Two Girls Down

by Louisa Luna

  Cap stopped walking. He remembered plenty of times when young cops were too hot to see some action, started making poor decisions. Jules had told him some boys’ frontal lobes, the part of the brain that processes consequences, didn’t develop until they were in their midtwenties, and Cap could believe it. Taking a bad shot, searching and seizing without a warrant, walking into an unknown situation without backup.

  He could just see the outline of the cabin about a hundred feet away, the shape of a one-story A-frame, shimmering through the trees. Vega continued to walk ahead of him and soon realized he wasn’t right behind her, that he had stopped. She turned and held her hands out, impatient.

  “Coming?”

  Cap didn’t speak, gestured come here with one hand. Vega looked at him sideways and came back, small clouds of dust kicking up from her feet.

  Then she was right in front of him, breathing fast and heavy.

  “What is it?”

  There was no way to say it except to say it, no bubble wrap he could duct-tape to the thing to make it more attractive to her.

  “We have to go back,” he said, calmly resigned.

  “What’s that?” Vega said back as if she had a bad ear.

  “To the old man’s house, see if he has a landline we can use.”

  Vega stared at him, her mouth a little slack, in shock.

  “We’re right here,” she said. “The girls are in there right now.”

  She spoke slowly so he wouldn’t miss anything.

  “They could be,” said Cap. “And McKie and Dena could be armed. So let’s say we have a little gunfight, and they shoot us, and we die. Then the girls are still in there, and no one knows where they are.”

  Cap watched her face for a reaction but there was none. She gazed at him, forehead wrinkled.

  “And we’re dead,” he added.

  “They’re junkies, not gangsters. They got in over their heads,” she said. “We can handle them.”

  “All circumstantial. We’re talking about thirty minutes here. That’s the trade—thirty minutes for odds of a significantly better outcome.”

  Vega stepped closer, up to his face, close enough so he could smell the herbiness of her breath and see her nostrils puff with air.

  “This could be the thirty minutes, Caplan,” she said, her eyes shining, reflecting the severely clear sky. She continued: “When they rape them or kill them or cut off their thumbs and their ears because they’re panicking.”

  She was earnest and not angry, and Cap knew the real bitch of it was that they were both right.

  “This is the thirty minutes,” she said, firm. “This is it. Right now.”

  Cap thought of this: When Nell was twelve she learned about 9/11 in school. They had covered the basics before then, but when she was twelve, in the sixth grade, they really gave them the details, watched videos and read newspaper articles, wrote reports and glued clippings to posterboards. Not long after Nell wrote a short story about a freak snowstorm in the middle of September, all the planes grounded, all airports shut down. Cap and Jules were stunned: even though it was a child’s rewrite of history, isn’t that what we all did in our heads, tapped the clock icon and scrolled the hours back, played endless versions of if this, then that.

  He wanted to tell Vega what he never told Nell, that the terrorists just would have done it on September 12.

  “We can’t control that,” said Cap. “We can control what we do.”

  “Yes,” she said, lips curling up on her teeth. “We can.”

  She turned and headed purposefully toward the cabin.

  “Vega!” Cap called.

  She whipped around and walked a few steps back to him.

  “I’m going in there right now. You can come or not come. If the girls are in there, I’m going to get them and bring them out here. You can come or not come.”

  He looked at her and really saw the color of her eyes, a mix of green and blue, thin yellow rays spiking out from the pupils—two watercolor suns.

  She turned to go again, and this time Cap put his hand on her shoulder with the intention of pulling her back. In a second she grabbed his wrist and flipped it and kept twisting it like a pipe cleaner; the pain shot through the tendons, and he grabbed the collar of her jacket with his free hand and grunted. She shoved her other hand hard against his sternum, the heel sharp right over his heart. Cap knew it was some martial-arts move, something where you use the muscles of your back and midsection to push forward. He wondered if they fought, really fought, who would win. Vega’s reflexes were faster, but he was probably ultimately stronger, just the cruel benefit of being bigger and a man. That said, if he had to put a dollar down on who would get up more quickly after being hit, that would be Vega.

  They both froze, barely breathing.

  “Here’s the thing, Vega,” he said, barely louder than the chattering birds around them. “I think you made a mistake too, just not the same one as most people.”

  She wasn’t moving. Her fingers stayed cold and clamped around his wrist.

  Cap kept going: “Except instead of thinking you’re too special to lose someone, you think you’re special because you already have.”

  Vega stared at him, eyelashes coming down halfway, not even a full blink.

  “I’m very sorry about your mom and your friend—Perry, right? But losing them doesn’t make you special. My grandfather died from Alzheimer’s, and he killed a fucking Nazi with a knife.”

  His voice choked high when he mentioned Art. His mother’s father, a small bowlegged man, the human equivalent of a Jack Russell terrier, always busy, building Cap cars and trucks out of thick wooden blocks. When Cap was ten, Art had told him to lose the “Grandpa.” “You’re practically a man, Max, you can call me Art like my friends.” And then the shitty, undignified end—a bed in the vets’ hospital in Bay Ridge, playing with a child’s tower of rainbow rings.

  His nose stung, and he swallowed salt. Vega still didn’t move, kept her hand against him, the other on his wrist. Cap let go of her jacket.

  “If they’re dead, they’re already dead,” he said. “If they’re alive, they’ll probably be alive in thirty minutes.”

  Vega cocked her head a little and started to open her mouth.

  “We play the favorites,” said Cap. “Not the long shot.”

  She bent her elbow, and the palm on Cap’s chest relaxed. Slowly she let go of his wrist with her other hand. Then she leaned forward and kissed him forcefully on the mouth.

  It happened so fast he didn’t have too much time to react. He felt the pressure from her lips (soft, dry) as if she were trying to pass something through them to him, a message or a germ. Their arms were still tangled together, her one hand still resting lightly on his chest, and then she pulled away. Her eyes moved up and down his face, the neck of her black T-shirt shaking. There was no wind; it was from her heartbeat.

  He instantly regretted not holding tight to her shoulders and kissing her back, kissing her cheeks and her forehead and her eyelids. He realized he couldn’t think of a thing to say that made sense, so he thought of what Nell would say.

  “WTF, Vega?”

  The corner of her mouth turned up in a smile she wouldn’t allow to fully occupy her face, so he focused on that tiny movement, a miracle really.

  Then the deafening crack of a gunshot split the air around them, and it was over.

  14

  They broke apart instantly and ran to the right side of the road, each behind a tree. Vega pulled the Springfield from the holster and flipped the safety. She watched Cap do the same with his ancient Sig. They waited for another shot, which didn’t come. But then they heard voices, loud but unintelligible. Fighting. Vega peered through the branches to the cabin but could see no detail, all the windows dark.

  “One of them didn’t want the other to take the shot,” she said.

  “Are we certain they’re shooting at us and not each other?” said Cap.

  Vega strained to hear specific w
ords but couldn’t get anything, just a “goddammit” here or there from McKie and high-pitched screeching from Dena.

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re getting itchy in there, and they’re armed,” said Vega. Then she said, as if it were a full sentence, “So.”

  Cap squatted, looked over his shoulder and around the tree at the cabin, then back up to Vega. There was a bluish tint to his face, from either the early light or exhaustion.

  “So this is the thirty minutes,” he said.

  Vega said again, “And they’re armed.”

  Cap exhaled through his nose audibly and then barely shook his head, ending a conversation between himself and himself.

  Finally he said, “Why don’t you go around back, see if you can get in. I’ll get in the front door.”

  Vega huffed out a laugh. “And then what the hell are you gonna do?”

  “If the girls aren’t in plain sight, then I’ll talk, distract them while you look around.”

  “What if they are in plain sight?”

  “Then I’ll talk, distract them, wait for you, then we shoot to wound. Below the knees, no torso. Stay away from arteries. We need to know what they know.”

  Vega nodded.

  “Let’s get a little closer first,” he said, standing.

  He took a few steps to another tree, and then another. Vega followed him, hiding behind the same trees. Soon they reached the clearing around the cabin, which was wider than the house of the old man with the truck, more square footage but still shabby, the exterior a chipped red wood with metal-paned windows and an open porch running along the whole front of the house.

  “You good?” said Cap.

  Vega nodded, and then started to make her way around, moving through the trees, kept the Springfield pointed down, both hands on it. Through a side window, she saw shapes, people moving. She glanced at Cap, who was staying low and thin against the tree, and she pointed to the window and then to her eyes. I see them right here. Cap gave her a quick up nod.

  She continued, slowly, tree to tree, passed a pair of sloped cellar doors and an old beige Honda with a peeling New York Giants sticker on the fender. The car the girls were taken in. When did Kylie realize Evan Marsh was not her friend, and neither was John McKie? When did the fear close in? Vega shook it out. Not her concern, and as usual, the wrong questions.

  —

  Vega left Cap’s line of vision, went behind the house. McKie and Dena were still fighting, the volume sounding the same, which meant, Vega hoped, that they had not moved too much, that they were still where Vega had just seen them, toward the center of the house and not right up front. Cap knew he had to get the twenty feet to the porch unseen, then under the window.

  Why don’t I keep my goddamn vest in the trunk anymore? he thought. It was in the attic at home, in a cardboard box with untaped flaps, covered in dust. The short answer was that he had not foreseen this particular situation. He had not predicted a week ago that he would be working on a police and federal investigation and would be participating in an armed hostage rescue. He momentarily grabbed hold of the idea, allowed himself to feel the fear of it, closed his eyes and thought to Nell over the father-daughter telepathic hotline—I love you, Bug.

  That was it for the fear. He opened his eyes, gripped the Sig tighter, and ran for the house.

  —

  There was no porch at the back of the house, just three narrow steps leading to a rusted screen door, wires frayed at the bottom. The inner door, red with a square window, was closed behind it.

  Vega stayed in the trees. She could still hear the fighting but faintly. She tried to see through the window in the door, but the shadow from the screen was too dark. So she crouched and hustled to the door, up the three steps.

  She looked in.

  A small room, full-size bed in the corner, with a sheet and a thick blanket in a pile, a dresser with a lamp on top. Bottles, papers, candy wrappers on the floor.

  Vega opened the screen door slowly; a squeak came and went. She grabbed the handle, pressed her thumb down on the thumbpiece, and the door was not locked. The country, she thought, with an element of disdain. She pushed the door open with a little bit of pressure; it opened with the soft pop from the rubber door sweep. Then she was in.

  She took a couple of light steps. The door to the rest of the house was wide open, but Vega couldn’t see anything except a hallway wall. Where are you, Little Bad?

  And then her answer: a girl’s scream.

  —

  Cap heard it as he squatted underneath a window on the porch, facing the woods, the hoarse cry followed by sobbing and garbled words in the same high child’s voice. The hair on his arms straightened out, the skin on his neck iced from the sound. He heard Vega in his head: thirty minutes.

  Now he could hear McKie clearly: “Shut her up, Dena, shut her up!”

  “Fuck you!” Dena shouted, then murmuring to the girls, Cap assumed. Babysitter of the fucking year.

  He felt footsteps shake his ribs as they grew closer, stopping right behind him. He made himself as flat as he could against the wall, guessed that McKie was looking out the window above his head.

  “They’re fucking gone,” said McKie. “They’re gonna bring the fucking National Guard on this place.”

  Cap could hear the slur—drugs or booze or both. Suspect not thinking clearly, volatile, armed.

  “Get her out,” yelled McKie, his voice cracking.

  Her. A child—Kylie or Bailey—made a mournful sound like a wounded animal. Cap’s eyes fell on the cellar doors in front of the porch, and then there was movement, two or three sets of feet coming forward, to the front door, right next to him.

  He ran on his haunches, keeping the Sig tight in one hand, pushing off the porch with the other like a chimp, and turned the corner just as the door opened. He sat against the side of the house now and peeked around the edge, tried to breathe and slow his heart rate as he saw who came out.

  —

  Vega still couldn’t see. She heard the front door open and people run out, so she left the small bedroom and stepped into the hallway, pressing her back flush against the wall. Now she saw more of what she guessed was the living room, a yellow wingback chair, another open door leading to a bathroom. Dead mice and boiled meat filled her nose; she pictured hot dogs in a pan of oil-topped water.

  She heard no sound in the living room except a small rustle, and she imagined Bailey Brandt gagged and tied and nearly passed out on a pile of newspapers where they made her sleep.

  Wrong! Perry would have said, knocking his fist against his head like it was a door. The hell, Vega, your number-two fuckup (number one was not bringing enough firepower): Never assume you’re gonna find who you’re looking for. Assume you’re gonna find the other thing. Which will generally be someone who wants to kill you. Sometimes they’re the same.

  He was telling her, over and over, just like Little Bad and Big Bad, to get out of her head, stop projecting and imagining and hypothesizing, because even if you’re thinking of the worst thing, it was still a kind of optimism, being cocky enough to think you could see the future and get a handle on it. You have no handle—you got your gun and you got the fire; sometimes it’s enough, and sometimes it isn’t.

  She got closer to the end of the hallway, and she saw more of the living room—a couch with a sheet over it, a pile of clothes. And just as she realized the hallway was more of a partition, a thin wall between the back room and the front of the house, she heard a creak and a catch of breath, and she turned the corner with her Springfield out. But McKie was right there, waiting for her, swinging a plank of wood at her, and he cracked it over her forehead and right eye. Then it was shock, blood, bright white, then black.

  —

  Dena Macht wore cutoffs and a pink tank top, dressed for summer in not-yet-fifty-degree weather. She had the same eyes as her mother—blue and set close together; except hers were bright and agonized whereas Mrs. Macht was past all that, long since resigned to bland
disappointment. Dena had a gun in one hand but held it awkwardly, no finger on the trigger. Her other arm was wrapped around Bailey Brandt.

  Cap curved his body around like a ribbon and pressed his face against the side of the house so he could get a better look: Bailey’s face was buried in Dena’s ribs; her blond hair was stringy and snaky down her back, and she wore the pink dress she’d been kidnapped in, the tulle wrinkled and ripped in the skirt. Cap shook his head to an invisible audience and bit the inside of his cheeks—those fuckers hadn’t given her a bath or changed her clothes for six days.

  Dena did not have the gun pointed at Bailey, but it could be there quickly. These things could unravel in a second, Cap knew. There was no fight and then there were fists, no accident and then a pileup, no gunshots and then, suddenly, blood and brains.

  Dena was steering Bailey slowly toward the car when McKie called from the house: “I got one, Dena, I got one!”

  He sounded giddy, like a kid catching frogs. Cap cringed. Dammit, Vega, how’d you get caught?

  Dena’s eyes went wild as she held the gun up, pointing it at the sky.

  “Get her in the car!” shouted McKie.

  Dena shuffled toward the car, pulling Bailey, who moved like she was sleepwalking, her bare feet turned in slightly, head still pressed against Dena’s midsection. Cap brought his head back from the edge and just sat for a second against the side of the house, tapping his head on the wall.

  He knew a few things: he knew McKie and Dena were planning to take off soon, and he knew he was a man down. Once they were in the car it was over; there would be no way for him to get to his car fast enough, especially if he had to make sure Vega was still breathing. He knew people were easier to talk to when they were apart; together they got mobby, gave each other ideas. He knew he had a matter of minutes to convince Dena.

  He knew it was time to talk.

  —

  Vega tried to open her eyes, and then the pain landed. She put her hand over her right eye, which was wet, muddy. She looked at the blood on her fingers and touched again right above her eyebrow, and it was like a fucking ocean of pain there, blood rushing from an actual hole in her head. She gasped before she could realize she should keep quiet, looked around and saw she was right in the hallway where she’d been hit, and then he was above her again.