Blink & Caution (27 page)

The cold makes you catch your breath. Then you grab the yellow rope and lead the boat back to the dock, like it’s some big dumb animal that made a break for freedom and you’re this patient farm boy who has to bring it back to the barn.

S
he clings to the tree, her eyes tight shut, her face wet with tears. It no longer matters if anyone heard her strangled scream. In her mind’s eye, she sees him jump from the end of the dock to the boat, sees the boat shoot out onto the water to the end of its rope. The end of the dock, the boat, the end of the dock, the boat, the end of the dock, the boat. He escapes and doesn’t escape. He is gone forever and never leaves. He only passes from one state of being to another. A floating brother in a dark floating world.

The ATV returns, and the noise passing under her perch brings Kitty back. Shakily, she wipes her face, slick with tears and snot. She sniffs and raises herself to a sitting position, straddling the branch. What now?

She shinnies down the tree, scraping her arms and legs, liking the pain of it — good, clean pain. Distracting her from the pain inside. So much for her brand-new threads, her cute little gaucho jacket.

There is a window of opportunity here that might not come again. She races up the road, now deep in shadows. She reaches the Jeep and curses the beep it makes when she unlocks it. She climbs in and sits behind the wheel out of breath.

But what is she to do?

The police? After she and Blink left Sharbot Lake, they passed through nothing but a village or two. Settlements. Sharbot Lake itself wasn’t all that large. The man at the Petro-Can had been friendly; she could ask him where the nearest police station is.

And yet. . .

There is something wrong with the idea. And foremost of what is wrong is the idea of the police. She has spent the last seven months on the other side of the law. She has become the kind of person who crosses the road to avoid passing a cop on the beat. She has been a person whose eccentric pink Little Mermaid backpack has often contained restricted substances. The police, she has come to think, are not her friends.

She shakes this off. She is not on the wrong side of the law right now. She has nothing on her and nothing to hide. She has no record. And she has witnessed a crime — seen it with her own eyes. Those men did not give Blink a talking-to for trespassing. She could convince the cops of what she had seen, she’s sure of it.

But. . .

Even if they came, even if they took her seriously, it would be hours before they got back to this place, and what would they find? A trio of guys at a hunting lodge. That’s what. There would be no trace of Blink. Even if they weren’t expecting trouble, there would be time enough to stuff him in some closet somewhere once they saw the cruiser entering the clearing. Or stuff him in a grave, for that matter.

No. It wouldn’t be a trio of hunters the cops would find. The businessman . . . what was his name? Niven, Jack Niven would make himself scarce, since his face would be too well known. So he would hide, and no matter what she tried to tell the cops, they’d look at her as if she was delusional or a troublemaker or some hopeless freak trying to get her face in the newspapers.

As she sits there in the Jeep, her thoughts become clearer and clearer, and she realizes that even if she were able to convince the cops to come, there would be no one here by the time they arrived. They would find a boarded-up lodge, with no recent signs of habitation. Jack and his men would have split. They’d have had all the time in the world.

And finally Kitty realizes that at this very minute, those men may be torturing Blink to find out where the key to the Jeep got to. They could be screaming up that road anytime now — and not in an ATV, but in the van she saw parked behind the outbuildings. She could take off now, but they could be on her tail in minutes, and there was nowhere to go on 509 but south again — not if she was trying to go for help. She has no idea where the two-lane goes as it meanders north. Somewhere called Ompah. And beyond that? It is essentially a deserted road. They passed little more than a handful of vehicles in the forty-five minutes they drove after leaving Highway 7. Two of those were logging trucks. And there she would be tootling along in a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler — not exactly camouflaged.

So she will stay.

She sniffs, wipes her face again, pinches her cheeks. Of course she has to stay. Burned into her brain is that image of Blink jumping from the dock to the boat. Blink, not Spencer. She cannot rescue Spencer. But she can rescue Blink. If it’s the last thing she ever does.

So she must watch and wait. She climbs out of the car into the coolness of the evening. Somewhere far off she hears the drone of a truck changing gears on a long hill. All around her are the sounds of the bush at night. These are not alien sounds to her. She has no fear of this. She locks the car, pockets the key.

She heads back down the road. It is just light enough that she would see someone approaching. She will need all her hunting smarts. What was it Spence had taught her about moose hunting? You don’t look for moose; you look for something that doesn’t look right.

She must keep her eyes and, more important, her ears alert for something that doesn’t seem right.

None of it seems right, really. She thinks back to the discussion she’d had with Blink about purgatory. Not just a place but a state of mind. And as she walks down the road toward where it ends at the lake, she realizes that this is purgatory’s end.

There is a low rumble of thunder.

B
y the time you’ve waded to shore dragging that fool boat behind you, you’re about as tired as a human can be. It’s a deep tired, deeper than your bones. It’s a give-up kind of tired. The Captain must have drowned out there in the bay, because you don’t feel him inside you anymore. There is no alarm left in you, Blink. The battery ran out. Surrender has sucked the last drop of juice right out of you just like the mud of the bay is sucking the last bit of strength out of your leg muscles. You hang your head in defeat.

If there is any hope left in the world, it is in that girl with the dove-colored eyes, Kitty Pettigrew.

You hand the end of the yellow rope to Wallace, still standing at the end of the dock. He squats to tie the boat back up again while you wander those last few feet to shore, your legs heavy now from the soaking and growing cold as the night air gets at them. For one brief moment, you think about making a run for it in your mud-heavy sneakers, but the knife hidden in your shoe isn’t going to make running any too easy. And when you look up toward the lodge, you realize that Niven is standing there, and you can hear the whine of the ATV getting louder as Tank makes his way back. With Kitty? You send up a soggy prayer to the God you knew as a boy that she has not been captured. You remember her escape from you at Union Station with all your money in her hand. Was that only this morning? You recall how quick she was. How quick her mind is. This is all you can hang on to.

You stand on the silted shoreline, looking at Wallace, wavering a bit as if you might collapse. He is coming, and for some reason you want him to be the one to claim you as his captive. He takes you by the arm and leads you up the hill toward the lodge. He must feel the breakdown of your spirit, for he barely holds on to you at all.

“You’re limping,” he says, staring down at your left foot.

“I twisted my ankle,” you say.

Niven wrinkles his nose and waves you away. “Show him the shower, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to talk to him in that state.”

One of the sheds turns out to be a sauna with a shower in it. Wallace points at something on the roof and explains how they run the generator and fill the drum up there with water from the lake, and then heat it with a woodstove in the sauna.

You look at the bay. “I’m going to wash in that shit?” you say.

He chuckles. “The line goes way out to where the water is fresh.”

You aren’t about to argue with him because Tank is back, his ATV rumbling and grumbling as he brings it around to the back of the shed. He’s alone; good. But his face is clouded, angry. So you head into the shower house quickly, and Wallace doesn’t follow you, which is also good. There’s a little front room where you strip down, palming the knife before you enter the sauna. There is a shelf of towels where you find a place to hide the knife for now.

The stove has made the whole place warm, and the smell of cedar, pungent and soothing, fills your lungs. The water from the shower scalds until you get the mix right and then washes away the muck of the bay, the muck of days and days. When was the last time you washed? You feel your muscles relax. You look down at your skinny self and see a new batch of bruises blossoming, ones you got from your daring escape. The
only
thing you got from your daring escape. Well, other than the knife.

You wash your hair with some lemon-scented shampoo. You wash it twice, putting off what is coming, though you don’t really know what is coming.

When you finally step out of the shower and into the little front room, there are ironed and laundered clothes waiting for you: jeans, anyway, and a thick plaid shirt. No underpants or socks but a pair of moccasins for your feet. They’ve taken away your beautiful blue two-day-old sneakers and your brand-new gear from the Army Surplus. There’s some ornate stitching on the back pockets of the jeans, and you guess they must have belonged to a woman, though you haven’t seen one around. They’ve put your money back in your pocket. How weird is that? The pants are loose on you. There is not much of you left, child.

There’s a little mirror lit by a battery-operated lamp. You comb the tangles out of your hair and recover your hidden weapon from its hidey-hole. The knife fits better in the moccasin than it did inside your sneaker. Then you step outside to face the music.

Tank is standing next to Wallace, steaming.

“You think it’s funny wasting my time?” says Tank.

You do what Niven does and ignore him. You stare straight at Wallace, as if Tank is speaking in some other language and you need a translation.

“Tank here says he couldn’t find no car keys.”

“I hid them,” you say.

“They’re nowhere on the Jeep,” says Tank, his voice raised as if this is an insult directed at him.

You shrug and he makes a move toward you, but Wallace stops him. Then Tank points his finger at you, like it’s the barrel of a gun, and pulls the trigger.

There’s more trouble with Tank when you get to the lodge. Wallace sends him away.

“What?”

“Get back to the camp,” says Wallace.

“Jesus, Wally,” he says, shaking his head, his teeth gritted. Then he looks at you, Blink, as if yet again you’ve screwed things up for him. You can’t help it: you give him a wave. He doesn’t lunge this time. He smiles the wickedest smile you have ever seen.

“You have rubbed me the wrong way one too many times, punk,” he says.

He throws up his hands to stop Wallace from scolding him anymore and heads off back across the yard, still shaking his head and rolling his shoulders like a heavyweight going to his corner but dying for the next round.

The door into the lodge leads through a kitchen area, where something is bubbling on a gas stove. Wallace looks you over in the light and then finds some thick string in a kitchen drawer and hands it to you.

“You’re going to need this to hold your pants up, eh,” he says.

You pass it through the belt loops and tie it. “Thanks,” you say. You want to keep this one on your side as much as possible.

Meanwhile, he has ladled out some soup into a big bowl. You can see beef and potato in a rich broth. The savory smell makes your knees weak.

He indicates the table. “Take a load off,” he says. He shoves a spoon into the chest pocket of your oversize shirt.

You carry the soup in two hands toward the table. You recognize it. There is the chipboard wall from the video. The table in front of it is enameled white metal, with benches on either side. You remember Alyson trying to tell you that she saw a stain on that wall when she saw the video. How many stories did she have lined up to tell you — how many layers of lies — until she convinced you? Except that they really
didn’t
know who you were at first, you remind yourself. It wasn’t a setup. Well, it hardly matters now. Your street smarts are no match for the games these people play.