Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “I found it.”

  “In my wallet,” he says.

  “So, it’s him,” says the Moon.

  You’re about to say something, but Niven raises his hand, ready to strike you, and you hold your tongue. The jig is up. Don’t get him angrier than he already is. “I don’t know how you got yourself into this mess,” he says, “but it looks as if we’ve got some damage control to do, gentlemen. What we do depends on you. Do you follow?”

  You nod slowly. There’s not much good about this except for one small thing. Alyson didn’t set you up! Somehow that seems to matter, although you’re not sure why.

  “The man asked you a question,” says the Moon, his voice even.

  “Okay. I follow.”

  “So, where did you get this picture?”

  “Like you said. It was in your wallet.”

  “In my hotel room?” You nod. Niven shakes his head. “And how the heck did you get into that hotel room?”

  The Moon stands back so you can stand up straight again, turn around, and answer the question face-to-face. You tip your chin toward Tank.

  “Smart ass there handed me the key.”

  You don’t know what pain this may end up bringing down on your head, but it’s worth it right now to see the look on the Littlest Hulk’s face.

  “What the —?”

  “Can it, Tank,” says the Moon. Then he looks at you, Blink, his eyes asking a question, and you answer it, because you don’t want trouble with this one.

  “He threw away the key after he chucked the BlackBerry back into the room.”

  “Bullshit!” says Tank.

  You just shrug.

  Niven doesn’t look at Tank. He never looks at Tank. He didn’t up there in the hall of the hotel, and he doesn’t now, as if the sight of him is painful or maybe only irrelevant. Instead, he looks at the Moon, his eyes questioning, his chin clenched tight as if to say, Do we really have to put up with this? You glance nervously at the Moon.

  “You gonna believe this little asshole?” says Tank.

  “Pipe down,” says the Moon. He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t need to. Then he sniffs and looks at you. “Are you alone?”

  You nod. Don’t even have to think about it. Right now you are totally and utterly alone.

  Niven places the photograph of Alyson in his breast pocket and pats it. “How did you get here?” he says. You shrug. “We’re miles from anywhere, kid. I asked you a question, and I want an answer.”

  “Hitched,” you say.

  “Bullshit,” says Tank.

  The Moon waves his head at Tank.

  “What?”

  “Go take a look,” says the Moon.

  Tank makes a face, like a kid whose mother has just sent him to bed.

  “Go,” says the Moon.

  Tank spits, then heads across the darkening yard toward the shed. There’s an ATV parked in the shadows behind the van. In another moment Tank straddles it, starts it up, flips on the headlight, and after a brain-jarring few revs, tears out into the yard and up the road. The sound of the machine shatters the silence, which seems to fall in jagged pieces all around you, Blink. You want to duck, afraid that you might get pierced by this sharp-edged falling dark.

  You think of Kitty out there somewhere. At least there’s no chance of her being surprised by Tank.

  “Bring him in, Wallace,” says Niven, and turns toward the lodge.

  So now the Moon has a name.

  You stumble forward, with Niven leading the way toward the door, Wallace right behind you.

  You have to time this just right.

  The instant Niven turns and reaches for the doorknob, you spin out the other way, like a crazy dancer, ducking as you go, feeling the breeze of Wallace’s arm pass over your head — and you are gone, running down toward the lake.

  Scamper! Don’t look back! Straight to the dock and that boat tethered at the end. The deck shakes and rattles under you, and then you jump.

  She watches Blink’s capture from high in the branches of a white pine. She sees the big one moving in on the boy and wants to yell out, only stopping herself when she realizes that giving away her position won’t help anyone. So she lies flat on a thick branch, like a large cat, and takes it all in, feeling as though it is she who is being dragged, kicking and screaming.

  They empty the boy’s pockets, and then the short one is sent off for the ATV. She wonders how tough Blink is. Do they know about her yet? They haven’t had much time. Is the little one heading after her? All the more reason to stay put. All the more reason for this bird’s-eye view. She sees the one who is clearly the boss and knows now, for sure, what she had suspected all along. It was a trap, and Blink has walked right into it.

  She tried to stop him, didn’t she? But did she try hard enough? Why does it all seem like fate, as if it were meant to happen? But there isn’t time for such speculation now.

  The ATV flies up the road, passing underneath her and out toward Tumble Road. The sound diminishes to nothing, but she is not sure whether the little one — what did Blink call him? Tank. Yes, that was it — whether Tank has stopped the machine, or whether he has driven out of her range of hearing.

  The Jeep. That’s where he must have gone. It won’t be where he expects it to be. There may be a chance he’ll miss it. Right: a yellow Jeep. Damn!

  They turn out Blink’s pockets and don’t find a key, because it is safe in her pocket. The doors of the Jeep are locked. What will they make of that? Will that give them more reason to suspect an accomplice? Or will Blink think of something? If they do manage to pry the information out of him, then she will need to make herself scarce. It disturbs her that she has seen only three people. She’s sure Blink said there were four in all.

  And now there is a shout. He’s gotten away! He’s heading toward the dock. As she watches, clinging to her branch, he jumps onto a boat that’s there, waiting. And suddenly a part of her cracks wide open, letting out an animal cry of pain and sadness all wrapped up together that she can’t begin to understand. She presses her face against the bough of the tree, shaking, holding on for dear life.

  You land in the aluminum boat and lose your footing, tumbling forward over the middle seat, landing painfully on your shoulder, and lying there like a fish in the bottom of the boat, gasping for air. You stumble to your feet, adrenaline charged, only to lurch forward as the boat comes to a juddering stop at the end of the line securing it to the dock.

  You fall again, but you’re up in a flash, scurrying to the bow to untie the taut yellow rope connecting you to the land. You shove yourself off, putting water between you and them.

  You’re floating free.

  You stand as the boat drifts outward into the still black water of the little weed-choked bay. You are breathing hard, bruised and hurting, but triumphant! Your mouth hangs open, gulping at the cool air. Niven and Wallace just watch you like someone pushed the Pause button on them. Then click — Wallace moves. You’ve got more of a head start than you’d have ever dreamed. It’s eerie. You turn sharply to look behind you out onto the bay, half expecting to see a gunboat approaching — an armada. But there is nothing out there but the dusk.

  You put your hands on your hips. Now what? You stare at the outboard. You have no idea how that works. It’s tipped up, the propeller out of the water. You step over the seat and give it a shove. It doesn’t move. Locked in position somehow. But lying in a rack attached to the inside of the boat is an oar. You grab it and stick the business end straight down into the water until it hits bottom, which is not deep. The bottom gives, you push down hard, and the boat shoots back end first out into the bay. You dip the oar in again and shove with all your might. The boat starts to come around, and you realize that this is a good thing, so you shove that oar down into the muck and push again so that the prow of the boat is now facing out into the lake, the way it ought to be. You’re a good twenty meters from shore now, and Wallace is only just reaching the dock. He’s got his hands in
his pockets. He’s not in any hurry.

  “Where you heading?” he says, standing at the end of the dock.

  He doesn’t sound concerned, which immediately makes you worried. But you aren’t about to launch into any discussion about your immediate plans. It isn’t about plans is it, Blink? It never has been. Life is about reacting. When you end up in a mess, you do something about it. You beat them at their own game, didn’t you, boy? They only lowered their guard for a split second, and you were gone, ducking and weaving out of there.

  You stick the oar down one more time into the murk, and you almost follow it overboard as the blade catches on something — a submerged log maybe — something that moves but not much. You reach out to grab the side of the boat, drop the oar into the drink. You fall to your knees to drag it out, wet and slimy.

  You push again more carefully, and now the water is getting too deep to pole the boat away. Your eyes glom onto the oarlock. You’ve never seen one in your whole life, but you know what it’s for, all right. You sit and slam home the pin attached to the oar into the lock and then stare into the boat for the other oar. But there isn’t one. Where the other oarlock should be there is a rubber holder with a couple of rods stuck in it, standing straight up like car antennas.

  You pull on the oar anyway, and the boat starts veering right.

  “You aren’t going to go far like that,” shouts Wallace. There is a bit of laughter in his voice. “Why don’t you just bring it back, son,” he says. “It’s a lot shorter distance to here than it is to there.”

  You pull the oar out of the useless lock, shimmy your butt across the seat, and with two hands dip the oar into the water on the other side, using it like a paddle.

  “I’ve got a canoe over here, Brent,” says Wallace. “I can reach you in about three strokes. I’d rather you saved me the trouble.”

  You shut him out. You paddle on the right until the boat starts heading left into the thickest of the bulrushes, and then you shimmy back to the left again and paddle there a bit, bringing the boat around, though you are now moving ever so slowly in a dry jungle of rushes. Up close, you can see that their brown heads are busted open, spilling out guts like the stuffing of a chair. You paddle hard, the best you can, with those reeds battering against the hull, while the prow piles up dead and shriveled lily pads.

  The exhilaration of escape seeps out of you. An endlessly long day catches up to you. You sit. You turn and stare at the outboard as the boat comes to a dead stop out in the reeds. You are baby Moses in his basket. Except this Moses isn’t going to escape the pharaoh.

  You are so tired. You are tired to death.

  You turn your back on the shore and look out across the lake. And that’s when you notice the fishing tackle box. You don’t know for sure that’s what it is, but when you open it, you can see well enough. And what you see first is the white cross and the bright red of a Swiss Army knife.

  You sit up straight, glancing back toward the shore, hoping Wallace didn’t see you make this discovery. The big man’s back is to you. He’s walked up the deck toward the shore, where Niven is coming to meet him.

  Quickly you slip the pocketknife into your left running shoe, pushing it down under your arch, wiggling your foot to make it as comfortable as possible. Then you sit there waiting for a second wind, but all you get is the cold breeze coming up off the water, pushing the boat into the shallows. Even in your snug new hoodie, you can feel October close its fist around you.

  The water stinks. Something died here. Out there, beyond the bay, the water still holds long gashes of setting sun. In here the water is brown and turgid like a plugged toilet bowl.

  “There’s nowhere to go, boy,” says Wallace. He’s back at his spot at the end of the dock again, and Niven is standing at the foot of the dock, his arms crossed. “Out there is just bush and wetland,” says Wallace.

  You turn to look out toward the “there” he’s talking about.

  “You head out onto the lake, and you make our job easy. Nobody’s going to see you for a good long time, my man.”

  You are “boy” one minute and “man” the next. And right now you’re not sure what you are.

  He lets his news sink in.

  “Now, there’s wetland at the south end of the lake,” he says. “With a bit of luck, you might find a channel through it. In a day or two, you might even find your way out to the Mississippi.”

  He doesn’t say it nasty. He even sounds a little encouraging, as if he’s giving you a chance — a head start. But by now you can hardly imagine getting out of the bay, let alone all the way to some river. Did he say the Mississippi? How far is it you’ve come, anyway? Does that legendary river come all this way? How little you know about the world, Blink.

  The darkness is coming on, and Wallace doesn’t have to say anything more to convince you that it’s over. There are no roads but the one behind you. The road ends at this nameless lake.

  “Mr. Niven was right, Brent,” says Wallace. “We aren’t going to harm you. We just gotta talk, eh? I know you don’t want to believe that. Why would you? But it’s the truth. The only truth you’ve got right now.”

  Not the only truth, you think. You’ve still got Kitty. She might have already beaten it back to the car. All you’ve got to do is hold on.

  Captain Panic retires again to his deep room inside you. The dread recedes. You look down into the gloom on which the boat sits and see no reflection in it. You could just tip yourself over into it, into this brown nothingness. Which is exactly what you do. You stand and just step right out of the boat. You hit bottom, thigh deep.

  The cold makes you catch your breath. Then you grab the yellow rope and lead the boat back to the dock, like it’s some big dumb animal that made a break for freedom and you’re this patient farm boy who has to bring it back to the barn.

  She clings to the tree, her eyes tight shut, her face wet with tears. It no longer matters if anyone heard her strangled scream. In her mind’s eye, she sees him jump from the end of the dock to the boat, sees the boat shoot out onto the water to the end of its rope. The end of the dock, the boat, the end of the dock, the boat, the end of the dock, the boat. He escapes and doesn’t escape. He is gone forever and never leaves. He only passes from one state of being to another. A floating brother in a dark floating world.

  The ATV returns, and the noise passing under her perch brings Kitty back. Shakily, she wipes her face, slick with tears and snot. She sniffs and raises herself to a sitting position, straddling the branch. What now?

  She shinnies down the tree, scraping her arms and legs, liking the pain of it — good, clean pain. Distracting her from the pain inside. So much for her brand-new threads, her cute little gaucho jacket.

  There is a window of opportunity here that might not come again. She races up the road, now deep in shadows. She reaches the Jeep and curses the beep it makes when she unlocks it. She climbs in and sits behind the wheel out of breath.

  But what is she to do?

  The police? After she and Blink left Sharbot Lake, they passed through nothing but a village or two. Settlements. Sharbot Lake itself wasn’t all that large. The man at the Petro-Can had been friendly; she could ask him where the nearest police station is.

  And yet. . .

  There is something wrong with the idea. And foremost of what is wrong is the idea of the police. She has spent the last seven months on the other side of the law. She has become the kind of person who crosses the road to avoid passing a cop on the beat. She has been a person whose eccentric pink Little Mermaid backpack has often contained restricted substances. The police, she has come to think, are not her friends.

  She shakes this off. She is not on the wrong side of the law right now. She has nothing on her and nothing to hide. She has no record. And she has witnessed a crime — seen it with her own eyes. Those men did not give Blink a talking-to for trespassing. She could convince the cops of what she had seen, she’s sure of it.

  But. . .

&
nbsp; Even if they came, even if they took her seriously, it would be hours before they got back to this place, and what would they find? A trio of guys at a hunting lodge. That’s what. There would be no trace of Blink. Even if they weren’t expecting trouble, there would be time enough to stuff him in some closet somewhere once they saw the cruiser entering the clearing. Or stuff him in a grave, for that matter.

  No. It wouldn’t be a trio of hunters the cops would find. The businessman . . . what was his name? Niven, Jack Niven would make himself scarce, since his face would be too well known. So he would hide, and no matter what she tried to tell the cops, they’d look at her as if she was delusional or a troublemaker or some hopeless freak trying to get her face in the newspapers.

  As she sits there in the Jeep, her thoughts become clearer and clearer, and she realizes that even if she were able to convince the cops to come, there would be no one here by the time they arrived. They would find a boarded-up lodge, with no recent signs of habitation. Jack and his men would have split. They’d have had all the time in the world.

  And finally Kitty realizes that at this very minute, those men may be torturing Blink to find out where the key to the Jeep got to. They could be screaming up that road anytime now — and not in an ATV, but in the van she saw parked behind the outbuildings. She could take off now, but they could be on her tail in minutes, and there was nowhere to go on 509 but south again — not if she was trying to go for help. She has no idea where the two-lane goes as it meanders north. Somewhere called Ompah. And beyond that? It is essentially a deserted road. They passed little more than a handful of vehicles in the forty-five minutes they drove after leaving Highway 7. Two of those were logging trucks. And there she would be tootling along in a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler — not exactly camouflaged.

  So she will stay.

  She sniffs, wipes her face again, pinches her cheeks. Of course she has to stay. Burned into her brain is that image of Blink jumping from the dock to the boat. Blink, not Spencer. She cannot rescue Spencer. But she can rescue Blink. If it’s the last thing she ever does.