Liam's Secret

by Jadyn Chase

  I went back inside and found the old man’s bedroom. I picked up three large sectioned boxes from the bedside table. They contained hundreds of pills divided into compartments labeled with the days of the week. I tucked it under my arm and returned to the porch.

  I didn’t ask his permission. I unplugged his nasal tubing from the oxygen cylinder and took the tank and the medications to the Jeep. I stashed them under the seat and went back. Without asking, I scooped up the frail old body in my arms. I carried him like a baby to the Jeep.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. McMasters,” I murmured into his ear. “I’m going to take you to a safe place. They’ll take care of you until Amy comes back. Don’t worry. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

  If only I could believe that half as much as I hoped he did, maybe I could make it true. I settled him in the passenger seat and buckled the seatbelt around him. He didn’t respond. He retreated into his stupor and stared straight in front of him. Hell, maybe a ride in an open-air Jeep would do his old brain some good.

  I turned the ignition and drove all the way back to Smokey Ridge, but nothing could deter me from the course I set for myself. I knew what I had to do. Nothing under the sun could stop me, not even Pop. I was a man now with my own compass. I would follow it for good or ill.

  I positioned the Jeep as close to the porch as possible. Adrian and the twins gaped at me like I had lost my mind. I lifted Mr. McMasters out of the seat and kicked the screen door open. I took him into the living room and eased him down in a corner on the couch.

  My Pop and three of my uncles stood in a cluster around the dining room table. They stopped talking and blinked at me when I laid the oxygen tank on a cushion next to the old man. I stacked the medication boxes on the table near Mr. McMasters’ elbow.

  My Ma and aunt Irma looked up from a cookbook on the kitchen counter. I knelt down in front of Mr. McMasters and plugged his tubing into the tank. I turned it on and the gas hissed into his nose.

  “This is my house, Mr. McMasters,” I told him. “You’ll be safe here.”

  Ma and Aunt Irma drifted over. They stood behind me and watched me tuck a wool blanket around the old man’s legs. “What’s going on, son?” Ma asked.

  I squeezed Mr. McMasters’s hand and positioned my face in front of his eyes. “This is my Ma, Caroline Kelly. Ma, this is Mr. McMasters. He needs a safe place to stay for a little while. It’s not for long. Don’t worry, Mr. McMasters. This is my family. They’ll take care of you until we get Amy back.”

  Pop called from the other side of the room. “Don’t do anything foolish, son. We’re going after the Lynches at the tannery. Come on over and tell us what you know about their plans.”

  I got to my feet. When I scanned the room, I saw the change in all their faces. I wasn’t a boy anymore. I changed that fast, with a single decision. I no longer followed their lead. I had no choice but to stay true to my own course.

  “The tannery’s no good anymore,” I replied. “The jig’s up and the Lynches have Amy now. I’m going after her.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, son,” Pop argued. “Wait until we get the whole Clan on board. You don’t want to take on the Lynches alone.”

  “I don’t plan to take them on. I plan to find Amy and stop them from killing her. That will give you and the boys time to get the Clan on board.”

  He cocked his head to study me. “Are you sure about this, son? You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do.” Just saying those words made them true. “I’m doing it, and I’m sure. If you can get the boys out, so much the better. Otherwise, I’ll handle it on my own.”

  I laid my hand on Mr. McMasters’ shoulder. “Don’t worry, Sir. I’ll bring her back to you.”

  I cast one more glance around the circle of faces. I saw in the blink of an eye how much they loved me. For once in my life, I recognized pride in my parents’ faces, but that couldn’t help me now. I had a job to do, and I was man enough to do it.

  8

  Amy

  I curled into the cold, dripping corner of the dark basement. Handcuffs bit into my wrists and a stout hemp rope chaffed my ankles. They held me to a length of sturdy pipe strapped to the wall. Tugging at them only cut my skin and made my arms and legs ache worse than before.

  I buried my eyes in my shoulder and did my best to control my mounting panic. After Dean took me from the cabin, he tied me up and left me alone in this stinking basement under a house somewhere in the woods. I had no idea where I was, but I couldn’t stay here.

  “You’re no good to us now.” That’s what Dean said on the drive here. “You’re dead weight. You screwed up, so you have no one to blame but yourself.”

  Didn’t I know it? Liam lost his temper at me. Now here I was awaiting execution by some hillbilly version of the Humane Society. I didn’t care anymore. Let them kill me. What good was my life anyway?

  One thought kept me going: Daddy. He was all alone at the cabin right now with no one to take care of him. Who would make sure he ate dinner? Who would make sure he didn’t catch cold on the porch? Who would take him inside and put him into his nice warm bed?

  My heart bled when I thought about him. If he didn’t freeze to death on the porch tonight, I owed it to him to get the hell out of here.

  I did all this for him. I couldn’t give up at the last moment. I turned my attention to the pipes, but I didn’t tug at the cuffs anymore. Black bruises already circled my joints. Pulling on them only injured me. I had to come up with a different way out of here.

  Footsteps clomped on the boards above my head. Voices drifted down through the floor, but I couldn’t make out the words. They rose to an arguing pitch. Maybe all was not peaceful in Clan Lynch. Maybe Dean’s relatives didn’t go along with his plan of blackmail, kidnapping, murder, and revenge. I could only hope.

  For a few minutes, terror and despair devastated me to the ground. I couldn’t move under their crushing weight. The next instant, they congealed into anger. How dare these bastards take me from my house? How dare Dean push me around and threaten me?

  I would find a way out of here. I would get even with him if it was the last thing I ever did. Right now, I had to figure out how to break these cuffs.

  In the movies, somebody always picks the lock with a paperclip or a hairpin or something. I didn’t have anything like that and I didn’t see one lying around on the sticky floor, either.

  The pipes didn’t budge when I yanked on them. Steel straps held them against the wall with stout screws. Someone went above and beyond the call of duty when they secured those pipes in place.

  If only I could get my legs free, I might be able to kick the pipe loose. Then again, the noise would attract attention. The last thing I wanted was Dean and his riffraff coming down here mad at me.

  Even if I could get out of these cuffs, that presented the problem of getting out of the basement. Going through the house was out of the question. I could hear at least five people up there. A tiny window high up the basement wall offered the only light in the place. Judging from my position on the ground, I couldn’t even reach that window if I was standing upright. Heaven knew how many armed men surrounded this house.

  I took a firm grip on myself. I couldn’t think about how hopeless this situation was. I survived the last five years of living Hell. I could damn well get out of here. I just needed to figure out how.

  I blinked the dust out of my eyes and bent my attention on the screws. I concentrated all my focus on them to the exclusion of everything else. Metal against wood. Metal against metal. Metal against human skin.

  I narrowed my gaze to the micron. There had to be a way to break this predicament if I only paid close enough attention to the atoms making up all the different pieces robbing me of my freedom.

  Okay. Think, Amy. Use the brain that God gave you. What’s the weakest link in the system? The rope, obviously. Getting my feet free didn’t help me much, though. The pipe looked like it was made of old-fashioned lead, not copper or
even brass. If I could find something sharp enough to cut the rope, I might be able to nibble through the pipe.

  Nibble through the pipe! That was a good one. Nibble through a lead pipe. As if. Dean would come around to blow my head off long before anybody nibbled through that.

  Still, what did I have to lose? I spread my knees to examine the rope. Then I came up with what I hoped would be a brilliant idea. The steel straps holding the pipe in place had sharp ends where someone cut them to length with shears.

  I rotated around on my seat and raised my feet. Yes! They just reached my already mangled arms. I had to clench my midsection to hold my legs up, but I just managed to wedge the rope against the protruding corner of metal.

  I hooked the hemp over the tip and wriggled. It took several minutes, but I threaded a few strands of hemp over the surface. The act of wedging it into position severed a few strands. Sweet Jesus, this just might actually work.

  I took a few deep breaths and gathered my strength. This was going to take a while, and I was already exhausted. I rested for a second, but I couldn’t still my beating heart. My fevered imagination conjured up all kinds of terrible consequences—as if Dean could hear the minute I cut a few pieces of hemp.

  I steeled my resolve and flexed my legs. I worked them back and forth. The rope slotted behind the strap and the edge bit into the cord. All at once, SLICE! It worked! It cut the rope.

  My legs collapsed on the ground trembling as much from anxiety over getting caught as from fatigue. I took a long time to build up the courage to do it again. This time, I slotted a smaller section behind the strap. It severed quicker and cost less effort.

  I got halfway through the rope. My heart hammered in my neck and my throat ached from gasping for every breath. Sweat stung my eyes. How much longer could I keep this up?

  I paused to rest when my worst nightmare came true. Loud footfalls pounded on the floor above, and a key rasped in a lock. My heart nearly stood still when a creaking sound accompanied a stream of golden light beaming into the basement.

  Someone trotted down the stairs and walked around me before I saw a young man I didn’t recognize. He fell on me without a moment’s hesitation. “Dean wants you. Get up.”

  He unlocked the handcuffs so fast I didn’t have time to react. He hauled me to my feet. I cringed in horror when he bent down to my ankles, but he didn’t appear to notice that I had tampered with the rope.

  He sliced the cord the rest of the way off to free my legs. He got up and slid the knife into his belt. Then he took hold of my elbow and marched me toward the stairs. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Did he really just free me without a second thought? I spent hours in this hole trying to puzzle out how to get those things off. Now they were off.

  The kid shoved me up the stairs into a glowing kitchen. Three women sat around a table across the room. They glared at me with hateful eyes. Dean leaned against the wall in the corner with his beefy arms crossed over his chest. He compressed his lips so his whiskers stuck out at odd angles.

  The kid parked me in the middle of the floor. I started to rub my wrists, but he jerked my arm and barked, “Don’t move!”

  Dean threw up his hands. “Well, here she is. What the hell do you want me to do with her?”

  “I don’t care,” one of the women fired back. “Just get rid of her. I don’t want her around here.”

  “You said you were going to get rid of her,” another woman chimed in, “so go do it. Don’t bring down your trouble on the rest of us.”

  “It ain’t my fault the Kellys got wise to us,” Dean snarled. “Our plan was going perfect before this happened.”

  “Your plan,” the first woman corrected, “and they didn’t get wise to us. They got wise to you. You did this. None of the rest of us wanted this. Your dad told you not to go through with this and you had to go and disobey orders like you always do. Now you better clean up the mess you made before someone finds out what you did. Get her out of here and don’t ever tell anyone you brought her here.”

  Dean smacked his lips and waved to the kid. “All right, Beecham. Let’s go.”

  The boy didn’t move. He cast a sidelong glance at the table. Sure enough, the first woman spoke up to defend him. “You’re not roping Beecham into this. You took her. Now you deal with her. Leave Beecham out of this.”

  I listened in rapt astonishment. I was right. None of Dean’s Clan supported him. He concocted this scheme to get revenge on the Kellys. Now that circumstances turned against him, Dean’s kin abandoned him to his own devices.

  Beecham stayed put. I sensed him behind me, but I also became aware of the tension in the room. No one wanted to help Dean. If he was going to kill me, he would have to do it alone. That meant he would have to take me off somewhere by myself away from everyone else. Maybe, just maybe he would give me an opening to escape.

  He swiveled one way and then the other, but no one would help him. In a fit of exasperated frustration, he shoved himself off the wall. He threw up both hands and wheeled to a door behind him. A window in it gave me a view of a yard outside the house. Thick woods surrounded the building on all sides so I could see nothing beyond it.

  He yanked the door open muttering curses and barged outside. He slammed it behind him and marched down a short flight of steps. He stormed across the yard and vanished from sight. I stared at the blank window. The world of light and air was right outside just a few steps away from me. I caught a scent of trees and rotten leaves when Dean opened the door.

  Beecham and the women made no sound for a long, oppressive moment. The biggest woman, the one who did most of the arguing, shelled peas into a bowl. The crack of the shells reverberated around the hollow kitchen. The peas drummed against the metal bowl and disturbed the stillness.

  The other woman who spoke stared into space at nothing. The third woman fixed her eyes on her hands. She laced her fingers together on the tabletop, unfolded them, and refolded them again and again.

  Beecham broke the silence by whispering, “Well, what am I supposed to do with her now?”

  The first woman waved a chubby hand at me. “Put her back in the basement for now. When he comes back, he can take her away.”

  Beecham seized my arm and marched me to the basement door. He pushed me through it and down the stairs. No sooner had my foot touched the dank floor than he spun away. He thumped up the stairs, shut the door, and locked it.

  I stood in the middle of the basement and dared to look around me. I no longer wore those cuffs or the rope. I was free to move around. Did Beecham intend to give me a chance to get away, or did he just forget to retie me?

  That didn’t matter now. I had the use of my arms and legs. Now I had to take advantage of the moment before Dean came back.

  I hurried to the window. As I suspected, I couldn’t reach it even standing on tiptoes. My fingertips barely grazed the sill. I searched the whole basement for some way to get up there. I found nothing until I hunted under the stairs. The light coming through the window cast that area in shadow, but I got down on my hands and knees and groped around for something, anything to make myself taller.

  My soul leaped when I touched something made of wood. My fingers danced around it praying to God for a miracle. I hardly dared believe it when I traced a round, rough object. Yes! A cylinder of what felt like tree bark wedged into the mold and mud far under the stairs.

  I wrestled it out into the light and nearly burst into tears of relief. It was a round section of firewood exactly like the ones Liam brought to make shingles for my house. I rolled it across the floor and set it up under the window.

  It teetered when I climbed on it, but it brought my eyes up to the window. My hands shook touching the seams around the casement. Please God, please God, please God…. I kept repeating in my mind. Please give me something.

  Rubber sealant glued the window to the frame. I couldn’t find a single gap in it. My resolve started to falter, but I braced myself for the final assault. All I had to do
was get that window open.

  I didn’t care how I did it. I couldn’t climb up to the window with that one stump of wood as a step, but that didn’t matter anymore. I was getting out of here come Hell or high water. Nothing could stop me, now that I’d come this far.

  I jumped off the stump and raced back to the pipe where Dean tied me up. The light faded in the window as day sank into dusk. I didn’t have much time before night blocked out my ability to see. Dean would probably come back before then anyway. When he did, he needed to find me already gone. Maybe then his relatives would convince him to let me go instead of running me down through the woods.

  I fell on my knees next to the pipe. Those sharp-cut metal straps could pick out the sealant with no problem. I just needed to unscrew them. I wouldn’t let a minor detail like that stop me now. I got up on my knees and stripped off my jeans.

  Mud smeared my bare legs and chilled me. I gritted my teeth and persisted. What was a little cold and dirt weighed against my life? I flung my jeans on the floor and isolated the first button on my waistband. I angled it to one side and slotted it into the screw head.

  I did my best to take steady breaths, but I couldn’t calm down. I had to hurry, but that only made me clumsier. I deliberately slowed myself down and concentrated on each excruciating turn of the screw. Turn by painful turn, I backed one screw out of place. It fell into the muck around my knees.

  I refused to think about the sun going down or Dean coming back. One thing and one thing only mattered now. Another screw came loose. Two to go. The muscles in my arms and chest burned from the effort, but I managed another screw before I took a break.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Cold grey gloom enclosed the house. With any luck, the dark would conceal my flight. It just might stop Dean from finding me. Who was I kidding? He was a dragon. He could fly and he could hunt. He would track me down and I would die out here.