Trust Me

9

Everyone was dead. Luke knew it as soon as he opened his eyes. He stood in the back of the private jet and began to walk through the small cabin. The whine of the engines, racing to nowhere, was the only sound. His father’s friends lay slumped in their seats, faces blue, jaws slack. One had his fingers tucked into his collar, as though the fabric had strangled him with a noose-like tightness. Luke wasn’t breathing, either. He could see frost coating the inside of the jet’s windows. He tried to wipe it away with his fingertips. If he knelt he could see out the glass, an endless smear of the Atlantic below, no land in sight.

The medal his father gave him, the avenging angel, burned with cold fury against his chest.

A ghost plane, everyone dead. A flight to nowhere. He stood from the ice-shrouded window that looked out over the empty sea. The door to the cockpit was closed. Between him and the door stood a man in a mechanic’s uniform. Ace Beere. He was short, red-faced, pathetic. ‘You killed them all. You sabotaged the plane. You took my dad. For no reason.’

‘For every reason,’ Ace Beere said. He tapped his temple, marred by a bullet wound.

Luke pushed past him. His father and the pilots would be in the cockpit, they would be okay, not dead like everyone out here…

He opened the door. ‘Dad?’ he called.

The cockpit was empty, gone, the ocean rushing at him like a wall.

Luke jerked awake. He thought for a moment he was on that ghost plane, flying with its suffocated corpses over the ocean until its fuel was gone. But it was just a dream. He was in a far worse situation as he moved his arms and heard the clink of the chains and remembered he was bound to the cabin bed.

Trapped in a death, just like his father had been, far from everyone he loved, beyond rescue. Except his father had no chance. Luke was going to have to make his own luck.

Betrayed. That son-of-a-bitch Henry betrayed me. The thought cut like a knife in Luke’s mind.

For most of the morning Luke had slept. Exhaustion, driven by the long dance with adrenaline, put a stronger claim on him than fear. He awoke in the late afternoon, bleary from his nightmare, twenty-six hours after Eric kidnapped him, his stomach knotting in hunger and thunder blaring outside the windows. He felt a childish urge to cry – a clutching in his jaw and his chest – and he kept it at arm’s distance until it passed. He tested the chains again, as though their strength had weakened while he slept, and then he dozed some more. When he awoke the rain dropped to a steady hiss, a white noise that allowed him to think.

The chain cuffs were blister-tight against his wrists and ankles. He found enough give in the chains to allow him to sit up on the mattress and stand up next to the bed.

He examined the room. The metal bed was pushed close to the wall and bolted to the wooden floor. The shackles were attached to the iron bed, not the wall. Under the bed sat a small plastic container. He opened it; it was a chemical toilet. It needed emptying but he felt a sudden relief that he wouldn’t have to soil himself or his bed. Crumpled peanut butter cracker wrappers and an empty water bottle were also under the bed. Under the heavily draped window, a table stood. On it was a small lamp, casting an anemic glow on the hardwood floor. A plain wooden chair. Another door was in a corner, maybe leading to a closet. He couldn’t get close to it.

Henry’s betrayal echoed in his head: I can’t help you. I’m going to hang up now.

Henry could have lied, he could have stalled. He didn’t. He left Luke at his kidnapper’s mercy. Henry was a Judas of the basest sort, and when Luke tried to summon an excuse for his stepfather, he could not.

So what would happen next?

The possibilities were few: the British woman, Jane, might come here. Either to get rid of him, or to try and force a change of heart from Henry. She might prove she meant business with violence.

The other possibility was that no one was going to find him, no one was coming, and a slow, lonely death from dehydration and starvation awaited him in the coming days or weeks. How long would it take him to die?

Luke had to find a way to escape.

He checked his pockets. He still had his wallet and he dumped the contents on the bed: Texas driver’s license. Forty-one dollars. A VISA card he used often, another MasterCard for emergencies. A University of Texas graduate student ID. And against his chest, the cool of the Saint Michael’s medal, his father’s last promise of protection. So much for promises.

Nothing to use against the locks.

He got up from the bed and pulled hard on its metal frame. It didn’t budge. He inspected the four legs of the bed. Three were bolted down tightly but one – the left rear – was a bit loose. Barely. He noticed heel scuffs marring the wall.

Aubrey hadn’t just laid here waiting for her knight to come rescue her. She’d tried to kick the bed loose.

Luke inspected the slightly loosened screw. She’d gotten it to give way from the floor just a hair. Not much. The screw was a crosshatch, Philips-style. He put the corner of the credit card in it. Tried to turn, gently, so the plastic wouldn’t shred. Careful. He felt eagerness, a cousin to panic, rise up his arm and he smothered the urge to hurry.

The screw wouldn’t budge. The plastic wasn’t stiff enough to turn it. He tried the driver’s license. Same result.

He needed something stronger. He had to look at the room with new eyes – seeing everything as a potential tool – but there was nothing. Panic churned in him and then he noticed the lamp. Lots of parts: bulb, base, cord, plug. It was a good six feet away, and he could see where it was plugged into the wall. Luke stood and took two steps from the bed. That was close as he could get; so he needed to get the lamp closer to him.

He had an idea.

Luke tore the blankets and sheets from the bed. He knotted them into a long rope, with the care of a Boy Scout testing for a badge. He double-checked the knots, then slowly fed the improvised rope, thick and awkward, through his hands.

He lay on the chilly hardwood floor and stretched as far from the bed as he could. His feet remained on the bed; the chains would not give farther.

He whipped the sheet-rope hard toward the table. He wanted to snag a table leg, with the other end of the rope back in his hands. First try, it missed. He tried again, putting more snap into his wrist: missed. He realized he needed the heavier section – the blanket – whipping toward the table leg; the sheet was too light. He reversed his makeshift rope. His arms ached. He threw the rope again. Missed. Again. His arms felt dense as stone. Missed. Tried again. The makeshift rope caught the right front leg of the table, part of it U-turning past the leg, back toward him. But out of reach.

He got to his feet and picked up the little side table next to the bed. He smashed it against the wall and jumped on the legs, splintering them from the base.

He picked up a leg that had a bent nail sticking from its end.

Holding the leg, he reached for the edge of the makeshift rope that was wrapped back toward him. He wanted to grab the blanket so he could pull the table toward him. He pretzeled his body to reach as far as the chains would let him. He turned the leg so the tip would face the blanket.

The cabin was cool from the rain, but sweat poured down his back; he didn’t know how else he could drag the table toward him if this didn’t work.

He aimed the leg, with its nail tip, toward the blanket rope. The nail caught an edge of the blanket. He let out a tense sigh; he ached as though pushing a truck up a hill.

He began to pull the blanket back toward him, using the jerryrigged table legs. The nail, trapped in the blanket, made a light hiss as he dragged it across the hardwood. Soon he had both ends of the blanket-rope in his hands. Slowly he began to tug at the rope. The table, with the lamp atop it, began to inch away from the window. He drew the table three feet nearer and the lamp’s cord went taut. He stopped.

He stood, holding the broken table leg with its bent crown of nail. He leaned as far as he could. The nail caught the edge of the lamp-shade and came free. He tried again, pulling the lampshade toward him, every muscle straining against his chains.

The lamp tottered and it fell to the floor.

Darkness. But he saw as the light died where the lamp fell. He groped in the dark, used the nail to catch the lampshade now on the floor. He could feel the counter tension of the lamp’s power cord, still mired in the outlet. If the lamp’s cord broke he was finished.

The lampshade crumpled, but he kept pulling on the top of the lamp. He heard the plug fall to the wooden floor. Breathless, he pulled the cord toward him.

His fingertips caressed the narrow edges of the plug’s metal tips. Thin and strong.

Luke inched to the bed leg. Groping in the dark, he wedged the plug against the groove in the bolt.

The screw turned.

He fought down the hammer in his heart. He worked with the calm of a jeweler setting a tiny stone. Don’t rush, don’t lose patience.

He pulled the first screw free. It worked. Four screws on each base of the cot’s legs. Sixteen screws total. Fifteen to go.

He worked steadily in the darkness, without panic. He unscrewed the first leg and worked the chain loose. Moved to the second. Now the back legs of the bed were both free. He started on the third leg. Then the fourth. His fingertips felt raw.

And with the last leg removed, he shivered in relief. He staggered to the far wall, the chains still on his ankles and wrists, but free from the bed.

The barest glimmer of light began to touch the edge of the curtains.

Flashlights?

Whoever was coming would hear him, running with the clinking shackles. He remembered Eric had taken the keys to unlock the shackles from underneath the flowerpot. God only knew if Eric or Aubrey had returned them.

If he went out the front door whoever was coming would see him. He opened the room’s door, shuffled toward the back door. He tested it. Locked. He undid the deadbolt, eased the door open, and waddled out, trying to keep the chains silent.

He closed the door behind him.

The night lay heavy and dark against the trees. The rain had stopped, and the wind hissed in the pines. Luke could hear voices and footsteps on gravel. A man. A woman. For a crazy moment he thought Eric and Aubrey had returned. But too much time had passed, and they had been far too anxious to escape and leave him to his fate.

‘Here’s the problem with blowing up casinos,’ the man said. A bit of complaint in his voice. ‘It’s mostly going to affect just one industry.’

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘It makes entertainment venues likely targets. There’s a trickle-down effect, to theme parks, movie houses, resorts…’

They clearly weren’t cops coming to rescue him. Blowing up casinos sounded like a plan hatched by one of his Night Road buddies. His heart boomed in his chest.

Luke heard another mumbled cursing – from the woman – and then the key working the lock, the front door opening.

Luke ran along the edge of the house, toward the front door, clutching the chains closer to him. He lay in the dirt close to the cabin. Risked a look around the corner. The front door was open and light came from the rectangle of the door. The flowerpot had been moved from its base.

Maybe the keys to the shackles were still there, waiting for Henry if he’d changed his mind about the ransom. He stood, slowly, trying to see if he could spot a silvery glint on the step.

‘We’re screwed,’ he heard the woman say. She had a low, raspy voice. ‘Or maybe he was never here.’

‘Someone was chained to that bed. He dismantled it. We better report in,’ the man answered in a heavy baritone.

‘He’s in chains, he can’t have gotten far,’ she said. Her tone was like an echo in a cave of wet stone.

‘Maybe someone came and collected him. Whoever grabbed him changed their mind, took him again.’

‘No, Mouser,’ he heard the woman say. ‘They would’ve just unlocked him or killed him on the bed. Luke pulled an escape trick.’ He heard a foot kick at the broken desk.

Mouser? And this woman knew Luke’s name.

Luke put his eye back to the cabin’s corner. It wouldn’t take them long to search the upstairs and the downstairs. Maybe just a couple of minutes. He’d have a few seconds alone with the keys, if they were still under the flowerpot. Then he could run like hell, vanish into the woods.

The woman stepped out onto the front step. She was tall, thin, wearing jeans. From the light inside the cabin, he could see a crown of dyed white hair and a thin tracery of scar along her jawline. She held a gun in her hand and a flashlight in the other. She walked toward the woods. Away from him.

Luke would wait for the trees to swallow the woman, and then he’d hurry and retrieve the keys to the chains if they were there. At least get his legs free. Then he could run.

She stepped into the heavy darkness of the trees.

He turtled toward the flowerpot, trying to move quietly enough where the crinkle of the chains sounded like the wind nuzzling the pines.

Luke knelt by the flowerpot. He heard the man call out from deep inside the house, ‘There’s food in the fridge.’

He tipped over the flowerpot. The keys to the shackles were gone.

Behind him the woman called, ‘You’re not very smart, are you?’

‘I guess not.’ Luke stood and faced her.

The woman wasn’t even bothering to point the gun at him. She walked close to him, and aimed the flashlight into his face. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way. I’m amazed you even got halfway free.’

So close, he thought. He noticed she wasn’t aiming the gun at him and wondered if she even considered him a threat. In a flash he thought: you’ve studied these people but you’ve never faced them. This is different than reading a book or a loudmouth posting on the web. You can’t analyze them, you just have to fight them. Because you know what they’re like. Single-minded. Brutal. Reasoning hadn’t worked with Eric; it wouldn’t work with these two.

Luke felt the quiet scholar in him easing backward, something new and primal emerging.

‘Mouser, he’s out here. Still in chains. Looks like he’s auditioning for A Christmas Carol.’ She laughed, a glassy sick giggle. ‘He looks like Jacob Marley. C’m’ere, schoolboy.’

Luke jumped at her, hammering into her before she could lift the gun, shoving the flashlight so it smacked her in the face. He fell to the grass with her and lassoed a length of the chain around her neck. She swung the gun at him, nailing him in the head, but he was tall and strong and desperate. He got her in front of him, the chain a choker across her throat. He knocked her down, pried the gun from her fingers as he yanked her back to her feet.

The man – Mouser – rushed into the doorway. He aimed his gun at Luke’s head. ‘Let her go.’

‘No. She comes with me.’ His voice broke, like a teenage boy’s. Luke put the gun on her head. The chain was a twisted braid in his left fist, the gun in his right hand. Don’t think, just do.

Mouser lowered the gun and Luke saw the gesture for what the woman’s laughter was – a sign of contempt. This couple weren’t remotely afraid of him, not even with him having a gun.

‘So you stay there,’ Luke said to him. ‘All right?’

‘Luke Dantry,’ Mouser said. ‘We’re here from your stepdad. Here to help you, find out who took you.’

‘You’re not the police,’ Luke said.

‘No, we’re better. Don’t be a stupid kid. Let her go and we’ll call him.’

But they were talking about bombing casinos and resorts. ‘I just want the keys to these shackles,’ Luke said.

‘You don’t know what a can of kick-ass you just opened up on yourself.’ Mouser sat on the porch step, with a sign of anticipation. Ready for the show to begin.

It was not what Luke expected. ‘Where are the keys?’ he yelled. The woman began to choke and he realized how tight the chain was across her throat. He eased his grip. But barely.

‘I’m going to… obliterate… you,’ the woman said.

‘Snow means what she says,’ Mouser added.

‘Where are the keys?’ Luke yelled again at Mouser. He tightened the chain again.

The woman pointed at Mouser. ‘His pocket.’

‘Toss the keys to her,’ Luke said.

Mouser didn’t stand. ‘Snow? How you want to go here?’

‘Give him the keys,’ Snow said.

‘Whatever you say,’ Mouser lumbered to his feet, dug in his pockets and tossed the keys. Snow caught them deftly.

‘Unlock me. The feet first.’

‘You think you’re smart because you escaped from a bed?’ She unlocked the chains binding his feet. Her skin was cool against his ankles. He pulled her back straight to him; she didn’t resist. He kicked the shackles free.

‘Be still and I’ll unlock your hands,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll play for real, schoolboy.’

If he lowered the chain from her throat she could fight him, even with the gun. Their confidence was daunting. He tightened the chain around her throat again, just enough to pull her close. ‘Not quite yet,’ Luke said. ‘Let’s walk to your car.’

‘Mouser has the car keys.’

‘Car keys,’ he called.

‘No,’ Mouser said. ‘Come on, Snow, enough. Let’s get going before the sky opens up again.’

Snow stayed still. ‘I just wanted to see what he’d try. What he’d do. It’s like watching a hamster work a maze.’

‘I’m going to shoot you is what I’ll do,’ Luke said.

‘Then shoot,’ she said. Her calm was maddening.

‘I… I need you alive for now. You come with me to the car.’

‘And we’ll be hot-wiring it?’ she asked. ‘You saw that in a movie, right, schoolboy?’

‘Come on.’ He gave the chains a harder pull than he meant to and she gagged.

‘For every second of pain you cause me, I will give you an hour of it.’ The icy tone of her promise chilled his skin. He shouldn’t be afraid of her but he was.

‘Maybe he doesn’t have the keys to toss me. Maybe you do,’ he said in a harsh whisper in her ear. ‘You. Mouse!’

‘Mouser.’

‘Whatever. You stay on the porch. I see you come off, I shoot her.’

‘How you want to play it, Snow?’ he asked again. The rain started again, hissing in the pines, thunder booming in the distance.

‘Do as he says,’ Snow said.

They hurried backward down the long path toward where he and Eric had come through the gate. The rain boomed out of the clouds, thick again. Mud sucked at their shoes, darkness drank them up except when the lightning flashed in the wet heavens.

Luke blinked, trying to keep sight of Mouser, looking back over his shoulder toward the gate. The metal chains grew slick in his grasp, from sweat or rain.

‘Empty your pockets.’

‘I don’t…’

‘Shut up! Prove to me you don’t have the keys. Pull out your pockets.’

Snow made a little grunt of anger and jammed her hand into her pocket. She stumbled against the gun and he pulled the gun away from her head. Suddenly she lashed her head back to catch him in the face. He tottered and she pivoted and powered him into the mud. The hand holding the gun slid deep into the muck. She wrenched free of the chains, nearly breaking his arm. She aimed a brutal kick at his head but he rolled and caught it on the upper back. He raised the mudglopped gun but she knocked it free from his hand, with a savage and precise kick. The gun was gone.

No gun. She was screaming for Mouser.

He lashed the chains at her face, she ducked back and fell, and he turned and ran. Away from the gate, from the glow of the automatic light. Into the rain-drenched blackness.

The grass rolled down a slight incline toward a dense grove of pines. He dodged around the trees; the faint glimmer from the gate lights receded.

He had no light for his path except the inconstant slash of lightning. He stumbled and fell, ran ten more feet into a pine, the bark scraping his cheek. Lightning again showed him an opening in the growth and he ran toward it. He spotted the silvery barbs of a wire fence. He eased below the bottom strand, sliding in the mud, slicking him from head to foot.

Luke stumbled past the fence and back into a stretch of unpaved road. Roads led, eventually, to people. He tried to get his bearings. To his right, the road bent into the darkness where he’d run from. To his left the road went straight. Toward civilization.

He ran hard to the left, grateful for the clean, smooth unobstructed line. He was tired of dodging pines.

He ran. Aware of nothing but the bright pain in his legs and the pounding in his chest and the chains weighing his arms down.

Suddenly headlights exploded into life behind him, a loud growl of tires speeding. Engine revving. The lights, low to the ground, cut across him, pushing him to run faster, as if the light had weight. The car accelerated toward him. He powered hard to the right. A gully cut down along the side of the road, topped by another wire fence. The car couldn’t go across the gully.

He slid down into the mossy-wet ditch, hauled himself up the side and skidded under another wire fence. The pine growth was heavy here. The rain strengthened, the wind rose. He bounced off the trees, trying to run as fast as he could. He roped the chains around his arms to silence their clinking.

He could hear the sound of pursuit behind him, moving past the trees, running. Suddenly a flashlight sparked on, caught his shoulders in its glow as he ran up to a jumble of fallen pines. He slid under the brush and where his leg had just been he heard a pop like a bullet. But it couldn’t fly straight, not in this rain.

A scream gelled in his throat and he moaned it away. He scrabbled into the earth and slid under the pyramid of tumbled, fallen pine trunks – there was a narrow passageway, formed by nature. Hoping to God he wasn’t sliding into a dead end, or a rattler’s nest. He saw an opening, slithered through it, staggered to his feet.

He ran, for several more minutes, before he collapsed against a heavy trunk.

Gasping, nearly drunk with exhaustion, he heard an engine ahead of him.

Soaked to the skin, he followed the fading roar. A minute later he stumbled out into another road. Paved. A painted line gleamed on the center, under a heavy cover of incessant rain. A highway or farm-to-market road. In the far distance he saw red taillights, a car. Inching into another lane because of a dark shape huddled on the road’s shoulder.

Someone pulled over because of the torrential rain. He ran toward the shape.

A semi tractor-trailer. He was twenty feet away when the truck’s blinkers flashed and the truck inched forward.

Heading back onto the road.

No, he thought. He had to get out of here now or they would kill him.

The back of the truck read WINGED FEET TRANSPORTATION Houston/Beaumont/Tyler.

The truck’s left wheels turned onto the asphalt.

Luke ran, every muscle in his body screaming. The truck’s back was now ten feet away from him; the pavement slick. He stumbled, nearly fell, stayed on his feet. He grabbed the back door of the semi and hauled himself onto the heavy metal bumper. He stood on it and looked for a way to open the truck’s doors. He found the handle but it was locked.

It didn’t matter – as long as he was getting away from his pursuers. He pressed his face close to the wet metal of the truck’s doors, steadied his feet on the wide metal bumper that served as a step into the vehicle.

He looped the chains around the door’s handle, an improvised safety belt. His arms felt like jelly. He considered signaling the truck – but then the driver would stop, and if they stopped, Mouser and Snow might catch them. Better simply to get away.

The truck eased its speed slowly up to a cautious forty – Luke guessed – and the wind and the rain plucked at him. His own breathing boomed in his ears. He shivered against the metal doors.

He heard a whoosh, then another, and the truck rocked in the wake of sudden hard surge of air. Two other trucks, passing in the opposite direction.

How many minutes had he piggybacked? Ten? Twenty? His legs ached, crouched on the bumper, lashed to the handle, trying to keep his balance. If he fell he’d break his neck.

Maybe his pursuers were still hunting him in the woods, blissfully ignorant that he was gone, speeding away on winged feet. His arms screamed in pain. He couldn’t keep this up forever; maybe it was time to signal the trucker…

He sensed the approaching lights behind him. He looked behind him and saw headlights – low to the ground, not a truck, a sedan. The lights were racing toward him, with the awful certain intensity of a snake slithering close, its unbroken gaze a hypnosis.

It couldn’t be them, Luke told himself. At the worst the car’s driver would signal the trucker and end Luke’s free ride.

The sedan veered up close to the truck’s rear, as though inspecting the odd big bug clutching the truck’s door. A Mercedes.

The Mercedes swung up closer.

The pulse of the truck’s brakes jostled him, the hiss of tires slowing on pavement. The trucker gave a warning tap on his brakes.

The sedan slowed a fraction, cut around the truck’s corner and sped up the side.

Through the curtain of rain as the car passed, Luke saw Snow staring at him. Smiling. Then the Mercedes was gone, out of sight, revving toward the truck’s cab, veering into the opposite lane to pass.

They’re going to cut him off, force him to pull over, Luke realized. But the truck was speeding far too fast for him to jump.

He inched along the bumper, trying to get a view around the truck’s corner. The Mercedes winged close to the truck’s cabin, Snow’s window down, her hand waving at the trucker to slow.

The truck slowed, rocked, then picked up its speed.

Maybe the trucker didn’t like what he saw. Snow looked crazy as hell with that sickening grin. Maybe he had valuable cargo and he just wasn’t inclined to pull over in the middle of nowhere because another driver gestured at him.

He glanced around the corner again. The Mercedes swung out onto the opposite shoulder as another truck traveling the opposite direction barreled past, horns blaring over the growl of the storm.

Luke’s arms seized in bone-deep cramps, his muscles knotted in pain. He eased the chains out of the door handles, held onto the handles themselves and tested the locked doors again in blind desperation. If only he could have gotten inside the doors, squeezed inside, Mouser and Snow would have never found him…

He heard the crack of a shot. The truck lurched, convulsed, and nearly threw Luke to the pavement. He gripped the handles and braced his feet hard against the bumper.

The truck veered off the road. It rocked and surged as pines and oaks snapped in its path. A thick trunk splintered, flying past Luke in a cloud of pulverized wood and pine needles.

The truck rocketed down an incline and to his left he saw the beginning of a bridge rising past him.

The truck plummeted, smashing down through the trees as the speed slowed. Luke put his face to the metal as spears of mud flew past him.

The jackknifing came with a wrench and if he’d kept the chains looped in the door handle the force would have torn his arms from their sockets. He tried to time the jump in a flash of pure instinct but the crash was chaos.

You’ll be crushed under the rig, he thought and then the rig broke free and threw him; he cartwheeled past the edge of the crumpling trailer.

Air. He opened his eyes, falling, and saw the swelling river beneath him, rushing toward him.

Water. Cold beyond reason and dark.

Earth. His shoulder scraped the river’s stony bottom.

He kicked toward the surface, broke into air. Just long enough for a gulp.

Then the chains weighed him down.

Fire. Heat, surging through the river like a pulse. The current yanked him forward, the force of a blast pushed him into sweet oxygen again and he saw gray sky, dawn fighting to pierce the clouds.

Then the maddened river took him.