He was in Tennessee?
That couldn’t be right. He lived in Virginia, in Colfax, with his father. Where was Tennessee?
Sam thought about his father. How much time had passed since they’d put that cloth over his face and he’d breathed in that sick sweet smell and not really waked up until just a while ago, tied to this bed in this small bedroom that looked older than anything, older even than his father’s ancient Camaro? Maybe it was more than hours, maybe it was days now. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. He kept praying that his father would find him. But there was one big problem, and he knew it even while he was praying the words—his father wasn’t in Tennessee; as far as Sam could see, there was no way his father could find him.
I’m really scared, Mom.
Forget about being scared. Move, Sam, move. Get your hands free.
He knew he probably wasn’t really hearing his mama’s voice in his head, or maybe he really was, and he was dead, too, just like she was.
He could feel that his pants were wet. It was cold and it itched so that must mean he really wasn’t dead. He was lying flat on his back, his head on a flattened smelly pillow, his hands tied in front of him. He’d pulled on the rope, but it hadn’t done anything. Then he’d felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t want to throw up, so he’d just laid there, breathing in and out, until finally his stomach calmed down. His mom wanted him to pull on the rope and so he began jerking and working it again. His wrists weren’t tied real tight, and that was good. He hadn’t talked to the two men when he woke up. He was so scared that he’d just stared up at them, hadn’t said a single thing, just stared, tears swimming in his eyes, making his nose run. They’d given him some water, and he’d drunk that, but when the tall skinny guy offered him a hamburger, he knew he couldn’t eat it.
Then one of the men—Fatso, that’s what Sam called him in his head—tied his hands in front of him, but not too tight. Fatso looked like he felt sorry for him.
Sam raised his wrists to his mouth and started chewing.
“Damned friggin’ rain!”
Sam froze. It was Fatso’s voice, loud and angry. Sam was so scared he started shaking, and it wasn’t just the damp chill air in this busted-down old room that caused it. He had to keep chewing, had to get his hands free. He had to keep moving and not freeze. He couldn’t die, not like Mama had. His father would hate that almost as much as Sam would.
Sam chewed.
There weren’t any more loud voices from the other room, but he could still hear the TV announcer, talking more about really bad weather coming, and then he heard the two men arguing about something. Was it about him?
Sam pulled his hands up, looked closely, and then began working the knotted rope, sliding his hands first this way, then that. The rope felt looser.
Oh boy, his hands did feel looser, he knew it. Sam chewed until his jaws ached. He felt a give in the rope, then more give, and then the knot just came loose. He couldn’t believe it. He twisted his wrists and the rope fell off.
Unbelievable. He was free.
He sat up and rubbed his hands. They were pretty numb, and he felt pins and needles running through them, but at least they didn’t hurt.
He stood up beside the mangy bed with its awful smells, wondering how long it had been since anyone had slept in that bed before him. It was then he saw a high, narrow, dirty window on the other side of the room.
He could fit through that window. He could.
How would he get up there?
If he tried to pull the bed to the window they were sure to hear him. And then they’d come in and tie him even tighter.
Or they’d kill him.
Sam knew he’d been taken right out of his own bed, right out of his own house, his father sleeping not thirty feet away. He knew, too, that anything those men had in mind to do to him wasn’t any good.
The window . . . how could he get up to that window?
And then Sam saw an old, deep-drawered dresser in the corner. He pulled out the first drawer, nearly choking on fear when the drawer creaked and groaned.
He got it out. It was heavy, but he managed to pull it onto his back. He staggered over to the wall and, as quietly as he could, laid the drawer down, toeing it against the damp wall. He stacked another drawer on top of that first one, then another, carefully, one upside down on top of another.
He had to lift the sixth drawer really high to fit it on top of the others. He knew he had to do it and so he did.
Hurry, Sam, hurry.
He was hurrying. He didn’t want to die even though he knew he’d probably be able to speak to his mama again all the time. No, she didn’t want him to die, she didn’t want him to leave his father.
When he got the last drawer balanced on the very top, he stood back, and saw that he had done a good job putting them on top of each other. Now he just had to climb up on top and reach the window.
He eyed the drawers, and shoved the third one over just a bit to create a toehold. He did the same with the fourth.
He knew if he fell it would be all over. He couldn’t fall. He heard Fatso scream, “No matter what you say, we can’t stay here, Beau. It’s going to start raining any minute now. You saw that creek out back. A thunderstorm’ll make it rise fast as bat shit in a witch’s brew!”
Drown? The thunderstorms he’d heard on the Weather Channel, that must be what Fatso was yelling about. He didn’t want to drown either.
Sam was finally on the top. He pulled himself upright very slowly, feeling the drawer wobbling and unable to do anything about it. He froze, his hands flat against the damp wall, then his fingers crept up and he touched the bottom of the windowsill.
Things were unsteady beneath his feet, but that was okay. It felt just like the bridge in the park when he walked across it, just like that. He could work with a swing, even a wobble, he just couldn’t fall.
He pushed at the window but it didn’t budge. Then he saw the latch, so covered with dirt that it was hard to make out. He grabbed it and pulled upward.
He heard Fatso yell, “Beau, listen to me, we gotta take the kid somewhere else. That rain’s going to start any minute.”
So that was his name, Beau. Beau said something back, but Sam couldn’t make out what it was. He wasn’t a screamer like Fatso.
Sam had the latch pushed up as far as it would go. Slowly, so slowly he nearly stopped breathing, he pushed at the window.
It creaked, loud.
Sam jerked around and the drawers teetered, swaying more than ever. He knew he was going to fall. The drawers were sliding apart like earth plates before an earthquake. He remembered Mrs. Mildrake crunching together real dinner plates to show the class how earthquakes happened.
He shoved on the window as hard as he could and it creaked all the way out.
The drawers shuddered and moved and Sam, almost crying he was so afraid, grabbed the windowsill. With all the strength he had, he pulled himself headfirst through that skinny window. He got stuck, wiggled free, and then fell outside.
He landed on the ground, nearly headfirst.
He lay there, breathing, wanting to move, but afraid that his head was split open and his brains might start spilling out. He lay listening to the wind pick up, whipping through the trees. There were a lot of trees around him, and the sky was almost dark. Was it nighttime?
No, it was just the storm coming closer, the thunderstorm the Weather Channel had talked about for eastern Tennessee. How could he be in Tennessee?
He had to get up. Fatso and Beau could come out at any moment. The drawers had fallen over, no doubt about that, and the loud noise would bring them into the bedroom fast. They’d see he was gone and they’d be out here with guns and poison and more rope and get him again.
Sam came up on his knees. He felt something sticky on his face and touched it. He’d cut himself with the fall. He turned to look up at the window. It was way far off the ground.
Sam managed to stand up, weaved a bit, then locked his kn
ees. He was okay. Everything was cool. He just had to get out of there.
He started running. He heard Fatso scream the same instant a bolt of lightning struck real close and a boom of thunder rattled his brains. They knew he was gone.
Sam ran into the thick trees, all gold and red and yellow. He didn’t know what kind of trees they were, but there were a lot of them and he was small and could easily weave in and out of them. If they got too close he’d climb one, he was good at that, too good, his father always said.
He heard the men yelling, not far behind him, maybe just a little off to the left. He kept running, panting now, a stitch in his side, but he just kept his legs pumping.
Lightning flashed through the trees, and the thunder was coming so close it sounded like drums playing real loud rock ’n’ roll, like his father did when he thought Sam was outside playing.
Sam heard Fatso yell, and stopped, just for a second. Fatso wasn’t even close. But what about Beau? Beau didn’t have the belly Fatso had, so maybe he could slither through the trees really fast. He could come out from behind a tree and jump Sam, cut his throat.
Sam’s heart was pounding so loud he could hear it. He crouched down behind one of the big trees, made himself as skinny as a shadow, and waited. He got his breath back, pressed his cheek to the bark, and listened. He didn’t hear anything, just the thunder that kept rumbling through the sky. He rubbed his side and the stitch faded. The air felt thick, actually felt like it was raining before the first drop found its way through the thick canopy of leaves and hit him on the jaw.
They’d never see him in the rain. Fatso would probably slip on some mud and land on his fat belly. Sam smiled.
You did it, Sam, you did it.
He’d done it all right. Only thing was he didn’t know where he was.
Where was Tennessee?
Even with the thick tree cover, the rain came down hard. He wondered if the forest was so big he’d come out in Ohio, wherever that was.
4
It was Saturday afternoon, her day off, but with the storm coming, anything could happen. Katie Benedict was driving slowly, listening to the rain slam against the roof of her Silverado. It was hard to see through the thick gray rain even with the windshield wipers working overtime. The mountains were shrouded in fog, thick, heavy, and cold. And now this storm, a vicious one, the weather people were calling it, was on the way. An interesting choice of words, but she bet it was apt. She realized now that she shouldn’t have chanced taking Keely to her piano lesson given the forecast, but she had. At least it had only just started raining, and they were close to home. She just hoped there wouldn’t be any accidents on the road. If there were, she’d be up to her eyebrows in work.
She hunched forward, peering through the thick sheets of rain, Keely quiet beside her. Too quiet.
“Keely, you all right?”
“I’d like to find a rainbow, Mama.”
“Not for a while yet, sweetie, but you keep looking. Hey, I heard you playing your C major scale before. It sounded really good.”
“I’ve worked hard on getting it right, Mama.”
Katie grinned. “I know, but it’s worth it.”
Suddenly, Keely bounced up on the seat, straining against her seat belt, and began waving through the windshield. “Mama, what’s that? Look, it’s a little boy and he’s running!”
Katie saw him. The boy was sopping wet, running out of the woods to her left, not more than fifty feet onto the road in front of her. Then she saw two men burst out of the trees. It was obvious they were after him.
Katie said, even as she reached over and quickly released Keely’s seat belt, “I want you to get down and stay there. Do you understand?”
Keely knew that tone of voice, her mama’s sheriff voice, and nodded, slipping down to the floor.
“Cover your head with your arms. Everything will be fine. Just don’t move, okay?”
“Okay, Mama.”
Katie pulled to a stop, quickly leaned over the front seat and punched in the two numbers to her lock box beneath the back bench. She pulled out her Remington rifle, loaded, ready to go. By the time she opened the door, the men weren’t more than a long arm’s reach from the boy. Thank God he’d seen her and was running toward her. He was yelling, but the wind and rain wiped any sound he made right out.
The big man, his beer gut pounded by the rain, had a gun. Not good. Despite his size he moved quickly. He turned toward her, away from the boy, and raised the gun.
Katie brought up her rifle, cool and fast, and fired, kicking up muddy water not a foot from the fat man’s feet, splattering him to his waist. “I’m the sheriff! Stop right there! Don’t move!”
The skinny man behind him yelled something. The idiot was wearing a long black leather coat that was soaked from the rain. Katie calmly raised her Remington again and fired. This time the shot dug up a huge clod of dirt, spraying the leather coat.
The man in the coat yelled something and grabbed at the fat man’s shirt. The fat man jerked away, yelled something toward the boy, and fired from his hip, a lucky shot in the fog and rain that very nearly hit her.
“You idiot!” she yelled. “I’m Sheriff Benedict. Drop your weapon! Both of you, don’t move a single muscle!” But the fat guy pulled the trigger again, another hip shot, this one nowhere near her. Katie didn’t hesitate, she pulled the trigger and the guy flinched and grabbed his upper arm. She’d wanted to hit him high on the shoulder, wanted to bring him down, but the rain and fog were hard on her aim.
He managed to keep his gun. She had hoped he’d drop it.
She shouted, “Come forward, both of you, slowly!”
But neither of them took a single step toward her, not that she’d expected them to. Both men ran back into the thick trees. She fired after them, once, twice, then a final time. She thought she heard a yell. Good.
The little boy, panting so hard he was heaving, was on her the next instant. He grabbed her arm and shook it.
“You can’t let them go, ma’am! You’ve gotta shoot them again, you gotta kick their butts!”
Katie laid her rifle alongside her leg, and pulled the boy against her. “I got the fat one in the arm. Maybe I got the other one, too, while they were running back into the forest. You can count on it—the fat one’s hurting bad. Now, it’s going to be all right. I’m Sheriff Benedict. I’ll get right on my cell phone and call for some help with those guys. Come into the truck and tell me what’s going on.”
Sam looked up at the tall woman who could have shot Fatso right in his big gut, but had only shot him in the arm instead. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
Katie smiled at the boy as she quickly herded him back to the truck. She didn’t want to hang around here. No telling if those guys would pop back out of the woods. “I try not to kill every bad guy I run into,” she said. “Sometimes I like to bring them in front of a judge.” She squeezed him hard. “You’re okay and that’s all that matters. Now let’s move out of here.”
The narrow bench in the back could hold no more than a couple of skinny kids. What it did have was a stack of blankets, not usually for warmth, but to soften the ride.
She grabbed the blankets and lifted the boy up onto the front seat. “Keely, we’re going to make room for—”
“My name’s Sam.”
“We’re going to make room for Sam. He’s cold and he’s wet.” She settled him between her and Keely and covered him with five blankets. “Sweetie, don’t worry about your seat belt. You just press close to him to help him warm up, okay?”
“Okay, Mama.” Keely pressed against his back. Her little face was white, her voice a thin thread.
“It’s going to be all right, baby. I don’t want you to worry. I want you to be real brave for Sam here. He needs you to watch over him now. He’s been through something bad. Can you do that?”
Keely nodded, the tears that were near to brimming over nearly gone now. To Katie’s surprise, she shook Sam’s arm. “Hey, who were those gu
ys? What were they doing to you?”
Sam was shuddering.
“Not now, Keely. Let’s just let Sam warm up a bit before we grill him.”
Sam managed to get his mouth working, but it was hard. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“I’m Sheriff Benedict and that little girl next to you is my daughter, Keely. Did those men kidnap you?”
Sam managed to nod. He wasn’t going to cry. “I squeezed through a window and fell on my head. But I got away.”
“My goodness, you’re really brave, Sam. Now, let’s get you over to Doc Flint’s. Keely, you press close to Sam and try to get him warm.”
“I call him Doc Flintstone,” Keely said, watched her mom frown, then grab one of the towels to dry off the little boy’s head.
Sam said from behind the towel, “My mama used to give me Flintstones vitamins every morning with my toast.”
“I like marmalade on my toast. I don’t think smashed vitamins would taste very good.”
Sam thought that was funny, but he was just too cold and too scared to laugh. He burrowed under the blankets; all he wanted to do was get warm. He pressed himself as hard as he could against Sheriff Benedict’s leg. He felt the little girl squeezing against his back. He wondered if he was going to die now that he’d gotten away from those men. The little girl was pressed so hard against him, he’d bet she was going to get her clothes as wet as his.
Katie slid her rifle onto the floor behind the driver’s seat. She turned the heater on high. “Okay, kids, I cranked up the heat so it’ll be roasting you both in a minute. I know you’re wet clear through, Sam, but the blankets should help a little bit.”
“I don’t like marmalade,” Sam said as Katie looked at him closely.
“You’ll like my mom’s. It’s the best.” Good, the boy wasn’t in shock, at least not yet. Katie put the truck in gear and started up. She had to watch her speed; the heavy rain made the road a river. As they passed where the men had disappeared into the trees, she looked carefully, but saw no sign of them.
She picked her cell phone out of her breast pocket and called Wade at the station house.
The FBI Thrillers Collection Page 63