Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  14

  The sun cut through the blinds, low and gold. With a scratching sound the latch turned and the bedroom door burst open. Rory came awake in a rush. The dog bolted in, paws clattering on the hardwood, straight at her bed.

  “Chiba, no,” she said.

  He skidded up, whining a welcome, and stuck his nose in her face.

  He was a Husky–Australian shepherd mix, blue eyed and half-deaf because of neglect as a puppy. She’d found him abandoned one day when she was on a run. He was limping along a road outside of town, a bit like her. She took him home. He was now healthy, loyal, and crazy. He jumped around her and licked her neck.

  She hugged him and buried her face in his fur. “Hello, you nightmare.”

  His tail battered the air. He always greeted her as if she’d been rescued from a mineshaft, and she appreciated the unconditional attention. With him she didn’t need to put up her guard. Chiba had no agenda.

  Petra appeared in the doorway, mug in hand, wearing a T-shirt and men’s boxers emblazoned with Polly wants a cocktail.

  “Coffee’s hot,” she said.

  “Thanks.” Rory fought her way out of the covers. She was stiff and sore.

  “You turned your phone off, I presume.”

  Rory pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “How many calls?”

  “Fifteen on the machine. Mostly people who saw you on TV. I left a vodka bottle on the kitchen counter. Feel free to add it to your coffee.”

  Under the slatted golden sunlight, the room looked less like a garret and more like a cubbyhole. Rory had unpacked some mementos. A brass Thai Buddha. Books—The Great Gatsby, Bangkok 8, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Snapshots with kids from the school where she’d volunteered in Thailand, the girls bright and shy. A photo taken near Bulawayo, her kneeling next to young Grace. Grace, strong little arms squeezing Rory around the neck. A framed photo of her with her mom and dad. Another with her uncle Lee. He’d left Ransom River when she was a young girl, and she missed his confidence and mischievous smile.

  Chiba parked himself in front of her, tail wagging. When she ignored him, he put his head on her knee and groaned, peering up at her with the mournful eyes of a Goya martyr. Rory scratched the ruff of his neck.

  Petra leaned against the door. “Your baby.”

  Rory didn’t look up. “Thank you for keeping a poker face when my mom said that.”

  “Poker face? That’s nothing. Outside these doors, you live a poker life.”

  “Maybe someday I’ll talk to her about it. But not now.” She glanced up. “Besides, why shouldn’t I play my cards close to the vest? It’s how I was raised.”

  “You Mackenzies. You’d fit in at the NSA. For all I know, you’re your own little spy network. Or international jewel thieves. You could have liquidated an entire Al-Qaeda cell and buried them in the orchard and I’d never know it.”

  “Plus we’re terrible cooks.”

  Petra held her mug with both hands. “It’s okay. If you want to talk about yesterday, talk. If you don’t, don’t. Either way, I’m here.”

  “Thank you.”

  She felt a swell of affection for her friend, and the tug of her nerves tightening. She stood and went to the window and raised the blinds.

  Sunlight shone through the leaves of the avocado trees in the backyard. Petra’s place was a two-story farmhouse near the end of a road dotted with funky old homes. The neighborhood was guarded by orange trees and weighty pines, and butted up against the dry foothills at the northern edge of the city. Beyond the back wall, empty fields of yellowed grass led to lemon and avocado orchards. Rows of trees curved neatly over hillsides, vivid green. Beyond, the mountains rose, rocky and blue, outlined crisply against the sky.

  Rory said, “Remember my worst-case-scenario game?”

  As a teenager, she used to panic at the thought of things going wrong. At the starting line before a race, she would nearly freak out. What if I lose? Doom, she thought. Shame. Expulsion from school. Poverty. Economic collapse, bread riots, flying monkeys attacking from the sky. Until, one day, about to vomit with nerves, she thought, What’s really the worst that could happen? Would she be dragged to the center of the football field and burned at the stake? No. She’d have to look at some other runner’s ass accelerating away from her. Big deal.

  Since then, when faced with a challenging situation, she always asked, Worst-case scenario? And generally, the worst was not apocalyptic. Not slavery, prostitution, tattoos, or a job at the drive-through window at Arby’s. Yet.

  Of course, some scenarios had turned out worse than she’d thought possible. Briefly she heard a shriek of metal and had a vision of sudden endings—of plans, love, possibilities. She forced it away.

  “When I got called to jury duty, I asked myself, what’s the worst that can happen? And I thought, I’ll have to decide the fate of two people charged with murder and bear the weight of that decision. I miscalculated.”

  “No reason ‘taken hostage’ should have come up on your worst-case dartboard,” Petra said.

  “That’s not the worst case.” She turned. “The cops think I was working with the gunmen.”

  Petra lowered her mug. “Girl, what the fuck?”

  “They have video of the siege. And…” Her head pounded. “The gunmen chose people to go with them. Me. I thought it was random, but apparently not.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. And I’m scared.”

  “The cops are scaring all the hostages, I’ll bet. Rory, it’s a dirty trick.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “They’re hard-case cops. They think the gunmen were working with an inside man, so they try to frighten the shit out of all the hostages by accusing them of complicity.”

  Hard-case cops. Memory flickered again. Seth Colder, Mr. Once-upon-a-Hard-Case himself.

  Petra said, “The cops probably have no clue what happened, so they accuse everybody to see if anyone freaks and confesses. It’s a dirty, low-down trick. Christ, Aurora. Do you really think you’re so special?”

  Rory had to laugh. “Maybe not.”

  But she recalled the grainy courtroom video. Reagan, stepping across prone bodies, aiming straight at her.

  She said, “Last night I put in a call to one of my old law profs. David Goldstein—he was my advisor at UCLA. I left a message telling him I need a referral to an attorney.”

  “You’re an attorney.”

  “But not a fool. I need a criminal lawyer.”

  For a second she felt leaden. How could she afford to hire somebody competent, who might want several thousand bucks up front as a retainer? Sell her car? How much could she even get for a beat-up Subaru? Fall seven times, stand up eight. She didn’t want to admit that she’d been knocked down again. More like bitch-slapped into a wall.

  Petra crossed to her side. “It’s going to be okay.” She put a hand on her back. “Come on. Get coffee. The messages are on the machine. Including one from your aunt.”

  “What?”

  “Your aunt Amber called. Worried, wants to know all about it.”

  Rory’s mouth slowly fell open. “Every time I think I’ve considered the worst case, the world creates a scenario beyond my imagination.”

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Rory listened to the messages on the machine. Friends had called, and high school cross-country competitors. Former Peace Corps colleagues. A law school classmate.

  “This thing is damned huge,” she said.

  “I thought you knew that.”

  The courthouse siege had to be the loudest thing to happen in Ransom River in decades. The city hated loud. Within Rory’s memory there were few comparable criminal outbursts—the hijacking of a gasoline tanker, an arson fire that leveled an entire subdivision under construction, the armored car heist that put the city in the news when she was a kid.

  “Do I want to turn on the television?” she said.

  Petra gathered her
lesson plans from the kitchen table. “You’re the star of the day, whether you like it or not. Do you want to hear what they’re saying?”

  She had to expect media attention. It was Southern California, where live criminal confrontation got higher TV ratings than hockey. And why not? Shootouts were cheaper to film than game shows. No sets, no salaries, no releases for contestants to sign.

  She downed her coffee and aimed the remote at the television. Then, reluctantly, she played the last message on the machine.

  “Aurora, it’s your aunt Amber. I saw you on the TV and talked to Nerissa. I can’t believe you were in that courtroom.”

  Amber’s voice was raspy. It sounded like Virginia Slims.

  “Anyhow, I wanted to know all about it. You take care, honey.”

  Rory pressed Delete.

  Petra said, “Told you. You’re a celebrity.”

  “And she’s hoping it’ll rub off on her and her kids.”

  Petra gave her a tart look.

  “You heard her—she talked to Riss. Who put on an Emmy-winning performance last night,” Rory said.

  “That was bizarre.”

  “That was calculated. Riss has an angle. Guaranteed. One that has her at the focal point.” And me in her sights. “With Riss it’s always win-lose. My rule is to treat her like she’s a grenade with a pin that’s been pulled.”

  It had always been that way. She tried to remember a time when it hadn’t. Maybe when Uncle Lee had been around.

  On the television, catastrophic music erupted. Orchestral melodrama. A fanfare of menace. A red title burst across the screen: Courthouse Siege: Nightmare in Ransom River.

  It was a news special, recapping the attack. Rory shut off the TV. “I gotta get away from this.”

  “Where are you going?” Petra said.

  “Running.”

  15

  Then

  “Hand me that wrench.”

  Rory dug through the toolbox. Uncle Lee waited with his hand out. She lifted the wrench and set it on his palm.

  He grinned. “Thanks, princess.”

  She smiled, to the bottom of her shoes. Six-year-olds didn’t usually get to tune up a car. But Uncle Lee was letting her help him with the El Camino. His grin made her feel like she could float.

  The car was in the shed. The shed was like a little barn, on the dirt road out on the acreage her parents owned near the edge of town. The El Camino was her dad’s car from when he was in high school. It was red and had muscles and he kept it in the shed under a tarp. He said it was going to be Rory’s when she got her driver’s license. That would be in ten years. She would be a teenager. The car was huge, and her dad was in the driver’s seat, watching Uncle Lee turn the wrench.

  The puppy ran around her feet, sniffing the dirt. She picked him up and he squirmed and licked her chin.

  Lee tightened a bolt. “Where’d you find that thing, Aurora?”

  “By the river. He was hiding under a cardboard box. Somebody left him there.”

  Lee heard the quiver in her voice and looked up. She swallowed. His eyes softened.

  He shook his head. “Always collecting strays. That’s you.”

  She bent and nuzzled the puppy and hid her face. After a second, she said, “His name’s Pepper.”

  Her dad called from the car. “She wanted to call him Pokémon. I said no way.”

  Lee leaned over the engine and frowned at it like it was a bad dog. He made a circle in the air with his hand.

  “Crank it, Will.”

  Rory’s dad turned on the car.

  With the hood raised, the noise was loud. Angry almost. Rory pressed the puppy to her chest and put a hand over his ears. The engine shook, like it wanted to jump out of the car. The fan belt squeaked and spun and the carburetor shimmied.

  Lee nodded. He straightened and wiped his hands on a grease rag. He handed the wrench back to Rory.

  “Perfect. You could make a fast getaway in this, princess.”

  She giggled.

  Uncle Lee was a jack-of-all-trades. He said that meant he didn’t have a boss. It meant he could do any job. Her dad said not every job was worth doing—or legal.

  Her dad left the engine running and got out of the El Camino. He stuck his head under the hood and clapped Lee on the back.

  “Got her. Thanks.”

  “No problem,” Lee said.

  Lee was bigger than her dad even though he was the little brother. He tossed aside the grease rag and got behind the wheel himself and gunned the motor. Rory put her hands over Pepper’s ears again.

  Her dad said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to keep this car tuned up for you.”

  From the driver’s seat, Lee beckoned her with one finger, Come here. His smile seemed sneaky.

  Rory set Pepper down and climbed into the passenger side.

  “Close the door,” Lee said.

  She pulled hard and it creaked and shut. He closed the driver’s door. Leaned out the window.

  “Will, put down the hood. I’ll take her for a test drive.”

  Will lowered the hood and pressed it carefully shut, not slamming it. Lee gave him a salute and put the car in gear. He eased it out of the shed into the sunlight. It sounded to Rory like a space fighter, rattling and powering up.

  Lee held on to the gearshift and nudged the El Camino over the rough gravel drive. He pulled onto the road and stopped. Looked at her and smiled again. He was good at smiling. It made her feel like something exciting was about to turn her day into a surprise. It made her heart beat hard in her chest. Like she was in on a secret.

  “Want to drive?” he said.

  She inhaled so loud it sounded like a gasp, like the movies.

  “It’s gonna be your car, your dad says.”

  “It’s his car now.”

  “Yeah. He gets all the good stuff. I just help out,” he said.

  She looked up at him. He kept smiling.

  “He got you,” he said, and tickled her. Then he said, “The car’s yours. You oughta drive it.”

  She blinked. He patted his knee.

  She scrambled onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around her. He was strong and always made her know she could trust him. They were a twosome, he said. Uncle Lee had kids of his own, but he always made special time for Rory. She didn’t have brothers or sisters. She was an only. And he made her feel like she was his best friend.

  The steering wheel was hot when she put her hands on it.

  “You just hold tight and steer straight,” he said. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He put his arms around her and touched the bottom of the wheel with two fingers. That was all. He pointed up the road.

  “Know what that is?” he said.

  “The national forest.”

  He laughed. It didn’t sound funny, though.

  “That’s the horizon. That’s a boundary. You gotta think about what’s on the other side.”

  She nodded. She didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Your dad says this’ll be your car. He means it’ll be here, and if you stick around, it’ll be available. It’s what’s called a bribe,” he said.

  She shrugged. She didn’t understand.

  “It’s bait,” Lee said. “Crawl into the trap to get it, the trap snaps shut behind you. Boom.”

  She held on to the wheel. She waited for him to say something that made sense and didn’t leave her feeling…worried.

  “Out there,” he said, “that’s the world. That’s the real deal. The Show. Ransom River, that’s the hamster wheel. You understand?”

  She nodded, though she didn’t.

  Lee laughed. “Lesson number one, Aurora. What people give you becomes a debt. What you take is yours. Claim it. Get your own.”

  He looked in the rearview mirror. It was too high for Rory to see, so she turned and looked out the back window. Behind them, Will Mackenzie had walked out to the end of the gravel drive. He stood in the road, hands on his hips, looking at the E
lco.

  “There’s Dad,” she said.

  What she meant was He’ll get mad.

  Behind her dad, from the shadows in the shed, her cousin Riss walked out into the sun. She stared at the car. The stuffed bear in her hand dropped to the dirt.

  Lee said, “Hold tight. Don’t swerve.”

  Rory gripped the wheel. He put it in gear and jammed his foot on the gas pedal.

  This time Rory gasped for real. The car accelerated and it seemed like it was a real rocket, and she was steering it with the road zooming underneath the wheels.

  “No holds barred, princess,” Lee shouted. “It’s a circus out there. Lights and wild animals and walking the high wire without a net. Don’t let ’em shut the cage door on you. Get out there and star in the show.”

  She nodded and held on to the wheel and felt the El Camino gain speed. Lee laughed. The wind furrowed the car and blew her hair around her face.

  16

  An hour, Rory figured. Just pound the trails. She checked the clock. Seven forty-five. She had to be at the courthouse at nine thirty.

  She dressed for a cold-weather run. She clamped her gloves between her teeth, swept her hair back into a ponytail, and stepped out into a nippy morning that smelled of gardenias and jasmine. The plum trees near the porch rustled in the breeze. A chill sped up her back. The street was empty.

  She paused, but only for a moment. She couldn’t let fear cage her. Do it.

  She whistled. “Chiba, come.”

  The dog rushed out the door and jumped in circles around her. With him bounding along at her side, she headed out into the early light.

  Running cured almost everything. It eased pain; it exhilarated; it served as penance and validation. It turned lone wolf into a compliment. Running was objective—the stopwatch never lied. Races judged competitors on how long and hard they could run fast, not on a coach’s decision to play favorites with the starting lineup. Running was pure.

  It could do everything but get her out of this town for good.

  Her breath frosted the air. As always since the accident, in cold weather her right leg ached and her hip felt stiff. She headed slowly out of the neighborhood, fighting the urge to limp. But after a mile she warmed up. She quickened her pace. Chiba loped alongside her. When she passed the orchards, she took the river trail.