by Hunt, James
Luke had forgotten how much she missed as a kid. Their mom was gone a lot more than when he was little. Better jobs at bigger airlines meant longer hours and more time away from home. “You missed her, huh?”
“Yeah,” Holly answered. “I guess I did.” She plucked at his leg hair, and she giggled when he winced.
Luke tried to smack her hand away but couldn’t reach due to his limited mobility. “Stop, you freak.” But that only made her try it again and increased the level of giggles, and even Luke started to laugh. “Ugh! You’re lucky I was shot!”
Luke took her hand, engulfing it quickly with one snatch, his grip gentle but firm. “Hey. I want you to do something for me, okay?”
“What?” Holly widened her eyes, making them grow big and round like full moons. They always looked so green whenever she was worried. It was as though the emotion brightened them.
“You know it’s not safe, right? That there are people out there who want to hurt us?”
“I know,” she answered. “I’m not a kid.”
“Good, because if something ever happens and we are in trouble, I want you to hide somewhere good and don’t make a sound, no matter what.”
“But—”
Luke tightened his grip. “No buts, Holly.” And before she opened her mouth to answer, he pulled her close, dropping his voice to a whisper. “And this isn’t a promise you can break.” He held up his left hand, extending his pinky.
Holly regarded the pinky, those eyes still wide and bright green. She nodded and then wrapped her pinky around his. “I promise.”
Luke exhaled, knowing she meant it. She might act like a teenager, but a younger sibling never forgets the promises from childhood. For them, that was the pinky promise. Whenever either of them did that, they knew the other meant business.
Luke kissed her forehead and then rested his head back on the pillow, yawning. Fatigue had gripped him again, and the room started to fade to black. “I love you… Holls…”
Holly reached up on her tippy toes and kissed Luke’s cheek. “I love you too,” she whispered in his ear and then left.
Outside, the snow had picked up, and it made it hard for Mark to see very deep into the woods. But he still kept his eyes glued to the horizon, waiting for Kate to return. Over the course of his relationship with his wife, he had become very good at waiting. He could argue that he was the most patient man in the world. But this kind of waiting was different than before. It was dangerous.
Mark squinted, thinking he saw something in the snow, but once his eyes set on it, it didn’t move. Nothing but sheets of white waved against a sky fading into night. Uneasy, he walked to the kitchen and grabbed Luke’s medication, passing the townspeople who had taken up whatever space they could find on the floor.
Most of them were asleep. Mark imagined that they hadn’t had a good rest in a while—either that, or the adrenaline from the sprint here had finally worn off. But for the number of people crammed inside the cabin, it was quiet.
Mark tapped on Luke’s door. When there wasn’t an answer, he cracked it open. “Luke?”
The boy was asleep on the bed, his head turned away from the door, and the covers pulled all the way up to the white bandages that covered his shoulder and chest, which rose and fell steadily with each breath.
Mark watched him for a moment and then stepped as quietly as the old wooden floorboards allowed him.
Luke may have not been his biological son, but that didn’t mean he loved the boy any less. Luke was eight when he first started dating his mom. And for a child that had experienced so much pain and trauma, he was wonderfully kind. There wasn’t a trace of the evil that controlled his father.
But it was a thought that lingered in the back of Mark’s mind, the question of “what if?” What if the smiling boy had that evil inside of him? Because despite the teachings of his mother and the guidance Mark had tried to give the boy, there was no guarantee that he would be good.
Luke knew the truth about his real father. He knew what happened to him as a baby, and the crimes his father committed. But now, all those worries that Mark had experienced about the boy’s future when he was younger resurfaced. Dennis wasn’t locked away anymore. He was out there, somewhere in the cold, killing people who did nothing to deserve to die.
And what would happen if Dennis found him here? What would the father do to the son he kidnapped all those years ago and used as a hostage to escape the authorities? History enjoyed repeating itself. And Mark feared that another repetition was close at hand.
“Luke?” Mark asked, gently shaking Luke’s arm. “Luke, you need to get up.”
The boy groaned, his eyes fluttering open.
“Hey, it’s time for your medicine.” Mark extended his hand, his open palm holding two pills.
Luke reached for them lazily and then downed them with a swig of water. When he was finished, he leaned his head back onto the pillow, closing his eyes again. But sensing Mark was still in the room, he opened them.
“What’s wrong?” Luke’s voice croaked as he frowned with concern.
Mark battled with telling him the truth, about everything. About what happened with Claire back in Fairfax, about the fact that his real father was out there in the storm, trying to kill anyone that opposed him. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized what he needed to say.
“Your mother lied to you,” Mark said. “About what happened in Fairfax. About Claire.”
Luke tensed. “What?”
“After you were shot, your mother and Claire carried you through the forest,” Mark answered, gathering his nerve for the truth. “But they had trouble moving you. There was a lot of gunfire, and you need to understand that everyone was scared, including your mother—”
“What. Happened.” The words came out more as growls than actual speech, and Luke’s eyes glinted with fear and anger and confusion. And for a moment, Mark wondered if he’d made a mistake, if he’d gone too far.
“Claire left you,” Mark said, his tone blunt. “She left you to save herself, and it was your mother who dragged you to the plane and got you to safety.”
The words swirled through the air, and it looked as though Luke were examining them before he finally let himself hear them.
“Your mother wanted to spare you from that truth,” Mark said, watching Luke’s face contort to further confusion. “But I’m not going to sit here and watch you make her feel bad for trying to spare your feelings. You’re old enough for the hard truths of life.”
And so Mark waited, the silence passing between them building anxiousness.
“Why?” Again Luke’s words came out cracked and broken. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to make your own decisions and form your own thoughts, and you can’t do that without the truth.”
Luke nodded, his eyes drifting to the foot of the bed.
“And there’s something else,” Mark said, the spit disappearing from his mouth. “Something you need to know about the people that are out there.”
Mark reached for Luke’s hand when a gunshot thundered, followed quickly by shattering glass. Screams came next, and by the time Mark was at the door, there was already a bloodied body on the floor and two men with guns in the living room.
Mark stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him. The pair of intruders were dressed like the men at the town.
“Well, look what we’ve got here.” The older of the pair spoke first, the end of his pistol switching between the huddled group by the fire and Mark. “A party? And we weren’t invited?” He shook his head, clucking his tongue.
The second one, younger and thinner, stepped toward the group, his weapon trained on them as well. Holly was in that group.
Mark’s gun rested beneath the counter, blocked from view of the inmates by a short wall. It was just out of arm’s reach. He stepped toward it, and the fat man brought Mark into his crosshairs.
“Go on,” he said. “Join the
others.” Then he looked past Mark to the closed door. “What you hiding in there?”
Mark shuffled closer to the gun, his eyes falling to the bloodied body on the floor, then looked back up to the big man. He slowly raised his hands, stopping them at waist level, just high enough for the gun.
“Don’t move,” the big man said.
But Mark’s hand was only inches away. He could almost feel the cold of the metal, the hardened steel. He didn’t dare look for Holly in the group. She was tucked away safe in the back somewhere.
“I said don’t move!” The big man stomped forward, finger on the trigger.
It happened quickly. Mark reached for the pistol and curled his fingers around the handle, placing his index finger on the trigger. The recoil from the gunshot caused him to miss, then a bullet entered his chest and slammed him back into the wall.
Cold washed over him, blood leaking through his clothes and staining the front of him red. A few screams filtered up through the air, but the only one he recognized was “Daddy!” His legs gave out, and he slid to the floor. The big man who’d shot him stomped over and knocked the pistol out of his hands before he had a chance to use it again.
“Shut up! All of you!” the big guy shouted, keeping his gun aimed at Mark’s head, and then pushed open Luke’s door. “Got another one in here, Billy.”
Mark wanted to speak, he wanted to reach out and call for Holly, but darkness was falling over him now. Death pulled the veil over his eyes, and all sensation disappeared from his body. The last few noises he heard were the screams of women and Luke’s defiant grunting as the big man pulled him from bed and dragged him out with the others. He wanted to tell Luke that he loved him. He wanted to say the same thing to Holly. But all faded to black.
10
Kate wasn’t sure how long they kept up their sprint before exhaustion finally gripped its relentless and inevitable fingers around their bodies. She only knew of what happened when they stopped.
“I can’t.” A puff of icy air flew from Stacy’s mouth. “I need a break.” Her legs stumbled along with her words, and finally she collapsed to her knees.
“We can rest at the cabin,” Rodney said, though his tone sounded as if he was as weary as the woman. “We’re close. It’s not that much farther.”
Captain Hurley squinted through a blast of snow, his officers clustering around him, most of them ill prepared for the sudden escape, finding themselves half frozen. “We can push it. C’mon.”
Whimpering, Stacy complied and started walking. Kate waited for the officers to catch up to her, letting Harley pass, and then found Luis, who’d showed her the Morse code machine. “What are the chances that the message went through?”
Luis huffed, shuffling through the snow, his head down and his shoulders hunched forward. “One hundred percent.” He groaned, fatigue catching up with him as well. “But the chances that the National Guard troop actually listened to it?” He shrugged, shaking his head.
“And you’re sure it was the National Guard that you were hearing?” Kate asked. “It wasn’t something else? Something you weren’t—”
“I know what I heard,” Luis answered.
Kate dropped the subject. She was pushing her hopes onto a situation she wasn’t even sure would come to fruition. But that gun Rodney had brought with him to save them killed a lot of Dennis’s men, and they now had more trained shooters on their side. Even if the message didn’t go through, their circumstances were improving despite the cold, and despite the odds.
A light flickered up ahead, breaking the monotony of the darkness and the shape of the cabin came into view. Kate hastened her pace, stumbling past the other tired bodies and taking the lead. But as she drew closer Kate realized that something was wrong.
The front door was open, and despite the distance, Kate saw someone sprawled out across the floor.
“No,” Kate whispered and then sprinted from the group.
“Kate, wait!” Rodney shouted after her, no doubt having the same tingling suspicions as she, but she had too much of a head start on him.
Hot tears streaked down Kate’s cheeks, running back into her ears and hair because of the wind, only to freeze in place due to the cold.
Kate leapt over the body and the pool of blood on the floor, launching herself into the living room.
“Holly! Luke! Mark!”
Four more bodies lay on the living room floor, the glow of the fire illuminating blank and lifeless stares of the dead. Relief flooded her veins when she didn’t see Holly or Luke among them, and then when she stepped around the kitchen counter toward Luke’s door, she froze.
When she first opened her mouth to scream, there was nothing. She shuddered, gasping cold air, and then it came slowly, her cry bellowing up and out of her like some ancient, primal thing born from nothing but pain.
She dropped to her knees, screaming until her throat went raw, and Rodney was standing next to her, staring at Mark’s dead body. She tried to crawl to him, but Rodney held her back. She viciously smacked his hands away. “Let me go! Let me go!”
Rodney released her, and sobbing, Kate crawled to her husband. Her fingers hovered above his body, as if she were almost afraid to touch him. Her mouth quivered as tears dripped onto the wound that killed Mark.
Kate ripped off her gloves and tossed them aside in anger then cupped Mark’s face, the scruff of his beard coarse and cold against her palms. She ran her hands through his hair, whimpering. Behind her, she heard the gasps and cries of the others who had lost loved ones, the others who had dead waiting for them to collect.
Luke’s door was open, and Kate lifted her red and tear-soaked eyes to the empty bed. The sheets had been torn off messily, and a cup lay on the floor, its liquid staining the wood a darker shade of brown.
Slowly, grief gave way to rage. Luke’s body wasn’t here. Neither was Holly’s. Which meant they were taken. And Kate knew who had done it.
Anger pushed Kate to her feet, propelling her past Rodney and the others toward the front door. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill all of them.
The cold touched her face, and then Rodney grabbed hold of her, yanking her back inside.
“No, Kate.”
“Let me go!”
Rodney pulled her close, keeping her from escape. “You can’t do this by yourself.”
“I’m not losing my children to him!” Kate huffed and lunged at Rodney like a wounded animal. “You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’ll do.” She turned away, stomping out into the snow.
“Who?” Rodney asked, screaming and following her into the woods, catching up to her and stopping her once again. “Kate, you’ll die.”
Kate stopped and collapsed into the snow on her knees. Rodney was right. She couldn’t march into town alone, armed with nothing but a pistol. That would only get her killed, and that wouldn’t help her children.
“We can get them back,” Rodney said. “But the only way we get them back is if we’re smart about it. And the only way we’re smart about it is if we take our time.”
“I don’t have time,” Kate said.
Rodney smirked. “We didn’t have time in New York. We didn’t have time on the road here. And I didn’t have time to make it to the patrol station.” He gripped her shoulders. “But we did it.” He inched close, only a breath separating the two of them. “I swear on my life that I won’t let them get away with it, and I swear I will do everything I can to get your kids back to you safely. Let me help you.”
Kate wrapped her arms around Rodney, squeezing him tight, and she cried. The same guttural screams that she let go in the cabin escaped into the night air, which echoed her grief, and Rodney held her until it had run its course.
Kate peeled herself off of him and then looked Rodney in the eyes, wiping the tears from her own. She took a breath, clearing her throat and doing her best to compose herself. “There’s something you don’t know. Something that’s important for you to understand before we go
any further.”
Rodney pressed his eyebrows together questioningly. “What is it?”
“That man, the one who is in charge of the inmates, he’s Luke’s father.”
Rodney laughed, as most people do who are given such news, but when Kate’s expression didn’t break, when she said nothing else, the smile and laughter disappeared. He stepped away, running his hands through his hair, shaking his head in disbelief. “How is—” He turned around in a circle. “How?”
“That doesn’t matter now,” Kate answered. “All that matters now is getting them back. I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out who he has. He’s never met Luke, and Luke’s never met him. But I know that if he does find out who he is, he’ll do whatever he thinks will hurt me the most. And that will involve my children.”
The march back to town was quick and then painfully slow. Dennis wasn’t sure how many men he’d lost, but from the looks of the survivors, he would have thought they’d all died. Every once in a while, he would scream, that bug of his burrowing around in his head, and he’d fire his pistol into the woods, striking nothing but snow, rocks, and trees.
A man clutching his stomach, struck by shrapnel from the big gun’s bullets, collapsed to his knees and face-planted into the snow. There he lay still, none of the inmates around even glancing down as they passed. It was just another dead man. All of them had seen plenty of dead men in their lifetime.
Firelight from the windows of Duluth fanned the flames of hope, and everyone sighed with relief. The fires of the town brought warmth from the bitter cold, the layers of ice on everyone’s body starting to thaw.
The moment Dennis’s men were back in their home base, anyone who wasn’t seriously wounded grabbed liquor and food. But mostly liquor. One of them passed by Dennis, and he snatched the bottle from the man’s hands and then smashed it on the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dennis roared, turning every head in camp. “You think that you’re taking a break? No!” He pointed to the building that acted as their armory. “We’re going to find those pigs and kill them!”
