Closing Costs

by Bracken MacLeod

  But . . . they were inside. They probably weren’t salesmen. She avoided the most frightening implication and tried to focus.

  She nodded impatiently at Evan to start picking again, and he did. Though now he seemed distracted. His brow was creased in worry, and he glanced toward the stairs frequently.

  Heavy rushed footsteps overhead.

  Nelle tried to gasp at the sound of it, but the tape over her face kept her from doing anything but taking a shuddering, wet snuffle though her nose, followed immediately by another short blast of snot.

  Evan’s fingers worked harder and faster, and his breathing was becoming frantic.

  He didn’t stop when they heard the loud thump above and the sound of whoever it was collapsing on the floor. They knew it wasn’t Mack going down. There was no way. More heavy footsteps thundered above them, and Evan picked harder. Nelle couldn’t feel any difference in the tape binding her. She tried wringing her wrist, hoping that would loosen things and make Evan’s job easier. It didn’t seem to have any effect except to pull painfully at her skin and hair. She tried again and her wrist moved a little more. And then it caught again.

  It wasn’t working.

  She was breathing so fast she was beginning to feel dizzy. She tried to control her breath, afraid she might hyperventilate, but couldn’t do it. They were running out of time. Something bad was going on upstairs and, whatever happened, she knew time was not theirs.

  She heard a voice. Not Roarke’s. Oh, how well she’d come to know his voice in such a short time. Not deep or high, but midtoned with a hint of gravel, like someone who didn’t smoke but liked his whiskey. A good voice for radio or maybe audiobooks if it weren’t for the tones of condescension and threat or the implacable Massachusetts accent. No, this was not his voice. It was much scarier.

  Nelle dropped her head in frustration. She was ready to give up, grab Evan’s hand, and ride their descent to the end. The smell of pinot noir was stronger over by her husband. The bottle had smashed behind him and spilled wine pooled under the weight bench. Dark shards of glass winked up at her, glistening with wet red beads she’d never taste again. She wished it hadn’t gone to waste; she’d have liked one more glass before dying. One more bottle with friends. The special one that was now puddled at their feet.

  Evan picked and picked. His quickened breath told her he was growing frustrated and more worried. He might have sobbed behind his gag.

  And then another idea occurred to her.

  She tried to stop his fingers from grabbing at the tape, but she couldn’t reach his hand while he worked. She shook her head and grunted a soft but insistent “no” at him. He paused. She shuffled away from him. He pleaded with her to stay put. Let him keep at it. She ignored him and lined herself up as best she could with the biggest, thickest piece of glass she could see. A part of the bottle base, with a long, vicious-looking shard pointing straight up.

  She looked to her left at Evan. His cheek above the cut was swollen, and the blood coating the side of his face was turning maroon in the dark basement. She couldn’t smile through the duct tape to reassure him, so she winked. He blinked in response. Then she rocked toward him and then away. Left and right and harder and again and once more until she fell over.

  The chair didn’t make a sound hitting the floor because her shoulder and arm took all of the impact. There was still a loud pop she feared was her shoulder dislocating, and her elbow blossomed pain. A small piece of glass jammed into her biceps. She didn’t want to scream, but it was so hard not to. It hurt so much, tears sprung from her eyes and she saw stars. Before today, she’d never realized that was not just a turn of phrase—“saw stars.” Bright points of light erupted behind her eyelids. She wondered if she’d hit her head going down. The cellar came back into focus, and she tried feeling for the shard she’d aimed at. Evan grunted excitedly. She thought she might have heard him attempting to say, “Up, up,” and so she pushed herself a little in a direction that felt like up.

  Her hand brushed against something wet. It made a tinkling sound as it skittered away from her clumsy fingers. She scooted again and grabbed at the shard a second time. The sharp edge bit into her fingers, but she didn’t let go. She held on and felt around the piece, trying to find the point without hurting herself any worse than she already had. She found the tip and started digging at the tape at her wrist.

  Something heavy thudded upstairs—a body—and she stopped for a second before renewing her effort at a quicker pace. She listened while she tried to jab at where the tape felt like it was around her numb wrist. She pushed and tested and felt the glass pierce the tape. She did it again and wrenched her wrist as much as she could, trying to start the tear she could finish without the glass. She had no idea whether she was cutting it, or merely making random punctures in the binding that would do no good at all.

  Then it worked.

  She pulled, and the sound of the tape ripping was like cloth tearing. She inhaled sharply; it seemed so loud in the basement. But Roarke didn’t come running to see what it was. She pulled again and her arm twisted around free. She wriggled out of that, losing most of the fine hairs on her wrist and maybe a little skin. She slid her arm out from under her, experiencing another long moment of disorienting pain. It passed, and she set to work sawing at the tape around her midsection. And then her other wrist. When both hands and her body were loose, she tore at the tape holding her legs.

  Free from the chair, she pushed up onto her hands and knees. Her left shoulder hurt bad—real bad, the kind of pain that could make a person crack teeth trying to grit through it—and it wouldn’t support her. She almost fell, but she caught herself and got up on shaky legs.

  She hobbled over to her husband and cut him free. The glass kept nipping her fingers with small cuts, but she didn’t care. The slices were short and shallow; as long as she didn’t go too deep or cut a tendon, she could take it. The next unbidden thought to enter her mind was, Fuck your tendons. Fuck your fingers. Having a hook for a hand is better than dying.

  Freed, Evan reached up pulled his gag off. She winced at the movement of the gash in his cheek as the tape came away from his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or perhaps he was beyond caring. The tape left a square of irritated red skin on his cheek where the blood from his wound had flowed and dried over the tape. It was a terribly odd look, and it gave her pause while she tried to reconcile the image of it with what she expected her husband to look like.

  He removed her gag gently, though as quickly as he could. She spit out the underwear and tried to kiss him. He winced and pulled away from her. Then leaned down and gave her a light kiss before whispering urgently. His voice was a croak, and it sounded like his lips were numb. But she understood. “We gotta go.” They looked at the ceiling. An unsettling silence had descended, and everything was quiet upstairs. A lump grew in her throat that felt like she’d swallowed her gag.

  Evan nodded to the wooden door behind them. “That way.” It was barred with a two-by-four and a latch lock. Beyond that, up a short flight of concrete steps were the steel storm doors that led out into the back yard. “We’ll go to the Darnielles’ next door and call for help.” He didn’t say what they both knew: neither of them was in any condition to fight. They had to run or they would die.

  “Juanita and Colin won’t be home until Monday. There’s no one to let us in.” Her throat was so dry. It hurt to speak.

  “I don’t care. We’ll break a window. We’ve got to get help. You call, and I’ll look for a weapon. Maybe Colin has a gun in the house.”

  The thought of having a shootout with Roarke . . . or whoever else . . . seemed suicidal. Maybe not as much as going upstairs and trying to have a fistfight with him, but still. Maybe Colin Darnielle would have a gun and they could hide and wait with it for the cops to come. And if someone followed, and they saw him first before he spotted them . . .

  She hoped Juanita and Colin had a whole collection of guns. An arsenal.

  Such are d
esperate dreams made of.

  They started toward the bulkhead door. Nelle had to hold Evan steady. Despite being awake, he was still dizzy and unsure on his feet. As much as she wanted to get out the door and put distance in between them and Mack, her husband definitely wasn’t up for a long run. He seemed barely fit for the sprint across the yard. They had no other choice. The only two ways out of the basement were through the bulkhead doors or up the stairs.

  Nelle wasn’t ready to face what was upstairs. Not yet. Not ever.

  Evan stopped. Nelle said, “What is it?”

  “My glasses. He knocked off my glasses. Do you see them?” Evan wasn’t blind without his specs, but he wasn’t entirely sighted either. She cast a quick look around, trying to see if they were anywhere out in the open. She didn’t want to look any harder for them. He could see well enough to make out a door and her. He could squint and find 9 and 1 on the telephone.

  “Forget about ’em. You need new ones anyway.” She shrugged closer under Evan’s arm and tried to hurry. Pain arced up the back of her calf, and she almost fell. She yelped. Her guts cramped at how loud the unbidden utterance had been. She might as well have screamed, Come and stop us! We’re escaping!

  “What is it?” Evan whispered.

  She looked at her foot and hissed, “Shit.” A long shard of green glass stuck out of her heel on the same side as her hurt ankle. She reached down and tried to pull it out. It was slick with her blood, and her trembling fingers made it hard to get ahold of. It took two tries, but she slid it out of her heel. The length of the shard that had pierced her made her stomach do flips as it seemed to keep coming and coming like a magician’s rainbow handkerchief. The wound was deep. Maybe an inch. She’d never thought that seemed like much, not until she held a piece of red-stained glass that had been that far inside her flesh. Gritting her teeth, she stood for a second, trying to deal with the flare of pain that was growing. The raw hole rent in her heel screamed. It bled. She tried to take a step. It hurt so much to put any pressure on it she almost fell. Still, she could walk on the ball of her foot. She had to—this couldn’t be the thing that stopped them. Not now that they were free and so close to getting away. She couldn’t be the reason they died. They hobbled a few more steps, and she stopped and looked back. Blood stained the floor like a trail out of a fairy tale. “Fuuuck.”

  Evan let go of her and staggered back to grab the duct tape and the underwear that had been in her mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said, holding them close to his face to see what they were. “I’ll buy you a new pair.” He meant it. He was sorry for ruining them. She couldn’t have cared less, and it made her want to laugh, but then he pressed the cotton up against her wound and began to wrap it tight with tape, and the faint feeling of mirth she’d felt abandoned her. When he finished, he pulled her back up to her feet and together they hobbled the last few feet to the cellar door.

  Now neither of them were steady on their legs. They held each other close; their escape like a three-legged race. She almost laughed again at the thought, then worried that she was coming undone.

  A loud sound, unmistakably a gunshot, erupted in the house, and Nelle felt the bottom fall out of the ecstasy of their near escape. That was the sound of something ending; definitely not the beginning of their salvation. Roarke had killed whoever it was in their house, and now he’d be coming down to finish what he started.

  Evan let go of her and lifted the two-by-four blocking the door out of its brackets. The thing was wedged in there, and it took some effort, but the board came free. “We should keep that,” Nelle whispered. She imagined bashing Roarke in the head with it. Killing him was better than running, wasn’t it? Much better. But all they had was a piece of wood that either one of them would probably fall over trying to swing, and he had a gun. Evan held on to it.

  “When I get this door open, you run.”

  “We run,” she insisted.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Nelle didn’t argue. She stepped into the dark stairwell, tripping on the bottom step and catching herself against the wall. Pain shot up her leg, and she jammed a finger. All the little hurts felt like huge humiliations. Riiight. Run. Keep it together. Her shoulder and elbow and arm and foot all hurt, but she had clear eyes and no concussion. She had to keep it together for the both of them.

  Evan twisted the latch bar that unlocked the storm doors and slid it back. He pushed against the steel door, and sunlight streamed in. He looked like death in the daylight, blood covering half his face. Nelle lost a little more of her optimism at the sight of him. He looked better in the dark. The shadows had hidden how bad things really were. He needed stitches. Evan’s cheek was bruised and swollen, and his eye was closing. Even if they got to the hospital right away, she worried he’d lose his eye. If it weren’t for the coagulated blood gummed up in the slash, she imagined Evan’s cheekbone would be visible. White and wrong in the sunlight.

  Cut to the bone or not, he’s still standing. Keep going.

  He pushed the door open wider. The hinges creaked loudly. It had never occurred to them to oil them—who cared if the bulkhead squeaked?

  Footsteps overhead came crashing across the floor and toward the cellar stairs. Evan threw the door open the rest of the way, the latch catching it and keeping the thing from slamming back down on top of them. “Go.”

  The steps behind them thundered under Roarke’s weight. Evan snatched the two-by-four that had been bracing the door out of Nelle’s hands and shouted, “Go!”

  The bullet that hit the wall next to them sent fragments of concrete pelting into Evan’s face, and he flinched.

  “STOY!”

  Evan stepped in front of Nelle to block Roarke’s next shot. She froze as the unfamiliar voice shouted again. “Stoy! Ostanovis’ pryamo tam!” She knew she should run. Hurry out through the door and across the lawn. She looked over her shoulder into the daylight and winced at the painful brightness of it.

  She thought she saw a girl standing in the yard. Her broken little body teetering on bent legs and an arm that reached out, beckoning, this way. She wanted to go, follow the child, escape. But the sunlight hurt her eyes, and the child frightened her because seeing her meant she’d lost touch with reality. What was real?

  The sound of the gunshot made her breath catch and her muscles seize, as if the gun had fired an interruption in time instead of bullets. It was thunderous in the cellar and seemed to come from everywhere at once. Stabbing little bees stung her neck and face. That was real. Had to be. She blinked, and the girl in the yard enticing her away was gone. Just stark sunlight on green grass and the fairy-tale darkness of the woods beyond. Of course, she was never there. Nelle turned her back on escape.

  Another man stepped out from behind the one holding the gun. Calmly he said, “Mrs. Pereira. Close that door and come back inside. Let’s talk.”

  Nelle wished he’d shouted. Shouting would’ve been so much less terrifying. She twisted the lock bar that propped the bulkhead open and eased the metal door down, restoring darkness, until her sun-dimmed eyes were blind.

  46

  Evan spun around, trying to see in the dark cellar. The blue afterimage left by the sun hovering in his vision blurred everything more than it had already been. He saw shapes he recognized by their position as the staircase and the weight bench, but couldn’t make out details. In between them was the shape that shouldn’t be there—the one that moved.

  A second man stepped out from behind the first and spoke in English. His tone was firm and held them like the concrete steps had melted around their feet. He didn’t speak to Evan, but rather to Nelle. Called her “Mrs. Pereira.” Yet another stranger who knew their names. And that was the spell that held them. The name. It said, I know you. Run and I’ll still find you, because you aren’t capable of hiding. Not without your name. Not from your name.

  This wasn’t the person who’d been torturing them. Who the hell were these men?

  Evan’s thoughts were muddy. Whateve
r the guy had hit him with that morning, it felt like the asshole had cracked his skull wide open. The left side of his face was hot and stiff. He could see enough, and he could think just enough to know that he and Nelle had only one way out and it was the opposite direction of the man who’d just spoken. But Nelle had closed the door, and even if it were open, they couldn’t outrun bullets.

  The man in front shouted again, something more guttural to Evan’s ears than lingual. Evan gripped the board tighter and tensed, ready to fight and give Nelle the time she needed to get a head start, even if it was only a few feet. It was something he could do. An advantage she didn’t have otherwise. Any chance at all is better than no chance.

  The accented man spoke again. “Put down the weapon.”

  Evan wanted to stand firm and say no to this man who intended to do them violence, just like the other. But unlike the other, this man’s presence communicated rational disaster. Intentional atrocity. The other one. The man they’d left upstairs. His threat was unknowable. Scattered and subject to the whims of his madness. These men weren’t insane. They were deliberate. And when they commanded him to drop the board, it grew heavier in his hands. Evan opened his fingers and let the board clatter to the floor.

  “Good. Come have a seat, please.”

  Nelle’s fingers wrapped around Evan’s upper arm. He put his hand over hers. This was not a reprieve. This was their end. More certain death, but hopefully at the hands of men who took no particular pleasure in killing—at least no more than a butcher delights in his trade—and would afford them the mercy of efficient, painless ends. Together, they walked back into the cellar and toward the chairs that the man had repositioned for them, side by side.

  The man with the gun tracked them as they moved. Evan and Nelle both took their steps haltingly. Evan was dizzy and nauseous, and he felt more than a little drunk. He knew that was very bad, but doubted it would be the concussion that would kill him. Nelle hobbled beside him, favoring her wounded foot. They paused at the chairs. The man who’d asked them to sit stepped back. He showed no concern that being near them was in any way risky to him. He merely gave them room to move. Nelle helped Evan sit.