Run to Me (12 page)

‘Yeah, well, that’s ’cause it came out of a garbage can. Sorry I couldn’t get anything better
but it’s dark out in case you hadn’t noticed.’ Zack heaved a sigh when the boy didn’t answer. ‘Look, none of this stuff smells any better so just eat it, okay?’

Reece bowed his head. Any second he was going to start bawling.

‘All right, here.’ Zack shoved all the other things at him and took the sandwich. Hoping to put an end to the matter he nodded across the street. ‘Anything happen while
I was gone?’

‘I didn’t see anything. No one went inside or came out.’

They sat side by side, watching the office as they ate. With the surrounding forest so dark and dense the place seemed to glow in its small patch of moonlight.

‘You think the doctor lives in there?’ Reece said around a mouthful of pie.

‘Nah, that’s just where he sees sick people.’

‘Then why’s he still over there? How come
that other person’s still in there with him?’

‘They’re taking care of Corey, that’s why. They want to make sure he’s all right before they . . . go home.’ Even as he said it, Zack realised his mistake. No grown-up would leave a small boy alone even if he wasn’t sick.

‘You mean they might not go away until Corey’s all better? How can we go and check on him then?’

‘When it’s darker we’ll look
through the windows. If they have their lights on they won’t be able to see us.’

Zack felt his patience beginning to strain. The only bad thing about giving Reece food was that it had revived him. Before he’d left to walk to the store the boy had been sitting hunched and silent. Now he was starting with the questions again!

‘But what if they have their curtains closed? What if we can’t see him?
What if Corey wakes up and we’re not there? He won’t know where he is. He’ll think we left him.’

Before he could answer, Zack heard the sound of a car approaching. ‘Get down!’

The two boys peeped through a gap in the undergrowth as an ambulance pulled into the doctor’s driveway and disappeared around the back of the building.

Zack jumped up and grabbed Reece’s arm. ‘Come on. We gotta see what’s
happening.’

They moved onto the road and dashed for the woods on the other side. Ten yards back the building’s rear door came into view – the ambulance standing open before it. In the light from the hall, two men emerged wheeling a stretcher with a tiny figure strapped to its bed.

Reece jumped up. ‘No! You ca –’

Zack grabbed him and covered his mouth, then peered anxiously through the bushes.
The sound of the stretcher wheels hitting the gravel must have masked Reece’s cry – the two men continued to push it forward. They loaded it into the back of the ambulance, slammed the doors and, a moment later, drove from the parking lot.

Zack stood, unable to move. It had happened so fast he hadn’t had time to even think what to do.

Reece broke free of his grasp and faced him. ‘That was Corey.
They took him away!’

‘I know.’

‘But you said they wouldn’t. You said we’d get him back again. Where’d they take him? Where did he go?’

Zack took his arm again. ‘Shut up, will ya? You want them to hear?’

‘I don’t care if they hear! You said we would stay together. You said everything would be all right.’

‘I thought it would be.’

‘No, you didn’t. You hated Corey! You wanted those men to take
him away!’

‘What? Don’t be stupid. Corey was hurt. What was I –’

‘He wouldn’t have been hurt if it wasn’t for you! It’s your fault! You did it! You and your stupid spider accident! We’ll never –’

‘Shut up! Shut up!’ It was Zack’s voice that shouted the words, but the Bad Boy’s hand that shot out towards Reece.

Reece fell back, sprawling amid the moss and dead leaves. He lay for a moment blinking
in shock, then rolled on his side and started sobbing.

Zack stared down at him, equally stunned. Revulsion hit him with such sudden force he bent double and puked his dinner onto the mulch. The spasms were painful but somehow he felt he deserved every one – one day the Bad Boy would do something so awful, he wouldn’t be able to pull him back again.

He straightened and wiped his mouth on his
sleeve. It wasn’t fair! Kids like Reece and Corey needed someone smart and strong and good to take care of them. Not a pathetic throw-away like him!

With a flash of hope he looked towards the house. The grey-haired lady and another man had just come out the back, said their goodbyes and were walking towards their cars. Maybe if he went to them . . . told them the truth . . . asked for help .
. .

Angrily he blinked his tears away. What was he thinking? No one would believe a kid like him.

As the cars filed past him out of the lot, Zack looked down at Reece again. Rotten as it was, he was all the kid had at the moment.

He knelt beside him. ‘Everything’s going to be all right. Corey’ll be safe because he’s unconscious. As long as he doesn’t tell them his name, they won’t know who
he is so they can’t give him back.’

Reece didn’t answer. He’d rolled into a ball and lay crying and shivering.

Zack began pushing up leaves all around him. When he’d made a big pile he crawled in beside him and pulled the boy close. ‘Tomorrow I’ll find out where the ambulance took him and you and I’ll go there. You’ll see. We’ll get him back, I swear we will.’

Nolan stretched naked on the hearthside
rug, sweeping his hand down the long arch of Vanessa’s back. A bit too muscular for his liking – muscle should define a woman’s curves, not embolden them – yet her flawless skin, gilt by firelight, felt like satin beneath his touch. Cradled by the fur on which they lay, a pelt of luxurious warmth and texture, the effect was overwhelmingly sensual.

‘Your hands are cold,’ she murmured, staring
away from him into the flames.

‘Want me to throw on another log?’ Starting at her nape he began trailing kisses across her left shoulder. When he reached its apex he worked his way back, burrowing towards her neck to whisper his next words into her ear. ‘Or would you rather just retire to the bedroom?’

Dark hair tumbled across her face as she turned her head towards him. ‘No, we’ll stay here.
I’m sure we can find some other way to warm them.’

He laughed and rolled her onto her back. Christ, he needed this! After the day he’d had such mindless diversion wasn’t just welcome, it was therapy.

The cabin at least had been a pleasant surprise. Two bedrooms, fully furnished with a huge open fire and a view of some lake – the name of which had ten syllables he couldn’t pronounce, let alone
remember. The only lodging for a hundred square miles, it was
normally rented by vacationers seeking to truly get away from it all. But with the foliage season nearing its end and the skiing season not yet begun they’d been lucky in finding it unreserved.

Now, after a long hot shower and a meal of venison stew and crusty wheat bread – purchased from the general store – he was ready to put the
day behind him. Along with all thoughts of three feral boys and what would happen if they weren’t caught.

Vanessa moaned softly, arching against him. As he bent to her breast, he noted dimly that his mobile was ringing.

‘You’d better get that.’ Her voice was husky.

She couldn’t be serious. ‘Message bank.’

Taking his head in both her hands she pushed him away, then swung up to sit with her
back to him.

Nolan swore. How did women just turn off like that? With a muttered curse he took up the phone from the coffee table.

‘I could’ve sworn my last words to you were to keep me informed.’

Nolan’s mouth went instantly dry. ‘Tragg.’

‘Yet here it is going on ten o’clock and I haven’t heard a single word from my buddy. I was starting to worry.’ The man’s rough whisper made even the most
innocent words a threat.

‘Tragg, listen, I was just about –’

‘Where the fuck are you?’

‘Deadwater. Maine. The town where the kids ended up. Vanessa’s here, too. We’re at a cabin by a lake.’

‘Having a little vacation, are you?’

‘What? No! We’ve been searching all day. Got some good leads. Vanessa’s sure that by tomorrow –’

‘You mean you haven’t found them yet.’

Five minutes later when he
hung up the phone, Nolan’s cold sweat had raised gooseflesh over his body. Suddenly no fire in the world could warm him.

Vanessa nodded at his shrivelled erection. ‘I take it Tragg wasn’t happy.’

He shot to his feet and began pacing. ‘This is all that kid Ballinger’s fault! I swear to God when I find that smart-ass little prick –’

‘You won’t do anything,’ Vanessa cautioned in a level voice.
‘Be clear on this, Nolan. At this stage our goal is to get them back alive.’

He laughed as he balled his hands into fists. ‘I’m sure Tragg won’t mind a mark or two.’

With a white-knuckled grip on the Chevy’s steering wheel, Shyler sat staring at the back of Bill’s shop. Her palms were already slick with sweat, her breathing rapid. And she hadn’t even shut off the engine yet! Twice on her drive in she’d nearly turned around and gone home again. If not for the fact she was out of just about everything in the cabin she wouldn’t have come.

Three trips
to town in as many days was definitely more than she was ready for. In the last ten months, desperate to limit her exposure to anything that might trigger an attack, she’d made only four trips altogether. Yesterday’s had already proved her concerns were well founded, resulting in one of the turns she so feared. And as if that wasn’t enough to unsettle her, there was the dream she’d had last night.

She wouldn’t have thought anything could be worse than her usual nightmare where she relived what had happened. But dreaming of Jesse alive and whole, holding him, touching him, knowing the joy of his return, only to wake and find it an illusion, had been the cruellest form of torment.

Why? Why would her dream suddenly change? The strain of the second anniversary of his death? Encountering children
two days in a row? An unplanned trip to the doctor’s office? A combination?

Whatever the cause, she couldn’t see the change as a sign her condition was improving. If anything it was getting worse. The dream had felt so incredibly real, a part of her had wanted to remain in that realm. And a sense of what that would mean in reality told her she was possibly nearing a crisis point.

Staring up
at the back of Bill’s store she again felt the pressure to turn and run. In her current state, who knew what another trigger might do? But she had to eat.

She shut off the engine and looked around. Early morning, no other cars in the parking lot and there hadn’t been any out front on the road. The odds that Bill was alone inside were as good as they were going to get. She pulled on her hat, climbed
from the car and closed the door.

Before locking it she checked for movement in the woods that bordered the back of the lot. As always her gaze was drawn to the thicket. Broad and leafy, the copse of moosewood was a perfect screen for an ambush. Ample cover for five young men, their leader a brute with a fish hook scar, his second a scarecrow with flaxen hair . . . another with a jaunty beret
. . .

She stopped, took a breath and closed her eyes. Slowly she opened them, willing herself to see only what was real, only what was there.

Nothing. No shadows, no movement, no threat of any kind.
They
were long gone.
It’s only the ghosts that live in your mind
.

‘You said you’d find out where the ambulance went. You said we’d go there and get Corey back.’

‘We will, I promise. I just need
to get something to eat first, okay?’

Zack looked down into Reece’s troubled face, feeling only slightly shamed by his lie. In truth he had no idea how he was going to find out about the ambulance. He couldn’t very well walk into the doctor’s office and ask. But just at that moment, and as bad as it made him feel about himself, Corey wasn’t his top priority.

After vomiting all he’d eaten the
night before he just had to get something into his stomach. His hunger was like nothing he’d ever known. It overrode every other sensation – the biting cold, even the growing pain in his leg – and was so demanding he couldn’t think about anything else.

‘You’re hungry, aren’t you?’ he said to Reece.

The boy bowed his head. ‘Starving.’

‘Well, all right then. We do this first, then we find Corey.’

Zack turned back to the general store. From their vantage point amid the bushes at the far end of the lot, he could see a woman in a white woollen hat standing a few steps from the back door. For his plan to work he needed at least one other customer inside the shop. Why was she just standing there? Why didn’t she go in? What was she doing staring off into the woods like that? What the hell was
she waiting for?

‘Do you think it’s far, where they took Corey?’

‘Will you forget about Corey till after we do this? I need you to concentrate. Now you remember what I told you to do, right?’

Reece shoved a knuckle into his mouth.

Zack pulled it out again. ‘Well, do you?’

‘Yeah, but . . . I’m scared.’

‘There’s nothing to be scared of. They can’t do anything to you if it’s an accident. You
just have to make sure it looks like one.’

‘But I don’t know how.’

Zack clenched his jaw. ‘I told you how. You just drop something or knock something over. But not a little thing; it has to be something big and noisy.’

‘What if the man gets mad at me?’

‘So let him get mad! You want to eat, don’t you? Or would you rather have breakfast from the garbage can again?’

Reece grimaced and shook
his head.

Zack sighed at the pathetic sight. ‘I don’t know what you’re worried about. I’m the only one who could get in trouble. I’m the one who’ll be stealing stuff.’

‘What if they catch you?’

In that one mournful question Zack finally heard the boy’s true fear – if he were caught, Reece would be alone. ‘Get real. It’s not like I’ve never done this before.’

‘It’s not?’

‘You kidding? I’ve
shoplifted heaps. And that was in department stores with lots of people and security guards. This is nothing, just one little old man.’