I could tell when calisthenics ended by the sound of pounding feet on pavement, and I could also tell the moment they were out of Coach's line of vision by the way the steady cadence gave way to undisciplined chaos. From my vantage point behind a fir tree, I saw a handful of sweaty, blue-shirted boys running back toward their house. They were racing each other, laughing and carefree, quite unlike the way they'd acted during their exercises yesterday under the careful eye of Coach. The House Leader was nowhere in sight, so maybe that explained their lightheartedness. Or maybe it was the prospect of a whole hour to themselves.
Several orange-shirted boys ambled by, in less of a hurry than the first group, intent on making fun of the kid in front — perfectly normal adolescent behavior, I thought. I heard more voices coming down the path and stepped farther into the shadows as I watched. The kids came by in twos and threes, in large batches, and, occasionally, alone. The fat boy who'd been carted off in Coach's wagon walked by himself, his head down, his fists clenched at his side. He was struggling to catch his breath and his shirt was soaked through with sweat. Finally, I spotted Maddie toward the end of the processional, walking beside a spiky-haired, anorexic blonde who seemed barely able to keep up, though she was several years older than Maddie. As badly as I wanted to talk to Maddie, I knew it would be safer if I could catch her alone. Suddenly, she glanced up and looked in my direction, her dark glassy eyes wide and alert. Then she glanced behind her and quickened her pace. She hadn't seen me, but she seemed to sense my presence, or someone else's, I thought. She had the look of someone afraid she was being followed.
Just when I thought they'd all passed and I was about to step out of the forest, I heard a pair of stragglers. I recognized the couple strolling toward me as house leaders. One was the gangly, acne-scarred kid named Dobberteen who'd led the exercises yesterday, and the other was the Girls' House Leader, Belinda Pitt. Belinda was shaking her long red hair free of its ponytail, a sensuous move that seemed to fascinate Dobberteen. She had pale, almost translucent skin with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose; full, pouty lips; and melon-sized breasts that had Dobberteen nearly tripping over himself.
"It wouldn't have to be like all the way or anything," he stammered, turning to walk backwards in front of her.
"Forget it, Deano. You're too young, too dumb, and too, um, how should I put this? Too provincial."
"I am not dumb! What's that mean? 'Provincial?' " He'd stopped in front of her, forcing her to stop, too.
She laughed, throwing her head back. Suddenly, he lunged forward, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her toward him. His lips covered hers, and, for a brief moment, it appeared that she'd succumbed to his dubious charms, because her white freckled fingers circled his neck, pulling him closer. Suddenly, Dobberteen jumped back, emitting a terrible shriek.
"You fucking bitch!" he screamed, dabbing at his lip. A wet, red bubble of blood formed as quickly as he rubbed it away.
Belinda pushed past him, then turned to face him when she was a few safe feet away. "Practice on some of the younger ones first, Deano, then come see me in a month or two. And do learn to do something more interesting with that tongue." She flipped her red, wavy hair back over her shoulder and strutted down the path, leaving Dean Dobberteen to staunch the bleeding of his lip, not to mention his pride, in private.
Except that I was six feet away, hidden behind a fir tree, watching the whole sorry exchange. It was what Deano muttered under his breath after she was well out of earshot, however, that I found most interesting. What he said was, "Bet you never bit Coach, you fucking bitch."
I waited until he was well down the path himself before resuming my trek toward the stables. When I reached the outermost corrals, I leaned against a wood post and took in the view. This was what I'd seen from the road coming in. Beyond the stables and pastures stretched acres of pristine meadows surrounded by plush forest, and, along the east side, a steep, rocky-faced mountain that tapered off to the north, before plunging into a deep gorge. I could hear a distant waterfall and spotted a handful of trickling streams crossing the meadows. I tore my eyes from the beauty and scanned the stables and pastures until I spotted Gracie. She was standing beside a dun-colored mare in the next corral, cinching up a saddle. A weathered, wiry middle-aged man wearing faded Levis, a black T-shirt, and a wheat-colored cowboy hat was saddling up beside her. When Gracie saw me, she broke into a grin, then quickly glanced at the man to make sure he hadn't noticed.
"Howdy," the man said when I approached.
"Hi. I'm Cassidy James. Just hired on yesterday and thought I'd check out the horses before my first class."
"Welcome, Cassidy. I'm Clutch Evans. This here's Gracie. You the one taking over for Miss Sisson?"
"That's me. You must be Ida's husband."
"Guilty as charged," he said, showing me a tobacco-stained grin. His face was ruggedly handsome, with crow's feet around the eyes from perpetually squinting. "You a rider?" he asked, patting his horse on the rear.
"Used to be. It's been a while, but part of what attracted me to this job was the horse ranch. I was hoping to work out a way to get a ride in now and then."
"Hell, girl. You can ride every day if you want to. This time of year, we can use all the help we can get. Gracie, why don't you take Miss James here with you to help you get that gate. It'll save me the trouble." He winked at me. "You reckon you can handle this gelding?"
I took the proffered reins and set my left foot in the stirrup, pulling myself up onto the saddle. Clutch wasn't a tall man, but even so, the stirrups were a bit long.
"I appreciate this, Clutch," I said as he adjusted the stirrups. I leaned back, taking in the beauty of the meadow and surrounding forest. "Boy, I sure don't know why anyone would want to leave a place like this. That Miss Sisson must've been crazy."
"Well, it was a surprise to me, her leaving like that. She always seemed to like it, much as I could tell. Still, a woman's prerogative, I guess, changing her mind."
"Did she ride?" I asked, trying not to sound too interested. Gracie rolled her eyes at me like I was pushing it.
"Oh, yes. She loved to ride. Always took that little Appaloosa, said it fit her just right. I believe she even went for a ride the night she left. Probably wanted one last turn before she skedaddled."
"I wonder, why she did go?" I asked idly, leaning over to pat the chestnut gelding's neck.
Clutch looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Like I said, it pretty near surprised us all. Reckon we'll never know." With that, he slapped my horse's rear, causing him to bolt forward until I gathered the reins and brought him back under control. Gracie was laughing.
"You are a little rusty," she said. "Come on, I'll show you around."
As soon as we were past the corral, Gracie leaned over and whispered. "I knew you'd get the job! Whaddaya think, so far?"
"First impressions?" I said, coaxing my horse into a trot beside her. "I think Coach likes his job a little too much. I think Camp Turnaround probably breaks a few child labor laws, and I think, if this place is half as good as Ida Evans says it is, then all kids should spend some time here, and half the adults I know, as well." Gracie laughed. "What I don't think is that Annie Sisson left voluntarily." I told her about the birth control pills and blanket.
"I'll tell you something interesting," Gracie said, leading me across the pasture toward a gathering of grazing horses. "The night Annie Sisson disappeared, all sorts of stuff was going on around here. I've been snooping around a bit myself. After we open the gate, there's someone I think we should talk to."
She kicked her horse, breaking into a lope, and I followed suit. As soon as Gracie could tell that I was handling it, she coaxed the bay mare into a gallop, and the gelding shot forward, his red mane flying in the breeze as we kept pace. My own short hair was blowing behind me as we raced across the meadow, easily jumping the stream that meandered across our path. By the time Gracie pulled up at the end of a fenced pasture, I was grinning
from ear to ear.
"I'd forgotten how much I missed this," I admitted, leaning forward to pat the gelding.
"You ride pretty good for a white girl," she said, sliding off her horse. "Come on. This gate takes two of us."
I climbed down and dropped the gelding's reins so that he could munch a little grass, then helped Gracie with the huge iron mesh gate that spanned a good hundred feet. It swung on a hinge and took both of us to push it open.
"They do this every day?" I asked.
"After sunup and before sundown. Mountain lions," she explained. "Used to be grizzlies, too, but Clutch says they haven't been around in years. Still, there's plenty of other dangers. The tops and bottoms of the fences are hot-wired each night to discourage adventurous predators, and in some spots there's even barbed wire. Even so, every year they lose a few horses."
"No wonder the kids don't run away," I said, looking out at the dark forest surrounding the meadows.
"Speaking of which, remember Maddie's remark about running away? Turns out that happened the night before Sisson disappeared. And she was still out there somewhere the night Annie left."
"Really." It was hard to picture that little black-haired waif venturing out into the perilous forest on her own at all, let alone, lasting two nights.
"Unfortunately, that's all I know. Except the one to ask is a horse trainer named Joe Bell. Best horse handler I've ever seen. Makes old Clutch look like an amateur. You know what a horse whisperer is?"
"I saw the movie. Didn't know they really existed."
"Well, this kid's as close to one as I've ever seen. Takes a wild-eyed pony and talks magic to it, makes it as gentle as a lamb. I've been trying to catch him alone, but I'm not having much luck. Maybe we can try this morning. He seems to ride the perimeter every morning, checking the fences. If we can't catch him, I know where his cabin is."
She swung back onto her horse, looking every bit the television Indian, and we galloped toward the east side of the meadow.
"What's that?" I asked, slowing to point at a boxcar incongruously perched on a rail track that seemed to run straight out of a gaping hole in the mountain along the east side. Grade pulled her horse to a stop.
"Clutch told me it's the entrance to an old gold mine. They still use the boxcar to dump junk from the machine shop into the sludge heap down that ravine." She pointed back the way we'd come, where the meadow ended in an abrupt drop-off. The rusty steel tracks ran north along the edge of the mountain, ending at the ravine. "According to Clutch, it's about the only thing that old mine is good for. It never did produce much gold."
"So, this mine connects to the machine shop?" I tried to picture it. The machine shop was a good half-mile east of the stables on the far east end of the compound, abutting the mountain that ran north and south along the entire valley. The road to the stables followed a thick stand of trees separating most of the compound from the meadows, making for a pretty long hike from one end of the camp to the other using the road. But now that I thought about it, as a crow flies, the distance from the main compound to where we were riding would be much shorter. I could see how a tunnel through the mountain, running mostly north and south, would allow for quite a shortcut.
Suddenly, I felt a paralyzing fear rise up in my gut, as I recalled the dream I'd had the night Connie and Gracie had come to hire me. Without any warning, my throat felt as if it were clamping shut and my palms began to sweat.
"You okay?" Gracie asked.
"Yeah," I lied as the panic slowly abated. But the sense of dread was nearly overwhelming. What I really wanted to do was turn my horse around and ride straight out of camp. How could one lousy recurring dream about dying make me lose my nerve, I wondered. Furious at my cowardice, I forced myself to sound casual.
"You ever been inside the mine?"
"Me? No way. Scared to death of anything underground."
For some reason, this admission made me laugh and I instantly felt better.
"Gracie, you ever dream about dying?"
She looked at me for a minute and I felt her eyes probing me, searching.
"Uh huh," she intoned. "But I ain't dead yet."
I laughed again and this time she joined me. "There something you want to talk about?" she asked.
There was, actually. But I wasn't sure where to start. How could I tell her that I had just discovered, despite years of false bravery, that deep down I was a coward? That the thought of my own death paralyzed me? What kind of private eye did that make me? One thing I'd always relied on was my ability to think fast and move quickly in a crisis. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with the possibility that the next time, I might not rise to the occasion. I might stand stock still and do nothing. I might die.
"So," I said, ignoring her question, "you afraid of heights, too?"
"Nah. Just depths. Probably buried alive in a past life. Just the thought of going underground makes me nervous."
Me, too, I thought, but I didn't share this. I changed the subject.
"Speaking of nervous, Ida Evans seems a little wired to me. And she's taking Lithium carbonate and something called Fluoxetine. You ever run across those in your med-tech days? Could they be making her a little hyper?"
Gracie narrowed her eyes. "Not likely. How'd you find out all that?"
I told her about my sneaking into the office to check Annie's file and going through Ida's desk drawers.
"Hmm. The only time I've seen something similar to that combo was to treat bipolar disease."
"You mean as in manic-depressive?"
"Exactly. If Ida seems wired, I doubt it's the drugs' doing. More likely, she's taking them to keep herself on an even keel. Come on, maybe that's him up there."
She pointed her chin at a distant figure leaning beside a horse. As we drew nearer, it became clear that a young filly had become entangled in the barbed wire fencing along the east side of the pasture, and Joe Bell was trying to free her. Gracie motioned for me to pull up, and we both dismounted quietly, dropping the reins so our horses could graze as we walked closer.
The filly was wide-eyed and terrified, several nasty gashes still oozing onto her dark, sticky, matted coat. It was clear that the horse had been trapped for some time. Her ears were torn and bright red blood ran down to mingle with the black ooze already coagulated on the crooked white blaze of her nose. We inched closer, hearing Joe's gentle voice soothing the colt. " 'Atta girl. You can do it, now. Come on, baby."
Flies buzzed around the horse's wounds, and, every time the horse tried to swish its tail to clear them, the tail became more entwined in the barbs. Though the horse was clearly panicked, Joe's words seemed to calm her.
"Careful, girl. Just let me get this one leg free and then we'll be good as new. Watch your tail, there, that's right. I know this hurts, I wish I didn't have to do this. That's right, good girl." As he spoke, the kid pried the two twisted, tangled wires apart as far as he could, ripping open his own flesh in an attempt to free the trapped hoof. His black hat came off in the process, revealing blond hair combed straight back off the forehead, and surprisingly fine features.
Grade spoke so quietly I barely heard her myself.
"Would it help if I came over and pulled those for you, or would that frighten her even more?"
Joe didn't even turn. His gentle, soothing voice stayed the same, though his hands were covered with blood, some of it his own.
"Don't want to spook her even more than she already is. I just about got it. Thatta girl, one more time now. Okay. Yes! That's it, sweetheart. You can do it, let me just get the tail."
The filly's leg had finally come free, though her tail was still hopelessly entangled in the barbed wire. Feeling her battered hoof touch ground, however, caused the horse to bolt forward. When she realized her tail was still trapped, she laid her ears back, rolled her eyes, squealed a horrifying cry, and kicked back with both hind legs, ripping her tail free from the fence.
Joe took the brunt of the kick to his hip, sending him sprawling
straight into the barbed wire. The filly raced away, and Grade and I dashed toward the writhing form entangled in the fence.
"Shit! Hold still. You're cut pretty bad." Grade pried the barbed wires apart, and I tried to rip the torn flannel shirt free in the dozens of places where it had caught on the fence. The shirt was practically shredded and blood streamed freely down Joe's arms.
"Hold on, I've almost got it," I said. With one final tug, Joe suddenly came tumbling free of the fence, toppling both Grade and me in the process. I heard the flannel shirt rip apart, rendering Joe's chest completely bare, but my brain didn't quite process what my eyes beheld.
"Oh, my," Gracie said, sitting up on her heels. We looked at each other, and then again at Joe, who lay sprawled before us. Ribbons of blood criss-crossed Joe's fine, tawny skin, but that's not what had Gracie and I gaping. Joe Bell, despite outward appearances to the contrary, wasn't a man at all. She was, in fact, a very striking woman.
Chapter Nine
Madeline
Three and a half-weeks earlier
On her twentieth day of incarceration, during kitchen duty, Maddie had scored! Her plastic baggie was dangerously close to bulging and tugged at her pants, but she could barely suppress the grin that threatened to break the surface of her practiced stoic expression. Ten wooden matches, a box of birthday candles, and, miracle of miracles, an honest to goodness Swiss Army knife! This was an unbelievable find, though theft was probably a more accurate description. It was one thing to swipe stuff from the kitchen drawers. It was something else entirely to go through the cook's purse that was hanging in the coat closet. It had been a risky endeavor, one that could easily have landed her in Isolation, had she been caught. But she'd been very careful not to touch any money or personal belongings that the cook was likely to notice missing. She even bypassed the car keys, though it was tempting to take them. But she knew the parking lot was locked, and that, without the code to the gate, the car would be useless, even if she had known how to drive, which she didn't.
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