He pulled himself back up and untied the harness from his chest. “This isn’t long enough for me to leverage them up from the bottom.”
Standing nose to nose with one another in the cramped space of the outhouse, I said, “My turn.”
There was really no other answer. He knew it. But he tried anyway. “We’ll wait until the other guys get back and we’ll send one of the guys down there.”
My desperate words were choked, “If they’re down there, we can’t wait. The other guys won’t be coming back for at least another hour and a half, maybe two hours.”
He had no argument.
“But I can hold on to the rope with one hand while you lower me down the hole.” I added in a whisper, “If little Max and Noah are down there, we’ve waited long enough. Come on. I need your help.”
I straddled the open bench seat wearing my thick winter coat, Streeter’s rag wool sweater, Phil’s too-tight charcoal gray suit pants, and my snow boots. I pulled on my insulated work gloves and wrapped Beulah’s lead around my chest. I looked down at Streeter and offered him a tentative smile.
“Ready?” I said and stepped in.
Streeter gripped the rope. I groaned as the lead tightened around my chest and my ribs were compressed as he lowered me down into the outhouse pit.
I called up to Streeter, “I’m down far enough. Stop for a minute and let me look around.”
I felt Streeter hold tight to the lead. I pulled the rag wool sweater over my nose and mouth.
When I turned my head to sweep the headlamp’s beam across the dugout walls and floor, all I could see was the heap below. The foul odor crowded my senses. My beam swept across the bottom of the outhouse pit and along the walls, searching for any sign of the boys.
Dear God, let Noah be here. Alive.
I thought I saw something on the bottom and slowly swept my beam back and forth. It settled on a drag mark through the slimy, semifrozen piles of excrement. The mark was about a foot wide and flat. I followed the drag mark beneath me over toward one corner.
I gasped.
Little Max had dragged Noah’s chair to the side.
“They’re here! Ease me down. Quick,” I called up to Streeter.
I could feel Streeter fumble with the lead and begin easing me down the hole. I saw a lump of different colors in one corner of the dugout structure and a patch of shiny bright blue.
Noah’s chair!
CHAPTER 63
“THEY’RE HUDDLED IN THE corner. I think. All I see are colors. Mostly pink. It looks like a pink hat or something.” I swallowed hard and told him the truth, “And they’re not moving.”
Down to the last two feet of the twenty-foot lead, I reached bottom.
Streeter called down, “How far to Max and Noah?”
“About six feet or so. Maybe more.” I loosened the lead and tied it around my good wrist. I trained my eyes at the pile of many colors so the beam would stay steady and thought of the Biblical story of Joseph. Wearing his coat of many colors, he had been tossed into a pit by cowards. Selfish cowards. I trudged through the thick muck that was stiff with cold, like oatmeal left in the refrigerator too long.
I felt the lead tug my arm.
Streeter called, “Don’t let go of the lead. I’m hanging on. Just to be on the safe side. See if you can reach them. Without slipping.”
Too late.
My feet slid out from under me and I wrenched my arm again. I groaned and righted myself, trying not to let my boots get sucked right off my feet with every other step. Where the excrement wasn’t frozen slick as snot, it was thick like foul quicksand.
How in the hell did little Max pull Noah through this?
As I narrowed the gap, I held my breath. Not because of the stench. Anxiety constricted my lungs and I felt an overwhelming desire to hear every sound in the dark hole. I wanted to hear sounds of life, but all I could hear was the thick sloshing of my boots. My headlamp bounced with every step, my head jerking. The lead grew taut just as I reached the mound of colors. I was literally at the end of my rope. I untied the lead from my wrist and baby-stepped my way toward the corner.
A screeching rat scampered across the pile of colors.
And the colors moved!
“I hate rats. Don’t you?”
Streeter called down, “Did you untie the—”
“My name is Liv.”
Streeter would figure it out. I wasn’t talking to him. I was talking to little Max, or to Noah, whoever it was that was moving under the layers. And I didn’t want to scare him by hollering back up at Streeter. He was scared enough.
“You boys shouldn’t have to stay down here with these rats. Max? Let’s get out of here. Together. Would you like that?”
I heard a small sound from one of the boys.
I tossed back layers of colors, clothing that little Max must have stuffed in his backpack and piled on top of himself and Noah to stay warm. They had huddled together beneath the mound. Noah wasn’t moving. I tried not to look at him, because I knew I’d start crying. And little Max was barely moving, blue. Scared. And right now he needed me to be strong. So I was. I swallowed hard. One at a time, I told myself. One at a time.
“Okay then, little bud. Let’s get out of this yucky place … Max? Can you hear me? Wrap your arms and legs around me. Can you do that honey?” I coaxed him in a soothing voice. “Max?”
Max wasn’t answering me. He had slipped away. Don’t let it be too late, I prayed.
“Liv?” Streeter called down.
I didn’t answer him.
“How about I just scoop you up and carry you? Would you like that? I’ll hold on to you. I’ll come back for Noah. I’m Noah’s aunt.”
“Broken baby? His name is Noah?” His words were nothing more than a harsh whisper in my ear as I bent to lift him. He stared at Noah, who was listless, but breathing.
I nodded. I was conflicted. I wanted to scoop Noah up first and come back for little Max. Get my nephew help immediately. But after my quick and initial assessment of both boys, little Max appeared in worse shape, dehydration and hypothermia causing some delirium. His skin was much bluer than Noah’s and I knew I had to get little Max out first.
“You call Noah broken baby?” I asked him, hearing Noah groan a dull laugh, which made me realize my choice was wise. Max didn’t answer. I was starting to panic as little Max was starting to fade. “Thanks for keeping Noah warm last night, Max. And for pulling him over here with you. Noah, sweetheart. I’ll be right back.”
I yelped with pain as I scooped little Max into my arms, feeling something pop in my forearm. It wasn’t a natural sort of pop. Max didn’t make a sound, his head lolling against my shoulder. “Look at that, Max. The rats are scattering,” I said, trudging my way back to the center of the pit. “Can you wrap your arms around my neck, Max?” No answer. “Max?”
I reached for the lead and tugged. Streeter pulled all the slack out of the lead as I neared the center. He stared down the hole, pulling the lead taut.
“That’s my friend, Streeter, up there,” I said. “He’s going to get us out of here.”
Cradled in my arms, looking more like a filth-encrusted runt pig than Maximillian Bennett Williams III, the boy stared up at Streeter.
“Not Papa?” he asked, listless, but alive.
Streeter smiled at the boy, offering him a little wave. But I could see all the pain Streeter felt for the boy in his wide blue eyes.
“Not Papa. I promise. He’s gone. You have been so brave and strong. I’m so proud of you. Your mom and dad will be proud of you, too,” I said.
Max lifted his heavy eyelids. A hint of a smile played around his lips.
“But I need you to be brave and strong for a little bit longer, okay?” I pointed up the hole at Streeter and said, “See that man up there, Max? He’s my friend. And he’s your friend, too. He’s going to lift you out of this hole and wrap you up in a warm blanket. Would you like that?”
The little boy’s eyes widen
ed with fright. He hung limp in my arms.
I added, “I need you to be brave for me while he pulls you up. You’ll need to hold on tight.”
For the first time, the child moved. His filthy pink sleeve slid around my neck.
“Not to me. To the rope,” I explained.
Max’s grip on my neck tightened.
I shushed him. “It’s okay. I promise. I’m going to have my friend pull you out first. Then I’ll come up and hold you some more. Okay?”
That didn’t quiet his fear.
“Besides, I need to get your friend Noah. And we don’t want to stay down with these stinking rats anymore, do we?”
Max’s little arm eased from around my neck. I kissed his soiled cheek.
I looked up at Streeter. He pointed at the lead, made a motion of winding it around little Max, and shook his head. I nodded. Winding the lead around Max’s chest in his weakened condition may cause further damage. I looked back into Max’s exhausted eyes.
“A blanket? Your coat?” Streeter said.
I answered, “That might work. I can wrap him up like a cocoon.”
“How about this?” he said, holding up Beulah’s harness.
“Perfect. Toss it down.”
He did, careful not to let it fall too far from me.
I caught it and slipped the harness over little Max’s chest, pulling his hands from my neck, threading each of his arms into the shoulder loops. I latched the lead to the harness and gave the thumbs-up sign to Streeter. He pulled the boy upward, slowly. The boy’s head lolled to one side, which concerned me. Max stiffened and squinted in the bright light that Streeter shone down the hole. A good sign. The boy had some reflexes.
Once Streeter had him, he quickly stripped the boy and wrapped him in blankets, setting him on the floor beside the bench. Streeter dropped the lead and harness down the hole and motioned for me to get going. I trudged back through the heap to Noah.
“Noah?” Startled by his ashen appearance, I felt for a pulse. “Noah, it’s me, Auntie Liv.”
He had a pulse, but it was so weak I wondered if it was my heartbeat pounding through my fingertips. I pried open his eyes, moving my head so the light flashed across his face. His pupils responded. He was there. Buried deep, but there.
Noah’s skin was a pale gray, his face sagging and sallow, and his lips had that haunting bluish tint. He had a dirty pink sweater draped across his legs and a small coat spread across his chest. Little Max had layered everything he could over Noah to keep him warm, including a pink stocking cap pulled over his head. He was still strapped in his chair, wrapped in a blanket, with his snow pants and coat, just as Frances had described putting on him late last night when they were headed to the police station, before he’d been taken from the backseat of her minivan.
Fletcher had dropped Noah down the hole, chair and all.
“Are you okay, bud?”
No smile. No response.
I knew he wasn’t going to make it if I didn’t hurry. I prayed both boys would live, that we’d found them in time.
“You’re my hero,” I said, swallowing the tears that were welling inside me and I kissed his forehead.
I scooped his chair into my arms, feeling the sharp pain in my left arm, the ache in my ribs, as I did. I wanted to scream from the pain. But I didn’t want to scare Noah. If my arm wasn’t broken before, it was certainly broken now. I wondered if any of Noah’s delicate little bones had been broken in the fall, if his spine had buckled, if he’d had any seizures. And if so, how many. How bad was the damage? How much could this kid take?
I hooked Beulah’s harness around my nephew’s chair and watched as Streeter pulled him up through the hole.
When he made it to the top, I saw Noah lean over in his chair, his forehead wrinkling as he looked for me down the hole. Even clinging to life, he was more worried about me than himself.
And I cried.
CHAPTER 64
Noah
SHE DID IT!
Auntie Liv found me and saved little Max. I was hoping she’d find my football pin and figure out that creepy Mr. Fletcher had little Max the whole time, but for the life of me, I don’t know how she figured out where he took us.
I knew Mr. Creepy drove us a long time, went way up in the mountains and out in the woods, a really long drive from our house, somewhere where his tires crunched in heavy snow, on back roads that weren’t paved, because I could hear the gravel under his tires. But the Rocky Mountains are a big place and if I was really truthful about it, I didn’t have a clue how Auntie Liv would figure out where he took us. And I was scared. Really scared. The pain in my broken leg made me feel angry and alive but mostly I was trying to hold on to my “mad” so little Max’s whimpering and shivering wouldn’t get me down. I knew if I cried, if I started worrying too much, I’d cause myself to have a seizure. And that would have really scared little Max. I was trying to stay brave because he needed me. By the time I did have my seizure, little Max had already passed out. Or at least that’s what they told me.
And Auntie Liv found us. Found me. But I was just coming out of my seizure and it was all a blur.
Now that we’ve had time to talk, Auntie Liv said this is where she found the kid’s backpack. Said the kid was an older boy that Mr. Fletcher had kidnapped a couple of years ago. When she told me his name, I remembered him. He was the “Boy Who Had Disappeared.”
I’d heard about Clint at school. He was a legend. The kids all said he disappeared because he always stuffed his food in his milk carton at lunch and threw it in the garbage so the lunch monitors couldn’t make him eat all his food. They’d warned him many times to eat everything on his plate. But he didn’t. And after three warnings, the boy simply disappeared. POOF! Someone started a rumor that he got lost in the woods and was eaten by a bear. We all thought the lunch room was haunted, that Clint’s ghost wandered from table to table, stole our butter pats, took cookies, or made our goulash taste yucky.
None of that was true. Auntie Liv told me Mr. Fletcher had kidnapped Clint and left him out in the woods, near the hole where he had dropped me and little Max. But Clint eventually made it out of the mountains to a house. His parents sent him to school at a different place the next year and no one ever told us. So I wonder who’s stealing my cookies at school? Well, it’s not the “Boy Who Disappeared,” that’s for sure. ’Cause Auntie Liv promised me Clint didn’t die, so he can’t be haunting the lunch room.
The doctor is just about done wrapping up my leg with the wet plaster. He told my mom and dad that I’ll have to wear this cast for several weeks. I think it’s so cool! It’s blue, like my school’s colors, and it matches the frame of my wheelchair. Everyone here at the hospital is so nice. I’m glad the doctor’s keeping me overnight for observation. He said they want to make sure I didn’t hit my head, receive a concussion, or suffer any trauma from hypothermia, whatever that means.
Okay by me, as long as they don’t have to poke and prod and keep me up all night like they usually do when I have to stay here. And as long as they don’t feed me goulash. The food here is actually good, but I’m full. Emma brought me a Dairy Queen Butterfinger Blizzard—my favorite—which Mom fed me while we were waiting for x-rays so the doctor could set my leg. Now that the doctor is finishing up, I’m excited about going back to my room because I told Emma to let Mom and Dad know I wanted some time alone to talk with Auntie Liv. If she ever gets here and has her arm x-rayed. She said she’s busy wrapping up some loose ends on the case and will be here pronto to stay the night with me in my room, so my mom and dad can go home and get a good night’s sleep.
I can’t wait!
I have so many questions about what happened out there, and she promised to tell me the whole story, leaving out no detail. That’s what I was hoping because how am I ever going to get better as a spy if she keeps things from me? Yeah, I know I said I didn’t want to be a spy anymore. But I do. I just have to grow up a little bit so I’m not so scared.
Special Agent Pierce called me a hero and told me how proud he was of me. Denver Police Chief Gates gave me a special police officer’s badge and told me to apply for work when I got old enough. But I think I was most excited about Special Agent Linwood. Auntie Liv calls him Jack. He took me aside and told me how brave I was, how lucky little Max was that I was there to care for him, to protect him like I did. He didn’t talk to me like the others did. He treated me like a fellow spy. When he talked about how lucky little Max was to have me and said not all kids are that lucky, I think I saw a tear come to his eye, but I’m not so sure. I don’t think FBI agents cry. Spies sure don’t. Besides, I was so excited because Agent Linwood gave me his FBI cap, snugged the strap and put it on my head, as the ambulance was taking me off to the hospital. I think he knows kids. Knows I’m not invisible. He’s a lot like Auntie Liv. Has the gift.
I like Agent Linwood. And I think Auntie Liv does, too.
Anyway, although all the rescuers and emergency people have been so nice to me, I’m glad to have some time alone with the doctor. It sure seems like a lifetime ago when my rainy day began and turned to sleet once Mr. Fletcher dropped me and little Max down that hole. I was glad I broke little Max’s fall and even more glad that he broke my leg. It will be a great story at school. Most of all, the single ray of sunshine in my rainiest day ever was when I heard my name called in the slimy pit of that frozen outhouse.
By my Auntie Liv.
CHAPTER 65
THE GENTLE PURR OF Noah’s soft snoring was the best Christmas music I’d ever heard in my life. And seeing him warm and snug, tucked in the hospital bed beside mine—both of us relatively unscathed from the horror that was creepy man Fletcher—was the best gift I had ever received. His tiny little cast from his knee to his toes was covered in signatures from well wishers, whereas my cast from my elbow to fingertips was unmarked as yet.
My sisters and brothers-in-law had just left; Frances was happy that I was planning to stay with Noah overnight, even though my injuries didn’t warrant the attention. She would get a good night’s sleep for once, not worried about the care Noah deserved. And she would be well rested to prepare a second Christmas Eve dinner so that we could all gather around the table together tomorrow night. Mom and Dad were on their way, driving to see for themselves that little Noah was well, and that I was, too.
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