by Glenn Meade
It was a technique my father once showed me. It was useful if you didn’t have handcuffs or tie wraps, just a rope, and you needed to move a prisoner. One end of the rope tied the prisoner’s hands, and another loop went around the neck in a choke hold. The other rope end was fed back between the legs. That way, a guard could exercise some control over the prisoner.
In my father’s words, when you had them by the testicles, their minds and hearts might not necessarily follow, but once you held on to the rope between their groin, there was no way captives could run away without risk of painful injury to their manhood. I searched Jack’s pockets. I found a tactical flashlight, the kind you’d mount on a rifle or pistol, and a small half-finished bottle of bourbon.
“Where are Sean and Amy?”
Jack didn’t answer, and his eyes slid away from me and stared down at the floor, his lip curled in a kind of defiance. I lost it again. I brought the gun down hard on his neck and stepped back. He recoiled with pain. Such savagery wasn’t me, but right that second, it felt justified. And hitting Jack felt good. My animosity returned in a surge. I hated him. Hated him for what he’d done to me. Hated him with an overpowering intensity.
“If I have to ask again, I swear I’m going to put a bullet in your kneecap.”
“There’s a house, a few minutes’ walk from here.”
“Are Sean and Amy there? Was it Sean who went ahead?”
He nodded.
“Are they there? I want a proper answer.”
“Yes.”
“You son of a . . . You kept them from me. You kept them from me all these years and—”
Jack turned and lunged, his neck craning forward, as if he was trying to head-butt me.
He was quick, but I sidestepped. His head slammed against the wall. I brought up the gun barrel, touching it against his right temple. “Either you’ve drunk too much or you forgot you’re dealing with a colonel’s daughter.”
“I could never forget that.”
“Next time, the gun goes off, and you’re a dead man, Jack Hayes. Now, move.”
He stared at me, as if to ask where.
“Up on deck. I want answers. And I want to see my children.”
74
* * *
I moved my back toward the rungs, pointing the gun at Jack and gripping the end of the rope.
“You’re going to back your way up the stairs, right behind me. Turn around. Don’t move until I say so.”
I grabbed the flashlight Jack had dropped and put it in the back pocket of my jeans. I climbed, keeping my back to the rungs. At the top of the stairs, I kept my eyes on Jack, still with his back to me, and used my hand holding the rope to cautiously raise the hatch. Cold, fresh air seeped in. My breath fogged. I glanced up. Stars glittered.
I stepped onto the boat deck, still training the gun on Jack’s back. He couldn’t go anywhere except up through the hatch. I glimpsed water to my left, a wide river channel or lake, I couldn’t tell which. To my right was a narrow dock. Dark landscape beyond, speckles of distant house lights.
Wherever it was, the place was kind of remote. I could just make out a pathway leading to a dim painted structure a few hundred yards away. A house, I guessed. I fumbled to take the flashlight from my back pocket but didn’t switch it on.
I looked down at Jack, still in the cabin, his back to me. “Turn around and step up the stairs, like I told you.”
He clattered up the steps awkwardly, almost lost his balance a few times, and had to use his elbows to right himself. In the cold, the smell of alcohol from his fogged breath was even more overpowering. I shone the light on his face, and his bloodshot eyes blinked.
“Move onto the deck, and do it slowly.”
I moved farther back, still covering him with the gun. He climbed up onto the deck. I fed out a long enough length of the rope and shone the flashlight. The dock was built of weathered cedar. I stepped off the boat, and my feet hit the dock. I jerked on the rope.
“Come on. Step out.”
I covered Jack with the gun as he stumbled onto the dock’s cedar boards, the rope still binding him. He looked up, caught in the flashlight beam. I thought his handsome, unshaven face looked weather-beaten and tired, as if he’d fought a lot of battles, and more than a few were inside him.
Right then, for some reason, I felt only pity for him. I didn’t want to; I wanted to stay angry. Jack had harmed me so much, robbed me of eight years of my children’s lives.
Once I’d loved him so much. Once I couldn’t wait for him to hold me, kiss me, to feel and smell the maleness of his strong body next to mine. I could still remember how much it broke my heart whenever he left me to go overseas. My ache was always so intense I’d cry for days. A powerful anguish jolted me now like the stab of a blade.
That was in the past, I tried to tell myself, even if the rush of emotion swept back in on me like a wave, reminding me that I felt torn between love and hate. I forced myself to crush my pity, to jolt my focus back toward the house, a few hundred yards away.
My hope soared. Sean and Amy were there.
How would they react when they saw me? Would they even remember me after eight long years? Would they want to? What if Jack had a new partner who shared their lives?
What had their lives been like in this house in the middle of nowhere? What had happened to them all these missing years? I so longed to hold them, to touch them. But would they feel the same when they saw me? Amy, thirteen by now but still a child. How I longed to hold her, kiss her. Clench her body tightly to mine and never release her.
And Sean, my angel. I felt tears hot on my cheeks. Meeting Sean and Amy again—all of us together—wasn’t going to be easy. There would be so much explaining to do, so many questions, so many raw feelings, at least on my part. Yet I needed to control myself. I couldn’t drop my guard for a second and let Jack overpower me again. I felt overpowered already, though, by the tidal wave of emotions that ripped though me.
I wiped my eyes. “Get moving toward the house.”
Jack gave me that pitiful look again. It made me almost want to hit him. How dare you make me even consider being sorry for you?
I kept the light shining on his face.
His tired, sad eyes locked on mine. “No matter what, I want you to know something, Kath.”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t want to. Just waited for whatever it was he wanted to say.
“Sean and Amy. They never stopped loving you. I want you to know that.”
That statement hit me with a trainload of pain. I felt my eyes become wet again. Jack looked right at me. And then it came, the most disturbing thing I’d ever heard. Something I never expected, something that sounded so absurd it sent a violent shock wave through my body, as if I’d just been in a car wreck.
“The same goes for me. I never stopped loving you, Kath.”
75
* * *
We walked about fifty yards toward the house. “Keep it moving,” I ordered.
I was dumbstruck, Jack’s words still ringing like a fire alarm inside my head. I never stopped loving you, Kath.
“Don’t try to play me.”
“I mean it, Kath.”
Jack was crazy. But crazy like a fox. Trying to distract me, overpower me again, and mess with my mind. But I wouldn’t let him. I had a truckload of questions, not just about who killed DJ and Vera but about why we could be in danger.
Still, I kept my focus. What was important right now was safely reaching the house.
Then what? I had no idea. All I could envision was some kind of emotional reunion with Sean and Amy. Or was I deluding myself? My children might not remember me. Sean, maybe, but Amy was so young when I last saw her.
Beautiful Amy, how could you forget me? How could you forget the nights I held you or when you were ill and I sat up with you until dawn and your fev
er had passed. How did you weather all our lost years? Who held you and comforted you? Jack had been a good father when he was at home, but I could not imagine him comforting Amy the way a mother could.
Jack stumbled ahead of me, like a tethered slave. I halted, took a cautious step back, and shone the flashlight. Crimson spotted the ground behind him. He was losing more blood. He seemed to wobble, his steps less sure.
I didn’t seem to care now. The closer we got to the house, all that mattered was my children. I flicked the flashlight on and off, partly to save the batteries and partly not to give myself away, in case Sean was somehow observing our approach. “Has Sean got a gun?”
“No.”
“You’d better be telling me the truth. The last thing I want is to get in a gunfight with Sean.”
Jack swayed on his feet, as if he was in a stupor. “Sean hasn’t got a gun.”
I still didn’t trust Jack. I figured rural Tennessee properties like this—or wherever we were in the South—always had mini-arsenals and enough ammo to last until Doomsday. I couldn’t believe Jack would get by on just a single gun.
“Don’t try to play me. What other firearms have you got?”
“There’s a rifle and a shotgun and a pistol locked in a bedroom closet upstairs. But Sean wouldn’t use them.”
“He hit me hard enough to knock me out. What makes you so sure?”
“Living out here, he’s learned how to use them, but Sean doesn’t like firearms. They scare him, ever since he was a kid. You ought to remember that.”
I remembered—at least, Sean used to be that way. It was something my father couldn’t fathom. The first Kelly offspring in living memory who avoided gun shows and guns and anything to do with the military. Once, my dad took Sean to the range and let him shoot his Colt .45. The powerful recoil from the single shot Sean took scared the life out of him so much that he threw down the gun and ran away.
Sean was a dreamer, a stargazer, not a soldier. Gentle Sean, who hit his momma on the head with a baseball bat. How kids change. Funny, the things you think of when you get smacked in the skull by your own son.
We reached the house. The place had a farm-manure smell. I heard a cow’s distant moo in the darkness. Pale light showed between cracks in the dark curtains. I flicked on the flashlight. Next to the house, I saw a barn with peeling paint.
An old, rusted blue Chrysler van was parked on the rutted track out front. Next to it was a dented, muddied old four-wheel ATV. The property looked barren and smelled of rural poverty and decay. Was this how my children had lived for the last eight years? In a crumbling cabin? What about all that money that disappeared? In the back of my mind had been a niggling feeling that Jack may have had something to do with the disappearance of the twenty-five million and maybe cut a share of it. But this didn’t make sense.
I played the flashlight over the van for a second or two, then over the house. Two fishing rods were propped against the gable wall, next to a vegetable patch, bare in winter. A withered old tree with bleached-white branches hung over it.
I focused on two things. Where were my children, and why did Jack do what he did? A million other questions buzzed around my mind, but Jack seemed dazed, in a world of his own. I aimed the flashlight and saw blood dripping down his left side, his eyes glazed.
“Are you OK?”
My pity was all gone by now. All I wanted was to make sure we made it to the door without incident.
“There’s a first-aid kit in the house. I’m . . . I’m going to need it.” His voice sounded weak.
It scared me. What if he got worse? “Who’s inside?”
“Sean.”
We were thirty yards from the front porch. The house was painted a dull apple green and almost completely camouflaged by trees protecting the back and sides. The air was syrupy with a strong scent—of flowers or fruit trees, I couldn’t tell which. The track from the dock snaked away into darkness, as if toward an exit road. I saw the white twinkling lights of another house, maybe a few hundred yards away, but no sulfur-yellow road lights. The place seemed remote.
“Not Amy? Where is she?”
He didn’t answer. I grazed his skull with the gun barrel. “Answer me, Jack.”
“Amy’s not in the house.”
“Why not?” I saw a light flicker behind the curtain. Someone was moving about inside. My gut told me that getting inside without trouble could be tricky. “I asked why not?”
“She’s not staying here tonight.”
“Where’s she staying?”
“With friends. I had to leave her with friends. I . . . I’m losing some blood, Kath.”
I felt my heart sink again but not for Jack. I wanted to see Amy; my ache was unreal. But we’d solve the problem of Amy’s absence later. At least my son was here.
“Where will Sean be in the house?”
“He usually hangs out in the living room or the kitchen. Or in his room upstairs.”
“Describe the layout once we step inside the front door.” I wanted to be prepared.
“A short hallway, with stairs on the left leading to the second floor. And be careful. There’s a wheelchair stashed just inside the door on the left. Don’t fall over it. I don’t want that gun going off again.”
“A wheelchair? What for?”
“I needed it for Amy, years back, after the plane crash.”
My heart did a somersault. “Is . . . is she still hurt? Does she still need it?”
“No.” Jack clammed up.
“Go on. Describe the rest.”
“Living room is on the right, open plan, a kitchen at the back.”
“Upstairs?”
“Three . . . three bedrooms. Amy’s, Sean’s, and mine. A bathroom and a closet on the landing.
We reached the front porch. “Move up the steps, nice and slow.”
Jack climbed them. I didn’t follow him just yet, careful not to get too close. He was on the porch now, facing the door. He looked back at me. “What do you want me to do?”
I kept the gun aimed at him. “You tell me. I figure you don’t want our children put in harm’s way, so we need to keep this sensible. Is it safe for you to open the door, or is Sean going to go ape again?”
“I don’t believe he will.”
“If he does, you’ll get it first. OK, do it. Keep your hands out straight so I can see them.”
Jack turned sideways as I let out the rope, and he turned the handle. The door opened a crack, a wash of light spilling out. “Sean? It’s Dad. I’m coming in with the lady.”
The lady? He hadn’t even told Sean I was his mother. My anger returned with a surge. Seconds passed with no reaction from inside the house. I moved cautiously up the steps behind Jack. Was Sean already prepared to rush me? I had to be so careful. I didn’t want this getting out of control.
“Inside. Push in the door. Go easy.”
Jack moved into a short hallway. Stairs on the left, open-plan living room on the right.
I saw the wheelchair on the left. It was folded flat, propped against a wall. The place smelled of maleness and wasn’t up to much, the sparse old furniture looking like it came from a thrift store. Forlorn, like some hard-up hillbilly cabin. An old TV and video player were the only modern belongings, a few stacks of DVDs beneath. No woman’s touch. No flowers or photographs. And then I spotted Sean, in a corner, sunk in an old easy chair with greasy armrests.
He was twisting the crown of his hair the way he used to, twisting it into a tornado. He rose, wide-eyed, his hair falling across his forehead the way it always did, his beautiful face so much older and more mature.
My eyes felt wet. I had such a powerful need to rush across the room and crush him in my arms. I was besieged by a feeling of intense love mixed with apprehension.
“Sean, this lady . . . this lady is . . .” Sweat glistene
d on Jack’s forehead, and he was clutching his stomach.
I felt my insides cave in, and I finished the sentence for him, said the words I desperately longed to say. “I’m your mom, Sean.”
Sean reacted with a confused stare. He looked from his father to me and back again. I wanted to speak, to let him know that I loved him, but for some reason, my lips would not move.
Maybe it was because the boy staring back at me looked bewildered, in a trance, and so different from the last time I had seen him eight years ago. The silence seemed to drag on forever, until Jack said, “He doesn’t understand.”
“What do you mean?”
Jack stumbled and held on to the couch for support, blood seeping between his fingers. His face was white as he took his hand away and looked at the blood. He spoke without looking up. “It . . . it’s complicated.”
It was the last thing he said.
His eyes rolled in their sockets, his legs collapsed, and his body slumped onto the floor with a sickening thud.
Sean screamed.
76
* * *
I knelt beside Jack and felt his pulse. It was weak. He was still losing blood. I felt myself starting to panic. My feelings raged again, but this time I felt for Jack. I really felt for him. Not only that, but if he died, any answers I was looking for might die with him.
“We need a first-aid kit.”
I stood and grabbed Sean’s arm.
“Sean, a first-aid kit. Your father’s hurt. We need to help him. The kit, where is it? Bandages, medicines—I need them now. Where are they?”
He stared at me open-mouthed, perplexed, as if rooted to the spot by panic, fear sparking again in his face.
I frantically scanned the room for Jack’s first-aid kit. Being a military man, he always insisted that we were prepared for any emergency.
I hurried to a corner closet and flung open the doors. Inside smelled of men and was filled with coats, old boots, and sneakers.
“Sean, for God’s sake, where’s the kit? Help me here.”