Northwest Angle

FORTY-THREE

They sat in the lodge until it felt like a prison and they the prisoners. Anne finally stood and said, “I have to go outside, just for a little while, just for a little sun.”

Mal said, “I’ll go with you.”

Rose stayed, using the excuse that she wanted to figure out what to prepare for dinner that evening. In truth, she wanted time to herself for some deep thinking and some desperate prayer.

In her brief sleep during the night before, she’d had a dream. It had been so terrible that she didn’t even share it with Mal, but it had jarred her awake and left her fearful of closing her eyes again.

In the nightmare, Rose had seen them all—every one of the O’Connors and her and Mal—standing in a clearing surrounded by bodies. None of the bodies was whole. They’d all been torn into bloody pieces. Rose and the people she loved most in the world huddled together and fearfully eyed the edges of the clearing, where amid the dark, unfathomable shadows of the trees, things moved. She couldn’t make out what lurked there, human or beast, but whatever it was, it was preparing to come at them and tear them apart in exactly the way it had torn apart all those bodies around them. Rose was not just afraid, she was terrified. And worst of all, she had the sense that they were absolutely alone in that clearing, that God had abandoned them completely. It was this that scared her most. That somehow she—they—had done something that had made even God turn his back on them.

As soon as Mal and Anne left, she went to the kitchen, but rather than rummage through the refrigerator and cupboards, she stood awhile with her eyes closed. She prayed silently that, in whatever lay ahead, God would be with them and would stay their hands from doing anything that might, in his eyes, be unforgivable. Was there such a thing, she wondered, even as she prayed, something so terrible that even God could not offer pardon?

Her eyes were still closed and her mind focused on prayer when she felt a strong arm wrap around her chest and the blade of a knife press against her neck, and the coldest voice she’d ever heard whispered, “One sound and I’ll slit your throat.”

Rose stood paralyzed, and the feel of the nightmare, of being alone in the clearing abandoned by God, overwhelmed her.

“Who are you?” the cold voice asked.

She barely managed to speak. “Rose,” she said. “Thorne.”

“I don’t care about your name. I want to know who you are. Are you one of them?”

One of whom? she wanted to ask.

Before she could reply, the whisperer from behind demanded, “Where’s the baby?”

This she would not answer.

“Tell me where the baby is, or I’ll kill you now.”

Her heart beat so hard and fast she could feel the pound of it in her throat beneath the blade of the knife. Somehow, she found words and stammered, “Now or later, you’ll kill me anyway.”

“Maybe not, if you give me the baby.”

“So you can kill him like you killed his mother? No.”

The man stayed at her back, his body pressed so tightly to hers that she could feel the iron of every muscle. “Move,” he said and forced her from the kitchen to the front door of the lodge. “Call them in.”

She made no effort to comply. She felt the knife cut into her flesh and blood trickle down her neck.

“Call them in.”

“If I call them in,” she said, nearly breathless, “you’ll kill them, too.”

“Maybe not,” he whispered. “Or maybe I’ll do it whether you call them or not.”

She didn’t reply, nor did she call out to Mal and Anne.

“Be afraid, woman. You will die.”

“We all die eventually.”

He was quiet, his breath hot against her ear. “You’re not afraid?”

“Yes.”

“All I want is the baby.”

“I’ll die before I give you that child.”

“He’s not yours to give.” It was said with anger as sharp as the blade he held.

At that moment, Mal and Anne stood up and started for the lodge. Rose thought of crying out, of sacrificing herself for them, but before she could speak, the man at her back released the arm he’d wrapped around her chest, brought it up and clamped his hand over her mouth, and drew her forcefully back into the kitchen, where they stood together.

All Rose could do was pray, which she did with her whole being. She heard the door open and two voices and a little laughter from Anne.

“Rose?” Mal called.

The man moved her to the kitchen doorway. Rose saw her husband’s face, stunned as if a horse had kicked him. The rifle was held in his right hand, but he did nothing to bring it to the ready. Whether this was a conscious choice or simply that Mal had never used a firearm and his mind didn’t naturally leap in that direction, Rose couldn’t say. Nor could she say whether or not she was relieved by her husband’s inaction.

“Noah Smalldog,” Mal said.

“Tell me where the baby is, and I’ll let her go.”

“We know what you did to your sister,” Mal said quietly, reasonably. “Even if I could tell you where that baby is, I wouldn’t. None of us would.”

“What I did to my sister?” The man sounded at the edge of mania, and Rose felt his body begin to shake with rage. “I’ve seen your boats coming and going from Stump Island. Are you part of them?”

“No,” Mal said. “We have nothing to do with those people, except insofar as they can answer the questions we have about your sister and her baby.”

“Why do you care?”

Before anyone could speak further, the sound of a boat engine came from the lake. Through the windows behind Mal and Anne, Rose saw Kretsch’s boat arrive at the dock. They tied up, and Cork and Kretsch and a woman walked toward the lodge. No one inside moved an inch.

The woman stepped in first. She stopped so abruptly that Cork nearly ran into her. He looked past Mal and Anne, who stood statue still; his eyes took in the situation, and he came forward slowly. Kretsch entered last. As soon as he saw Smalldog, he cleared his handgun from its holster and brought it up. He wavered, uncertain, and Rose understood that it was because he couldn’t fire without being sure that she would not be hit. For what seemed like forever, they faced one another in that standoff, and no one said a word.

“I know you.”

It was Smalldog speaking to Cork.

“No,” Cork said. “You’ve only seen me. You don’t know me.”

“You threw rocks at me.”

“I didn’t have anything else.”

“Still got the bruise on my rib. David and Goliath,” Smalldog said.

“That’s pretty much the same thought I had out there,” Cork said. “I was kind of desperate.”

Something in Smalldog’s voice had changed, and Rose felt the rage ebbing from his body. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but for some reason, the man had responded positively to Cork.

“The woman who was with you?” Smalldog asked.

“My daughter.”

Smalldog was quiet a moment, putting things together. “She took the baby, trying to get to safety, and you stayed back to throw rocks and give them both a fighting chance.”

“That’s the size of it,” Cork said.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why risk your lives for a child not even yours?”

“We saw what was done to your sister.”

“And you thought it was me and that I’d do something like that to her baby?” Smalldog sounded as if all the pieces were falling into place for him.

“I didn’t know who you were, only that you were hunting us.”

“And when you found out who I was, you still believed I could have done it.” Anger had returned to his voice and tension to his body. “You thought because I’m Indian I would do a thing like that to my own sister? Chimook.” He spat out the unkind Ojibwe word for a white man.

“Anishinaabe indaaw,” Cork said. I am Anishinaabe.

“You’re Shinnob?”

“My grandmother was true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe.”

“You don’t look Shinnob.”

“And you look like a man who might have killed his own sister. How can either of us be sure?” Cork waited a moment. “It’s clear to me now that you thought we were the ones who killed Lily. Why would we do that?”

“I didn’t know. I only knew she was dead, and there were two strangers out there with her baby. You tell me what you would have thought.”

The tone of the conversation had become more reasonable, Rose believed, but the man still held the knife to her throat.

“Did you think that we were part of the Seven Trumpets people?” Cork asked.

“Or sent by them. You’ve been out to their island a lot the last couple of days.”

“Put that knife down and we’ll talk,” Cork said. “I think we all want the same thing here, the safety of the child, and there’s a great deal we need to know.”

The man didn’t move. Rose continued to feel the trickle of her blood. The room was deathly quiet, and she could hear the pound of her heart in her ears. She prayed silently, Dear Lord, please let this end well.

At last, the blade came away. She felt the jerk of Smalldog’s body as he threw the knife. She watched it somersault in the air, and the blade sank deeply into the floorboard at Cork’s feet. The knife, frightfully large, quivered a moment, then was still.

In the instant that followed, Rose heard the sound of boots fast at her back, and the grunt of Smalldog, and the man dropped beside her. Rose turned. Seth Bascombe stood behind her, his rifle poised in a way that made it clear he’d used the butt to take down the Ojibwe.

“Spotted his boat in a cove the other side of the island,” Bascombe said. “Found his tracks on the trail there, headed this way. Figured he’d try something like this, sneak up and slit your throats. The son of a bitch.” The big man spat. He glared down where Smalldog lay on the floor, unmoving. “Hope I killed him.”