THE CRUEL SEVEN

by Terence Mitford

  About twenty feet away, a large bolder protruded up from the water like a miniature island. She dared herself to swim out to it and a few seconds later, climbed up out of the water and laid back on the hot rock. The sun’s rays warmed and relaxed her and she felt herself drifting off into a heat induced sleep.

  A bird shrieked overhead and her eyes snapped open. For a moment, she had forgotten where she was. Then she looked up and wondered how long she had been asleep. She was no navigator, but judging by how much the sun had shifted its position, she guessed it could have been a couple of hours. Her skin was hot to the touch. The warmth of the sun’s rays must have kept her in a deep slumber. She had dreamed of home and of her life before her nightmare had begun. If only she had stood firm and refused to get into that deathtrap of a plane. Mike would have had to book a regular flight, and by now they would be in Quebec, either fixing their broken marriage or discussing how to end it. Either way, Mike wouldn’t have damaged his back. She wouldn’t have been coerced into displaying her body to strangers. And they wouldn’t be harboring a bag full of narcotics.

  But then Mike wouldn’t have flashed himself to Summer, and she wouldn’t know that he was full of it when he assured her the incident with the neighbor was a mistake he would never make again.

  So every cloud had a silver lining, right? At least now she could see him for who he was. Maybe she could have forgiven and forgot about Vicki, who knows, but trying it on with Summer was definitely a stretch too far.

  She slid off the rock and gasped as the now icy cold lake seemed to drain away her strength and she slipped under the water. She pushed off the lakebed with her right foot, but something caught around her ankle and pulled her back under. She pushed again, harder this time. Her face cleared the water for a moment, allowing her a quick gulp of air before being dragged back down. The more she fought to free her foot, the more entangled it became. She told herself to stay calm, to hold her breath, and to try again. But within seconds, panic was taking over.

  She lashed out with her arms, searching for anything to grab onto. Her hands cleared the water and slapped down on its surface, only for the water to filter through her fingers as she pushed down. The glittering sun kissed surface was just inches above her face, but may as well have been a mile away. She held her breath. But the struggle had depleted the oxygen in her lungs, leaving only carbon dioxide, and she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She breathed out and breathed in again. An instinctive reaction to her body’s desperate need for air. But only water rushed into her lungs, which her body tried to reject by coughing and spluttering, and more water flooded in.

  With no more oxygen getting to her brain, she began to hallucinate. Events from her childhood flashed before her eyes as if on a continuous reel of thirty-five millimeter film. She saw her mother, her father, her birthdays, Christmases, and her wedding day, all rolled into one condensed infomercial. So this is what drowning feels like. She was going to die in this lake a mile from anyone. How will they find her? How will they know where to look? Then, with her chest flooded, a calmness swept over her. She could no longer feel the cold or the pain of the water in her lungs, and no more memories scrolled before her eyes. There was just darkness. And silence. The pounding of her heart that had been so loud a few seconds ago became distant. She stopped struggling and relaxed as her life slipped away. The only sensation was that of slowly floating upwards.

  Then everything changed.

  The blackness of the lake transitioned into blinding light. Someone pulled on her wrists. Pain radiated from her lungs. Her eyes couldn’t focus in the blinding sunlight. Cold engulfed her whole body again. The serenity of death was replaced by the panic of life.

  She gasped for air.

  She was alive.

  Someone had dragged her from the lake onto her belly, and water poured from her mouth. As they rolled her onto her back, she looked up and tried to focus on the silhouetted face above her. Maybe it was one of those nosy city folk Luke had mentioned who had been spying on her and saw her in trouble. As her breathing slowly returned to something near normal, so did her vision, and she coughed and spluttered as his features came into focus. “Luke!”

  He grinned down at her. “You’re alive?”

  It took a moment and a few deep breaths to replenish the lost oxygen throughout her body before she could speak properly again. “I hope so. If not, you must have died too and followed me up to heaven.”

  “I should have told you not to swim out here on your own. There are all sorts of dangers lurking on the bottom of the lake.”

  “Yeah, I just found one of them, or it found me.” She drew in more deep breaths. “I thought I was dead. It felt like I was.”

  “You weren’t breathing when I pulled you out, so I put you on your stomach and massaged the water from your lungs.”

  She sat up and looked down at the red marks around her right ankle. “My foot was trapped, I couldn’t get free.”

  “From where you were, my guess is you got entangled in the rope from my old boat. That’s where those city folk sunk it. When you relaxed and went limp, it must have fallen off.”

  “You mean when I died. Because I did die. I felt it. I died under that water.” She took another deep breath and gazed at Luke. “You saved me. You brought me back. If you hadn’t, I’d still be out there lying on the lakebed. Dead.”

  They held each other’s gaze. He moved closer. She felt his warm breath on her face just before his lips touched hers. She didn’t turn away. He had just saved her life, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. With his wet hair swept back, and his damp skin glistening in the sunlight, he was even better looking than she remembered. And in that surreal moment she felt incredibly attracted to him, like they were the only two people in the world, in a kind of modern day Adam and Eve or Romeo and Juliet.

  He cradled her as she lay back on the ground, and with their bodies pressed together, he followed her down. She parted her lips, allowing his tongue to probe. It felt good, and so did his body against hers. She closed her eyes, lost in the moment as he hooked his fingers in the waistband of her underwear, pulled them down, and slid a hand between her thighs. Her breathing became short and rapid, and a tingle started deep between her legs and slowly became a tremor that rippled through her whole body. She pulled in a deep breath and moaned as she exhaled.

  Then it hit her like a sledgehammer. She was in the arms of another man, wearing nothing but a pair of panties that were now down her thighs. She pushed him off and sat up and covered her breasts with her arms. “I can’t do this, Luke.”

  He nodded. “You can if you want to. And for a moment there it was obvious to both of us you wanted to.”

  “You just saved my life. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was confused.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t know it was me?”

  She hesitated, unsure how to answer him.

  “Does your husband kiss you like that?”

  She looked at him. “As a matter of fact, he does. He’s very affectionate.” She pointed to a yellow bundle near the lake’s edge. “Could you get my dress?”

  Luke scooped up the dress and handed it to her.

  She stood up and grabbed it with one hand while trying to cover her breasts with her other.

  Luke grinned. “You don’t need to cover yourself. I saw your body last night and again when you were laying here gasping for air.”

  Her cheeks burned as she pulled on her dress. “I’m a married woman. The only people who should see me naked are my husband and my doctor, and you are neither. I’m sorry. I don’t want to sound ungrateful because I truly am.”

  Luke nodded. “Okay, let me know when you decide how you are going to prove it.” He winked at her.

  All kinds of emotions swirled around her head as she grabbed the backpack and emptied it on the ground, then set about washing the clothes at the edge of the lake. Luke settled down beside her and helped. When they had finished, they wrung out the garments, pushe
d them into the bag, and set off back.

  22

  LISA

  There was little conversation on the walk back from the lake. Lisa didn’t want to say anything that Luke could misinterpret as either encouragement or a lack of gratitude, so she remained a few yards behind him. Maybe the silence would give her time to clear her head. She wasn’t the superstitious type, but she was starting to believe in guardian angels. Because for the second time in two days, she had cheated death.

  As Luke led the way, carrying his shirt by his side, she focused on his rippling back muscles and wondered if fate was trying to tell her something. Was it orchestrating recent events to guide her from her current life? Could that explain why she hadn’t been in control of her actions at the lakeside? Was fate to blame for what happened back there? And did she really have an orgasm in the arms of another man?

  She was still trying to make sense of her emotions when they arrived back at the house. Luke stopped at the edge of the trees and seemed to study the area through squinted eyes.

  She stepped up next to him. “What is it?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  Lisa scanned the house. “I don’t see anything.”

  “That’s what I mean. Pa should be out front. He’s always outside at this time of the day and ma sits on the deck watching him cutting the logs or skinning the animals.”

  “I’m going to check on Mike.”

  Luke grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

  She pulled free. “If something’s wrong, I need to make sure he’s okay.”

  She sprinted around to the cabin, rushed inside, and froze. The bed was empty. She ran to the bathroom. Empty. With her heart pounding, she rushed back to the house, and as she burst through the door, she breathed a sigh of relief. Mike was sitting on a couch, alone, and Erica and the family were sitting around the table.

  But they weren’t the only ones in the room.

  Three men stood near the table, and it took just a glance to see that it wasn’t a friendly visit. One cradled a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun in his arms, and another held a semi-automatic pistol in his right hand. The third must be in charge. He stood at the head of the table, grinning at her. “I’m so glad you could make it,” he said through clenched teeth. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Lisa glanced back at Mike for an explanation. He had a look of resignation on his face. “They are here for the bag, Lisa.”

  She turned back to the man at the table. He was big and heavy with a large square jaw, cold gray eyes, and faded-black tattoos scrawled around his neck, arms, and hands. The kind that gang members acquire in prison. His two friends had similar tattoos and looked just as unfriendly.

  “Okay,” Lisa said. “Just take the bag and go. We want nothing to do with it.”

  The boss crossed the floor and looked her up and down. “So where is it?”

  “I can show you. But please don’t hurt these people. They have nothing to do with it.”

  “They are harboring you. That means they are just as involved as you are.”

  “We’re not involved. We didn’t know what was in the bag until we got here.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  He smirked. “Take me to the bag.”

  Lisa glanced at Mike. Then turned back to the boss and nodded. “Follow me.”

  She led him to the cabin, rushed inside, and dropped to her knees. But when she looked under the bed, she gasped. “It’s gone.”

  He stormed over and pulled her up by her hair. “If you fuck with me, I’ll fuck with you, and you won’t like the result. So quit stalling and get me the bag.”

  “I’m not fucking with you. The bag was under the bed.”

  He bent down to check, then stood up and slapped her across the face. “That’s just for starters. It’s going to get a lot worse if you don’t cooperate.”

  Lisa held her stinging cheek. “I told you. We have nothing to do with the drugs. We were just taking a flight to Quebec for a vacation when we crashed in the woods.” She paused a moment. “Wait. How did you know we were here?”

  “We followed the GPS signal in the bag. You don’t think we’d let a bag full of merchandise go without keeping tabs on it, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a drug dealer.”

  ‘The second you took the bag from the plane, you became ours. You touch our stuff, we own you.’

  “If you tracked the bag here, can’t you track its location now?”

  “In the city, we can pinpoint it within a couple of yards. Out here, the signal is too weak, so it’s more like a hundred. But we know it’s around here somewhere.”

  “Well, I can’t help you. Last time I saw the bag, it was under the bed. I don’t know who moved it or where they put it.”

  He reached out, grabbed her hair, then pushed her out of the cabin and marched her back to the house. He shoved her towards the table and ordered her to sit down.

  She sat next to Summer and glanced around at the family. She made eye contact with Erica and mimed, “I’m sorry.”

  Erica just nodded. Lisa glanced at the twins and Ed, then drew a breath. Luke was nowhere to be seen. So he must still be outside? She couldn’t ask because then they would know someone was missing.

  The boss appeared deep in thought as he paced the floor. Then he stopped and scanned the table. “One of you knows where our stuff is. I suggest whoever it is starts talking now or we’ll start thinning out this family until you do.” He pulled out a semi-automatic pistol from his belt and pointed it at Summer’s head. “We’ll start with the girl.”

  “Wait!” Lisa shouted as she jumped up and ran over to the couch. “Mike, tell him where the bag is, or he’s going to kill Summer.”

  Mike shook his head. “I haven’t touched it. If it’s not under the bed, I don’t know where it is.”

  Lisa went back to the table and looked at the twins. “You were in the cabin earlier today. Have you moved it?”

  The twins shook their heads.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why are you asking us? We haven’t moved the bag.”

  Lisa slumped back down in the seat next to Summer. Billy was still on his way back from town, and Luke had spent most of the afternoon at the lake with her, which just left Erica and Ed. But it couldn’t have been them. They wouldn’t stay quiet while this man threatened to kill their only daughter. So it made no sense.

  The boss pulled back the hammer on his gun. “I’ll count to five, then I’ll blow her head off.”

  Lisa looked across the table at Erica and Ed. Their daughter was about to die, and it would be her fault. She and Mike had brought the drugs onto this family’s property, and they were all about to suffer the consequences.

  The boss began counting, “One… two… three—”

  “Wait a minute, Boss.” The man with the shotgun raised a hand. “Why don’t we have some fun with the girls first?”

  The boss glanced from Summer to Lisa and back to his accomplice. Then he pointed to Summer. “Okay, take her upstairs, but make it quick. I want to get back to business.”

  The guy pointed his shotgun at Summer and ordered her to climb the ladder. The second man grabbed Lisa’s arm and pulled her towards the door. He marched her to the cabin and pushed her down onto the bed. “If you move, I’ll shove my gun in your mouth and blow your brains out.” He laid on top of her and pulled up her dress.

  She froze and closed her eyes, not wanting any visual memories of what was about to happen. As he pulled down her underwear, there was a dull thud, and warm liquid dripped onto her face. She opened her eyes to see Luke standing over them, holding the handle of an axe. The business end was embedded in the back of the man’s head. Lisa stifled a scream as she wriggled out from under him.

  Luke pulled out the axe and dragged the man off the bed and out of the cabin. He returned without the axe or the body.

  Lisa brought her hands up to her face,
and when she pulled them away, they were covered in blood. She rushed to the bathroom and rinsed it off. Then she hurried back to Luke. “We have to do something. One of the men has taken Summer upstairs.”

  Once outside, Luke grabbed the bloodied axe and set off for the house. Lisa followed and suggested he let her go in first to distract the boss. “I’ll get him to turn away from the door so you can take him by surprise.”

  Luke agreed, and Lisa entered the house and walked past the boss. Her plan worked, at least initially, because he turned his back towards the door. “What are you doing back here?”

  “I have a surprise for you.”

  Luke stepped into the doorway, but due to the bright sunlight behind him, he cast a long shadow into the room.

  The boss spun around and raised his gun. Luke ducked to the side of the doorway as the man squeezed off several rounds in his direction. Ed sprang up from his seat and rammed a knife through the man’s neck. The twins jumped up and ran to the ladder. Frankie went first, with Freddie close behind.

  The boss dropped the gun and collapsed, and as he thrashed around on the floor, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood pumping out from the gaping wound, there was a scuffle upstairs, and a blood-curdling scream was followed by a thud on the floor above.

  A few seconds later, the boss took his last breath just as a body was thrown down from the top of the ladder.

  Then the twins climbed down and dragged both bodies outside.

  Lisa ran over to Mike. “Are you okay?”

  Mike nodded. “Are you?”

  “Yes, but were you telling the truth about the bag, don’t you know where it is?”

  “I thought it was still under the bed.”

  Luke walked in with a huge grin on his face. “That went well.”

  Ed laughed. “We took out the two in here, where’s number three?”