I nodded, grinning at this description.
“How’d you meet him?”
“I went in to buy some weight-lifting gloves,” I said, sifting through the weeks past to find something believable.
“That’s romantic,” Carrie said.
I looked at her sharply to see if she was teasing me, but she was dead serious.
“Didn’t I see him at the hospital the night of the bombing?” she said doubtfully.
Now, that was before I’d officially met Jack. But Carrie didn’t know that, didn’t know when I’d bought my new gloves. This was so complicated. I hated telling lies, especially to one of my few friends.
“Yes,” I said.
“He came to see about you?”
I nodded, figuring that was a little better than trying to sort partial truth from fiction.
“Oh, wow,” Carrie said, all dewy-eyed.
As if on cue, I heard a familiar voice from the living room.
“Hey, I hear you deserted us upstairs. There must be a secret benefit to living down here!” Jack said heartily.
Claude’s response was less audible, but I heard the word “beer” clearly.
“I just may do that,” Jack answered. “I’ve been working all day and I could use some liquid refreshment. Speaking of which, I picked up this bottle for your housewarming.”
“Thank you, neighbor,” Claude said, more audibly. He must have turned his head toward a moving Jack. “You’ll have to come share it with me when I open it.”
Jack appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing his red sweatshirt with the Winthrop logo and his leather jacket. He betrayed his surprise at finding me there only by a widening of his eyes.
“Lily,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek. His hand groped for mine, squeezed it hard for a moment, released it. “The chief says you have some loose beer in here.”
I pointed at the refrigerator. Carrie beamed at Jack and extended a hand.
“I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Carrie Thrush.”
“The good doctor Thrush. I’ve heard great things about you,” Jack said. “I’m Jared Fletcher. New man in town.” He was smiling genuinely. He set a bottle of bourbon on the counter, Claude’s homecoming gift, and opened the refrigerator to extract a beer.
“You’ll have to bring Lily down for supper some night. Maybe she and I can collaborate on cooking and you and Claude can evaluate the result,” Carrie said cheerfully.
“Tom David told on us, Jared,” I said, trying to speak lightly. But I haven’t done that in a long time, and it came out sounding very unnatural. Carrie swung a look in my direction, then back to Jack.
“That would be great, Carrie,” Jack said smoothly. He looked at me to tell me he’d gotten my message: the little cabal was having conversations about us.
“Lily brought Claude some bread and some lasagna,” Carrie said, pushing my praiseworthy aspects.
“Did you, baby?” Jack looked at me, and if there was a flash of heat in his eyes, there was none in his voice.
Baby? I was trying to imagine double-dating with Carrie and Claude. I was trying to imagine everything being straightforward, Jack really working at Winthrop’s Sporting Goods, having no other agenda than making a living. I would just be a maid, and he would just sell workout equipment…We’d date, go out on real dates, during which no one would get shot. We’d never hit each other, or even want to.
“Claude took care of me when I got hurt last spring,” I said, suddenly feeling very tired. I didn’t owe Jack an explanation, but I needed to say something.
“You got hurt…” Jack began, his eyes narrowing.
“Old story. Go out there and have your beer, sugar,” I said dismissively, and gave him what I hoped was a loverlike shove to the uninjured shoulder. He righted himself after a tense second and stalked into the living room.
“Did I catch some undercurrent there?” Carrie asked.
“Yeah, well, nothing’s easy,” I muttered.
“Not with you, anyway,” she said, but her voice was gentle.
“Actually, in this case, it’s him,” I told her grimly.
“Hmmm. You think this is going to work out?”
“Who knows?” I said, exasperated. “Let’s get this kitchen done.”
“It hardly seems right for you to work so hard, Lily. You spend all week cleaning and arranging other people’s things. Why don’t you go sit out there and have some down time?”
With Claude and Jack and Tom David? “Not on your life,” I told her, and finished placing pots and pans in the cabinet.
We worked on the bedroom next, sliding all the drawers back into their correct position, rearranging the clothes in the closet. I polished all the furniture after I found the cleaning supplies, and I quickly stowed away the bathroom things while Carrie set Claude’s desk to rights in the second bedroom.
Then I was through, and I knew it was time for me to leave. Carrie would have to be helping Claude do personal things, I supposed; he would be tired.
He was, in fact, asleep on the couch. All the men had left except Jack, who had opened a box of books and was shelving them in the low bookcase. He’d gathered up all the beer bottles and put them in a plastic garbage bag. He half-turned as he heard my steps, smiled at me, and pushed a dictionary into place. It all seemed so pleasant and normal. I didn’t know what attitude to take. He’d severed our connection until this episode was over. But we were alone in the room except for the sleeping policeman.
I knelt by him, and he turned and kissed me, his hand going to the back of my neck. It was a kiss that started out to be short and ended up to be long.
“Damn,” he breathed, moving back from me.
“Gotta go,” I said very quietly, not wanting to disturb the sleeper.
“Yeah, me, too,” he whispered, standing and stretching. “I need to listen to today’s tape.” He patted his jacket pocket.
“Jack,” I said in his ear, “if Howell won’t call the law, you have to. You’ll get in awful trouble.” It was an idea that had consumed any extra minute I’d had during the day. I darted a glance at “the law,” sound asleep on the couch. “Promise me,” I whispered. I looked straight into his hazel eyes.
“Are you scared?” he breathed.
I nodded. “For you,” I told him.
He stared at me. “I’ll talk to Howell tomorrow,” he said.
I smiled at him, rubbed my knuckles against his cheek in a caress. “’Bye,” I whispered, and tiptoed out Claude’s door.
I pulled on my coat in the hall, zipping the front and pulling my hood up. It was really cold, biting cold; the temperature would be well below freezing tonight. I wouldn’t be able to walk even if I needed to. But after extracting Jack’s promise I felt very relaxed. It might not take me too long to sleep.
Just to make sure, I walked the four streets around the arboretum twice, very briskly, and then took the trails through the trees. When I emerged onto Track Street, it was full dark. My feet were feeling numb and my hands were chilled despite my gloves.
I was halfway across the street, angling to my house, when a Jeep rounded the corner at a high speed and screeched to a halt a foot away from my right leg.
“Where’ve you been, Lily?” Bobo was hatless and frantic, his brown coat unbuttoned. There was no trace of the ardent young man who had kissed me the night before.
“Helping Claude move downstairs. Walking.”
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Get inside your house and don’t go out tonight.”
His face, almost on a level with mine because of the height of the Jeep, was white and strained. No eighteen-year-old should look like that. Bobo was scared and angry and desperate.
“What’s going to happen?”
“You’ve been too many places, Lily. Some people don’t understand.” He wanted to say more. His teeth bared from his inner tension. He was on the verge of screaming.
“Tell me,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. I snatched off
a glove and laid my hand over his. But instead of soothing him, my touch seemed to spark even more inner storms. He yanked away from me as if I’d poked him with a cattle prod. From between clenched teeth, he said, “Stay in!” He roared off as fast as he’d come, as recklessly.
My own anxiety level jumped off the scale. What could have happened so suddenly? I looked up at the facade of the apartment building. Claude’s new windows were dark. Deedra’s, above him, were also out. But Jack’s lights were on, at least some of them. His living room window was faintly illuminated.
I stood in the middle of the street in the freezing cold and tried to make my brain work.
Without deciding it consciously, I began to run—not toward my house but toward the apartments. Once I was inside the hall, hurrying past Claude’s door, I tried to walk quietly. I went up the stairs like a snake, swift and silent. I tried Jack’s door. It was unlocked and open an inch. A ball of fear settled in my stomach.
I slipped inside. No one in the living room, lit only by the dim light reaching it from the kitchen. Jack’s leather jacket was tossed on the couch. Further down the hall, the overhead light in the spare bedroom glared through its open door. I listened, closing my eyes to listen more intently. I felt the hair stand up on my neck. Silence.
I’d only been in here once, so I picked my way through Jack’s sparse furniture very carefully.
No one in the kitchen, either.
I was biting my lip to keep from making a sound when I stood in the doorway of the guest bedroom. There was a card table holding a tape player, a pad of paper, and a pencil. There was a Dr Pepper can on the table. The folding chair that had been in front of the table was lying on its side. I touched my fingers to the Dr Pepper can. It was still cold. A red light indicated the tape player was on, but the tape compartment was open and empty. I ran back to the living room and fumbled through the pockets of the leather jacket. They were empty, too.
“They’ve got Jack,” I said to no one.
I COVERED MY eyes to think more intently. Claude was downstairs unable to get around on his own. At least some portion of his police force was corrupt. Sheriff Schuster was dead and I didn’t know any of his people. Maybe the sheriff ’s department, too, contained one or two men who at least sympathized with the Take Back Your Own group.
What if I couldn’t save Jack by myself? Whom could I call?
Carrie was a noncombatant. Raphael had a wife and family, and without putting it to myself clearly in words, I knew a black man’s involvement would escalate whatever was happening into a war.
If I went in and was captured, too, who would help?
Then I thought of someone.
I remembered the number and punched it in on Jack’s phone.
“Mookie,” I said when she answered. “I need you to come. Bring the rifle.”
“Where?”
“Winthrop’s. They’ve got—my man.” I was beyond trying to explain who Jack was. “He’s a detective. He’s been taping them.”
“Where’ll I meet you?” She sounded cool.
“Let’s go in over the back fence. I live right behind the Home Supply store.”
“I know. I’m coming.” She put her phone down.
This was the woman I’d cautioned about leaving town yesterday, and now I was urging her to put herself into danger on my say-so. But I didn’t have time to worry about irony. I ran down the stairs, leaving Jack’s door wide open. It wouldn’t hurt for someone else to become alarmed. I ran to my place, let myself in. I pulled off my coat, found a heavy dark sweat-shirt, and yanked it down over my T-shirts. I found Jack’s forgotten watch cap. I pulled it over my light hair. No gloves, I needed my hands. I untied my high-tops and pulled on dark boots, laced them tight. I would have darkened my face if I could have thought of something to do it with. I came out of my front door as Mookie pulled in. She leaped out of the car with the rifle in one hand.
“What’s your weapon?” she asked.
I raised my hands.
“Cool,” she said, and we began to run for the tracks without further conversation. From the high point of the railroad, we surveyed the back lot of the Sporting Goods store. There were lights on in the store. The back lot was always lit, but there were pools of darkness, too.
“Let’s go,” my companion said. She seemed quite happy and relaxed. She required not one word of explanation, which was refreshing, since I wasn’t sure I could manage anything coherent. We jogged down the embankment. I was about to take a run at the fence and accept the barbed wire at the top, but Mookie pulled wire cutters from a pocket in her dark jumpsuit. This was no fashion model garment, but a padded, heavy, dark workman’s jumpsuit with many pockets. Mookie had a knit cap pulled over her hair, too. She went to work with the wire cutters, while I looked around us for any signs of detection.
Nothing moved but us.
Finally the opening was large enough and we scrambled through it, Mookie first. Again, nothing happened. We moved into a pool of darkness and crouched there behind a gleaming new four-wheeler. Mookie pointed at our next goal, a boat. We had to cross through some light, but made the boat safely. We waited.
In this run-and-wait fashion we worked our way from the rear of the lot to the back of the store. There was a customer door at ground level and a loading dock with a set of four steps going up to it. From the dock there was an employee door leading inside to the huge storeroom. The customer door was dark. I was willing to bet it was heavily locked.
They’d left someone on guard at the loading bay door. It was the pimply boy from the Home Supply store, and he was shifting from foot to foot in the cold, which I no longer felt. He had a rifle, too. Mookie whispered, “Can you take him out silently?”
I nodded. I’d never attacked anyone like this, someone who hadn’t attacked me first, but before that thought could lodge firmly in my consciousness and weaken me, I focused on his rifle. If he had it, I had to assume he was willing to use it.
The boy turned to peer through the window in the employee door, and sneezed. Under cover of that noise, I leaped silently up the steps, came up behind him, snaked my arms around him to grip the rifle, and pulled it up against his throat. He struggled against me but I was determined to silence him.
He weakened. He grew limp. Mookie helped me lower him to the concrete platform. She pulled a scarf from one of her pockets and tied it around his mouth and bound his hands behind him with another. She took his rifle and held it out to me. I shook my head. She placed it down against the base of the loading dock, out of sight. She evidently thought he was alive and worth binding, so I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know now if I’d killed him.
I wondered if they’d come to check on him. I stood sideways to the little head-high window reinforced with diamond-patterned wire, and looked through into the lighted storeroom. I could just see movement past a wall of boxes and racks, but I couldn’t tell what was happening.
“Cover inside,” I whispered to Mookie. “Go left when we go in.”
She nodded. I took a deep breath, turned the knob, praying that it would not make a noise. To me, the twist of the metal was loud as cymbals, but no one appeared at the gap in boxes to investigate. I pulled the door open and Mookie went in low, rifle at the ready. No one shot her. No one shouted. I went in after a second, dropped to a squat right inside the door, letting it ease shut against me.
Mookie was crouched behind a chest-deep pile of stenciled boxes. An array of huge metal shelves, all labeled and aligned, loomed ahead of us. To our right, across the aisle left open for passage to the back door, was a rack of camouflage jumpsuits in the colder, grayer, green and black of winter camo. There were more rows of shelves in front of the rack.
I could hear voices now, the raucous laughter of men high on their testosterone. In the middle of the laughter there was a cut-off yelp. Jack.
I was ready to kill now. I worked my hands, getting the stiffness and cold out of them. Mookie eyed me with some doubt.
“Whic
h man is yours?” she asked almost inaudibly.
“The one who yelled,” I told her. Her eyes widened. “He’s got long black hair.” She would need to know which one was Jack.
“We’ll work our way up there, see what happens,” she breathed.
That was as good a plan as any. We ducked around the boxes and concealed ourselves behind the next row of shelves. We could see through the gaps in the stacked goods. Darcy was there, Jim was there, and Cleve Ragland, Tom David Meicklejohn. About who I’d expected. There was at least one person I couldn’t see; I noticed the men turn to their right a few times, addressing a remark to whoever sat there.
They were torturing Jack.
As we worked our way to the front of the storage area, I saw more and more. I saw too much. Jack was tied to a chair, a wooden one on rollers. His arms were tied to the chair arms. He had the beginning of a black eye, and a cut on one cheek, maybe from when they’d grabbed him in his apartment. They’d taken off his shirt. They’d pulled the bandage off his bullet wound. Darcy had a hunting knife, and Cleve had devised his own little implement by heating an arrowhead with a lighter and putting it on Jack’s skin. Jim Box looked nauseated. Tom David was watching, and though he did not look sick, he did not look happy, either. His eyes flickered toward whoever was seated out of sight, and back to Jack.
Darcy turned away from cutting Jack right under the nipple. The knife glistened with blood. I would kill him first, I thought, so consumed by the thought that I could not reason, could not plan what I should do. I had forgotten Mookie’s existence until she nudged me. She pointed a slim finger to a man sitting on his haunches in the shadow of a shelving unit, a man I hadn’t seen before, and I thought I would vomit. I recognized the pale floppy hair instantly. Bobo. Darcy said something to him.
Bobo raised his face to look at Darcy, and I saw tears on his face.
“I gotta ask you, boy, where you went just a while ago,” Darcy said genially. He raised the knife so the light caught the part of the blade that was not red. Bobo stood up. His shoulders squared.
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