by Harley Tate
The next time Hampton screamed, people would hear it in Lake Tahoe.
She reached for the man’s hand when the door to the kitchen cabin burst open. Peyton stood in the threshold. Sweat soaked his shirt, turning the blue fabric almost black.
Tracy twisted around, knife still ready in her hand. “Have you found her?”
“No.” Peyton’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced a swallow. “There’s no sign of her or anyone else.”
Tracy exhaled and stood up.
Hampton immediately began to protest. He shouted at Peyton. “You have to help me! She’s crazy. She threatened to break all of my fingers and stab me with that knife!”
Tracy turned back to face him. “Should I start now?”
He stilled and she smiled. “Didn’t think so. Now if you’ll excuse me a moment.” She stood and made her way over to Peyton.
He eyed her with a wary expression. “Are you really going to torture him?”
“If I have to.”
“Has he told you anything?”
“Yes and no. He’s part of a group and they were casing the place. He thinks it’s just us—two women and three kids. An easy mark.”
“What will you do to him?”
Tracy turned back and regarded the man she’d knocked unconscious and had been threatening with no success. “Whatever it takes. He will take me to Madison.”
“And if he can’t?”
She spoke loud enough for Hampton to hear. “Then he can die out there and not stain the hardwood floors with his blood.”
Peyton’s mouth fell open. “Mrs. Sloane… are you … okay?”
Tracy shook her head. “No, Peyton. I’m not okay. My daughter is gone. I’ve hit a man upside the head, stabbed him with a needle, and threatened him with torture, but he still won’t tell me the truth. But the worst part is that there’s no end to any of this. People will always be coming to get us. Someone will always be trying to take what we have.”
“The Cliftons didn’t.”
“No, but look what that got us. We spent two weeks living in paradise and now Madison might be dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We don’t know anything and that’s the problem.” She turned back to Hampton. He would tell her the truth, somehow, some way. And if he didn’t, she’d kill him. Her voice once again rose to fill the cabin. “Get me a good solid tree branch and strip it, will you, Peyton?”
“What for?”
She smiled at Hampton. “You can’t roast a pig without a spit.”
Chapter Twelve
TRACY
Clifton Compound
12:00 p.m.
“You can’t do this.”
Tracy continued cutting lengths of cord to lash Hampton to the mast Peyton dutifully delivered first thing that morning. “I can and I will.”
“Tracy. You need to think this through. I know you’re hurting right now, but—”
She cut off Brianna’s mother mid-sentence. “I am not hurting at all, Anne. Mr. Rhodes is the one who’s going to be hurting if he doesn’t tell me where my daughter is located.” She couldn’t believe this was even up for debate.
“We all want Madison back.” Brianna stepped forward, placing herself square in Tracy’s line of sight. “But this isn’t the way to do it.”
“He knows where she is. I can get it out of him. All it takes is a little convincing.” Tracy hoisted the three-inch-thick log up and knotted the first strip of cord to one end. “As soon as the first flame singes his skin, he’ll talk.”
“Mrs. Sloane, please, listen to what you’re saying. You’re going to kill him.”
Tracy fixed her eyes on Peyton. “And so what if I do? He won’t be the first man I’ve killed since the EMP hit. How many have we taken down? How many have we killed as a group? Don’t you see? This is how it is now.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
She snorted. How many times had they had this conversation? “Yes, it does. If I don’t do this, Madison will die. Whoever she’s with will kill her and then they’ll come for us. We need to get Madison back and eliminate the threat.”
“For all you know, that man is bluffing and there isn’t anyone else.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Brianna interrupted the argument. “Let me search for her. I’m a good tracker. I can follow Hampton’s trail in from the forest and go farther out. If Madison’s out there somewhere, I can find her.”
Anne agreed. “Brianna’s as skilled a hunter as her father. She can find them.”
“It’ll be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“No. It won’t. We already canvassed the immediate area and they aren’t there. That means they didn’t just scout this place out. They have a camp. Most likely within a day’s hike.”
“You’ll never find it.”
“Give me a chance to try.”
“We don’t have that kind of time.”
Brianna ran a hand through her hair. “Mrs. Sloane, please. Madison is my friend. I want her back, too.”
“Then help me truss that man up on this log and light a fire. We’ll get the answers.”
Peyton interjected. “What if they don’t know Hampton’s missing? If you kill him before we get Madison back, they might never let her go.”
Tracy paused. “What are you getting at?”
“We could make a trade. Hampton for Madison.”
Anne agreed. “He’s no good as a trade if he’s dead.”
Tracy frowned. The thought of letting Hampton go didn’t sit well with her at all. She wanted Madison back and this man to suffer. But why? Because she was angry? Afraid? Sick of being bullied and attacked and taken advantage of?
She stared at the bunch of rope in her hand. If Walter were there, he would already have Madison back and these people, whoever they were, wouldn’t be a threat. “What if this is just the beginning? What if they attack us?”
“Then we fight back.”
Tracy didn’t want to concede, not when her daughter was out there somewhere and the man tied up in the kitchen might know where.
Anne walked up to her and reached for her shoulder. Kindness shone in her brown eyes. “What if we’d shot first when you arrived?”
“You wouldn’t have. Brianna was with us.”
“We could have turned you out and sent you on your way.”
“We knew the risks and if that happened, we would have been okay.”
Anne shook her head. “You can’t rush to judgment, Tracy. Give these people a chance.”
“It’s a mistake.”
“It’s one I want to make. For us and our home.” She motioned to Brianna. “Let Brianna scout the camp. She can find it and report back. Then we’ll know what we’re up against.”
Brianna agreed. “We have a pair of walkie-talkies. They’ll work over any range I can travel. As soon as I find them, I’ll call you.”
Tracy didn’t like the idea one bit. All she could think of were the pitfalls. “What if you get hurt? Or they capture you and you can’t talk?”
Brianna’s brow knit as she thought it over. “I won’t engage. I’ll only scope them out. If they look dangerous, I’ll call right away and tell you the location. You can mount a rescue that minute.”
Tracy still preferred dragging the information out of Hampton. It could take Brianna days to find the camp. She settled on a middle way. “I’ll hold off until tomorrow morning. If you don’t find the camp and radio by eight tomorrow, I’m getting the information out of our prisoner. One way or another.”
Brianna nodded. “Fair enough.”
With a heavy heart, Tracy turned away from Brianna and her mother. It was well and good for the two of them to argue for leniency when it wasn’t their flesh and blood on the line. Would they feel the same way if Madison were their family?
Peyton stopped beside her. “Brianna will find her faster than we can.”
“I hope you’re right, Peyton.” She couldn’t
shake the feeling that her daughter was slipping away. Tracy twisted the rope in her hands. “I can’t stand here and do nothing.”
“You could help me patrol. Without Brianna, I’ll have twice the ground to cover.”
Tracy managed a small smile. “Thanks, Peyton. I will.”
7:00 p.m.
Tracy stared at the sleeping form of the man who walked onto the Clifton property and turned her whole world upside down. Ten hours had passed since Brianna disappeared out of sight in search of his camp.
Ten hours of radio silence. Tracy turned the radio around in her hands. If Brianna didn’t call in soon with an update, she didn’t know if she could wait until morning to find out what Hampton knew. He held the information in his head and she could get it out of him.
Would she still be the same woman when she finished? Could she look her husband and daughter in the eye when they came home?
Tracy wasn’t sure it mattered as long as Madison came home in one piece. She could sacrifice her own humanity for the life of her daughter. A metaphorical eye for an eye.
The moonlight cast long, jagged shadows across the floor of the kitchen. It lit the side of Hampton’s face when he shifted on the chair. It would be so easy to end it right now.
He opened his eyes and focused on Tracy. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
“If I don’t find my daughter, yes.”
“Even if you do, why would you let me go?”
Tracy regarded him for a moment. An able-bodied man with the capacity for hard work. He could have made his own way. He didn’t need to loot and steal. “You never should have walked onto this property.”
“You have what we need.”
“Who sent you?”
He sighed. “What does it matter?”
“If you tell me where they’re holding my daughter, I’ll let you live.”
“And what if they don’t have her? What if she’s already dead?”
Tracy didn’t respond. She reached for the cup of water sitting on the table and brought it toward Hampton’s lips. “Drink. Can’t have you dying of dehydration.”
He guzzled the water, spilling half of it in his desperation. When the cup emptied, he sagged back against the wood slats of the chair. His head dipped low and at first Tracy thought he may have passed out. But then he lifted his head. “The camp is about a five-mile walk due north of here. It’s at the nexus of a creek and an outcrop of rock.”
Tracy didn’t dare move a muscle. She inhaled and waited for him to continue.
“There’s eleven people. The leader is Eileen. Used to be a pit boss in a mine in West Virginia. Only female to ever have the job. Only woman I ever saw who could bring a grown man to his knees with just a look.”
He coughed a bit and Tracy rose to refill the cup. “How did all of you get together?”
“Eileen lived in the apartment complex where I worked. I was the maintenance guy. When all hell broke loose, she rounded a bunch of us up and we formed a little gang.”
Tracy brought the cup back to Hampton. He drank a few more sips before turning away.
“At first we stayed in town, looting and stealing from the local places. But that all cleared out real quick. Eileen said we needed to find somewhere more long-term where we could make a life. Somewhere like this place.”
“And what? Once you found it, you were just going to take it?”
He nodded.
“Why? You’re capable. You could have made your own way.”
“Eileen’s been good to me.” He snorted. “She’s been good to all of us.”
It didn’t make sense. Why would able-bodied young people band together around a single woman?
Hampton smacked his lips again. “Did you search my pockets?”
She nodded.
“Find anything?”
“No.”
“Damn.” His body twitched. “I could really use a hit.”
Tracy reeled. “Is that what Eileen has over you? Drugs?”
Hampton’s leg jumped up and down. “She’s old. She can get a million prescriptions with the snap of her fingers. Made her rich doling them all out, too. Doctors would rather give a complaining old lady pills than listen to her. Eileen turned it into a business.”
Now it all made sense. Eileen turned her clients into a gang. With them reliant on her for their next high, she could ask them to do anything. Tracy frowned. At some point the woman’s supplies had to run out. “What will you do when you run out of pills?”
Hampton chewed on his lip. “Eileen says we can make more. Just need a good base camp with a decent kitchen.”
Tracy didn’t know a lot about drugs, but she knew it took more than a kitchen in the woods. Even if they found the right equipment, Anne didn’t stock the ingredients.
Was Eileen stringing them all along just to get what she wanted? What would happen when she did?
The radio in Tracy’s hand crackled to life.
“I’ve found them. Over.”
Tracy brought the radio up to her lips and held down the button. “They’re drug addicts. Don’t trust them.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring Madison home.”
“Brianna, wait! It’s dangerous! Come back.”
The radio went silent and Tracy waited for a response. It never came.
She glanced up at Hampton. She couldn’t let Brianna walk into a camp of unstable addicts reliant on a single woman to save them. She stood up in a rush. “Don’t fall asleep. We’re leaving.”
Chapter Thirteen
MADISON
Location Unknown
8:00 p.m.
Pain and singing. The two came together in a strange, swirling mix inside Madison’s skull. She groaned and rolled her head, pausing as the dull ache shifted into sharp agony.
The singsong cadence picked up and the words filtered into Madison’s consciousness.
Drove she ducklings to the water
Every morn just at nine,
Hit her foot against a splinter,
Fell into the foaming brine.
Ruby lips above the water,
Blowing bubbles, soft and fine,
But, alas, I was no swimmer,
So I lost my Clementine.
She blinked and fought to focus despite the pain. Young voices of women, hushed and melodic, kept singing the morbid song she learned in grade school. Reds and oranges danced against the backdrop of darkness. Her lips were stuck together, caked in something thick and crusted.
Madison ran her tongue along the chapped edge and tasted the familiar tang of copper. Blood.
Blinking again, the world sharpened into discernible objects. A fire leaping and twisting in the night. Bodies huddled around it for warmth. Some small, some big.
A woman with white, wiry hair standing off to the side.
Madison licked again at the blood. It had to be her own. The front right side of her head screamed in agony and the same side of her face was stiff and thick. Had she fallen?
She thought back to what she remembered. Scouting in the forest. Sliding down the embankment. The rock. Hauling herself up.
Darkness.
Did she slip back down? Did someone rescue her? She tuned out the second round of the same folk song and concentrated. No, she didn’t remember falling.
Crinkling her nose against an itch, Madison tried to scratch it. Her arm didn’t move more than an inch. She wiggled again. Her wrists were bound behind her, not too tightly, but secure enough to restrict her freedom.
She tasted her own blood again as memories flooded back. The man crumpled on the ground in front of her mother. The morning patrol.
Were these the rest of his crew?
The old woman across the fire stood still and proud, her long white braid stark against the darkness of her jacket. Wrinkles etched deep lines across her forehead and around her mouth, but she didn’t seem delicate or weak.
There was nothing frail about her.
As Madison watched, a young b
oy of ten or twelve rushed up to her. The woman leaned over to listen before nodding. The boy scampered off. Was she the leader of this little group?
Madison heard movement behind her and shut her eyes.
“Is she still unconscious?”
Hands palmed her body and shook her by the shoulders. Madison let her head loll back and forth.
“Yeah. Lilly hit her good.”
“You really think they’ll give us the cabins when they find out we have this girl? She doesn’t seem like much.”
Madison wanted to protest, but she didn’t dare move.
“I don’t know. Eileen seems to think so.”
“What about Hampton? Where is he?”
“That idiot couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag. He’s probably lost in the forest. If he can’t find the fire, then we’ll go looking for him at first light.”
“Eileen’s not going to like it.”
“She doesn’t like anything. That old woman is meaner than a pit bull.”
“And she holds on tighter, too. Have you felt her grip? She gave me a bruise on my arm that lasted a week.”
Madison swallowed. If they were speaking of the white-haired woman, then Madison was thankful she didn’t try to escape just now. A blow to the head was nothing compared to what could befall her if the whole group caught her running away. She needed to save her strength and wait for a better opportunity.
Whatever happened, Madison refused to let them take the cabins. The Clifton property would not fall to this gang of thugs in the woods. She would find a way to stop them.
“Did you find anything on patrol?”
“Naw. That hiker we found the other day was gone. Bastard drank all his beer before Otto found him.”
“If we don’t get into those cabins, we’re gonna starve out here.” The person talking snorted back a noseful of snot. Her voice lowered to just about a whisper. “And I need a hit somethin’ fierce.”
“Eileen promised. We get those cabins, we can get glassed all we want.”