Blink & Caution (31 page)

You can hear him growl, low in his throat. He’s not the kind of bully who likes to think he’s wasted a perfectly good threat. “You ain’t asleep,” he says. And you know what’s going to happen next — he’ll come to check. But just then you hear the tinny sound of a cell phone ringing, playing some rock riff.

He swears and answers the call. He does a lot of “yes, boss-ing” and then closes your door and locks it, with the call still in progress.

Saved by the bell.

You wait for his return, dying to get up and get at the shutters that stand between you and the outside, and yet afraid to move. It seems an eternity before you hear him coming upstairs again and the door next to yours opening and closing. Tank has taken over Wallace’s room — just one thin wall away.

I
am his guard,
she thinks.
I am his guardian angel. And like a guardian angel, there is little I can do,
thinks Kitty. Just be here. That’s all.

She had defined her job as learning the lay of the land, learning as much as she can, not getting caught. Along the way she has added to this the job of making things difficult for Blink’s captors. But now her job has changed to just being here. Bearing witness. She must see what happens and faithfully record it.

This boy. He is ten months younger than she is, but he seems so much younger sometimes. So open — she’d seen that in him at first glance. She could recall him in the emptiness of Union Station waiting to buy his train ticket, pulling out that fistful of bills, his palm flat, unrolling the needed amount. He might as well have had a
SUCKER
sign on his back. All she’d needed to do was create a situation where he would expose himself like that again.

But there is nothing else weak about him, she thinks. He is bold — reckless, perhaps — but full of this crazy kind of certainty that is like a tonic to her. In his determination to turn things to his advantage, he seems invincible in a way. Somehow he’d convinced her, against her better judgment, to join in on this whole scheme. So she feels guilty for knowing better and yet falling for it. Falling for his eagerness, the way it lights up his eyes.

She owes him, she thinks. She robbed him and then let him rob her of her own good sense. Good sense? What a laugh! She’d spent most of the year flaunting her complete lack of good sense. A death wish? Yes. Probably. And then this desire, every bit as overwhelming,
not
to die. Was that what happened to her Wednesday morning? Waking up like that with this grand scheme to collect money from Drigo? And is this what she has collected? Or had the desire to stay alive come with this brave and foolish boy?

She remembers something Wayne-Ray said about it being okay to be numb. That being numb gave the body a chance to recover. She isn’t numb anymore. Blink Conboy has woken her up. If she was his guardian angel, she’d been asleep at the wheel. That wouldn’t happen again.

She makes herself as comfortable as she can under the eaves. At the darkest corner of the lodge. She is more or less dry, but shivering with a cold that has winter written all over it. Her new denim gaucho jacket is too short and not at all warm. She had chosen it because it showed off her figure. She wanted him to like her.

The rain picks up, gusting off the unseen lake, black and shifting, playing the bass note to the wind’s lead. She had placed herself in the lee of that wind. She begins to think about the sheds across the clearing. Perhaps there is somewhere inside one of those small outbuildings where she might curl up small, like a sow bug under a rotten board. When the lights go off in the lodge maybe. When everything settles down. But, no, she will stay here. It’s not like punishment. Not really. She wants to stay here because of the boy inside who needs her.

She must have nodded off, because suddenly she is awoken by a clatter across the yard and an almighty shout of pain.

She half suspects a bear, until the swearing starts. A string of curses no bear would be likely to use. Apparently Tank has stumbled across her trap.

She can’t resist the urge to sneak to the corner of the lodge to see him, in the light spilling across the yard from above the doorway. He appears, swearing and hobbling, rain streaming off his ball cap. Limping badly.

The Moon opens the door. “What’s all the racket?” he asks.

“My foot!” yells Tank. “A fucking nail.”

Kitty makes her way back to her safe corner and only makes it just in time, because lights suddenly appear in the woods, like a false and hurried sunrise. It’s a car coming. She dives into the bush as the vehicle enters the yard, its headlights raking the back wall of the lodge as it turns around.

It’s a black SUV. A man jumps out and runs, covering his head, toward the door. He’s lanky. So is this the Snake at last?

He enters the lodge, slamming the door behind him, but almost right away returns to the vehicle, followed by two more figures: the Moon and, under a black umbrella, Jack Niven, a briefcase in his hand.

Kitty waits, fearfully, expecting Tank to appear next with Blink all trussed up and gagged. There will be nothing she can do. Create a diversion? Throw herself in front of the SUV? Or drive the ATV like crazy back to the Jeep and pursue them? But considering the speed at which the Snake pulled into the yard, the SUV will have put many miles between her and them by the time she would be able to follow.

Her horrifying speculations arise and are resolved almost instantaneously. No sooner has the car door shut on Jack Niven than the SUV wheels around in the yard and takes off up the road.

So, as far as Kitty knows, there is just Tank left now — Tank with a wounded foot. Better odds, she thinks.

Y
ou wake up with a start. You must have drifted off. You have no idea what time it is. You turn your head slowly toward the door. You see nothing, not even a light under it. The darkness is complete. And yet you heard something. The wind gusts. The rain pelts down. The window rattles. That’s what you heard. Freed from the buildup of paint, the window is rattling. You’re kind of rattled yourself.

You switch on your flashlight and scan the room nervously. It’s as if you’re in the middle of a horror movie. You switch it off again and listen hard; there’s nothing but the creaking of this big old building under the battering of the wind, the squall of rain. You throw back the sleeping bag and place your bare feet on the cold floor. You stand and make your way by memory to the window, your hand out in front of you, finally coming to rest on the chilly glass. You’ve got your flashlight in the other hand and only now do you switch it on. You dig your knife out of your pocket, open it, and lay it carefully on the windowsill. With the flashlight between your teeth, you lift the window slowly, slowly. You test to see if it will stay up, but it won’t; the painted-over pulleys in the grooves are no longer connected to anything.

How to keep this thing open? Because there’s no way on earth you can undo those fasteners on the shutters and hold this window at the same time. You lower the window. Listen again. That storm is heaven-sent for your benefit, Blink Conboy. If there is a God up there, he’s an angry God, but maybe something else has gotten his attention right now. The house seems almost to rock, like a great boat out on the sea. The trees shake and crack under the weight of the deluge, their branches rustling and clicking against the sides of the lodge.

You check under the mattress to see if there are boards there but, no, just springs. You look at the chest of drawers. The two top drawers are each something less than two feet across, maybe six inches high. You slowly pull out one of the drawers. It’s empty except for a couple of mothballs. You pull it all the way out, ditch the mothballs, and carry the drawer over to the window, where you turn it on its side. You lift the window again with one hand, then carefully place the drawer in the gap, hard against the sash. You lower the window until the bottom rail rests on the upended drawer.

You step away, breathing hard, holding in the desire to say something proud and foolish. To shout “Yes!” to the night. You smile grimly. Keep that “yes” inside you, Blink. Hold on to it tight.

The longest blade of the Swiss Army knife slips through the crack between the shutters and pushes up the lower fastener with only a few minutes of effort. You push tentatively on the shutter, and a thin whoosh of wind and rain comes in on you. Cold as it is, you have never felt anything so refreshing. Next you slip your arm up into the narrow space between the upper window and the shutter. There is not much room to maneuver in, but you wedge your knife into the widened crack right under the upper fastener. It doesn’t give. You press harder. You try to hammer the blade upward, and suddenly the knife springs from your grip and clatters down on the windowsill beside you. You switch off the flashlight.

You freeze. Wait.

Despite the cold, you are sweating like nobody’s business. Slowly, carefully, you find the knife in the dark and lift it, cursing your slippery fingers. After an eternity, you try the fastener again; no hammering this time, just even pressure upward. It budges. Good. You lean your back against the right-hand shutter and press the knife upward. Then suddenly there is a snap and a clatter, and the shutter flies open.

The upper S-shaped clasp has broken off and tumbled down the roof. With your flashlight, you can see it resting in the leaf-clogged gutter three feet below you, down the steep pitch of the roof.

The shutters waver in the air and are about to slam against the gable wall when you reach out and grab them. You are hanging half out the window, your feet no longer on the floor, and the shutters are tugging on you like a kite in a gale.

Was there a kite in your life, Blink? Yes, out on the Beaches with Granda. Him getting it up there and then you holding on, two-fisted to the reel, sure you were going to be lifted clear out across the lake all the way to America on the far shore.

Again you catch your breath, wondering how much breath you have left in you. You need your moccasins. The wind is on your side for the moment, pressing the shutters closed, though any minute it might swing them both open.

Go, quick!

You race to your bed, slip the moccasins on, race back, and in one fluid motion fling open the right-hand shutter and crawl out onto the roof.

You didn’t count on the rain-slick moss.

Your feet no sooner touch down on the steep slope than they fly out from under you, and you are on your backside sliding down, down, and over the lip of the roof into space.

You cry out.

Crash!

You lie in a heap on a grassy hummock. You are winded, but nothing feels broken. Above you, out of sight from where you lie, the shutter to your cell slams shut, then flies open and slams again, sounding the alarm.

Get up, Blink. Go!

And with a new surge of energy, you roll to your feet in the wet grass and take off, only to run right into a thicker darkness — a darkness you bounce back from, recoil from. Then out of that darkness comes a flashlight beam, blinding you.

“You just made my day,” says the Tank-shaped darkness, now revealed as he switches on the row of lights on his ball cap brim. He says it loudly, so as to be heard above the storm, loud so you can hear him good, like a man who’s been feeding money all day into a slot machine and just hit the jackpot.

Before you can find your feet again, Tank grabs you by your shirtfront and lifts you up in one fluid motion so your face is inches from his, and the row of brightness on the underside of his cap blinds your eyes. What you can see of his expression is filled with hate and triumph.

“Nobody’s gonna blame me for this,” he says. He raises his hand, and there’s the rifle he wanted you to see earlier. The black metal catches the glow of his lights. He holds it so you can see it. He’d like to hold it there awhile, shaking it in his massive fist, to give you a good long chance to fully appreciate how terrified you are.

“I’m going to let you go in a minute,” he says, pulling you closer still, so you can smell the wet rankness of him, the stench of his breath. “And you are going to wish you were never born.”