It didn’t matter. Liz couldn’t imagine leaving Ally ever again. Whatever they faced, Liz would simply have to protect both children from it.
But as she lifted her hands to her eyes, their soreness eased by the moisture in the air, she knew there was little she could do if the Shoemaker set his sights on her again.
Liz stayed crouched on the wet ground for a period of time she couldn’t pinpoint. Time was like blood in these woods, endlessly replenishing itself, but she sensed she was squandering a resource they might need.
“Okay,” she said at last.
Both kids had stood in place without making a sound. They were patient and compliant children, and Liz couldn’t imagine anyone better to aid her in this recovery mission, yet she still feared for their chances.
“You said you thought they’d be inside the barn?” she asked.
Cody nodded solemnly. “Because of the raining.”
“Nah,” Ally said, sounding so like her brother that Liz’s heart gave another dip. “They’ll be outside.”
Having Ally here beside her was a miracle, but Liz also needed her son. Please don’t let me be asking too much. Please let us succeed.
“They don’t care about getting wet,” Ally went on. “I bet they’re still taking down that laurel and the catberry in the barnyard.”
Was that what the children were doing here at this enclave? Clearing brush? Liz allowed herself some small measure of relief.
“Okay,” she said again. “Then lead me to the barn.” Constructing an approach, she added, “We’re going to make it like a game.”
“Like Hide-and-Seek?” asked Cody.
“Exactly,” Liz said. “And Follow the Leader. Kind of a mash-up.”
The kids smiled when she did.
“And then we’ll surprise Reid and the others and we’ll—”
Which was when Liz’s plan petered out. They would have to play it by ear. With any luck, those kids would be as unsupervised as Ally and Cody had been, and Liz could beckon them away, Pied Piper–style. All the treats in her pack would be put to good use.
Ally and Cody were nodding.
Then Ally said, “Why don’t they just meet us here?”
“Well, that would be hard, sweetie,” Liz replied. “I don’t want to shout too loudly. And they might not hear us over the rain anyway.”
“I know that,” Ally said. “But we could call them.”
“Call them?” Liz said. “How?” A thought lit. “Does the cell phone work over here? Do you have it, Al?”
“Not with a phone,” Ally said, delighted by her mother’s error. She turned to Cody.
The little boy began fumbling beneath the collar of his shirt, but the raincoat made his fingers trip. Soundlessly, wordlessly, Liz bent down and unzipped it for him.
The boy drew out a whistle on a string.
“We have a system,” Ally said. “Of signals. Reid invented it and Tom makes us practice them. All the time. He forces us to.”
“Signals?” Liz echoed, gazing down at the tiny silver whistle.
Both kids nodded fervently, faces lit up despite the grayness all around.
“Like … like—” Cody said.
“Time to eat,” Ally put in.
“Or … or a grown-up is coming,” Cody said, finally getting the words out and beaming at Ally.
“Or,” Ally said, ignoring the little boy to gaze up at Liz. “Come right now.”
Liz stared at her. “And the grown-ups? They don’t understand these signals?”
Ally laughed, spark-fast. “No way. They think we’re just playing.”
Liz reached down and took each child’s hand in one of her own and began to walk them toward the edge of the woods where she had first spotted Ally.
“Well,” she said, “I’d say that you both had a very good idea. Why don’t you try the signal, Cody? The one that tells them to come?”
Cody nodded obediently. He pulled the whistle out of his shirt again, and put its miniature slot to his lips.
“You can do it,” Ally told him. “Remember? Three short, three longs. That was for an emergency.”
Three shrill notes cut through the air, then three longer ones sounded.
“Do it again,” Ally suggested.
Cody did, his eyes on Ally.
The notes rang out, distinct and true.
Nothing. Only the soughing of the rain.
“Again,” Ally urged.
“I’m all out of breath,” Cody complained.
“Want me to try?” asked Ally.
Liz too was reaching out her hand.
But Cody opened his mouth again.
He was about to blow when out of the ghostly gales of rain, visible in parts, first feet, then legs, then torsos, three children appeared from different directions, covering the distance to where Liz and Ally and Cody stood.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Two of them resolved into clarity first and Liz was left scanning the mist for her son, her gaze flitting back and forth, raindrops obscuring her vision.
She heard Reid’s voice before she saw him.
“You came.”
It was dull and angry, though recognizable; the voice of the boy on the phone last night, rather than the nimble-fingered son who had been taken out of the hotel.
Still blind, Liz walked forward, arms reaching toward the sound of that voice until she met the block of Reid’s chest, felt his wet face, a little higher now than before their so-called vacation, and spoke into the top of his head. “Yes, Reid. I did. I’m here. I came.”
Her boy, who seemed older, who had grown in just these three weeks, began to cry.
There was a snorting noise from behind.
“Did you call us out for this happy family reunion?” a boy asked. “Because I’m not a part of it. So I’m leaving.”
“No, wait!” Liz said.
She reached down, wiping Reid’s face before tackling her own. She took in the sight of the other two children. The one who had spoken was oldest; he had a good half a head on Reid, and a burgeoning sturdiness in his legs and arms, while the other was that boy’s polar opposite, a tiny sprite of three or four, with a froth of strawberry curls.
The big boy half turned, regarding her with a look of scorn.
And Liz knew whom he must belong to, and she also knew what she could say.
Two can play the mentalist game, Shoemaker.
“Sure you don’t want to go with us?” Liz asked lightly. “Get out of here? Away from your dad?”
“We’re leaving?” Reid said.
The other boy maintained his contemptuous expression.
Liz ignored it as she began digging in her pack. “Here. I thought you guys might be a little hungry.”
The kids descended on the goods—fruit and nut bars, thumbprint cookies, knock-off M&Ms in diluted colors—as if they’d been stranded on a desert island.
“A little hungry!” Reid cried. “We’re a lot!”
“Hey, Mommy, can we really eat all this?” said Ally.
“Can I have some?” asked the blond kid.
“Me too, me too!” said Cody.
The big boy stood there, watching the children scrabble around as if they had just knocked down a piñata. After a moment, he thrust out his hand.
“Hey,” he said. “Leave some a that for me.”
Liz told them her plan, and the children nodded chocolate-smeared faces and murmured assent with crumbs in their mouths. Not a single protest. Maybe the treats had reminded them of all they were missing. Or maybe they were just in a sugar coma, insensate, content.
“My mom already said we’re leaving,” Cody announced. “She just needs to do a little thinking first so the man doesn’t find out. And we can’t go in the rain.”
The big boy—Reid had called him Tom when they jostled over the sweets—lifted his head when he heard that.
The children cast their eyes up to the sky, worriedly for the most part, although Tom wore a licking-his-chops
expression, as if the coming implosion excited him.
Liz was worried herself. Thunder was harmless, getting wet only a little less so. But she had just seen a prong of lightning arc above the canopy. And lightning could fell a tree so fast in these woods, none of them would be able to get out of its way.
Cody’s mom’s hesitation made sense, but Liz knew the Shoemaker in ways the moms who had chosen to live with him clearly didn’t. And the Shoemaker was worse than any storm.
“We’ll meet up with your mom—with all your moms—once we get out. I have a friend who will come in and search for them here.”
“My mom’s not here,” Tom said scornfully. “You think she’s a nutcase loser, too?”
Liz had indeed been wondering who might have chosen not just to come with the Shoemaker, but to have a child with him.
She wiped her wet hands off as best she could and began to load up the remaining food. “Well, that’s good,” she said. “Then we can call the non-nutcase-loser from a real phone.”
Tom looked at her, his expression flickering for a second. “Cool.”
Liz gave Reid her raincoat, deciding that its draping folds would slow the little blond one down too much. Then she decided on an order in which they would walk, big sandwiching little, and indicated their direction. They would take the same way out she had followed in. There was something of a trail now; it would be a little easier to navigate.
“We can’t go that way,” Tom said.
Liz braced her hips with her hands and bit back a breath. “Why not?” Sweet, compliant, she’d thought about the other kids. But this one was trouble.
“Because we’re going to be missed,” Tom said, a duh in his tone. “They’ll see our tracks and follow them.” He paused until Liz looked at him. “My father will follow them.”
Liz quelled a rising panic. Minutes had been devoted to mere treats. The Shoemaker may have already detected their perfidy. He might be stalking them now, unseen and unheard.
Cody began to approach Ally, moving amongst the twigs and brush on the ground. A stick snagged his leg and he tripped, crying out. The crack of the branch disturbed the whole woods, louder than all their voices combined, violent where the whistle had been playful.
Liz gathered the boy up, shushing him, looking around. Then she turned back to Tom. “Do you know another way out?”
For the first time, Tom looked doubting. “The only place I can imagine them not thinking we’d go … it has a path if we can get across …”
Reid picked up where Tom had left off. “The falls.”
THE SHOEMAKER
Kurt had to deal with the body.
Yesterday had been spent finishing up a few essential tasks, as well as restoring Madeline’s mood, making her understand why her mother had to be dealt with as she was. That hadn’t been easy, but Madeline’s girlish adulation had helped.
Kurt had succeeded in keeping the others close to the barn—he’d always had a hold on people, commanding them to his will without their even knowing they were being commanded—but children were an unknown quantity, as Kurt had learned from Tom. For the time being the horde seemed content, hacking at brush that blocked the entrance to an old haymow, but that job was nearly complete. And there was work to be done elsewhere on the grounds.
Kurt’s misadventure with Madeline’s mother was not why Paul had a composting method that would get them out of this predicament. It was just opportune that he did. What was less ideal was that in order for Kurt to make use of it, Paul would have to know what he had done.
Kurt wasn’t worried about anyone coming to look for the dead woman. He could read her story as if it were one of the true crime books he used to love poring over. He’d always had that ability, and it hadn’t failed him, even with things unraveling here in much the same way that they had when he ventured off to college.
But they hadn’t spun out completely here—at least not yet—and this woman’s death wouldn’t be the cause of their doing so. Madeline was the sole person on the planet the woman had been able to convince of her importance. No one would search for her, not hours away from where she lived, in what was a nearly undiscoverable location. The woman wouldn’t be missed by anyone that much.
Kurt hated the distant, knowing look in her eyes. As if she could read him as he did her. He leaned down, thinking to press her eyelids shut, but the idea of touching her with his hands was repellant. That cupped shell of skull would burst so satisfyingly, like the hull of a coconut, if he kicked it. Kurt forced himself to turn away. He had more important things to do.
Paul was pulling reeds from the pond, shirtsleeves pushed up for the messy task. He’d been at this since they arrived, asserting repeatedly that the pond was going to be key to their processing system. The reeds he was pulling out would also make excellent watertight containers; Paul laid each one down as carefully as a tube of glass.
“Ahoy, the pond!” Kurt called out, in the joking way he knew to adopt with Paul.
Paul looked up, screening his brow with a muck-streaked arm. “Hello, the meadow!” he shouted back. “Hey, does the meadow want to get down to the pond and help?”
Kurt put on a good-natured smile, parting tall grasses and descending the bank. When he arrived, he didn’t enter the water, and he made sure his face turned serious.
“Paul, we have a bit of a situation.”
Paul blocked the bright light with his forearm again. In a little while, he wouldn’t have to. The sun was disappearing fast, covered over by scudding clouds.
“The children all right?”
“Sure, sure.” Kurt nodded. “That isn’t it.”
Paul turned back to the diminishing stand of reeds, clearly itching to return to his task. “What is it, then?”
“This might be best as a visual,” Kurt said. Water was lapping at his boots and he stepped back with a feeling of distaste. How would this slimy pool ever be put to use?
“Kurt …” Paul said. “I’ve got a lot to do here. As you can see.”
The eruption was close to the surface; Kurt felt every part of his body fill with heat. But he managed to speak with the jovial demeanor Paul had come to expect from him. Kurt played the willing assistant so that Paul could believe he was in charge.
“I do see,” he said. “And don’t think I don’t appreciate you getting your hands dirty. But Paul—we have a different kind of dirty work to do right now.”
That was all the preparation he would give, the only hint he’d provide.
Paul finally turned away from the pond, a faint frown appearing between his brows. “And it’s a visual, you said?”
Kurt nodded, glad to be leaving this slop bucket, even if the job ahead would be equally nasty. He waited until Paul had climbed out before indicating their direction.
The hardest part would be when Paul saw, and Kurt had already determined that warning him in advance would only make things worse. Best to be brisk about this relatively trivial blip on the radar of their creation. He had also concocted a story to engage Paul in the righteousness of this act. As the best stories did, this one contained an element of truth.
Paul flung droplets from his hair, wagging his head as they trudged uphill. He wiped a hand across his face, licked off damp lips.
“Don’t you ever worry that what’s in the pond shouldn’t be ingested?” asked Kurt.
“Well, it’s not like I’m drinking it by the jugful,” Paul responded, and Kurt contributed a chuckle.
“By the creek?” Paul asked, scouting with his eyes as they walked.
“You got it. That big tree over there.”
“The willow,” said Paul.
Again, pressure rose inside Kurt. The idea that this rinkydink college teacher—this nothing of a man—thought he could inform Kurt of anything made him want to take Paul’s windpipe and crush it. But Kurt suppressed the urge, speaking merrily, “That what it is?”
Paul gave a nod. “See those drooping boughs? That’s why they say it weeps.”
>
“Learn something new every day,” Kurt said.
“Especially in this place,” Paul responded, and turned to clap Kurt on the shoulder.
Kurt hid his instinctual wince, offering a nod for cover. “You got that right, too.”
Paul slowed his pace. “Kurt?”
Kurt was distracted; it took him a second to work up a grin.
“Have I thanked you?” Paul said. “For making me—not making me, that’s not the right word—”
Oh yes, it is, thought Kurt.
“—for giving me the support that enabled me finally to act?”
Kurt slowed down, too. “No thanks needed, buddy.”
“No, but—” Paul broke off. “I want to thank you. I know some would criticize what we’re doing out here, at least the way we did it. But I needed to make a better life for my children. For myself. And if we hadn’t met … Well, I might’ve stayed where I was, fat and cushy, and never realizing my …”
Kurt knew Paul wasn’t going to fill in the word, but he waited the required beat. “Destiny?” he offered after the pause had gone on for the right length of time.
Paul gazed up at the sky as if he owned it. Pressure boiled again inside Kurt but he managed to regard the scene neutrally.
“Yeah,” Paul said at last. “That’s right. My destiny.”
“Well,” Kurt said as they resumed walking, “I’m glad. But I still say no thanks are needed.”
Paul would get the chance to repay him momentarily.
They had arrived at the place where Madeline had been suckling her mutt, and Paul registered what lay there before the truth slightly penetrated his consciousness.
Kurt could read the reaction in his shoulders.
He allowed for the inevitable denial. A snake’s tongue of lightning forked across the sky, diverting Paul’s attention, and Kurt waited that out as well. When Paul again lowered his eyes, one of two things was going to happen. Either Paul would drop to his knees and feel for a pulse, having no idea that this woman was almost twenty hours dead, or else he would ask Kurt how he had found her. What Paul wouldn’t do was put two and two together. Most men couldn’t stomach the idea of standing next to a murderer.
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