The street was empty except for two volunteers, looking in the other direction.
Brooke went straight to the stables. Her last words to Robin had been to get Star. That’s where he would wait for her if he’d gotten out of the alley alive. She brushed aside the nagging question of what would have compelled him to leave her in the alley.
Brooke found Star in the stables, a bit jumpy but otherwise fine. There was no sign that Robin had been there. Brooke scoured the building—a converted car wash—as if she might find him hiding somewhere, but the place was empty.
If Robin had made it out of the alley on his own, Brooke was sure he would have come here. If he hadn’t come here, that meant someone else had taken him from the alley. And only one person other than Brooke had seen him fall.
Brooke’s breath became shallow.
She pictured Robin by the river with his shoes in his hands, unwilling to leave her. The desolation in his face when she’d turned to go.
He’d been so close to getting away.
Brooke closed her eyes. The calm place was waiting for her. And, as if Robin were somehow helping her, the fog that closed around her this time was deeper, thicker—an emptiness and a quiet that erased everything else.
She went north for the simple reason that, if Robin had lived, they would have gone south. It took her and Star three days to reach Buxton.
After that, and for a long time, Milo and the kids and the farm were everything. Her first lie, telling Milo she had no family, had been a simple knee-jerk deflection, the same thing she would have told anyone. Later, when she should have told him the truth, it was harder. The lie had become an aspiration: Brooke had tied the past off tight so it might choke, and wither, and fall away, leaving nothing for her to miss, only an absence she could not describe.
AS BROOKE SPOKE, the light in the windows of the Legion hall turned rosy. The sun was setting. Wherever Holly and Sal were, the temperature was dropping.
Milo listened to her chronicle, his expression unreadable.
“Brooke Holland?” he said when she was done. Curiously, as if testing it.
“Yes.”
“So Stephen Cawley, he was the boy your father—”
“Yes.”
“Did you know all along?” he asked, then shook his head. “Of course you did. His name was on the warrant. You knew from the beginning he was looking for you. That’s why you were so sure there would be others.”
Brooke nodded weakly.
“The rider we saw?”
“Delia,” she croaked. She stopped to clear her dry throat. “I saw her in one of the rooms upstairs when we were here before.”
“That’s why you wanted to leave.”
Brooke nodded again.
“I don’t get it. Is it just revenge they’re after?”
“Yes.”
“What if they find the kids?”
“They’ll take them,” she whispered, closing her eyes for a moment. She wanted to disappear. She forced herself to open her eyes and look at him. “I don’t know what they’ll do, but I . . . They might kill them.”
Milo’s face flashed a look of shock and disgust. Then he was on his feet, dragging his chair to the locked door.
“Sheriff!” he shouted, kicking the door. “Someone!”
“No one’s going to come,” Brooke said.
“Do something!” He lifted the chair with his cuffed hand and swung it against the door’s window panel. It glanced away from the safety glass with a dull thump. “How can you just sit there?”
“I’m handcuffed to the wall.”
“They’re just kids, Brooke. They don’t have anything to do with the Cawleys. Why would anyone hurt them? They don’t even know about this. They don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m still me,” she said.
“You’re a stranger.”
Brooke inhaled sharply. There it was: Milo would cut her out of their lives like a bruise from fruit.
“Did you tell Maxwell?” he asked.
“No. She already thinks I killed her nephew.”
“But if she knows the whole story—”
“She’ll never let us go if she finds out who I am. You heard her yesterday.” I don’t want anything to do with those animals.
Milo sank back onto his chair, defeated. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, feeling a twitch of resentment for Milo, with his good job and his good mum.
“I gave up everything for you, Brooke. Just because you asked me to. You didn’t think I deserved to know who you were?”
“That’s not it,” Brooke said. She was uncomfortably aware of the corrections he must already be making, reevaluating everything he felt about her, all their years together.
“They might have come for you any day in the last fifteen years. How could you put Holly and Sal in danger like that?”
“I thought they were safe,” Brooke said, knowing as she said it that it wasn’t true. “And I didn’t want you to know who I . . . who I . . .”
“You should have at least told me when Cawley came. I knew something wasn’t right. I asked you so many times, Brooke. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I needed you to—” She broke off, realizing her mistake too late.
“What? What were you going to say?”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“You needed me to cooperate? Follow instructions? I’m an adult, Brooke. I’m supposed to be your partner.”
“You are, but, Milo, we were in danger. I couldn’t risk it.”
“You don’t respect me at all, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” she said, frustrated. “I love you, Milo.”
“That’s not love, Brooke. That’s not how you treat someone you love.”
“I was trying to protect you and the girls.”
“Really? By taking us to Shaw Station? Right into the middle of it?”
Brooke felt her temper rise. “Okay, I needed you to cooperate,” she said. “So what? What if I had told you Cawley was there to kill us, that his entire family was chasing us? How would you have saved us?”
“How much worse could I have done?” Milo asked, leaning toward her.
Brooke kicked her boot loose, sending it flying into the side of his face.
Milo fell back. His lip was bleeding. He looked at her like he’d never seen her before.
13
It was full dark when Sheriff Maxwell returned to the Legion behind the needling white light of a headlamp.
“Same as I left them,” Maxwell said. The headlamp swung away for a moment as she addressed someone coming through the door behind her, and Brooke had a glimpse of the tall, heavyset man with the walrus mustache, the one who had led Lorne’s body away. Then the headlamp shone in Brooke’s eyes again and abruptly went out.
Brooke blinked away the afterimage. She could hear someone moving around behind the bar. Something heavy slid across wood; there was the ring of glass, a scratch and pop. She smelled sulfur, kerosene. Then a cloth wick sparked as it caught. Against the thin flame of an oil lamp, Brooke watched the man’s thick fingers twist a delicate metal wheel to adjust the wick, then lower the glass bell into its brass fitting. A warm yellow glow expanded, lighting their corner of the room and the face of the man behind the bar, who stared at Brooke with a righteous anger she knew all too well.
Maxwell settled herself into a chair that squeaked under her weight.
“So?” Brooke asked. “What are you going to do with us?”
“I want to know what happened,” Maxwell said. “Then I’ll decide what to do.”
“I told you what happened,” Brooke said. “Stephen Cawley killed your deputy.”
“How?” Maxwell asked, arms crossed. “He was tied and unarmed.”
“When I had him, he was. Then Lorne came and took him off me. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“Bullshit,” the man behind the bar said. His voice was a low rumble, almost co
mically deep.
“This is Cliven Davey,” Maxwell said. “Lorne’s father.”
“Lorne rode out there to help you people,” Davey said.
“He wanted the money,” Brooke said.
“No!” Davey brought a fist down on the bar, causing the light to flare.
“He lost his son, Brooke,” Milo interjected, leaning forward in his chair.
“Lorne was a good man,” Davey said, composing himself. There was something rehearsed in his posture, Brooke thought. The hands outspread on the bar, the jaw under the mustache clenched. “Whoever killed him is going to die for it,” he said. “I’ve got the right, Lynn agrees.”
It was as Brooke had thought. Summary justice.
“Lorne took Cawley off me at gunpoint,” Brooke said evenly. “I told him not to keep Cawley that close. I warned him. He wouldn’t listen. Milo and I found him this morning, around dawn. He’d been dead for hours already, and there were hoofprints headed north.”
“Why should we believe you?” Maxwell asked.
“Who do you think shot Milo?” Brooke asked. “Was that me, too? You saw his wound, and Lorne’s. They were both shot by a revolver, weren’t they?”
Maxwell shifted in her chair and Brooke knew she’d guessed right. The sheriff had already concluded that they weren’t rifle wounds.
“If Cawley killed Lorne and shot your husband, where is he now?” Davey asked accusingly.
“How should I know? I haven’t even seen Cawley since Lorne showed up. After he shot Milo, I followed his trail as far as the swamp. I might have him by now if Maxwell hadn’t attacked me. And now, the longer you keep us here, the longer our kids are out there with him.”
“How’d Cawley get the kids off you, if you never saw him?” Davey asked.
“He didn’t take the kids,” Milo said. “They ran away.”
“Ran away?” Maxwell drew her brows together. “Why?”
“None of your business,” Brooke snapped, flushing. “They’re on their own, and Cawley’s out there with your deputy’s horse and his gun—”
“I’ve heard enough, Lynn,” Davey said. “I can believe Cawley murdered Lorne. These folks aren’t killers. They probably got mixed up in something over their heads.”
“We don’t know that, Cliven,” Maxwell said. “We don’t know what part they played.”
“You said yourself this guy and Lorne were both shot by a 9mm and she only had a .22 rifle.”
“That’s not proof. They could have taken Lorne’s weapon and stashed it.” But Brooke heard a note of concession in Maxwell’s tone. The sheriff might not trust them, but she was eager to get shed of the inconvenience posed by prisoners.
“I don’t want to lose any more time,” Davey said. “I’ve got to leave tonight if I’m going to catch his trail before there’s more snow.”
“I can bring Cawley in for you,” Brooke spoke up. “Just give me my gun, and a horse—”
“You’re not in a bargaining position,” Maxwell cut her off.
“I don’t want him brought,” Davey pronounced. “I’m not after any fed bounty. That piece of garbage will be the one to pay for what he did. Just tell me where you lost his trail.”
“You’ve never seen him,” Brooke said. “You won’t recognize him. I can take you to him. I can identify him.”
“You’re hurt,” Davey said, dubious. “You won’t be able to keep my pace.”
“I’ll manage,” Brooke said. “Give me a horse to find my kids, and I’ll make sure you get Cawley.”
“Both of us,” Milo said. “We’ll both go.”
“Be careful, Cliven,” Maxwell said. “You don’t know these people.”
Brooke saw Davey considering it.
“No one’s taking Cawley to the feds,” he warned them. “You can say goodbye to that money.”
“We just want our kids back,” Milo said.
“All right,” Davey said, squaring his shoulders. “No one else should have to lose a child. God knows that.”
BROOKE AND MILO FOLLOWED on foot through curving residential blocks as Sheriff Maxwell and Cliven Davey rode ahead on chestnut horses so similar-looking they might also have been siblings.
Milo had neither spoken to nor looked at Brooke since they left the Legion. Now he turned to her. “Don’t antagonize these people,” he said. “They’re helping us.”
“I didn’t antagonize them.”
“Davey was ready to kill us; now he’s lending us horses, so try to act grateful.”
“Davey’s an ass,” Brooke scoffed. She’d met men of his sort before, all ego, no spine.
“That doesn’t matter. We made a deal. Just cooperate with him. Don’t challenge him. Let him feel like he’s in charge.”
Brooke snorted in disbelief, but Milo just walked ahead, leaving her to gape at no one.
They stopped at a brick home on a corner lot. A wind chime pinged, strung from the eaves by wire. Davey hauled up the door of a double-car garage and turned on an overhead light. He and Maxwell led the twin chestnuts inside, where two more horses—a gray gelding and a roan—were penned between well-stocked utility shelves.
They settled the horses and Davey rapped on an inner door. There was the sound of a deadbolt sliding. A young woman opened the door, looking frightened. She was small and pretty, with just-brushed, shining hair, and she gave off a strong smell of perfume. Brooke took her to be Davey’s daughter until she turned her face up for a kiss.
“Come in, come in,” the woman said when she saw Brooke and Milo. She gestured them through a gleaming kitchen to a sectional sofa in the adjoining living room. Davey’s wife—Brooke swore she heard the woman introduce herself as Chlorine—must have been his second. She was too young to be Lorne’s mother; if anything, she looked younger than the deputy.
“I’m going to be away a couple days,” Davey told Chlorine solemnly, standing with hands on hips as if addressing a crowd. “These folks are coming with me to try and recover their children. We’ll need all three horses. I think you should stay with Lynn until I get back.”
Brooke thought she saw a slight wince from Maxwell at this, quickly covered by a nod.
“Cliven’s the protective sort,” Chlorine smiled shakily at Brooke and Milo.
“You pack us some food,” Davey said, turning to rummage in a closet.
“Do you folks take mustard in your sandwiches?” Chlorine asked, moving into the kitchen. “I wish there was fresh bread. That whole wheat kind gets so crumbly when it’s more than a day old. It’s better if you can toast it. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cliven can toast bread on that camp stove of his. It’s a marvel what he does with it. Last time we were out hunting, he made me blueberry pancakes! Can you believe it? Blueberry! I hope you’ll remind him to eat properly. Lord knows he won’t take much rest, he pushes himself so hard.”
“It’s not a pleasure cruise, honey,” Davey said from the closet.
“Still,” Chlorine said. Brooke noticed a jumpiness to her movements as she filled the cooler bag. “I don’t like you leaving in the night like this, Cliven, without any sleep. It isn’t healthy. If Lorne hadn’t taken the thermos, I could send you hot coffee for the morning, at least. He was in such a hurry, he just grabbed things on his way out. It keeps things warm longer than you’d think, that thermos! Lynn, I don’t suppose he still had it with him? You know the one. Bright green?”
“Be quiet,” Maxwell said. “You’re acting stupid.”
“I’m only trying to help,” Chlorine said, her voice quivering.
“Lynn,” Davey rebuked.
“Well, god, Cliven. A thermos?”
“Just trying to help,” Chlorine said again, sniffing quietly over the sandwich bread.
Davey emerged from the closet with a heavily loaded duffel bag. As he sorted through its contents, Brooke saw a naphtha stove, a small axe, a solar filter. He lifted out a binoculars case that bore a night vision logo, followed by a pair of Teflon shooting grips. Brooke recalled Emil
y once referring to grips like those as “princess paws.”
“You need all that?” she asked, incredulous. When Milo shot her a warning glance, she muttered to him under her breath, “This is taking forever.”
“I picked most of it up at military surplus,” Davey said proudly. “Same stuff the special forces use overseas.”
Chlorine zipped closed the cooler bag and came to the sofa with a basket of tortilla chips. Brooke reached hungrily for a handful.
“Lynn told me that man has your daughters,” Chlorine said, perching next to Brooke on the sofa. “I can’t imagine—”
“Turns out they just ran away,” Maxwell cut in. “Domestic matter, doesn’t concern us.”
“Oh!” Chlorine held a hand over her heart. “How old are they?”
“Holly’s thirteen and Sal’s eight,” Milo said.
“You’re so lucky to have girls!” Chlorine exclaimed, laying a hand on Brooke’s knee. “You know what they say: ‘A son’s a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter’s a friend for all your life.’”
“I never heard that,” Brooke said, jerking her knee away.
“Where are you folks from, anyway?” Chlorine asked, casting a sideways glance at Milo.
“Buxton,” Brooke said, knowing that wasn’t what Chlorine meant. She’d heard some version of this question every time Milo met someone new.
“But before that?” Chlorine’s gaze was more pointed this time.
“My mum was from the city,” Milo answered genially.
“Ah.” Chlorine nodded, as if this explained everything. She winked at Brooke. “Your children must be just beautiful. I love mixed babies.”
“Do you like them frozen?” Brooke asked, squeezing her tortilla chip so tightly it exploded in a shower of crumbs. She glared irritably at Davey, who was still fussing over his gear. “They’ve been outside in wet clothes for eighteen hours.”
“We only packed one change for them,” Milo explained to Chlorine.
“Oh!” Chlorine jumped up. “But Cliven has things left from when Lorne was little! Would they wear boy things? I know how girls can be with their favorite colors and whatnot.”
“Anything would be great.” Milo smiled. “Thank you. They won’t mind.”
The Captive Page 15