“They must still be looking, right?” Dominic said. “Frank is the leader. They would want him most of all, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t think they’ll stop looking,” Loreena said, “but I also don’t know how long that will take. Do you have any idea where we are?”
He shook his head. “The time I got away, I didn’t get very far. All I saw was more forest and a single road leading out—you know, just a one-lane dirt road, not anything people would be traveling often.”
“Probably the road we came up on,” she said.
Dominic lay back down, his breath coming fast. Loreena touched his chest, checking his heart and lungs. His body felt cold and yet he was perspiring, and he moved in small ways that betrayed discomfort, even pain. His muscles pulled him slightly left and then right, as if he would be writhing back and forth if it weren’t for his pride. Loreena touched his forehead with the back of her hand and found it warm, but there was nothing she could do to help him, not as long as they were locked in this room. Unless there was some way she could get through the window.
Her mind whirled with ideas, including the possibility that the rocking chair might be hurled hard enough to cause a break in the glass, but then she stiffened. The sound of footsteps came from out in the cabin. “He’s awake,” she whispered.
Dominic pushed himself up again, but it took longer this time, as if all his reserves were going into the effort. He needed water. They both did. They waited, clinging together, Loreena’s gloved hands around Dominic’s arm. The footsteps stopped, and then they heard cupboards opening and closing, the suction of rubber against rubber as Frank opened the refrigerator door. Another moment, and then water running from a sink somewhere against the back wall. They breathed together, neither daring to speak for fear of missing some important aural clue. Finally, it came: footsteps thudding across the wooden floor, headed their way. One lock clicked, and a second, and then the third slid across and thunked into its original place. The door opened.
Loreena held her breath.
“Aww, now isn’t that sweet.” Frank flipped on a light switch and new shadows jumped into her vision. “Good to see you’re still alive.” He paused, as if looking around, and then crossed to the bed, coming up on Dominic’s side. “Goddamn, it stinks in here.”
Loreena shifted and moved across Dominic’s legs, bending from the waist to crawl over him until she sat between him and Frank. “We need water,” she said, “and food.”
“Look at the little she-devil,” Frank said with a chuckle. “You should be thanking me your boyfriend is still here. I could have offed him a number of times.”
“I know why he’s here,” Loreena said, “and that’s fine. I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but only if he stays alive. Right now, he needs food and water.”
Frank paused, and then rapped his knuckles on the footboard. “Here’s my dilemma, Miss Queen Bee. I’m nobody’s nursemaid. You’re going to have to do for him yourself. If I let you out of this room, you could go running off somewhere. Now, I know you’re not going to find any help. We’re a good twenty miles from any other human beings. It would be more likely you’d starve to death out there in the cold. But still, I don’t want to have to worry about it.”
Loreena brought her legs around beside her so she was resting on one hip. “I’m not going anywhere without him.”
Dominic pressed up behind her as if to say something, but she grabbed his arm, asking for silence.
Frank waited, watching her. “Can you cook?” he asked.
“Did it all the time at home.”
“Fine.” He backed away from the bed. “You get this place cleaned up, and make us some breakfast. You take off somewhere, understand this.” He pulled something out from behind him. “I got my pistol here. I won’t hesitate to use it.”
The wound on the side of Loreena’s head throbbed in recollection.
“You take off, I don’t need him anymore. You got it?”
She nodded, pointed her eyes toward him, and thought of the ear she had pulled from his head. How it looked now she could only imagine, if it had healed properly or if it hung at an odd angle, the lobe a bit more forward than normal, allowing the eye to see too much of the cartilage curves. Most of all, she wondered how much more force it would take to rip it off completely.
Frank let his threat sink in and then walked out of the room and opened the front door, exiting the cabin.
Dominic let out a long sigh and turned Loreena toward him. “Go. Go now, and don’t look back.”
Loreena touched his cheek, then pulled away and slid off the bed. Water was the first thing they needed. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Loreena!”
The instinct was there, to find the back door and hide somewhere in the trees until Frank stopped looking for her and she could get away. Where she would go, she didn’t know, but the urge was strong to just get out of the cabin, away from Frank, so she would never have to be around him again. Fumbling through the cupboards, she found a glass, took a long drink herself, and then filled it again and returned to the prison room.
“You have to listen to me,” Dominic said. The chains rattled on his hands as he moved to meet her. “This might be your only chance.”
The chains. He had been tied up like a wild animal. Loreena tried not to picture it and focused on the water glass. “Drink.”
Dominic hesitated, then drained the glass. Loreena went back and filled it again. She did this four times before he’d had enough, and then she moved to the side of the room. The next thing she needed to do was dump the pots, and she needed to do it before she lost her nerve.
“Loreena, please,” Dominic said. “That’s not important. Go find help.”
“You said so yourself. There’s no one around.” She paused at the foot of the bed, the first pot in her hands, angled away from her body. “It would be hard enough for you. How do you think it would be for me?”
He dropped his hands in frustration. The chains pulled against the bed frame. “You could find your way. I know you could.”
The pot grew heavy in her hands. Careful lest she bump into something and spill its contents all over her clothes, she made her way out of the room and to the front door. Frank still hadn’t returned, and she dreaded meeting him outside, but it was important to get these pots dumped, for she didn’t know how long she would be free to do it.
The air smelled fresh with rain, but the sun was out. Loreena could feel it on her face, though she wished she’d taken Dominic’s jacket, as winter was already afoot here in the mountains and the trees soaked up much of the sun’s warmth. Wanting to dump the pot quickly but unsure where to do so, she hesitated, turning right and then left, and finally decided on right, since they’d approached the cabin from the left. To take the pot the other direction would be the most likely way to get it out of their sight and smell. She had decided beforehand to take it twenty steps out before dumping it, and she counted them now, checking the ground with her toe before placing her weight on it. Once she got dangerously close to a tree, but she caught the smell of the bark before she ran into it, and adjusted her course slightly to the right before finally reaching step number twenty and emptying the spent urine onto the ground. The liquid crackled through old fallen leaves and sticks before settling into the soil, and she waited before returning, pointing her nose the other way to breathe in the deli cious air of freedom, allowing herself for about sixty seconds or so to toy with the idea of just dropping the pot and running until she couldn’t run anymore. Once the scene had played out in her mind, complete with Frank shooting Dominic, she retraced her steps.
On the third trip out, this time with a plastic gallon bucket that had a handle with a pipe-like grip, she imagined doing something with the car. It was sitting nearby, waiting. She didn’t know how to drive, but it couldn’t be that difficult. Press the gas, steer the wheel. The backseat was big enough for Dominic. He could be her eyes and guide her where she needed to go. Then
again, maybe he could drive himself, if he felt well enough, and she would only need to help him get from the room to the car without Frank noticing. But then, there were the chains.
By the time she walked out with the fifth bucket, this one a two-handled pot normally used for cooking stew or boiling spaghetti, she decided the keys to Dominic’s chains would be somewhere in Frank’s possession, most likely on the key ring he’d used to get into the cabin. That was the same key ring he’d used to run the car. If she could find that, she could set Dominic free and get them both out of there. But how she would distract Frank long enough to search for the keys she didn’t know. Perhaps Dominic would have some ideas, but the thought of involving him again filled her with fear. As she walked back to the cabin with the empty pot, all she could think of was how she had involved him in the first place, allowing him to drive her to Kelley, and how she had berated herself over and over for that stupid move. She wouldn’t make it again.
There was only one bucket left. Frank hadn’t shown himself since he’d left the cabin, and she wondered if he were somewhere nearby, watching her, waiting to see if she would make a run for it. She walked dutifully back inside with the empty pot, entered the prison room, and set the pot down in the corner. Without any cleaning solutions, she would be unable to rid the air of the smell completely, but at least it had lost some of its overwhelming power. The last bucket sat against the wall, the biggest one yet. She hesitated, unsure if she could lift it and carry it out.
“It’s too big,” Dominic said. “Leave it.”
Loreena rested her hands on her hips. “I think he’s out there watching me.”
“Do you know where he left the keys?”
Dominic’s thoughts were going the same way as hers, though she doubted he was thinking about the locks on his hands. The car was the way to get free.
Loreena tapped her thumbs on her hipbones, thinking. Did Frank know how many buckets were in the room? Was he waiting for her to take out the last one? Or was he somewhere else, watching the movements inside the cabin, maybe peering in through the back window so he would know the instant she started snooping around, looking for the keys? If he caught her, he would want to do something to punish her, and Dominic was all he had. He wouldn’t have to kill him. There were other options.
She sighed and bent her knees, grabbed the bucket handle, and lifted. It was the heaviest of them all and she had to balance it between her knees, but it was manageable. Waddling, she started out of the room.
“Loreena, wait. You have to try!”
“This isn’t the right time.”
“But he’ll be back any minute.”
“I know.”
Both hands on the bucket handle, her back rounding with the weight, she made her way across the floor once more and out the front door.
“Thought I told you to make breakfast.” Frank moved in to block her path.
Loreena just managed to stop the bucket from swaying before the contents splashed out. Setting it down between her feet, she panted. “You said to clean up.”
“You’ve been at it for a good fifteen minutes. How much shit can one man produce?”
She kept her head down, the bucket handle still in her fingers, and imagined heaving the thing up and over his head.
“How long is this going to take you?”
“I think this is the last one.”
Still he didn’t move, and Loreena wondered what he was waiting for. Finally he stepped aside and walked past her into the cabin. “Hurry up. I’m hungry.”
The mountain air was a blessing compared to the prison room, and she wished Dominic could come out, too. She couldn’t imagine how he had stayed in there all this time. His body was shockingly thin, and who knew what else was going on, as he was clearly in some sort of pain. Standing there, the bucket of shit between her legs, Loreena lifted her head and let the light breeze waft the smell out of her sinuses until she could detect only the scent of pine. The sun reached warm fingers through the branches to alight on her eyelids, and in that moment something shifted at the base of her spine. Behind her closed eyes she saw the angel in the front yard of her uncle’s home, and beyond that, the church with its bell tower gleaming on top, and inside and down the aisle between the pews her uncle at the podium, his mouth open as he sent his words of wisdom out into the congregation. In an aural rush she heard a blend of his sermons with all their lessons about compassion and forgiveness and love and brotherhood playing in reverse. Back, back, back, past her uncle’s lectures and Saul’s rebellions and her endless hours with a book or at the piano or with the cello in her hands, back through the days she spent on the swings in the park while her uncle studied at the picnic table, back until the day before the car accident, the day she and her mother had tended to Salvador. Some of his leaves had turned up with chew marks, signaling he was under an aphid attack.
The memory hadn’t come to her for years. That day, her mother had shown her how to mix the insecticidal soap inside the plastic spray bottle and then spray it on the leaves, letting the white foam bubble up and dribble in little milk-colored suds onto the soil.
“Won’t it hurt Salvador, Mom, to have the poison on his leaves?” Loreena had asked.
Her mother sat in the grass while Loreena sprayed, caressing one of the new buds with her fingers. “He’ll feel so much better once those nasty bugs stop eating on him. Then he can open his flowers and let the sunlight soak into his veins.”
“But it doesn’t hurt him?”
“It won’t hurt him,” her mother promised. “Imagine if you had bugs eating your skin. Sometimes we have to be aggressive when we’re taking care of things.”
Loreena lowered her head. Aggressive. In that moment she could see the future, how Frank would continue to use her, and, when he was ready, put a bullet in Dominic’s head and dump her in the backseat of the car, and then he would drive to some other unknown location, where the FBI couldn’t find him. Eventually he would start over again, building his club, and all the while he would hold her under his thumb with one thing or another, and she would become like Mrs. Markos, ever afraid, jumping in fear when he barked his orders. Like the old woman, she would still be working for Frank long after the man she cared about was dead.
That was one future. That was the future of waiting, hoping someone or something else would get her out of this, that Shawn would find them or Saul would track them down or even God himself would move some wheel of fortune to give her and Dominic a chance at escape. That was the future of denying her deepest impulses, as she’d been taught to do all these years, avoiding the one thing she knew she could do to put an end to it all right now.
Her uncle wasn’t here. The angel wasn’t here. The church was far away, and God or some other twist of fate had delivered Dominic back into her life. Meanwhile, the biggest aphid of all was chewing away at the little strength she had left.
Loreena picked up the bucket and waddled from one side to the other, carrying it out. It would be harder, measuring twenty steps this way. She would make her best guess. Frank was hungry. They were all hungry. She would fix a nice breakfast—pancakes, if she could find some flour and sugar and baking powder. If not, she could whip up an omelet, or maybe some oatmeal. It would depend on what she found in the cupboards, how well Raymond or whoever had stocked the supplies. She would use whatever was there to create the grandest breakfast she had ever made. Right now, breakfast was important, and that’s what she would do next.
She smelled the other waste before she arrived at her designated dumping spot. It was a relief to set the bucket down. She tipped it over and stepped back, letting the liquid flow out. When it stopped gurgling, she lifted it up to empty it completely, and then walked back to the cabin.
After she returned to the prison room, she realized as she placed the empty bucket back against the wall that it couldn’t be the last one.
“Where are the rest?” she asked.
“That’s enough. You’ve done enough.” H
e sounded distant, defeated.
“You couldn’t have reached these.” Someone else had pushed the others aside. Whoever had been watching him, Raymond most likely, wouldn’t lower himself to empty a bucket full of waste. Easier just to push it aside, leave his prisoner in a room full of sewage. Obviously he never expected his boss would have to use the cabin as a hideaway. “Where are the rest?”
Dominic didn’t answer, so she looked in the last place possible—under the bed. There were three more there, smaller, easier to handle. She grabbed the first one and walked out, faster now. Frank was somewhere in the back of the cabin, shuffling around in the other bedroom. With the route from the front door to the dumping place now etched clearly into her consciousness, she nearly ran back to retrieve the second, and when she returned for the last, Dominic touched her shoulder. Frozen by the bedside, she heard a different sound, the rush of water running.
“Loreena,” he said, “he’s showering.”
His grip was weak, like a child’s. She had one hand on the mattress, balancing herself, the other hanging near the floor. When Frank came out of the shower, he would be expecting his breakfast.
“You can do it,” Dominic said. “He won’t notice. Just go to his room and look. Go now.”
He was right. This was the time, though she wasn’t thinking of looking for keys. She mourned for the breakfast they wouldn’t have, the breakfast that would have been so good for Dominic, would have given him back some of his strength. But the water was running and had only just started running and she needed to hurry. The keys. She wouldn’t have time to get the keys, which meant Dominic would be left chained to the bed. She had to be sure to get back.
Bending over, she kissed him on the head. He held her close, his other hand on her shoulder.
“Be careful,” he whispered. “The second you hear it stop, get out of there.”
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