoulder. Soon my elbow was lodged against his shoulder.

With my hold on his wrist and the way my body was positioned, I completely controlled his movement and balance as I pivoted-twisting his wrist and shoulder and using my momentum. He followed where his wrist was being taken, but his leg encountered the back of mine, and he lost his balance. The motion pulled him down to the ground, so that he landed flat on his back with an “oof” at about the place I had been standing a moment before.

He had lost his grip on the gun, but I still had not lost mine on him. I kept hold of his wrist while I used my right foot to stomp hard on his right arm, his chest, his left arm, then jabbed the knuckles of my right hand into his eyes. He turned his head just before I made prime contact, but I still hit him hard enough to hurt him.

I knew I had taken him by surprise, I knew he had been underestimating me all along. But this was no time to gloat. I didn’t wait to see if I could take him in round two. I picked up the gun and ran like hell into the trees.