“Amazing,” he says and stands up. He looks at me. “How many more are there?”
I clamp my jaw and stare at him. I’m not going to say a word to him, or any of his goons. They don’t deserve my time of day and they can’t force me to say anything.
Suddenly, from seemingly out of nowhere, he has a gun in his hand. He walks over to Mom, pulls her to her feet by her hair and puts the barrel to her head. “How many are there?” His evil eyes are on me.
“Eight,” Mom sputters out.
“Shut up! I’m not asking you. I’m asking your little girl here.”
Shit to hell! “Seven!”
He lets Mom go. “Seven? Eight? Seventy-eight? Which the hell is it?”
“Eight counting Simon,” I say pointing to the dead sabre-toothed cat with a shaky finger.
He turns to the cat. “Simon?” He returns the handgun to a holster on his belt at his back, under his shirt. “I see.” He scans the cavern. “I think I understand, now. Yes. It’s becoming very clear. This is why they survived. They live in here. They hunt from here. Very well hidden from man . . .” His eyes land on me. “. . . but not from one woman. Not from one very special woman. This is her little hideaway as well, isn’t it. And the sabre-toothed cats are her friends, aren’t they? Her protectors; her bodyguards.”
Screw him if he wants an answer. I glare at him. He walks toward Mom, reaching back for his gun.
“Yes!” I blurt.
“Good girl. You’re learning.” He turns to his goons. “They say that kids nowadays aren’t very smart, but here is a smart one. She learns fast.”
Baldy and Black Beard chuckle.
“I’ll bet,” Vandermill says, returning to his train of thought, “that any friends of Bravelli’s are also friends of her bodyguards. I don’t think she would invite anyone here unless they were very close friends; friends she could deeply trust. And of course she wouldn’t want her bodyguards eating her friends, so somehow she has control of them so that they will leave her friends alone. A big friendly family we have here.” He steps in front of me and looks me straight in the eyes. “Am I right or am I right?”
I pause and he raises his eye brows. “I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
He’s close enough that I can smell his stinky aftershave. “Yes, they are her bodyguards. She controls them. We don’t know how.”
“Where is she and her seven guards now?”
“I don’t know. None of us know.”
“When she left in the middle of the night, where was she going?”
“She went out after your men, to stop them before they got here.”
“I see.” He turns away. I take a breath of fresh air. “But according to your mother, she abandoned you all; ‘left you high and dry,’ I believe she said. Your stories don’t seem to agree, entirely. Your mother implies that she is not coming back. You, on the other hand, lead me to believe that she is. Is she coming back or not?”
“I don’t know.”
He nods and goes to the fire. It is nothing more than a few red-hot coals. He throws a log on, and then crouches down in front of Mom and Dad. “How’s your back, Mrs. Price? Did it heel well since that terrible hiking accident eight years ago?”
“That’s a lie!” I say. “She was injured trying to escape from you. It was your fault.”
“Is that what they told you? Did they also tell you that I saved both of their lives? Did they tell you that they would have frozen to death if not for me, that you would have been an orphan?”
“They wouldn’t have been there to freeze to death if not for you.”
He rises and looks at Randall. “Tell me, Randall, do you blame me because you got shot in the foot?”
“No, Sir. I blame the bitch.”
“Why don’t you blame me? I’m the one that put you in this situation.”
“You employee me, Mister Vandermill. You pay me good. You didn’t force me to put my foot where the bitch could shoot it.”
“Young lady.”
“Sir?”
“I’d prefer you refer to her as a young lady. She really is only trying to protect herself and her family. You’ve got to give her credit for that.”
“Yes, Sir. Never thought of it that way. You didn’t force me to put my foot where the young lady could shoot it.”
“Thank you, Randall. You’ll get the finest medical care, and a bonus for being wounded in action.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
And for kissing up. If I was closer I think I would throw up on his foot.
Vandermill turns his attention back to me. “I don’t feel I’m in any way obligated to justify to you anything I’ve ever done. For some crazy reason, I’m going to make an exception.” He points at Dad. “I hired that man, your father, at a time when he desperately needed work, after he had abandoned his family.”
“Certainly not out of the goodness of your heart,” I point out. “And he didn’t abandon us.”
“You’re partially right. It wasn’t out of the goodness of my heart. That’s not the reason I do things. I’m a business man. It was a business decision, though on hindsight I readily admit, a very bad one. It was that decision that led to the destruction of my company.”
“An illegal and unethical company, which you burned to the ground.”
“Illegal? Not back then, except maybe that the IRS didn’t know about it. Unethical? That can be argued. It depends on what religious faith you claim, if any. The burning . . . he left me no choice. Your father took a job, well paying I might add, with my company which at the time was conducting business in a legal and ethical manner.”
“Except for the IRS, you said.”
He waves his hand in the air as though to back hand a fly. “How I dealt with my taxes was of no concern to your father and how he did his job. The point is, he decided that he didn’t like what my company was doing, and instead of simply resigning, he chose to make a big stink behind my back, turning several of my employees against me.”
“Bullshit!” That comes from Dad and I can see that it hurt him to say it. Vandermill looks at him like he’d passed gas.
“Bullshit is right,” I say. “San Sanssabre was already starting to unravel when Dad arrived. There was internal fighting going on, dissatisfaction, and guilt at the ethical questions. Your employees were living in a prison and after so many years, it was starting to get to them. Then people started dying. Dad didn’t kill those men.”
“Those were unfortunate accidents.”
“Yeah, right! More like arranged accidents. Murder.”
Suddenly his gun is in his hand again. I flinch about a foot off the ground. He doesn’t point it at me or Mom. Instead he points it straight up. The words, I’m sorry, are trying to find a way to my lips. I grind my teeth and seal my mouth closed, determined not to let it escape.
“Justification time is over,” he says. “I was asking your mother how her back was.” He turns to her. “How is it, Mrs. Price?”
“It hurts,” she says angrily.
“But you’re a lot stronger than you used to be. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
He puts away his gun, and walks over and picks up a six-foot piece of tree limb very similar to that that Mom tried to use on Sam. “Stand up,” he says to Mom.
“No.” She shakes her head.
He walks toward her. “Stand up!”
“No!” Dad says and places himself in front of Mom.
Vandermill stops. “Oh, my. Your knight in shining armor arrives. You’d better stand up now, Mrs. Price, or I’m going to have to go through your husband first, with my big stick.
“What do you want?” I scream.
He turns and looks at me, the stick resting on his shoulder like a baseball bat.
Why is he using my mother to get to me? I consider reaching into his mind to find out, but I’m afraid he’ll know I’m there and then really get pissed. Instead I throw eyeball daggers at him.
“Y
ou’re leaving something out,” he says. “You’re not telling me the entire truth. On the life and health of your mother, let’s start again.”
Mom looks terrible. I want to go over and put my arms around her. I want her to put her arms around me. I want to tell her I’m sorry, and that I love her. I consider reaching into her mind to tell her, but what if he knows what I can do and thinks I’m up to something funny? What if it shows on my face? “I’ll tell you anything you want to know if you’ll let Mom borrow your first aid kit for Dad, or use ours which is around here somewhere.”
“I don’t make bargains I don’t initiate myself.”
“What could it hurt? You can take it away if you don’t like anything I say.”
He laughs and nods his head to Sean, who carries it over and hands it to her.
“Now, Miss Price. I know a lot more than you think I do. Thus, I know when you’re leaving something out. It might not seem all that important to you, but it is important to me. All of it!”
I jump.
“Do you understand?”
I nod.
“Good.” He gazes up into the darkness and says, “Where did you get the gun?”
“Ah . . . Sam gave it to me.”
“Sam?”
“Samantha Sikorski. Ah . . . Aileen Bravelli.”
“Yes, Yes. Of course.”
“She took it off of one of your first two men, after the sabre-toothed cats got them.”
He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead. “That’s terrible. I hope it was quick.”
I want to tell him I hope they suffered a slow, agonizing death.
“Here’s my concern,” he says, looking at me. “A bit over an hour ago I was on the radio with one of the three men she supposedly went after in the middle of the night—with just her cats, you say—when he suddenly said he was being shot at. The next thing I know I’m talking to nobody, and I can’t raise anyone else. Who in the hell shot my people?”
“It was probably her. She had two guns. She gave me one and kept the other.”
“No!” he yells, pulls his gun, and points it toward my head. I close my eyes and the gun goes off. Mom screams and I jump about a million feet. Instead of pain and death, there is only the warmth of my pee spreading about my crotch. “Who was with her?” He screams. My ears are ringing and my legs are shaking, and it is hot where the bullet grazed past my cheek.
“Dad! Dad went with her.” I’m sputtering and my jaw is shaking.
“Of course he went with her. I could figure that out myself just by looking at him. Where else would he get attacked by a dog? Who else?”
“Matt.”
He lowers his gun and puts it away. “Thank you.”
Mom is on the ground sobbing. Dad is trying to get his good arm around her.
“Did they both have guns?”
“Yes,” I say without pausing.
“Where is Matt?”
“We don’t know. We’re afraid he may have gotten killed. He didn’t come back with Dad.”
“This Matt is the son of Brian Shwartzberg, the recently defeated county sheriff. Am I correct here?”
“Yes. And your men killed him in cold blood.”
His head rotates to Sean. “Is that right?”
“Yes, Sir. We think so.”
“Ah. So, this Matt is out for revenge.”
“Do you blame him?” I say.
“Of course not. Bravo to him and all that shit. But it does tell me we may have an angry young man with an automatic weapon. That’s important information to know. You may be right in that he didn’t make it in the shootout, however, seeing as I haven’t been able to make contact with anyone on that team since, I’m inclined to believe they have all expired. That would then lead me to believe that your Matt is still alive and knows how to use an MP5.”
“I hope so and I hope he puts a bullet between your eyes.”
I immediately regret my words, but he ignores my comment and signals to Baldy and Black Beard. “Go up and set yourselves where you can keep an eye on the chopper without being seen. Curiosity may bring him out into the open, as well as Ms Bravelli. They may be together, so watch for both of them. I want her alive.”
They start to head up the path and Vandermill adds, “Keep an eye on your backs. These cats are dangerous. And find out what’s keeping Ace.”
Black Beard drops the magazine from his weapon, examines it and puts it back in. They continue on their way. Vandermill goes to help Nick extract his dog from Simon’s jaws. Randall is sitting back against the woodpile; his bandaged foot propped up; his weapon in his lap, pointed my way. He grins. I walk out of line of fire and crouch down next to Mom and Dad. I smell my own urine and back a way a few feet.
“Are you okay, Mom?” I say.
She looks at me and shivers. Dad is slowly running his hand up and down her back. The first aid kit is standing open. I pull it over. “What do we do with this?” I ask, knowing I have to get her mind onto something. Patching Dad up is as good as anything.
Mom considers it for a while, and then slowly starts to move. She pulls out gauze and tape, a pair of scissors, an antibiotic of some sort, and a tube of something. “I need water,” she says.
I find a bottle. It’s three quarters full. She takes it and I watch her work. Dad winces a couple of times. There is Extra Strength Tylenol. When she’s done, she gives him three and then takes two for herself.
“How’s your head?” I ask.
“Pounding.”
“You know, he wouldn’t be planning on killing us if he’s letting us use his first aid stuff.”
My comment catches Mom’s attention only briefly.
“She’s right.” Dad’s voice is soft and rough, like a big dog trying to bark with a whisper.
“Don’t talk,” Mom says. “Let your throat rest.”
He says nothing else. I can tell it hurt him, but he wants to support my observation for Mom’s sake, even if he or I don’t believe it.
I get another whiff of myself and move a little farther away. I need to bathe with my clothes on, and then to dry in the sun. I’d sure like to lie in the hot pool for a while. I consider asking, but change my mind. How many days has it been? Shit to hell. I put these clothes on Monday. I pull my knees up and lay my arms and then my head on them, turning my nose from the smell. This is Wednesday. And now I’ve peed in them . . .
. . . and soon, I will die in them.
Chapter 64
Reba
I’m tired of sitting. I stand up.
“Where are you going?” Sean says.
“I want to get my backpack.”
“Why?”
“I’m bored.”
“So what? Sit down!”
I sit down.
“Not there. Get with your parents where I can watch you all at one time.”
“I don’t want to sit with them.”
“I don’t care what you want.”
I stand back up, but instead of going toward Mom and Dad, I head to my backpack.
Becky! Dad is suddenly in my head. A split second later Sean’s gun explodes. I shake where I’m standing, determined not to lose control of my bladder again.
“What the fuck’re you doing?” Sean demands.
I look him directly in the eye. “I want my backpack and I don’t like your language.”
Becky! What’re you doing?
I ignore Dad’s question and then shut him off. I have no answer for him. I have no idea what I’m doing. I know I’m being stupid, and that I shouldn’t be trying to piss off someone with a gun in his hand, but what I know and what I’m doing are two different things.
“You don’t like my fuckn’ language? I don’t give a fuckn’ rat’s ass. Get over there and sit down!”
“No!” What’s my big deal about his language? I’ve heard worse than that in the hallways in high school from the girls.
He levels his weapon on me. “I don’t fire two warning shots.”
“Good, c
ause I didn’t like that first one.”
His eyes get big, as big as I’m sure Mom and Dad’s are right now. “What in the hell’s your problem?” he demands. “You got a death wish or something?
“The only thing I wish is that you’d get off my case. I want my backpack because I’m bored. I’m tired of sitting and waiting, worrying about when you guys are going to kill us. I have some things in there to do. There are no guns or explosives. Wait! There might be a nail file. It could be dangerous. If I promise to give it to you, will you promise not to shoot that thing again? It hurts my ears.”
I end my little speech and then suddenly find myself in his mind. He’s flummoxed. He has no idea what to do. He doesn’t want to shoot a kid, especially a female kid because he is a father of one himself. I can’t tell her age but she isn’t yet a teenager. The tension grows. Dad is struggling to get to his feet. I say to Sean, “How long has it been since you’ve seen Miranda?”
Chapter 65
Zach
I’m screaming at my daughter, but she has shut me off. She has gone insane and he’s going to kill her. I try to get to my feet, but without thinking I push with my bad arm only to collapse with a jarring thud. Pain flashes and then dies. Tanya’s mouth is hanging open, the corners turned down in pure fear. I roll to where I can use my other arm to leverage to my feet, then bring myself around, ready to charge Sean. Becky’s next words stop me. I barely hear them because unlike her minor tantrum of a few seconds ago, her voice is soft.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen Miranda?”
I have no idea who Miranda is, but based on Sean’s reaction, and knowing what Becky is capable of, I render a guess. Wife, girlfriend or daughter. Not unlike Tanya, his mouth drops open; unlike Tanya, though, it does not turn into fear. Instead, his jaw, and his eyes, expose shock; surprise. The point of the gun slowly drops.
“How do you know about her?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead she says, “I’m going to get my backpack now.”
“No!” Randall is now pointing his weapon at my daughter. I tense again and shift my intentions from Sean to him.
“Freeze!” Vandermill steps into the center. “Everyone relax.” He motions Randall to lower his gun.
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