Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (45 page)

But he couldn’t help it, he could barely make himself let go when the boy started looking more like the rock star than anyone else. It was only when he recognized that he was marking the boy the same way the rock star marked Audrey—with thumb and fingerbruises either side of the throat—that he was able to stop squeezing. And just in time, it appeared, because the kid’s been out like a light ever since. Another good thing because a limp silent captive is a lot easier to hold on to than one that’s yowling and fighting back.

Hoop feels for the carrying straps and readies to hoist the burden back into place just as the sound of fast-coming hard-pounding footsteps reaches his ears. Too many footsteps to be one runner, his ears tell him as he dives blind for what he hopes is deeper cover, dragging the now wriggling boy along to suffer the same as he is from the punishing surroundings.

From this safer distance, going by the lights they’re flashing, he’s able to make out five guys as they run by in a military manner made more so by the jackets they’re wearing. Jackets with the word security spelled out in big letters across the shoulders and reflector stripes running down the sleeves like the ones on the jacket to his rainsuit.

That observation comes with a double message: The reflector stripes on his uniform-like rainsuit are the reason the kid mistook him for a security guy earlier, and now the reflector stripes are going to make the security guys think he’s one of them—with any luck at all. And depending on whether he can strike a bargain with the kid, who’s now thrashing around under the foot planted square on his back.

Plain talk is called for when no more runners go by and it seems safe enough to give a few whispered orders. A no-nonsense “you do this or I’ll do that” stops the thrashing. A scraping of the knife blade against the boy’s throat and a sharp pinching of his nostrils gives backbone to the threat. If the kid wants to see his rock star dad again—if only in parting—he’ll do what he’s told.

Banter with Brownie Yates has gone as far as it can and she’s run out of empty subjects to touch on with Emmet and Chris. Sudden rebel to forced frivolity, Laurel withdraws from their midst, turns back the cuff of her sweater to reveal her wrist and realizes her watch was forgotten in the afterglow of the startling bathroom encounter with Colin. She glances up at an ancient mantle clock and fares no better; its pendulum and hands may not have moved since the eighteenth century.

Amanda is the best judge of how much time has elapsed since Colin and then Nate fled the billiards room. But if the men have been gone long enough to promote concern, Amanda’s not showing any as she moves through the diminished gathering giving off sparkle and chatting at a rate to rival Susa’s gift for gab.

Her purposely bland expression as fixed as the clock’s, Laurel makes a final attempt to achieve a carefree state. She pours a third drink of the evening; premium vodka that could be water for all the buzz it produces. She sets the glass aside and abandons further pretense upon noticing that now Bemus is missing.

“Okay, that’s it,” she says under her breath and ducks out of the party as abruptly as did the men.

Gemma’s not in the kitchen when Laurel looks in. Just the regular staff, all of whom appear unconcerned about anything other than how much longer they’re supposed to delay serving dinner.

The usual play areas on the ground floor are empty when she looks in. Rachel and the children must be in the winter parlor engaged in board games or watching videos—
Star Wars
for the umpteenth time if Anthony has anything to say about it.

Outside, on the brightly lit terrace where the optimist in her hoped to find Colin and Nate smoking cigars or engaged in more weather talk with Sam Earle and Bemus, nothing is moving. No one’s in sight. Anywhere. In any direction she looks. No people, no dogs, no cats, no roosters. And her noisy approach on the graveled path to the studio goes unchallenged when her suspicions take her there.

Inside the studio, those suspicions spiral skyward. Something is wrong; something is very wrong. Instead of the usual six or eight, only two men are monitoring the three banks of television screens in operation. She’d love to believe this represents nothing more than a breakdown in manpower—that she’s caught an entire shift shirking their duties, goldbricking in the support trailers beyond. She’d love to believe anything but what she’s seeing on those television screens.

Visitors from another planet would have no trouble deciphering the message conveyed by the stitched-together scene extended over multiple monitors. Young children would not mistake the activity portrayed there for anything but an expansive manhunt even though the searchers are little more than silhouettes behind widely scattered flashlight beams.

“He got in, didn’t he?” she says in a guarded tone and manages to wait only a scant heartbeat before repeating herself. “I
said
. . . the son-of-a-bitch got
in
, didn’t he!” she shouts at the skeleton crew, both of whom are monitoring radio communications as well as televised transmissions.

“Yes ma’am,” one of them replies without looking away from the flickering visuals or listening less intently to the radio receiver pressed to his ear. “I’m authorized to say we’re presently operating on that premise,” he enunciates as though the words were being dictated to him. “And on the unfortunate probability the suspect has seized a hostage,” he tacks on after another pause to listen. “They’re telling me it’s your—”

Laurel grabs for the radio unit, pries it from his hand and smashes it to the stone floor in a pathetic version of killing the messenger. A messenger that won’t be silenced that easily because the rubber-clad radio hisses and spits back to life as she kicks it aside. She turns her back on the owner-operator’s scramble to retrieve the instrument of her torture and ignores his efforts to complete his statement. She hurries to the door and escape from this hideous reality.

But there is no escape. Out in the open there is no direction she can take that won’t heighten the awareness closing in on her now that she can hear firsthand the distant cries and shouts of the searchers and see without the compound eye of multiple television monitors the true scope of the search moving this way.

At a sustainable pace, she strikes out to join their forces. She runs parallel to their advance until she reaches the shortcut to the oast houses. From here she can intercept their broad path before her narrow one disappears into unrelieved darkness. Unless something or someone intercepts her along the way. She shudders and almost stumbles.

Against Bemus’s vehement objections, Nate heads back to the mansion without an escort. Fear for himself is secondary at this point. At the wheel of one of several golf carts that converged on the hops barn after Colin’s call for help, on the longer, less familiar route to the mansion, he negotiates the service road at a reasonable speed and resists the temptation to contrast the present emergency with long ago events in Northern Michigan. The temptation is strong, his resistance is low, but comparisons are few beyond the need to summon help, and the darkness that characterized both crises. Plus, it’s not as though Colin’s been left at the mercy of the unknown this time around; this time the threat is identifiable and far more potent than anything ever imagined during the Michigan ordeal.

Despite a train of thought that should have prepared him for it, he’s slow reacting to an equivalent deer in the road—a lone figure running on a collision course with his present path. He brakes hard, barely avoids striking the figure—human, female—now fully illuminated by the powerful headlamps. She whirls on the stopped golf cart and comes at him, swinging blindly as he steps forward to find out what in hell she’s doing out here all alone

“Laurel!” he shouts as she lands a blow to his gut. “Jesus Christ!” he oofs and fends off the next blow. “It’s
me
. It’s
Nate
. You’re okay. You’re safe. I’ve
got
you.” Grateful that she didn’t happen to be carrying a garden spade, say, he grabs her in a disabling bear hug, maneuvers her onto the bench seat of the cart where they remain becalmed in a sea of turmoil while he fills her in.

At the finish of his unsparing briefing, Laurel asks the expected questions, principal among them having to do with Colin’s safety and whereabouts. Nate responds with the argument Colin gave to avoid house arrest.

She nods knowingly. “Of course,” she says. “He could hardly do otherwise, could he? That’s why I should be with him. That’s why
I
should be part of the search. Have you forgotten Anthony’s
my
son too? And maybe you’ve forgotten
I’m
the only one who’s seen Jakeway and can make a positive ID.” Her chin comes up in defiance; one foot strikes out to connect with the ground.

“Don’t even
think
about it,” Nate warns and jerks the cart into motion before she can bolt. “Your place is at the house. If Colin knew you were out here . . . Jesus, can you imagine what he’d do? Do you really want to add to his worries? And to the general confusion?” He argues that point to death, then stresses the importance of reliability and patience in situations like this. “Don’t forget, they also serve who only stand and wait,” he concludes in lame desperation.

“On His Blindness,” she responds.

“Whose blindness? Who are we talking about? You’ve lost me.”

“The quote you just gave—it’s the last line of a sonnet by John Milton. ‘On His Blindness,’ the sonnet’s called.”

Sheer blind luck that the quote came to him when it did because its substance seems to have brought about her surrender.

In the backwash of the blazing headlamps, she assumes the same rigid composure she displayed on the trip back to Manhattan after surviving the attack in her New Jersey garage. She appears impervious to the freshening wind that’s carrying enough rain to wet her face and dampen her shoulders.

At the merge with the main driveway, the wind is carrying the wailing of police sirens from outside the fence and the calls and shouts of searchers inside the barrier.

At the porte-cochère, they’re met by the remaining partyers, along with Gemma Earle and Rachel. Amanda is at the forefront of this group whose aggregate expression indicates they’ve pieced together enough to be deeply concerned.

Nate validates their concern without describing the hideous find in the oasthouse. Chris, Emmet, and Brownie Yates race out of the covered entranceway in different directions before he can stop their swelling the ranks of the ill-equipped and undirected volunteers threatening to turn a manhunt into a monumental clusterfuck.

Rachel reports that hers and Gemma’s search of Anthony’s favorite hiding places produced nothing to weaken Colin’s belief that the lad sneaked out to look for Toby at the oasthouses. “The torch kept in his room in case of a power cut is missing . . . oh, and so is that bedraggled Manchester United cap he’s seldom without. But that doesn’t have to mean he’s set on anything but deviling the little Thorne girls,” she says, the catch in her delivery at odds with her brave bearing.

Inside the main entrance hall, Gemma, when questioned, adds nothing to change that perception before bustling away with Rachel to advise the kitchen staff of a major change in plans.

Susa Thorne dashes off to check on her daughters, who are temporarily bedded down in one of the guestrooms. That leaves him alone with Amanda and Laurel, who still hasn’t said a word since referencing the Milton sonnet.

They move into the nearest sanctuary, the always welcoming winter parlor, where the hearth fire is down to embers, with toys and games littering one end of the room and a kiddie video still playing on the TV.

No one says a word until Laurel, fixed on the remains of the hearth fire, finds her voice. “Just tell her, will you? Just get it the fuck over with, will you please?” she says without turning away from the embers.

There’s no mistaking what she means. Nate waves Amanda to take a chair at the game table, clears his throat, shifts his weight, runs his fingers through his hair in a standard stall.

“Very well,
I’ll
do it.” Laurel forsakes the fireplace and targets Amanda. “
This
is what he didn’t tell the others just now. He didn’t tell them that along with incontrovertible evidence that Jakeway has been squatting in one of the oasthouses, he’s also been dining there. Colin found the bloodied feathers of Cyril the rooster in the barn and Nate found the missing dog, skinned, spitted, and partially roasted in the—”

“
What
?” Amanda says, her knuckles whitening on the armrests as she attempts to rise from the chair. “Omigod, what are you saying? They haven’t found . . .” She sinks back into the chair.

“No, they haven’t,” Nate says. “Not yet anyway.”

“Do you know for a fact the rat bastard
has
Anthony?” Amanda says.

“We don’t know that for a fact, but I’m afraid it’s a good surmise,” he says, avoiding eye contact with either woman.

Emmet saves him from further distress by bursting in fresh from a review of the CCTV security tapes with definitive proof Anthony strayed beyond the monitored perimeter soon after nightfall—just as Bemus claimed, just as everyone feared. That news impacts with the finality of a struck gong, stripping Emmet’s other news of any real importance.