The main trailhead was another fifty yards away, past the pit toilet outhouses and a shed. She bent down, and started to creep away from the lodge. Behind the outhouses, she paused and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Her heart was thundering, and the bar in her hands was slick with dripping sweat. She wiped her hands, one at a time, on her shorts and tried to listen for the sound of footsteps following her. When she heard nothing, she made for the shed. Behind that, she didn’t dare pause again. She kept going, lumbering toward the trailhead as quietly as she could. A few yards away, she came to the trail marker.
MAHICAN TRAIL ⇨
DELL POND TRAIL—CABOT MEETING HOUSE ⇨
⇦ TRISTAN LEE PORTER COUNCIL RING
⇦ SPECTRE PATH
The few times she had been hiking on the forest reservation, she hadn’t paid close attention to what features were on each trail, except for the Spectre Path. That led to a memorial for a mass grave the town had dug to bury their dead during a smallpox outbreak in the seventeen hundreds. The fenced-in ring of memorial cairns at the end of that route offered nowhere to hide. She picked the Tristan Lee Porter fork and limped off, wanting to step off the path, but knowing that once she did, she would become both much louder and much slower in the underbrush. She stuck to the trail and forged on.
The ambient sounds of the woods made her cringe. She looked over her shoulder as often as she dared, though it led to her stumbling more than once. Each time she turned back, she expected to see Roarke looming behind her, gun raised, ready to fire. But he wasn’t there. Not yet. She was ahead of him, and he only had a one-in-four chance of following the same path she’d chosen. And he couldn’t be thinking clearly. Not after being shot in the face. Though it wouldn’t take much concentration to find her if she didn’t do a better job concealing her escape. One-in-four. One-in-four. Only a quarter chance. And if she could hide long enough, she could try to circle down through the trees to the animal hospital.
She stumbled around a bend and spied a small cabin up ahead. It was supported by struts in front keeping the building level on the sloping hillside. Nelle could crawl underneath, though raised as it was on this side, it wouldn’t offer any more concealment than hiding behind one of the picnic tables out front. If she wanted to disappear here, she had to get inside. She hurried around to the steps leading up to the small front deck. Above her, a sign hung from the front eaves.
POND VIEW CABIN
A brand-new, shiny brass deadbolt lock with a number-pad key box underneath had been installed in the door. She could bust a window and unlock it easy enough, except someone had nailed a two-by-four across the door frame as added security. She wasn’t getting that off by hand. The windows on either side were big enough to crawl through, but again, she knew better than to try to smash them to get in. She wanted to hold on to whatever chance she imagined she had in being silent, and didn’t have it in her to walk through any more glass. She peered through the window on the left. The late afternoon sun was low, and golden light filtered in through the back of the cabin, illuminating the inside in a warm golden glow. Through the front room, there looked to be a small kitchenette and a back door. She stumbled off of the deck and around the building.
The back was locked with a deadbolt like the front door, but instead of a board, a padlock hung from a loop over a hasp as a second measure. She breathed a sigh of relief. Still difficult, but not impossible. She jammed the end of the tire iron into the shank loop and braced against the body of the padlock. The thing didn’t give when she pulled, and she bit her cheek to try to stifle the cry of frustration rising up from deep inside of her. She tried again, leaning away with all her weight, but with the loose lock twisting in the hasp loop, she couldn’t put enough pressure on to break it. She pulled the bar out of the lock, stepped back, and took another look.
The hasp. Try against the hasp.
She stuck the bar behind the swinging hasp arm behind the lock and pulled down hard. The padlock stuck out toward her like it had come to attention, and then the thing gave. Not the lock, or the hasp plate, but the screws in the wood holding the whole assemblage in place. They weren’t coming out of the new solid door, but the framework around it that was as old as the cabin and weatherworn. Another hard tug, and the hasp came away with a small metal ringing and the faint clatter of screws falling out of the mount onto the flat stone beneath her. She tried twisting the knob just in case. It was locked. A small cry of exasperation escaped her throat. Her impulse was to abandon this cabin and run to the next, but she was tired, and the next place would be at least as well secured as this one, or better. It was this or nothing at all.
In desperation, she swung the end of the bar at the pane of glass nearest the doorknob. The loud clack and crash of glass made her flinch, but the pane broke into pieces on the first hit, falling inside the cabin. She was getting better at breaking and entering. Nelle carefully removed a big shard that remained stuck in the frame and tossed it in the weeds beside the building. She reached through, undid the lock and pulled the door open, slipping inside. She took a long step over the shards on the floor and closed the door behind her, resetting the lock, even though anyone could reach through and undo it again. Whether or not it was a worthless action, the extra second of time it would take to jiggle the knob, then reach through to undo it again seemed like an advantage, however slight. She slipped her arm out the broken window and pushed the padlock hasp up against the door frame again so it looked intact. It wouldn’t fool anyone up close, but she hoped everything would look right enough from a distance. Satisfied, she turned to find a place to hide.
Her shadow stretched out ahead of her on the floor of the kitchenette. She stepped to the side out of the light, and it disappeared. Not seeing her shadow felt a little better. Still, it wasn’t enough; she needed to find a real place to hide. Somewhere for all of her to vanish. The kitchenette was wide open, with a bare, round table and a couple of chairs. Against the wall was a sink basin and a narrow counter, but underneath, that was also open to view. No drape hid the space below. This room offered no shelter.
In the next room stood a brick fireplace and rows of bunk beds along the walls, stripped for the season. While a child might hide well enough beneath a low bunk, a full-grown woman would stick out, both figuratively and literally. She turned around, looking for anywhere else to hide. Behind her she saw the trail of muddy, slightly bloody footprints she’d left leading back the way she’d come, from the bunkbeds to the kitchenette and the back door. On the bright pine floors inside the cabin, nothing she tracked in was hidden like it had been outside. Her footprints marked her path through the house like one of those Family Circus comics her grandmother used to stick to the fridge when she was little. Her trail was a perversion of the sweet-hearted joke. The dotted line on the floor traced not the distracted path of a child to the mailbox and back inside, but instead the aimless, panicked flight to the place of her death.
She set down the tire iron and yanked at her camisole, trying to rip it. It stretched, but wouldn’t tear. She pulled it up to her teeth and bit at the cloth. It still wouldn’t tear. Frantic, she picked up the steel rod and shoved through with the tip near the hem at the bottom, finally hearing the sound she wanted as it punctured the thin fabric. She tore a long strip off the bottom. It pulled along unevenly, leaving her with more skin exposed on the right than the left. It would’ve been easier to wrap the entire shirt around her bleeding foot—it wasn’t that big—but bit by bit she’d lost control of everything, except for this one last thing: covering herself. She couldn’t say no to the man with the gun or stay with her husband when he needed her. She couldn’t even remain in her home and had to run away. But she could stay dressed, god damn it.
She pulled the rest of the strip of cloth off and paused, looking back at her tracks across the floor. She stood and walked to the back door, doing her best to deliberately leave a trail of blood that looked like she’d come and, finding nowhere to hide, had gone. At least that was what
she hoped it looked like. Her fresh tracks in place, she sat in a dining chair, wiped off her uninjured foot, and bound up her wound in the other with the tattered piece of her shirt.
The deception was only as good as her ability to disappear. The tracks wouldn’t fool anyone if she was caught out standing in the open. And apart from being inside, instead of outdoors, she was still exposed. The entire interior of the cabin was visible through the windows. The place wasn’t built for privacy—just shelter. It was a weekend bedroom for boys to stay up late telling scary stories and singing campfire songs.
Then she saw it. A solid plywood door in the next room.
She hobbled over, careful not to set her bad heel down as she went—the camisole bandage held, though it’d be only seconds before she bled through that too. It was a closet. Inside she found a pair of brooms, a dustpan, and plenty of space to hide. She’d be blind, but also out of sight. It wasn’t an ostrich hideaway like the main room; it was actual concealment.
In the next room, light shone through a window. She glanced out and her breath hitched when she saw the figure standing in the trees. Her broken girl. She stood staring at Nelle with worry twisting her face. She told herself that the girl was only the psychological manifestation of her worst fears. Of being like her.
But the ghost girl told her something she needed to know. If she could see the child outside, she could be seen from outside.
Nelle opened the door carefully, trying not to leave dark fingerprints on the light wood, and stepped into the closet. She pulled the door shut.
To her relief, light filtered in through the gaps at the top and bottom of the door frame. If she leaned close, she could see very faintly through to the room on the other side of the door. It was hard to see well, but she could make out the difference between the folding chairs leaning against the far wall and the bunk beds. Good enough. She tried to settle in for a long wait, wondering how long it would be before she could assume Roarke had given up looking for her or it was clear he’d taken another path. She had no idea. She relied on her gut to tell her when it was time to move; it had steered her right so far. The other voice in her head—that girl’s voice—was saying it was not time to stop and hide. It told her to keep running.
The sound of heavy footsteps in the brush outside made gut instinct irrelevant.
There was nowhere left to go.
60
He stomped up onto the front deck and paused. From her hiding place inside the closet, Nelle couldn’t see him but pictured him leaning close like she had only minutes before, a hand cupped to the dirty window beside the front door, peering inside. Seeing her footprints. The door rattled, and her heart started to race. Outside she heard Roarke say, “I see you!” His words were slurred and his voice deranged. But she understood him clearly enough.
Nelle lost her breath. She clutched the tire iron close to her chest. While she didn’t have room to swing it, confined as she was, holding it felt like hanging on to the safety rail that would keep her from falling into oblivion. She couldn’t stay there, hiding in the closet like a child, or else this cabin would become that place where she’d disappear forever. Her safety bar wasn’t attached to anything; she could take it anywhere.
He stomped away from the front door. The sound of him jiggling the back doorknob made her take a sharp hissing breath in. He laughed and called out, “So. Fugging. Stupid.”
She pushed the closet door open quietly and slipped out. She backed into the small sitting room and looked for an escape. The front door was locked and barred, the windows beside it in plain sight. He was at the only other door. If he went straight into the bunkroom, she thought she might be able to slip through the swinging door and out while his back was turned. But the cabin wasn’t that big, and the rustic wood floors creaked and groaned underfoot as she moved.
The sunlight shining through the window cast her shadow across the floor to her left. She spun around. That was her only way out. She twisted the locks at the top and lifted the sash, gritting her teeth at the dry sound it made sliding in the frame. The window stuck halfway open. Wide enough for her to try to shimmy out with some effort. She climbed through headfirst.
The sound of Mack unlocking the back door echoed in the tiny cabin. She let out a small squeal. Hanging halfway out, she felt caught. The waistband of her shorts was hung up on something. She pushed up and then shoved hard at the window frame. The wood scraped at her belly and her thighs as she fell out like a limp animal birthed from a standing mother and landed on the ground in a heap. The pain in her wounded shoulder flared, and she saw bright stars again. The tire iron bounced out of her hands and landed with a thud in the tangled weeds a few feet away. She scrambled for it, ignoring the searing sensation in her thighs and shins from dragging across the rough sill. She snatched at it, and the weeds held on, resisting her like some malignance—the animate forest come alive to aid her killer. She tore at them, and the tendrils holding her tool snapped and let go with a ripping sound she was sure echoed through the entire forest. Free of the weeds, she scuttled backward and put her back to the cabin wall below the window, paralyzed, waiting for the man’s lunatic leering face to appear in the opening. She couldn’t reach to pull the window down. There was no time to try. He’d see which way she’d gotten out, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She was unsure which way to go. Every direction seemed pointless. In her state, running wouldn’t accomplish anything except leaving her breathless and tired when Roarke finally murdered her. Now was the time she had. All her potential futures had narrowed down to this one moment at the intersection of living and dying.
Through the open window, she heard him shout, “Come out, and I’ll shoot you in the head and put your fuckin’ lights out quick. Like Evan.” She flinched at the sound of her husband’s name on his lips. Roarke’s footsteps stopped. Then she heard a sound like the closet door banging against the wall, loud as a gunshot. Her legs spasmed, and she pressed harder against the cabin wall.
“GIVE UP OR I’M GOING TO FUCK YOU AND GUT YOU!”
In a moment he’d know she’d slipped out of the cabin and would be coming to follow. She forced herself to creep away from the window and around the back of the building. With shaking hands, she raised the tire iron over her shoulder and waited beside the door. The steel bar felt so heavy, so unmanageable. It was no longer a safety rail. It was an anchor pulling her down. All she could do was hold on tight and try not to scream.
She didn’t scream. She waited.
Mack stomped through the cabin to the window. She heard him curse at the sight of it half open and shout through it. “Bitch!” If he followed her through the window, it was over. She was too far from the corner of the cabin to swing at him if he came from that direction. And she couldn’t outrun him. No. This was it. Her place to stand. He had to come through the door. Had to.
She heard his footfalls pounding on cabin floor as he ran back the way he’d come. Past the closet, through the bedroom, into the kitchenette. Her guts knotted. His boots crunched in broken glass and the door whipped open and she swung by instinct before she saw him.
The feeling in her hands was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. A reverberation of force traveled up her wrists and her forearms; pain flashed in her elbow forcing her fingers to spring open. The bar bounced back and slipped away like a weightless thing floating off into space.
I missed! I hit the fucking door jamb!
She’d failed, yet again, to do a single, simple thing—hit the man, not the wall or the door. She never heard the steel bar hit the ground. It was lost in the weeds. As gone as a final breath. She had nothing left to fight with, and Roarke would emerge in a second to end her. This was her last moment. The white pinpoint of a nearly closed aperture.
* * *
When her eyes cleared, she saw Roarke lying on his back inside the cabin, bright red hands up, covering his face. She’d hit him. Actually hit him right where she’d hoped, and he was down. She
spun, looking for a stone big enough to bash his head the rest of the way in. Her eyes alighted on one lying in the weeds a few feet away. She lunged toward it. Her foot caught in a tight vine growing along the ground in the same kind of ivy underbrush that had fought her for the tire iron and she fell. But her hand found the rock. Stone in hand, like some savage woman from fifteen thousand years ago, she walked into the cabin to finish what she’d started.
He lay on his back in the kitchenette. She stepped through the door and lifted the rock. He held out a glistening red hand. A fresh gash ran along his forehead, spilling blood over one of his eyes. It ran down, covering his nose and mouth. His lips were pulled back in a crimson snarl, and his open eye rolled, unable to stay focused on her. She felt a touch of satisfaction at how badly hurt he was.
“Wait,” he said. Blood arced in small droplets away from his lips, spattering the front of his shirt.
She stepped over the glass on the floor, lifting her stone over her head.
“Wait.”
“Fuck yo—”
His heavy boot connected solidly with her shin. The rock slipped from her fingers, landing with her on the floorboards. He kicked at her again and connected hard against her hip. She thrashed her way out the door, her moment of triumph as gone as her weapons. Broken glass sliced her palms as she went. She felt the shards cut into her, but the pain didn’t register.
I’m going to fuck you and gut you.
He appeared in the doorway, upright and dark. He stepped out into the late day shadows, toward her. His crimson face, a demon’s mien, as ruined as a damned thing.
She tried to scream, but only a frail whimper escaped her throat. She gasped, “No, please.” She kept pushing away, but he took another step and closed the distance. He dropped to his knees and straddled her, his blood dripping onto her face. She tried to bat at him, but he knocked her hands away and reached for her throat. His fingers were cold and strong, and it wasn’t long before her vision started to darken.
Closing Costs Page 26