The concern in her voice seems to resonate in Tim’s and Paul’s facial expressions. Cole’s so startled by this display that at first he can’t come up with a response. Given how much they know, it’s amazing how quickly these three people seem to vanish from his thoughts the minute he looks in another direction. Given what they have access to, they’re under as much surveillance as Charlotte. But maybe it’s not just fear of professional repercussions that ensures their secrecy. It’s what he’s seeing right now.
They care about Charlotte Rowe and believe in what she does. Deeply.
Cole opens his mouth to give the most appropriate and simplest response he can think of. I will. Then he thinks better of it.
“We will,” he says.
Shannon bows her head and takes a step back. She looks exhausted. Maybe it’s the last few weeks catching up with her, or maybe this small, simple act required all the bravery she has.
Then he and Noah and Scott are hurrying toward the helicopter pen behind the hangar, into the blast of wind from its spinning rotary blades and toward the very real fact that he just made a sincere promise he might not be able to keep.
34
Amarillo, Texas
Marjorie’s wondering if she should have put a third Pyrex dish of Frito casserole into the oven—her boys always arrive hungry—when she hears a familiar, comforting rumble drifting toward her across the fields outside. She wipes her hands on her apron, picks up the shotgun from where she’s rested it against the wall next to the oven, and moves to the sink and the window above it.
She’s turned only a few of the lights on inside the house in case someone does coming looking for those shitass kids, but she doubts any of her boys will take that as a sign of trouble. And her hopes are confirmed when she sees the twin headlights of a large truck mount the gentle crest in the road leading toward the barn. The truck continues on its practiced path, around the barn’s northern side before it parks in back, hidden from the county road and just up from the slope to the wooded creek bed. The landscape’s got some low and gentle folds, but save for the little ravine cut by the creek, it’s mostly flat prairie, surrounded by lots of arid property nobody would want for anything besides privacy and space.
There’s a skip in her step as she leaves the house. The boys purchase used trucks each year so they can be easily disposed of after the planting’s through, so there’s no telling who made it first just from the sight of what they’re driving. That means she’s always pleasantly surprised by the first arrival. There’s usually no rhyme or reason to it from year to year, no pattern that might illuminate the character, or at least driving skills, of her boys. Some years it’s Cyrus, others it’s Wally, then Jonah for a stretch.
But when the cargo area door of this particular truck rises with a familiar rumble, the surprise comes when the man inside doesn’t jump to the dirt and throw his arms around her. Instead, Jonah Polk turns his back to her and sinks to a seat atop some plastic crates she knows are housing whatever gifts he’s brought her. Besides the seedling.
“Jonah?”
Her handsomest boy looks crestfallen, staring into space. For a second, she thinks he might not have snagged a seedling at all. Which means his heads-up call would have been all lies. Then she sees the divider door is open and there’s a pair of slender bare feet strapped to the gurney in back. They’re still.
She scans his Wrangler jeans and red-and-black plaid shirt for signs of a struggle but doesn’t see any. He’s got a haircut now that reminds her of bankers; a neatly combed side part that seems to be well in place.
“Jonah.” This time it’s not a question. He recognizes the sound of a command. It looks like he’s aged more in the past year than most of the years prior. But there’s no getting up into his truck without help, and when she waves one hand at him, he jumps to the dirt, wraps an arm around her waist, and half hoists her inside by letting her rest most of her left side against him as she pulls herself up with her right arm.
Their little dance seems like a great prelude to an overdue hug, but no such luck.
She has to remind herself he doesn’t shrink away from her when he’s angry; he does it when he’s ashamed.
Marjorie’s enormously proud of the Head Slayer every time she sees one assembled. It’s a marvelously simple invention, and durable to boot. And it’s her design. They’ve only had to replace one of them twice since they’ve started.
Did something go wrong with this one?
It looks like the seedling tried to get free by jerking her head upward and that somehow jammed the insertion tube farther down her throat than it should be able to go. The results were predictably disgusting. Even the rats still clumped in the cargo area above have moved to one side and gone still, as if huddling together will protect them from the stench of vomit that’s surely wafting up the tube. The same vomit that apparently choked the woman to death.
Technically it’s not a violation, and so technically, Marjorie shouldn’t withhold her affection from Jonah, which after so many years of almost perfect obedience is the only punishment she’d consider meting out in this moment. What the boys aren’t allowed to do is get unnecessarily rough with their seedlings or use them as sexual playthings along the way. A planting is designed to purge dark instincts, but not by letting them run wild. It marries them to structure and purpose. It’s an extraction, not masturbation, as she’s said on more than one occasion, provoking boyish giggles every time.
So technically, this is the seedling’s fault, and it’s because she refused to heed the lesson the Head Slayer’s designed to teach. Silence is strength; screams are not.
“I should’ve watched closer,” Jonah says. “I got distracted.”
“By what?”
“Music. I was playing music.”
“Well, that’s not against the rules.”
Marjorie slaps the side of the woman’s face, feels a satisfying absence of response. Her head jerks slightly to one side, but it’s the tight strap across her forehead that makes the move feel reflexive and quick. A living person would be trying to spit out the tube or cough away the vomit. The seedling’s scrawny, with sharp, visible cheekbones, a high forehead, and a loose tumble of bottle blonde hair studded with dark roots.
“She’s not a hooker, is she?” Marjorie asks.
“No, ma’am.”
“’Cause hookers are against the rules.”
“I know, too easy.”
“How’d you get her, then?” Marjorie’s hoping a bit of small talk will pull Jonah out of his funk. Nothing seems to calm a man down like asking him to explain a complex, mostly physical process. Especially if he thinks he’s in control of it.
“She was mouthing off to a cashier at a gas station outside town. Claiming she got overcharged for cigarettes.”
“Smoking’s bad for you.”
“I know, ma’am.”
“Well, she doesn’t have to worry about that now, does she?”
“I’m sorry, Mother.”
Shame on her for wanting to draw this out. Maybe it’s shooting the little tweakers that’s done it; made her feel older, weaker, needier. The yearlong wait between plantings, even though it’s served them well for so long, is getting too long for her old heart and her old bones. And now she’s desperate to exert some small measure of control over one of her boys.
And what she said a moment ago is still true.
Technically Jonah didn’t violate any of the rules. Sure, he should have watched the seedling more closely, but he’s never had one die on him before a planting. That particular distinction belongs to Wally. He’s lost two. But that’s because he goes for the real fighters, the real screamers. For a while there, Wally’s seedlings had such tough outer shells, the group thought he was abducting them from the middle of literal, screaming bar fights. Two of them he beat to death because they just wouldn’t quit trying to escape. Of course, both times, Cyrus and Jonah ribbed him, calling BS on Wally’s weary accounts. In both instances, the f
ootage from the cameras they all used to monitor their seedlings while driving revealed Wally was telling the truth. Oh, how her boys had whistled and clucked their teeth over the aggressiveness those seedlings had displayed before Wally bashed their heads in.
But for a while there, Marjorie was concerned they were part of a larger trend.
Was Wally turning self-destructive? Worse, would the other boys be encouraged to compete with his recklessness?
It doesn’t seem to have been the case.
The planting’s better with three, but it can work with two just fine. Three’s better, though. A trio makes a nice, satisfying harmony.
“Come here,” she says.
Head bowed like he’s sixteen again, he moves to her, steps into her embrace, and then returns it.
“Show me what else you brought,” she says.
A moment later, they’ve closed the divider door so he can present the gifts he brought her without distraction. A new police scanner—that’s a nice surprise; the old one’s been busted for a few months now—and a framed watercolor of Lake Coeur d’Alene; she and her daddy went there on a road trip once when she was little, before her mother destroyed their family. It’s so dear Jonah remembered her affection for the place. She’s only mentioned it a few times. The problem is, she hates watercolors in general. Why make everything look so messy and vague when a good artist can re-create pretty much anything with a pencil? She doesn’t say any of this to Jonah, of course. He already feels bad enough about the seedling. And it’s a thoughtful gift. And he’s her boy. Her beautiful boy.
He’s answering questions about a music box he bought her at a garage sale when they both hear a sound like muted thunder. A few minutes later another large pair of headlights swings around the northern wall of the barn. It’s a truck of similar size and make to Jonah’s, maybe a little rustier and more battered, and it’s headed straight for them.
35
How could Zoey have thought this was a victory?
So she didn’t panic during the last stretch of the ride, didn’t scream, didn’t cause that hideous device to send a thick black snake sliding down the tube wedged into her mouth. But she’s still a captive, and the last steps that brought her out of the truck and to this cold place included a blindfold and the kind of harness you put on a difficult dog. Using a cord attached to the harness’s back, they lowered her into what must be some sort of pit, then they lassoed her to a thick column of wood.
There were whispers and other sets of footsteps besides her abductor’s. So she’s outnumbered now. But the scariest change of all is the one that seemed like a relief at first. She’s not gagged. There’s not even anything covering her mouth. But that can only mean one thing. There’s no one to hear her scream. No one who can help anyway.
The blindfold’s pulled from her eyes.
Relief floods her before she can think better of it.
A woman’s backing away from her, a stout woman with deep lines in her face and sensitive-looking blue eyes complementing a patient expression. Her gray ponytail is long and thick and pulled forward over one shoulder as if she wants the world to see how much time it took her to braid it. Zoey sags against the giant wooden post they’ve tied her to in a cruel parody of a romantic embrace. The words pour from her; she can’t stop them. She’s explaining the whole thing like a hyperactive child trying to recount her first day of kindergarten to her parents. Only there’s no kindness and excitement in the tale, just misery and pain and degradation, and she needs someone else to know about it. She’s not sure why that’s her instinct in this moment, but it is. Because if this woman’s here to rescue her, Zoey should tell her everything because she’s a woman and a woman will under—
Zoey’s forehead explodes with pain. The woman’s done it, grabbed the back of Zoey’s neck and knocked her head against the wooden post in a precise and effective blow that seems practiced.
“My boy says you spit in his face,” the woman says. “That true?”
Mother, she realizes. This is the mother he mentioned in the truck, and here I was hoping for a skeleton in a dress.
Dread so total moves through Zoey’s body that her sob comes out more like a wail. She feels cold all over, realizes it’s the wooden post she’s tied to. She thought she was already hugging the thing, but apparently she’d been resisting her confines more than she realized, and now the leveling effect of realizing this woman is not her rescuer has drained every last bit of energy from her body.
“Screaming fight in the mall, then you spit in my boy’s face. What’s wrong with you, girl? Go ahead and answer. I won’t hit you if you answer truthful.”
Zoey didn’t say anything about her fight with Jerald in the mall. Her abductor must have told this woman, and hearing it mentioned now makes her dizzy. It seems like a moment from a previous life, and the idea that anything might bridge the two other than her memory makes this place all the more horrible.
“Why?” Zoey asks.
“Why what?”
“Why did he . . . why is he doing this?”
“Oh, well isn’t that a damn fool question. You draw all kinds of attention to yourself and then you cry when someone answers the call? That’s rich, girlie. Let me guess. You were expecting a knight in shining armor? Well, he’d turn into a monster, too, after having to listen to your screams.”
“Why are you doing this?”
The woman grabs the back of Zoey’s head, gathering her hair in her fist, hard enough to pull at the roots. “Because women like you make me ashamed, that’s why. Ashamed of your ignorance and your selfishness. You refuse to see what you do with your careless words. And if I can’t wipe women like you from the earth, maybe I can teach you a lesson before you go. Maybe you’ll come back smarter. In a new life. Because you’re not keeping this one, little girl. All you can do is decide how you want to leave it.”
“A fight . . .”
“What?”
Zoey’s scanning their surroundings, trying to look dazed and confused so the woman doesn’t realize what she’s doing. She wants to keep her talking, but she’s having trouble forming questions.
“He picked me because I had a fight with my boyfriend?”
Dirt walls, at least ten feet high. A patch of lofty ceiling high above the opening to this narrow pit. Maybe a barn or some other type structure. Could someone of Zoey’s size climb the surrounding walls, or would the dirt start to come lose under her clawing hands and feet? It looks dry, but clumpy. This hideous Mother took a ladder down, but no doubt they’ll pull it up as soon as she climbs out. If the woman climbs out.
If I live to see her climb out.
“He could hear what’s inside of you,” she whispers. “He could hear the destruction in it. And that’s how he knew you were another foul, warped woman who tries to break men down into something she can keep in a drawer like jewelry. Because you don’t understand them and you don’t deserve them. The world loses everything they could be because of women like you. Because you bully and assault them with your hysteria and your abuse of your voice. And no one protects them. No one. Except for me. I can’t save them all. Just my boys. But I can sure as hell get rid of you.”
Zoey Long has never been this close to death. She’s never been in a bad car accident; never come close to drowning in a swimming pool; never gone home with a guy who tried to prevent her from leaving the moment she wanted to. For every hour that she spent in that psycho’s truck, the prospect of death was pushed a little further away. But now it’s here, pressing in all around her on the dirt walls of this pit, riding each of this insane woman’s hate-filled words.
Her new captor smiles faintly, and Zoey thinks she must be pleased by whatever expression despair and defeat have brought to Zoey’s face.
“There you go,” the woman whispers, “you’re getting it. Silence is your friend. Silence is your strength.”
Some people might call what Zoey does next a scream. Zoey wants it to be a roar, a monstrous, deafening roar that
comes from deep inside of her, from a place uncovered by the knowledge that she won’t escape this. That she won’t live to see another dawn. She takes a few deep breaths, then unleashes another so loud the woman stumbles backward and actually grabs the dirt wall behind her with one hand to steady herself. It’s not high pitched or piercing, the sounds Zoey is making in this moment; it’s a symphony of anger and rage.
Her throat burning, she runs out of breath and feels the threat of sobs. Releasing all her anger has left her with nothing to fight her despair. In this moment, at least.
“Save your breath,” the woman says. “You’re going to need it if you want to decide how you’re going to die.”
The woman climbs the ladder. When she reaches the top, the killer who drove Zoey here helps her up by one arm before pulling the ladder out of the pit.
Her abductor and his crazy mother vanish from sight. Then a second later, some sort of plastic tube is placed right at the edge of the pit’s opening, inspiring memories of rats and snakes and the terrifying prospect of what this pit might soon be filled with.
36
From this distance, downtown Amarillo looks like it has about two substantial high-rises in its skyline. There’s a lit-up logo atop the tallest one. Charlotte thinks it’s for Chase Bank, but she’s too far away to be sure. Still, anyone familiar with the city should be able to recognize its familiar profile from this view, so Luke and Charley wheel Mattingly’s gurney through the divider, then turn it sideways so he can see through the open cargo area door and across the empty field toward the small, sparkling city on the dark horizon.
With one hand, Luke turns Mattingly’s head, trying to give him a better look. But the leather strap across their captive’s forehead pulls back hard. Charley would help, but although Cole has remotely injected her with a dose of Zypraxon, she’s not triggered yet and doesn’t want to disabuse Mattingly of the notion that her hands are always strong enough to break rocks.
Luke removes his Glock, places the barrel against Mattingly’s slightly upturned temple, then undoes the forehead strap with his other hand. Eyes closed, his lips tremble from the threat of tears.
Blood Victory: A Burning Girl Thriller (The Burning Girl) Page 23