Purgatory Ridge

41

FIRST JO HAD EXHAUSTED HERSELF trying to kick loose from the wall of the fish house the metal repository full of old razor blades, then Grace Fitzgerald had done the same. The screws that anchored the metal box were sunk deep into hard wood, and in the end it was the strength of the two women that had finally yielded. The fish house, filled for a long while with the desperate thump of shoe soles against wood and metal-a sound that offered some hope-fell into silence. The light through the closed windows was fading. Eventually darkness would close in.

Darkness and silence, Jo thought. Like a grave.

Although she was tired and sore, she kicked herself mentally beyond the temptation for despair. For Stevie’s sake. “How long before this Bridger comes back?”

“If he sticks to his plan,” LePere replied, “the drop will be made at ten o’clock. He’ll do some maneuvering then to make sure he’s not followed. Give him an hour, hour and a half to get back here. So we have maybe two and a half hours, at best.”

“Two and a half hours,” Jo said. Not much time, but it was something. “All right.”

“Do you have an idea?” LePere asked.

She didn’t. Except not to remain on the floor like someone already dead. She scooted to the wall and pushed herself into a standing position. Grace followed her example, saying, “I’m with you, whatever.”

Jo looked the room over carefully. She wasn’t seeing anything she hadn’t seen before, but she was trying to see it in a different way. The nearly empty shelves, the long tables where for years fish had been gutted and cut, the windows. She paused, thinking for a moment it might be possible to break a window and to use a shard of glass to cut free. Unfortunately, the windows were all too high to reach-too high for someone like her, anyway, someone with her hands bound behind her. She eyed the washbasin, the slender wooden cabinet above it, the floor drain. She came back to the washbasin and the cabinet above it.

“Your father, when he shaved, what did he use for a mirror?”

LePere closed his eyes, remembering. “He had… something… inside the cabinet.”

“Glass?” she asked.

“I don’t remember.”

Jo hopped toward the cabinet. She put her belly against the washbasin and leaned toward the cabinet door. There was a wooden knob on the left-hand side that she intended to take between her teeth and use to pull the door open. As she leaned, she realized she wasn’t quite tall enough to reach. She resettled herself and leaned forward again. This time, she lifted her feet off the ground as she set her weight full on the edge of the washbasin, hoping the fixture would hold for a few seconds while she got her teeth around the knob on the cabinet door. Unfortunately, the basin shifted. Jo fell forward, hit her head on the wall, and tumbled to the floor.

“Are you all right?” Grace asked.

“Mommy?” Stevie called in a frightened voice.

“I’m fine, honey,” she said. “Mommy’s just fine.” In the growing dark, she turned her gaze toward Grace. “You’re taller than I am.”

As Jo worked herself up, Grace Fitzgerald hopped to the washbasin.

“Careful,” Jo cautioned her. “It’s not as solid as that damn razor blade box.”

Grace was able to keep her feet on the ground as she took the knob between her teeth and pulled the cabinet door open. The shelves were empty, but a glass mirror had been affixed to the inside of the door. Grace looked at it, then at Jo. “How do we break it?”

Jo surprised herself with a slight smile. “In a situation like this, it’s best to use one’s head. Can you open the door all the way?”

Putting her long nose to good use, Grace nudged the door so that it swung clear of the basin. Jo hopped into position with the back of her head against the glass.

“Oh, Jo, be careful,” Grace cried.

Jo closed her eyes and tapped her head against the glass. Nothing. Harder, she told herself. Again, nothing. Damn. She threw her head back and heard the glass shatter, and she tensed for the feel of it cutting her.

“Let me see,” Grace said.

Jo turned her head.

“There’s no blood.”

Jo realized she was holding her breath. She let out a deep sigh of relief. “Okay. We’re getting there. Now, Grace, can you get a piece of the broken glass off the floor?”

Grace knelt, then went down on her butt, and slid to where shards littered the old wood planking. She lay on her side, rolled a bit so that she could sweep her fingers across the floor. “I’ve got one. It’s pretty fragile, I think, but the edges feel good and sharp.”

“Grace, I’m going to lie down with my back to yours. I want you to try to cut the tape that’s around my wrists.”

Jo maneuvered herself to the floor and edged backward until she felt Grace Fitzgerald’s bound arms touch her own. She repositioned herself-careful of the shattered glass under her-so that her wrists were even with Grace’s hands. She waited. “Well?”

“Jo, I’ll be cutting awfully close to your wrists. I’m afraid if I slip-”

“Do we have a choice?” Jo broke in.

“All right. But, Jo, if it goes wrong… I’m sorry.”

“You’ll do fine, Grace.”

She made her words sound strong and positive, although she knew that the skin at her wrists was very thin and the glass very sharp and it wouldn’t take much of an error for an edge to slice right through to an artery.

“Here I go.”

Jo closed her eyes. A moment later, she felt the prick of a jagged edge. “That’s me,” she told Grace quickly.

“Sorry. How’s that?”

“I don’t feel anything. You must be on the tape now.”

The process was awkward and slow, mostly because Grace was reluctant to put a lot of pressure against the duct tape. As it turned out, she wasn’t concerned just about Jo.

“Are you all right?” Jo asked, hearing small, painful grunts from Grace.

“I may be doing more damage to my fingers than the tape,” she answered. “The glass is getting slippery. And I don’t think it’s from sweat.”

“I can feel the tape beginning to give. Can you stay with it?”

“I’d cut off a finger if I thought it would get us out of here. Unhhh.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Mom?” Scott called out with concern.

“I’m fine. Just fine. How you doing, kiddo?”

“Feeling a little sick.”

“Hang on, sport. We’ll all be out of here in a minute.”

Grace took a deep breath. Jo felt again the cut of the glass on the tape, and the grip around her wrists loosened dramatically. She forced her hands apart, breaking the last of the tape that held her. She sat up quickly, picked up a piece of broken glass, and cut her ankles free.

“Now you,” she said to Grace.

The light had faded almost completely. The fish house was filled with a deep, dismal gray that was all the narrow windows would admit of twilight. Although color was nearly impossible to tell, Jo knew that in a stronger light, the dark that dripped over Grace Fitzgerald’s right hand would have been bright red.

“Oh, Grace,” she whispered gently.

“Just cut me loose.”

Jo did, carefully and quickly. “Let me see.”

Deep slices scored Grace’s palm and fingers. All the wounds bled freely and all looked severe enough to require stitches to close them. Under normal circumstances, her injuries would have been at the center of concern. As it was, she pulled her hand back and said, “Now my ankles.”

Jo cut the last of the bonds that held Grace prisoner, then freed Scott and Stevie. Before she turned her attention to LePere, she tore a wide strip of material from the tail of her blouse and gently wrapped Grace’s bleeding hand.

“Thanks,” Grace said.

“No. Thank you.” Jo put her arms around Grace and thought how, aside from Rose, she’d never felt such love for another woman. “You’re remarkable.”

“Just desperate,” Grace said with a smile. “Come on. We still have to get out of this damn place.”

Jo set to work on the ropes that bound LePere. Stevie snuggled next to her and took hold of the loose tail of her torn blouse for comfort. She paused a moment in her cutting and gave her son a kiss on the top of his head. “We’ll be home soon,” she promised.

When he was finally free, John LePere sat a moment rubbing where the ropes had bit deeply into him. Although he was a little wobbly, he stood and headed quickly for the door. He tried his shoulder as a battering ram.

“I just finished making this place like a fortress,” he told the others. Then he cursed himself.

“The windows,” Jo suggested. “Maybe we can squeeze through.”

LePere looked doubtfully at the nearest window. “There’s only five or six inches between each bar.”

Jo glanced down at Stevie, who still clung to the tail of her blouse. He was so small for his age. “What if one of us could get through? Is there a key to the lock?”

“In a drawer in the kitchen.”

Jo knelt and spoke to her son quietly. “Stevie, you know how I sometimes call you a little monkey?”

He nodded.

“I want you to be a little monkey for me, okay? I want you to squeeze through that window”-she pointed-“and help us all get out of here. Can you do that for Mommy?”

Stevie stared up at the high window. His face was full of fear. “I don’t want to.”

“I know you don’t,” she said softly. She smoothed his hair. “But there’s no one else who can do it. And your daddy will be so proud of you when we tell him how brave you were and how you saved us all.”

“I don’t want to,” he said again.

“Maybe Scott,” Grace suggested.

LePere reached up and used the span of his hand to measure the distance between the bars. He used that same measure to assess the width of Scott’s head and chest. “I don’t think so.” He looked down at Stevie. “As it is, it will be tight for him.”

Jo hugged her son and spoke calmly but seriously. “The man who wants to hurt us all will be back soon, Stevie. Unless we get out, he will hurt us.”

“He’ll kill us,” Scott said.

Jo stared into Stevie’s dark, frightened eyes. “Yes. He will kill us. But you can help us. And you’re the only one who can. All you have to do is climb out that window. I know you’re afraid, sweetheart. We’re all afraid. If I could do this, I would. But no one can do it except you. Can you do this for me, little monkey? And for Daddy and Aunt Rose, who are waiting for us to come home?”

She hated herself for putting such pressure on her small son, hated the whole situation, but none of this was of her choosing, and there seemed no other way. She held Stevie close to her and she whispered, “Please.”

She said no more. Stevie was rigid in her arms. Finally he whispered back, “Okay.”

LePere raised the window glass. All that lay between them and freedom were the bars and the question of Stevie’s ability to slide through.

“I’ll lift you up to the window, son,” LePere told him. “All you have to do is squeeze through. Then I’ll tell you what to do from there.”

Jo kissed her son, then gave him over to LePere, who picked him up easily and lifted him to the window. Stevie took hold of the bars and pulled himself toward them. His head made it through. LePere supported him while he turned his body to align his shoulders and chest with the gap between the bars. He began to wriggle forward. He’d gone less than a foot when he stopped.

“What’s wrong?” LePere asked.

“I’m thtuck.”

“I’m going to give you a little push,” LePere told him.

“Owww!”

“Wait.” Jo grabbed LePere’s arm. “Stevie, we’re going to pull you back.” To LePere, she said, “Gently.”

“Owww!” Stevie cried as LePere drew him back. “I can’t get my head out.”

LePere supported Stevie with one hand and reached up with the other to assess the situation. “It’s his ears,” he reported to Jo. “They won’t come back through the bars. He’s stuck. Really stuck.”

“Hang on, Stevie. We’ll get you out.”

Jo tried to keep the panic out of her voice. Fighting against anger, frustration, fear. Fighting against time. She looked up into the dark gathered above her, descending, and she spoke in a bitter whisper as if someone there were listening.

“Why?”