The Captive

by Fiona King Foster

  In time, the memories came less often. Her life was her own. She cultivated cranberries, she loved a man who could not load a gun if you gave him an hour, and their children grew in peace and safety. Proof enough, Brooke thought, that she had left the past behind.

  MILO LED THE WAY UP the driveway toward the road. If the girls were looking for a signal, they would be there, at the high point of land. Brooke had known Holly to spend hours holding Milo’s old phone skyward in stubborn hope.

  Brooke walked last, with the lead rope looped in her left hand, the rifle slung on her right, and Cawley in front of her, where she could see him. His aggression in the rinsing shed had not returned. Now, he drifted in a chalk fugue, muttering to himself, laughing now and then.

  Brooke scanned the ground as she walked. The driveway had been gravel at one time, but a dozen seasons of spring runoff had blurred it with creek mud, and grass and weeds had taken root. Brooke could still see Star’s hoofprints from four days ago, when she and Milo had ridden to town.

  Where the driveway met the road, a sharp rise led up into the woods on their right. There, Brooke tied Cawley’s rope off to an old fencepost.

  Milo scrambled up the hill, calling out to the girls. Brooke stifled the urge to hush him, to keep Cawley from hearing their names. She checked her knots and added an extra clove hitch to slow Cawley down if he tried to escape. Once she was sure of the rope, she followed Milo, now out of sight over the hill.

  Brooke could tell the grass had been recently trod on, but in a few places the blades bent downhill, crushed by feet descending instead of climbing, and by a walker much heavier than an eight- or thirteen-year-old girl. Fearful, Brooke stooped to examine a patch of exposed sand; here were the girls’ prints—Sal barefoot despite the season, the scalloped outline of her small toes—but there was the tread of a boot, pointing back to the driveway. To the house.

  Brooke hurried after Milo. As she cleared the brow of the hill, she heard voices. Holly and Sal, talking at once.

  “Mom, what’s the surprise?” Holly asked as Brooke came into view. Both girls were down to T-shirts in the morning sun, their sweaters and coats strewn on the ground. “We were about to come back and see.”

  “What on earth did you tell them?” Brooke asked Milo.

  “They say a man was here an hour ago,” Milo said. Brooke saw the look in his eyes: he was trying to hide his alarm from the kids.

  “Your friend,” Sal said, hopping excitedly. A blue elastic slouched loose from one of her braids and fell to the ground. She bent to pick it up and twisted it back into her hair. “He said he was going to get the surprise ready and we should come after. Is it a movie like Grandma used to have? Does he have a movie?”

  Brooke felt something hot rise in her throat. Cawley had seen them. Spoken to them. Spared them only out of some sick, high freak of fancy.

  “What’s with the backpacks?” Holly said. “And the gun? And since when do you have friends?”

  “What did I tell you, Holly?” Brooke barked. “What did I tell you about strangers?”

  “Whoa,” Milo said, holding out a hand.

  “He was friendly,” Holly said. “God, Mom.”

  Brooke spun around, scanning the trees. From the hilltop, she could see their house and the rosy cranberry bogs below.

  “Which way did he come from?”

  “The road. I don’t know. What’s going on?”

  “Milo, we need a new plan,” Brooke said. “Cawley passed them here. He must have come from Buxton.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s where they were looking for him.”

  Brooke reeled at her mistake. It was just force of habit that had held her attention to the south. Whenever she’d had dreams—nightmares—of being found, the threat had always come that way.

  “Cawley?” Holly asked, wide-eyed, recognizing the name from who knew what gossip in town.

  “We can’t take the road,” Brooke said. “The others will be coming that way too, if he did.”

  “What others?” Holly looked from Brooke to Milo. “What’s going on?”

  “Let me think.” Brooke pressed her fingers into her temples, waiting for the spots in her eyes to clear, the roaring in her ears to die down.

  East was Buxton, with the nearest phone signal and plenty of Milo’s old friends and students they could turn to for shelter until the marshals came. But if the Cawleys were on that road, they’d never make it that far.

  West, there was nothing but sparsely populated prairie and the pipeline tracking south, carrying crude oil to the federal refineries.

  North were the mountains. There was only one road through the pass to the tar sands. If no one picked them up, they would be days walking, and they could be run down easily.

  South was Shaw County, the last place Brooke wanted to go. But if she got Cawley there, the marshals would put him behind bars and pay her enough to get away and start over.

  The creek they used to flood the bogs flowed from high in the mountains south through the foothills. If they kept to the water, they could cut cross-country, leaving no tracks.

  “Fine,” Brooke said. “We’ll take him to Shaw Station ourselves.”

  “Shaw Station?” Holly’s face registered disbelief. “Us?”

  “You’ll have to walk fast and do what I say. Understand?”

  “Brooke, no,” Milo said. “That’s too far. Shaw Station has got to be a hundred miles.”

  “How far is a hundred miles?” Sal asked.

  “We don’t even have a horse,” Holly complained.

  “Help me, Milo,” Brooke said.

  “No. I’m sorry. This is crazy. Why would we go to Shaw Station?”

  “We have to,” she said, trying not to shout. “We just do.”

  “Isn’t anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” Holly asked.

  “That man, he’s not my friend,” Brooke said. “He’s wanted by the federal marshals in Shaw Station, and we’re going to take him there.”

  “Brooke—” Milo started.

  “I swear to god, Milo. We can talk about it later.”

  Milo looked hard at her for a moment. She held his gaze, willing him to trust her.

  “We are going to talk about it,” he said. “Come on, kids. Mom and I will sort it out. Don’t worry.”

  “Take them to the creek,” Brooke said, pointing the way down the opposite side of the hill, away from the driveway. “I’ll get him and meet you there.”

  “I need stuff from the house,” Holly said.

  “We packed everything you need,” Brooke said. “Stay with Dad and head straight for the creek.”

  “Come on, Hol.” Milo turned and started off toward the creek. Sal followed, whacking the tall grass beside the path with her stick. The broken stems sawed over, a glaring record of her passage.

  “Don’t let her do that with the stick, Milo,” Brooke called after him. “And try not to scuff your feet on the ground. You’re leaving marks.”

  He shook his head. She saw him gently take Sal’s stick.

  Holly hadn’t moved. “I want my book,” she said.

  “No time. Go on, after them.”

  “Why?” Holly took a step past Brooke, back toward the house. “It’ll take five minutes. I can catch up.”

  “I said no.” Brooke caught her daughter’s arm. Brooke was taller and stronger, but she doubted she could pick Holly up anymore, or force her to go anywhere she didn’t want to.

  “Hey!” Holly yanked her arm away, affronted.

  Over Holly’s shoulder, Brooke thought she saw movement in an upper window of the house. She held her breath. A crow flapped up from the eaves, its reflection gliding over the glass.

  Holly was watching her, the irritation in her face changing to something else.

  “Just a bird,” Brooke said. “Go on. After your sister.”

  Holly didn’t argue. She followed Sal and Milo down through the trees, twisting to look back over her shoulder for whatever her mother had seen.


  CAWLEY WAS SITTING as Brooke had left him, several yards from where the lead rope was knotted to the fencepost. He appeared to have emerged from his fog for the moment; his eyes tracked her as she approached, his face twisted in dislike.

  “Yeah, fuck you, too,” Brooke said, undoing the clove hitch from the fencepost and loosening the other knots one by one.

  As the rope came free, Cawley lunged at Brooke, head down, and rammed her in the chest, knocking the breath from her. She grappled for the fencepost, just managing to stay up.

  Cawley was running. He was almost out of reach, up the driveway toward the road. Brooke launched herself at the trailing end of the rope and yanked it taut. Cawley came down hard. Before he could stand up again, Brooke ran the rope around the nearest fencepost and leaned back with all her weight to winch it while she raised the rifle with her right hand.

  “Down!” she bellowed.

  Cawley had his feet under him. He tried to move, but the winch held. He sank back to the ground, cursing.

  “Why are you here?” Brooke demanded, overcome with exasperation. “You could have just left me alone. You know I never did anything to you.”

  Cawley squinted at her. “Brooke,” he said, smirking crookedly. “Brooke Holland.”

  Brooke started at the sound of the name she’d hidden for so long. It was still hers, after all. It wouldn’t matter to anyone what Brooke had or hadn’t done; it would only matter who she was.

  Cawley was still watching her, that odd smile on his face.

  “Walk,” she said, gesturing toward the creek.

  IF BROOKE HAD TOLD MILO her name all those years ago, she knew what he would have thought of her. Her family had been notorious, one way or another, since she was born.

  Edmund and Emily Holland were legends of the rural resistance, among the first to take up arms. They had both fought at the Warren River standoff when the feds refused to recognize the secession vote, and there was a much-posted photo of three-year-old Brooke standing in the bed of a gun-mounted pickup truck, flanked by her older siblings, Callum and Anita, with Emily behind them, visibly pregnant, a bandana covering her face, an assault rifle across her chest.

  During the fight to sever the rural territories from the federal government, and the years of the short-lived sovereign state that followed, the Hollands’ single, stylized H had been a popular tattoo. Before she could read, Brooke had known what that letter signified: independence, self-determination, justice.

  Edmund and Emily had taught their children that if they were going to live free and thrive, they needed every weapon at hand, every skill that could be learned. It was an enfeebling lie that the system would take care of you. Just look around you: minorities and big corporations treated like royalty while the common people went ignored. If something was worth having, you had to get it for yourself. And the Hollands did. It was how they’d become icons of the movement. A Holland would not abandon the cause, no matter what it demanded, how much damage it inflicted. Regardless of the bleak TV commentary, you only had to look at Edmund’s and Emily’s faces to know that it wasn’t over. It would never be over.

  Brooke had been shaped by their force, leaning into it as into a strong wind, never thinking she might someday let go and be blown away, or that her life could take root elsewhere.

  After the sovereign state fell, things changed. Not right away, and not all at once, and Brooke was young enough, at first, to believe that her parents could still fix it. She’d kept believing that, even when she was old enough to know better, when their H had come to stand for something else and decent people got their tattoos reworked into other shapes. The Holland house had once bustled with friends who worked and fought alongside them through secession and independence; few of those people came anymore, and those that did were on different business. At sixteen, Brooke had followed her family into a chalk war with the Cawleys, still believing that survival was what counted, no matter how ugly.

  By the time she met Milo, she’d been glad to be rid of her name.

  Brooke had never known for certain that anyone was looking for her, only that instinct told her to hide. Buxton wasn’t far enough—a scant hundred miles from home—but Milo was there, with his kind heart and warm touch, knowing nothing and loving her. And then came Holly, so steady and serious, and sweet, dreamy Sal.

  Brooke had moved them to the farm, kept them hidden, stayed silent. Still, nothing she had done could diminish her guilt: she had risked the ones she loved most, she had brought them into something they were utterly unprepared for, and now they might not survive unless Brooke was very careful, and very lucky.

  It didn’t matter how the Cawleys had found her, or why they had come now, after so many years. Brooke would find a way to the marshals. She would take their money, and her family, and she would disappear, this time for good.

  4

  Highway 12 ran between Buxton and Shaw Station on a course that was far to the east of them here. Traveling south cross-country, Brooke didn’t expect to meet the road for another twenty miles, until it swung west near a place called Buffalo Cross. That far might take two days. Beyond Buffalo Cross, another fifty miles of country stretched to the Warren River and the edge of Shaw County, and the federal outpost was ten miles past that, in the hills outside Shaw Station. A week’s walking at best, slower with the kids.

  Brooke ran the rope out between her and Cawley and paced her strides to keep it fully extended as they walked. Cawley stumbled and limped, but the chalk was still working on him; he seemed hardly to feel his injuries.

  As they climbed the hill and then started down the path to the creek, Brooke erased their tracks and those left by Milo and the girls, brushing the ground behind her with a soft bough, snapping bent stems off at the root and folding them into her pocket. Someone seeing their footsteps on the driveway might assume they had gone to the road.

  They came out of the trees. Milo and the girls were resting at the edge of the creek and didn’t notice them at first. Sun glossed the fallen humps of feather grass. Milo had taken off his backpack and was leaning against it, wincing slightly as Sal struggled to weave sprigs of heather into his hair, chatting steadily in her high, light voice as she worked. Holly was lying on her back, eyes closed. They might have been on a picnic.

  Brooke realized she was smiling. Her stomach fluttered nervously. Cawley only had to say her name in front of them and the whole thing would fall apart. Milo would be confused, the girls frightened. They might refuse to go with her. Brooke considered gagging Cawley, but Milo’s principles probably wouldn’t allow it. Cawley couldn’t harm them with words, he’d say.

  The line that connected Brooke to Cawley snagged on a blackthorn bush. She flicked it free. She’d gag him if she had to.

  Now Milo and the girls noticed them. Holly sat up, and Brooke watched both her and Sal take in Cawley’s presence, his tied wrists, the rope. Holly’s eyes traveled curiously to Brooke at the other end of the rope, holding the rifle. Sal clung shyly to Milo, who stood, careful not to dislodge the heather woven into his hair.

  “It’s okay, kids,” he said, in the slightly lilting tone Brooke thought of as his teacher voice. “This is Stephen Cawley.”

  Brooke knew he was only demonstrating decency and compassion by introducing their prisoner this way; still, she bristled. “Take off your boots,” she said. “We’re walking the creek.”

  “You’re not serious,” Holly said.

  “We have to, Holly.”

  “But it’s freezing.”

  “Milo?” Brooke prompted, turning to him.

  “Maybe if you explained,” he said, holding her eye. “They don’t understand what’s going on.”

  She heard the unsaid part: I don’t either.

  “Later,” Brooke said. Holly and Sal watched disbelieving as she started on her own boots.

  “Dad,” Holly said. “Tell her this is insane.”

  “I’m sure you can take one minute to tell us why—”

&
nbsp; “No.” She tied her laces together and slung the boots around her neck.

  For a moment, Milo looked like he was going to argue. Instead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. After a second, he opened his eyes and smiled faintly at the girls.

  “Listen to your mom,” he said, rolling his jeans up as high as they would go and bending to remove his boots. “She wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  Holly swore, pulling one boot off and throwing it on the grass.

  “Dad, I don’t have any boots,” Sal said.

  “It’s okay, Salamander. We packed them.”

  “But I don’t want to go in the water,” Sal whined.

  Milo hoisted his backpack and then lifted Sal into his arms.

  “You’ll tire yourself out if you carry her like that,” Brooke said.

  “Wrap like a monkey, Sal,” Milo said. He waded into the creek, inhaling sharply as the icy water rose past his ankles.

  “This is unbelievable,” Holly said. “Unbelievable!”

  “Hush,” Brooke said. “Keep your voice down.”

  Holly stormed into the water.

  Cawley was watching with a look of amused scorn. He had pried his sneakers off without comment. Brooke gestured for him to step away from them. When he was far enough, she undid the knots in the grimy laces, tied the reeking things together and hung them from her backpack. As much as it might have given her satisfaction to sink Cawley’s shoes in the creek and let him walk barefoot to Shaw Station, she could not afford to slow him down.

  “Into the water,” she said.

  Cawley did not roll up his pants before descending the bank. He plunged down the creek, oblivious to the soaked denim that added weight to his legs. Brooke followed him into the frigid water, her feet slipping on the rocky bottom.

  Brooke let twenty feet of rope extend between her and Cawley, and kept him back twice as far again from the others. Holly forged ahead in sullen silence. Sal clung to Milo until curiosity overtook her and she reached a toe down to the water, half choking Milo as she dangled from his neck.