“Seriously?”
“I recognized him from the poster,” she said. A plan was taking shape in her mind. Five hundred dollars for information leading to capture, the marshal had said. Five thousand for safe delivery.
“What’s he doing here? Are you sure it’s him?”
“You have to go. You can get the girls on the way.” She cursed herself for selling Star and hobbling them, all for nothing. The Cawleys had found her anyway.
“Go where?”
“To Buxton. Hopefully you’ll catch a ride. Get that marshal and send him back here.” The marshal would have a vehicle, at least. Feds always did. Once Milo alerted him to Cawley’s capture, he’d cover the distance to the farm quickly. If Brooke was lucky, and the other Cawleys hadn’t descended yet, she’d claim the bounty, get back to Milo and the kids, and take them as far away as she should have gone in the first place. She rummaged in the desk for the keys to the gun cabinet.
“I don’t know, Brooke.” Milo was watching her. He hadn’t moved from the couch.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Her hand found the keys in the back of a drawer.
“It’s federal business. We don’t— What if he’s just resting? He might move on.”
She kicked a footstool to the base of the bookshelf and reached to unlock the gun cabinet above. “You know who the Cawleys are,” she said. “You’ve heard what they’re like.” She took down her rifle, a .22 she’d only ever used on gophers.
“What’s the gun for?” Milo asked. “You said he was just sleeping.”
“I knocked him out.”
“What? On purpose?”
“Milo, there’s no time. He’s dangerous. There are others coming. You have to get the kids out of here.”
“What others?”
“Cawley said more of them are on the way to the farm,” she lied, more easily now.
“Why? I mean, why here?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Brooke’s voice rose to a shout. “Cawley’s here, and he’s not alone, and it’s fucking dangerous. How are you still sitting on the goddamn couch?”
Milo stood up.
“You have to go,” Brooke said. “Now. Get the marshal. Send him here.”
“But, Brooke, that marshal’s not in Buxton anymore.”
“What?”
“He’s gone. He left after the auction. He had a Jeep.”
“Shit.” The marshal could be anywhere. No knowing how long it would take to bring him back to the area. Brooke’s fantasy—that she could still be standing when the marshal showed up—evaporated. Cawley would free himself in that time, or be freed.
Brooke took a deep breath. “Go anyway. Use the satellite phone in town. Call the marshals, tell them where Cawley is, see if you can get the information bounty off them, and then take the kids somewhere safe. Get as far away as you can.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I can’t leave Cawley alone here. He’ll get out.”
Milo drew his eyebrows together, as if trying to solve a riddle. “Then I should stay, if someone has to.”
“What? No. You can’t use the gun,” Brooke said flatly. Milo couldn’t even fish, wouldn’t hook a worm.
Milo picked up the box of shells from where Brooke had placed it on the coffee table. He read the lettering on the side, put it down again.
“Fine.”
“You need to be gone, Milo. You have to go now.”
“I said fine,” he said. “I’ll go.”
The gun in Brooke’s hands felt suddenly heavier. He was only agreeing to what she’d asked him to do, but it still stung. He really would leave her.
“Go, then,” she said, turning to the closet for one of the big backpacks. “Take warm clothes, one change each. Otherwise, the bag will be too heavy.”
Milo took the pack, dropped in Sal’s boots from the floor.
“We could bring him,” Milo said.
“What?”
“Bring Cawley with us to Buxton. Then you wouldn’t have to stay and keep an eye on him, and there would be two of us in case . . . I don’t know, in case whatever.” He gestured vaguely.
“With the kids?”
“It’s better than leaving you here, if these people are so dangerous. We’ll take him to Buxton, call the outpost at Shaw Station, and stay until the marshals come. People will help us.”
Brooke considered it. What hope did she have, alone, of surviving whatever was on its way to the farm even now, out of the south? What hope that she would ever see Milo and the girls again, or be there to protect them?
“Get another backpack, then,” she said. “And a rope.”
IT WAS STILL EARLY, barely mid-morning. Brooke and Milo leaned their backpacks against the porch and crossed the yard to the rinsing shed. Brooke listened: crows calling, wind in dry oak leaves, the layered songs of late-season crickets and grasshoppers starting and stopping and starting again.
For a mad second, Brooke wondered if she could have imagined her fight with Cawley. She observed the broken door of the rinsing shed hanging wide, the kicked-up ground in front. There could be another explanation for these things.
Then there came a thud from the shed. Cawley was awake.
Brooke double-checked the safety on her rifle. If she were just willing to shoot him, it would be simpler. She had a gun and he didn’t; it wouldn’t take more than a couple of shots, no matter how awake he was. But there was no point debating what her hands had decided as they swung the axe: she couldn’t kill Cawley. If she did, none of it would mean anything.
Instead, Brooke would have to stand guard with the gun while Milo extracted Cawley from the shed and made sure he was safely bound. If Milo made a mistake and Cawley overpowered him, things could go wrong fast. And even if things didn’t go wrong, there was still the greater challenge of moving through open country with a prisoner. Cawley would need his legs free. What if he couldn’t walk after the blows Brooke had landed to his knee and ankle? And how would she keep him moving while staying safely out of reach with the gun?
“If he’s worked his way out of the ropes, he’ll try to grab you,” she whispered to Milo, repeating what she’d already explained in the house. “There could have been a razor or something on him I didn’t find. Just do it the way I told you.”
Milo nodded.
“Stand to the left of the inside door, where the seed calendar is. You have to be totally silent. If you put weight on that—”
“I know,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It’s okay, Brooke.”
She took her position with the rifle as Milo crept into the shed. She saw right away that he was going to put his weight on the soft board, but it was too late to stop him. The board creaked loudly. Milo froze.
The thumping stopped. Brooke sighted the rifle at the closed door.
She wished she could split herself in half. If she were standing where Milo was, she could decipher, from the smallest of sounds, Cawley’s position beyond the door. She snapped her fingers. Milo didn’t hear. He was watching the door. She snapped again, louder. He turned to look and she signaled for him to unlock the door.
He took a deep breath and reached out, withdrew the bolt, and stood back, waiting. The door didn’t move. Milo inched forward, pulled it open.
Brooke couldn’t see much in the darkness beyond the threshold. Bars of broken light fell between the wall boards into deep shadow. She could just make out a form—Cawley, low against the back wall. He was lying on his back. A wider gap of light showed where he’d almost kicked through one board. He must be high to the point of numbness if he could kick that hard injured. Chalk was an upper and a downer in one. It made you invincible without the jitters, euphoric without the lethargy. No knowing what Cawley was capable of if he was beyond pain.
Milo stood to the side of the open door, looking in.
“Check his ties,” Brooke reminded him. “You have to go in to check.”
“Right,” he said.
She watched Milo move into the inner
room. She had talked him through it: he needed to make sure the baling twine had held, then move Cawley into the yard, where they would adjust his bonds for the walk to the road.
There was a sudden scrape.
“He’s bound.” Milo appeared again, eyes wide. “He tried to kick my legs out.”
“Did you check the twine? Did you feel it?”
“No.”
“Check it, then. He could be faking.”
“But . . .”
It wasn’t in Milo to do this. Brooke had never intended to put him in this position. But gentle as he was—exasperatingly, endearingly—she needed his help; she had no one else.
“I can’t put the gun down until you’re sure,” Brooke said. “Try not to think. Just follow the plan. I’ve got you.”
Milo nodded, took another deep breath. He crept back in, slowly, half crouching, as if approaching an animal.
Shuffling, a shout, grunts. Something falling.
“Milo?” she called.
“I’ll break his neck,” called a low, phlegmy voice, not Milo’s. “Old bitch, you know I damn will.”
Brooke was in the shed before she knew it, the floor creaking under her boots. In the inner room, Cawley was on his side, his hands still tied behind his back and his ankles bound. He had knocked Milo down and somehow managed to catch Milo’s head between his knees, choking him. Milo was struggling, kicking out. Cawley didn’t slacken his grip even when a heel caught him in the cheek.
Brooke stepped forward, where Cawley could see the gun. “Let him go!” she shouted.
“The fuck you thinking, coming at me here?” Cawley slurred his words. “Don’t you know when to quit?”
“Let him go,” she repeated.
“Fuck you,” he spat, and squeezed Milo’s neck so hard that his eyes bulged.
Brooke took two long steps, pointed the gun at the ground next to Cawley’s head, and fired.
Roaring in her ears. She saw Robin’s small form in the narrow alley. A siren wailing. Run, she’d screamed, again and again. Too late. She saw Robin flying into the air. Pain ripped through her. She saw him fall.
She stepped back from Cawley, her heart beating so hard she thought she might be sick. She forced herself to breathe.
“Fucking do it, then!” Cawley yelled.
How long until the girls came back and found them like this? How long until she heard hooves or engines from the south?
“Let him go,” Brooke said, “or I’ll shoot your hands.”
She saw Cawley’s fingers twitch involuntarily as he pulled against the wrist bindings.
“Take him, then,” he said finally, relaxing his legs so that Milo could pull his head back through. “All the good he’ll do you. This fucking wuss.”
Milo scrambled away from Cawley and lay gasping on the ground.
“Are you all right?” Brooke asked.
He nodded.
“Hitch him in the yard,” Brooke said. She stepped back with the gun still trained on Cawley.
“I need a minute.”
“Stand up, Milo,” Brooke said. “We don’t have a minute. Move his hands to the front of his body, attach the lead line, then undo his ankles.”
“I’m not sure about this plan anymore.” Milo got to his knees, rubbing his throat. “Look what he just did.”
“He needs his legs to walk.”
“I’m not walking anywhere,” Cawley said.
“Shut up,” Brooke said. “Do it, Milo.”
Milo stood, glancing doubtfully at Brooke. He approached Cawley with tentative steps, got him by the armpits, and pulled him out through the shed. Brooke noticed that Cawley let out a grunt of pain when his boot heel caught on the doorstep. He could feel something, then.
Brooke kept the rifle up and ready as Milo cut the baling twine from Cawley’s wrists. When the bonds fell, Milo quickly withdrew out of reach, but Cawley only moved his free hands robotically to the front of his body and held his wrists together in front of his chest. Milo moved in and cinched them together with one of the plastic zip ties they kept for small repairs.
Milo secured Cawley to a long nylon rope. Then he cut the baling twine from Cawley’s legs and backed away again.
“This is definitely the guy they’re looking for?” Milo asked.
“The scar,” Brooke said. “I recognize it from the warrant.”
A puckered line ran just off-center from Cawley’s bottom lip to the crease in his chin; it was old, knotted, dull purple. There were other marks, too, beyond the fresh red welt on his throat where Brooke had choked him into unconsciousness. A split lip from some recent fight, half healed. A swollen eye. Cawley was younger than Brooke—old bitch, he’d called her—but he looked worse; he’d been living hard.
“How are we going to get him all the way to Buxton?” Milo asked nervously. “What if he lashes out like that again?”
“You think I should just shoot him?”
“Of course not. God, Brooke. I’m just saying—”
“We just have to make it to town. If we get a ride, we’ll be there this afternoon.”
“Brooke?” Milo sought her gaze. “Can we talk about this? You don’t seem . . . like you.”
Brooke looked away, swallowing her guilt. The time to speak had passed. She was well aware that this cold, hard figure wasn’t the person Milo knew, the one who’d gotten comfortable, let her guard down, started believing in the life she’d stumbled into. A loving home. A family.
Brooke longed to be that person, but her longing was like grief. The person Milo knew wasn’t the one who could save them. It was another, older self, whose skin Brooke had slipped back into all too easily, that they needed now.
“Let’s get the bags.” She flicked the safety back on the rifle and slung it over her right shoulder. “It’s time to go.”
3
That first winter, when Brooke lay hidden in the Buxton mill, her nightmares receded until there were some nights she slept right through. When spring came, her shoulder was as healed as it was going to get, and she had a wallet full of earnings. She would have moved on then if it wasn’t for Milo.
She came outside to feed Star one morning when the sun was shining and the thick winter ice had shrunk back in the mill yard, runnels of meltwater carving paths like veins through its softened surface. The uncommon sound of children’s voices caught Brooke’s attention. Across the yard, half a dozen kids were standing on the rail platform with a young man. A teacher, Brooke guessed. He was slightly built, and his wool coat looked soft, well made. His face, listening to the students’ questions, was kind. He had black hair, olive skin, eyebrows like ink brushstrokes—features that people in Buxton called “exotic,” if they were being polite. Brooke had been raised with other words; it embarrassed her to think of them.
The class was watching a forklift shift two-by-sixes onto a flatbed. One of the children said something, and the teacher laughed, a sudden glow of warmth that reached right into Brooke’s body, waking her up to the potent smell of the forest breathing off skids of fresh logs, the velvet touch of the breeze brushing her skin. She stood shivering in the shadow of the mill, watching until he left.
The next time Brooke saw Milo, he was alone, walking on the main street in town. When he entered a store, she sat on the bench out front. She could think of nothing to do or say to catch his attention, and she felt foolish for being there. Nonetheless, she waited.
When Milo came outside, he stood for a moment in the warm sun, seemingly just for the pleasure of it. The collar of his coat was open, and Brooke felt a strong desire to slip her hand inside, under the fabric.
“It feels good,” Brooke said, surprising herself.
“Hm?” Milo turned. His eyes were hazel, flecked with gold. There were creases at the corners when he smiled.
“The sun,” Brooke said.
Love was like a levee breaking, two bodies rushing in to meet each other. It surprised them both. Milo was as different from Brooke as she imagined it was pos
sible to be. She knew what her parents would think of him: raised by a foreign, city-born mother who hung strange art on her walls and kept a collection of unfamous, subtitled movies. Milo was well liked in Buxton, for the most part. He held soft views on immigration and gun control, but he was wise enough to keep quiet about it in public; along with his mother’s complexion, he had inherited her sociability, her patience, her gentle charm. Still, even friends called him an outsider.
“Does that bother you?” Brooke asked him once.
“Of course it does,” he said. “I was born here.”
“But you never say anything.” Brooke was taken aback.
“I’m tired of having to,” he said.
Brooke couldn’t guess what Milo saw in her. She was secretive and prickly. She told him early on she was from no place he knew, that she had no family, that there were things she would not discuss. He accepted this. He loved her. He loved just to be near her. And when he touched her, that hum resonated in her bones, making all the panic and the roaring go quiet.
She did want to tell Milo, after a while. They had become close. She thought it would be a relief. But it was hard to reverse, embarrassing to admit her lie. She told herself that he was better off not knowing. She tried to forget. She started using his last name, never having offered another.
She didn’t leave Buxton in the spring, or in the summer, and by fall, she was pregnant with Holly.
Through the years that followed, memories would sometimes surface, and Brooke could feel the old fear hounding her: shots, screams, darkness, running. In those moments, she was hard and distant with Milo, and he treated her carefully.
It never stopped feeling wrong to lie to Milo, but somehow her pull to him only grew stronger. All the drudgery of farm work and the relentlessness of parenting, irritations and disappointments, moments they almost hated each other—there was thing after thing to figure out, not knowing what they were doing, terrified of failing; Milo’s mother got old and needed care, and then died; their isolation grew; the farm lost money—and yet the feeling was always there, wildly alive, astonishing her. They fell into bed at the end of the endless days, and Brooke wrapped her hands around Milo’s wrists, pushing him into the pillow, biting his lips, hungering for him to bite back. Afterward, she lay on his chest, empty and mindless, until her weight was too much and he eased her onto the mattress.
The Captive Page 3