The Captive

by Fiona King Foster

  Their only sign of the girls came when Brooke’s eye caught a spot of blue a few yards off the side of the trail.

  “It must have blown over there,” she said, retrieving Sal’s hair elastic, crusted in snow. The ground she had plucked it from was scoured by gusts, as if a small whirlwind had passed over it.

  Milo reached out to take the small blue band from Brooke. He looped it around his thumb, without speaking.

  They reached Highway 12 with a few hours of daylight left. Surprisingly, a truck had passed by on the road, the asphalt still black where snow had melted under the tires. It could be anyone, Brooke told herself; it could be the marshals. Or, she thought with disquiet, it could be the rest of the Cawleys, reconvening in force on the other side of the river.

  Brooke was closer to home than she’d planned ever to get. The highway here ran southwest through open prairie all the way to the Warren River bridge. But Cawley and Delia had not taken the highway. Their tracks crossed straight over the road, continuing south with the constancy of a compass needle, heading for the Shaw County hills that were now just visible on the horizon.

  When Brooke moved to follow the trail, Davey stopped her. “Let’s take the road,” he said.

  “What? No. We’ll lose them.”

  “Cawley can’t get farther than the Warren that way. Highway 12’s the only crossing for fifty miles. He’ll have to come back to the bridge. If we go this way, we can cut him off before that woman catches up to him. I didn’t come all this way just to let some nobody take Stephen Cawley to the damn feds.”

  “He won’t come back to the bridge,” Brooke said.

  “Of course he will.”

  “He’ll swim.”

  “In this temperature?” Davey laughed. “Not a chance.”

  “Go ahead and take the road if you want to,” Brooke said. “I’m not losing the trail.”

  “You’ll go where I say.” Davey puffed his chest out. “Those are my horses.”

  “Guys,” Milo said with a tired sigh. “We’re on the same side. Calm down.”

  “Listen,” Brooke said, holding Milo’s eye, “I know what I’m talking about. The only way we’re going to find the girls before they’re in some gunned-up compound in Shaw County is to follow these tracks right now.”

  “What compound?” Davey demanded, looking from Brooke to Milo. “What are you talking about?”

  Milo stared out at the highway, the trail, the hills, wrestling with what to do. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’m with you.”

  “You’re not taking my horses,” Davey growled, moving a hand to his gun.

  “What are you going to do?” Brooke asked. “You shoot horse thieves in Buffalo Cross like you shoot killers?”

  “I’d be within my rights,” Davey said, but she could hear the bluster behind his words. He wouldn’t shoot her.

  “We have to get to the kids, Cliven,” Milo said reasonably. “If Brooke’s right, and we take the highway now, we’ll lose them. If she’s wrong, at least we’ll still be on the right trail.”

  “And if that bounty hunter gets anywhere near Cawley before we do, your kids could end up in the middle of a firefight,” Davey argued.

  But Brooke didn’t stay to hear any more. She turned her back on the highway and dug her heels into the gelding’s ribs. She heard Milo’s roan close on her heels. Behind them, Davey cursed once, and again, louder, and then the steady beat of his mare’s hoofbeats joined their own.

  THEY REACHED THE RIVER as the setting sun dipped behind a bank of advancing clouds. The trail led straight into the water, and a line of hoofprints was just visible leading up the far bank.

  Milo nodded to himself and began rolling up his pant legs with a look of dour determination. He and Brooke had swum horses in the flooded bogs during cranberry harvest enough times to appreciate how cold this crossing would be.

  “My horses have never swum,” Davey said. “I don’t think they’ll do it. Not in weather like this.”

  “They’ll do it,” Brooke said, lifting one foot in front of her to unlace her boot.

  “I doubt Lorne’s stallion would have crossed the river,” Davey said, ignoring the clear evidence that the stallion had done just that.

  “Come on,” Brooke said, moving to the other boot. “We’re going across.”

  “I’m telling you, these horses won’t swim. We should follow the riverbank back to the bridge. We should have just stayed on the highway in the first place like I told you. We’d be way ahead. That woman’s going to get the jump on us now.”

  “It would take hours to go around, Davey. Which of these horses is likeliest to swim?”

  “Chevy here,” he said, indicating his chestnut mare. “But listen to me. I’m telling you we could all drown.”

  “Then Chevy should go first. Let me take her across. The others will go when they see her do it.”

  “You’re not taking Chevy.”

  “If your horses can’t swim, Davey, I’m guessing you can’t either.”

  “Like hell I can’t.” Davey rode to the edge of the water. “Come on, Chevy. Show her, girl.”

  “Take your boots off, at least,” Brooke called after him, stuffing her own boots inside her snowmobile suit.

  Davey stood Chevy on the bank and bent down with difficulty to remove his boots. The long ride was telling on him, or he was stalling. He balled his socks up and stuffed them down in the heels of his boots, tied the laces together, and hung them around his neck. He rolled his jeans up to the knee. Finally, he walked Chevy into the shallows. The horse waded up to her thighs and balked. Davey talked her farther in, but there was fear in his voice and the horse nickered nervously.

  “Shit,” Brooke said, seeing what was coming.

  Milo had his boots off. He met Brooke’s eye and, together, they advanced into the shallows.

  Davey was twenty feet ahead of them. Brooke saw Chevy lose footing as the river bottom deepened. For a moment, the mare swam forward on instinct, but then Davey gripped her reins too tight in his anxiety, forcing her muzzle down into the water, where she inhaled a nose full of cold water.

  Brooke spoke softly to the gelding, urging him forward, forgetting for a moment that it wasn’t Star’s familiar coat under her hands. The gelding swam poorly, casting and jerking once they moved beyond sure footing. With difficulty, Brooke steered him into the deeper water after Davey, who was in the middle of the channel now, clinging to a panicked Chevy, wrapping himself low against her neck, trying not to get thrown. Both horse and rider stood a better chance if Brooke could separate them. The mare would swim fine on her own, and if Davey cooperated, Brooke could tow him. But Brooke saw that it would be pointless trying to coax Davey off the security of his horse’s back, so she brought the gelding around in front and, gripping with her knees, reached her good arm out to grab Chevy’s bridle. She’d have to lead them both across.

  Chevy calmed when she felt Brooke’s grip, but only for a moment. Davey was too high on her neck. The mare tossed her head back again and again as she tried to throw her rider, and got dragged farther down in the process. Her hooves slashed the water. If Brooke couldn’t keep her own horse clear of the striking hooves, it, too, would lose faith and begin to panic. Brooke was on the point of giving up and letting Davey founder when she felt a change in the tension on Chevy’s bridle. Milo had swum the roan around the other side of Davey and taken hold of the flailing horse.

  “We got you,” Milo said. There was something strange about his voice; it was too low. Then Brooke realized he was imitating Davey’s baritone, the pitch Chevy knew and trusted. He murmured continuously, maintaining the falsely deep pitch, as he and Brooke pulled, urging the three horses onward. “It’s going to be fine. We’re going across together now.”

  Chevy snorted, stretching her neck forward under Davey’s weight, and swam. Between them, Brooke and Milo pulled the half-suffocated horse forward. A sandbar stuck out into the river on the far side. As soon as the horses’ hooves felt solid
ground under them, they ran up the bank, shaking their manes and puffing out their cheeks.

  Brooke shoved her boots back on hastily and jumped down from the gelding, hopping in place to get warm as the adrenaline left her body.

  “Thank you,” she said as Milo got down from the roan. “You were great.”

  Milo nodded, teeth chattering. He took her reins and led their two horses downriver to a weedy maple, out of the wind. A stiff breeze was rising, carrying with it the taste of snow.

  Davey was pale. He didn’t look at either of them, just rubbed his mare’s neck. “Good girl,” he said in his low rumble. “Good girl, Chevy. You’re okay. You did it.”

  “There’s more snow coming,” Brooke said. The stallion’s hoofprints led up the bank, stamped clearly into the mud. “I don’t want to lose the trail.”

  “These horses need rest,” Davey said, meeting her gaze with barely concealed hatred. “I won’t let you drive them to death.”

  “Ten minutes, then,” she said coldly, and followed Milo downriver to where he’d tied the horses, leaving Davey to nurse his outrage.

  To the south, the land rose in a steep range of hills, thickly forested with green so deep it was almost black. Ever since the highway, Brooke had watched those hills get closer. Now they had crossed into Shaw County. She was home.

  She’d spent fifteen years less than a hundred miles from here, yet it had felt like another world. Was it inevitable that she would come back? Was there some kind of compulsion in her blood?

  Wind brushed her face, smelling of wet earth, pine pitch, new snow. She shivered inside Chlorine’s snowmobile suit.

  “Brooke,” Milo said, as she got near. “Look at this.”

  He pointed to a set of hoofprints Brooke hadn’t noticed, leading out of the water farther downriver: recent, clear, big as plates. The draft horse, bigger and heavier, must have traveled faster in the current and come out separately from the stallion.

  Troubled that she had missed these tracks herself but eager for a sign of the girls, Brooke followed the massive hoofprints up the bank with Milo. At an outcropping of limestone, the snow had been brushed away and the ground trampled. Someone had sat here, and there were the dusty leavings of a feedbag.

  “What are you looking for?” Milo asked.

  “She stopped long enough to feed her horse,” Brooke said, crouching to examine the ground. “She would have let the kids down. Their footprints should be here, but I only see hers.”

  “Then they must have stayed on the horse,” Milo said.

  “No,” Brooke said, rubbing her eyes, willing herself to see. If she wasn’t so tired, the marks in the mud would make more sense, but her skull felt compressed by exhaustion. “She’s been riding that horse hard for two days, and then a swim in cold water—she wouldn’t have left the kids on the horse while she was resting it.”

  “But we haven’t seen their footprints since she picked them up,” Milo said, “so they were with her when she went into the river.”

  They looked at each other.

  “The river,” Brooke said.

  They hurried downstream. The light was failing fast now. They squinted through the gathering gloom at every rock and deadhead log on the shore. Twice, Brooke splashed into the shallows to examine a splash of color that could have been a sodden red scarf: a clutch of wet leaves, an old plastic bag.

  “The current isn’t fast enough to carry anything this far,” she said after they’d been looking much longer than the ten minutes she’d given Davey. “We would have seen something by now.”

  “Where are they?” Milo asked, his eyes twitching frantically over the dark water.

  Snow began to fall, gently and then harder, swirling around their faces.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Brooke said, trying to believe it. “Maybe Delia kept them on the horse. Or maybe she moved them to Cawley’s horse somewhere back there and I didn’t realize.”

  “Where are they?” Milo repeated the question as if he hadn’t heard her. He grabbed her arm. “You know how to do this, Brooke. You must know where to look. You have to know.”

  “I don’t,” Brooke said, feeling the truth of it. “Either I’m so tired I’m missing things, or there’s nothing to see. We’ll have to just keep following the trail, or else go back and look again, or . . . I don’t know.”

  Snowflakes swarmed between them as if they were alive: falling, swinging out to the side, rising up, falling again to be swallowed by the river.

  “We have to do something,” Milo said. “Get help, a phone, something. We can’t give up. I’m going to go get the horses.”

  He turned and set off upriver. Brooke followed, her heart heavy in her chest. The snow was falling so thickly now that she lost sight of Milo ahead of her.

  “Milo?” she called.

  Just as she thought she could make out his form—a different darkness through the snow—she sensed something move at her back. Pulse quickening, she raised her rifle one-handed.

  A shotgun cocked, close to her ear.

  “Stay still,” a woman’s voice said.

  Brooke froze. The voice was familiar, snaking out of the past, taking shape. She shifted her weight to the left foot, finding a position from which she could quickly drop and spin.

  “Your only way out of this is to set the gun down.”

  Brooke lowered a knee, laid the gun down in front of her without letting go.

  “Now step away.”

  “All right,” Brooke said, unsnapping the safety and bracing her shoulder, preparing to twist and strike up with the butt of the rifle.

  “Don’t block my sight,” the woman said. “You think I don’t know that trick?”

  Brooke hesitated, confused, memories clamoring.

  “Stand down.” Davey’s deep voice interrupted her thought. Brooke peered up through the screen of her hair. She could just see him through the snow. He’d come up more quietly than she would have given him credit for.

  “Why are you following me?” the woman snarled behind Brooke. That voice. It was so familiar, but it wasn’t Delia’s.

  “Ma’am,” Davey said, “if you’re traveling with a man by the name of Stephen Cawley, you better offer him up if you value your life.”

  “Cawley?” the woman echoed. Now Brooke twisted around to look up at her. Her face was hard to make out in the dark and the snow, through a screen of pale hair whipping wildly in the wind, but Brooke was no longer in any doubt.

  “He’s not with her, Davey,” Brooke said, straightening up, her heart hammering in her chest.

  She was older, thinner, somehow shorter than Brooke remembered, but it was her. She peered at Brooke through the snow, lowering the shotgun.

  “It’s me,” Brooke said.

  “Step closer.”

  Brooke did as she was told. Snow flew into her eyes.

  They were face to face now.

  “Brooke,” Emily breathed.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “No, Mama.”

  “But you died.”

  “I didn’t die, Mama.”

  “Goddamn,” Emily choked. “Goddammit.”

  15

  The storm had whipped itself into a blizzard. Emily led them into the hills on her draft horse, barely visible through squalls of white. Their urgent need for shelter had kept conversation by the river mercifully brief. After a long, disbelieving moment, in which unasked questions hung as thick as the flying snow between them, Brooke and Emily had seemed to reach a tacit agreement to start with the more immediate question of survival. All of them, human and horse, were wet and chilled; if they didn’t get out of the storm soon, they would freeze.

  “Strange coincidence, her turning out to be your mother,” Davey had muttered darkly.

  It was indeed strange. Emily, who belonged to the past, was here, diminished by time, yet still so much the same, familiar beyond words.

  Brooke’s tired mind adjusted her understanding,
piece by piece, of what had happened since they first reached Buffalo Cross. It must have been Emily, not Delia, that Brooke had seen through the window of the Legion. Emily they’d spotted on the ridge before Milo was shot. Emily’s tracks that had followed Cawley’s through the gully and all the way to the river.

  But Emily hadn’t seen any children, much less carried them. She’d picked up Cawley’s trail on the far side of the swamp, she said, and chased him all the way to the Warren. The previous evening at dusk, in a dry creek bed, she’d gotten close enough to catch sight of him. She’d taken a shot, but missed.

  “A rocky gully?” Brooke pressed. “Open country all around it? Twenty miles north of here?”

  Emily nodded. “Coward rode faster, rather than turn and fight. He outstripped me after that.”

  “That’s where we lost their trail,” Milo said. “Your shot must have been what scared them.”

  “I wasn’t shooting at them,” Emily said. “I wouldn’t have hurt them.”

  “They couldn’t know that, could they?” Milo asked tersely. His usually friendly manner was strained—influenced, Brooke imagined, by everything he’d learned about Emily so recently. “So they weren’t with you, but we know they came this way. The hair tie was miles past that.”

  Brooke’s mind ran in circles, crazed with not knowing. Even if she did know where to look, and she could get the horses away from Davey, and the horses could be driven past exhaustion, there would be nothing to find. The snow was piling up so fast that any tracks would disappear within an hour. Their only option was to take shelter with Emily and wait out the storm.

  “Guardrails,” Emily called out from the front of the line as the path rose sharply. Brooke slowed the gelding so he could lift his forelegs over the steel cables. They had met the hill road. In one direction lay the federal outpost, Highway 12, and Shaw Station; in the other, her childhood home. Brooke squinted into the trees, trying to guess how close they were to the Holland property, but she struggled to see anything through the snow, and what she could see was overgrown beyond recognition. Emily, on the other hand, navigated with no apparent need for sight, following each curve and twist of the road without hesitation.