The Runaway

by Jennifer Bernard

  A chill shot through her. Did he recognize her somehow? “Do you know me?”

  “Don’t worry. Won’t hurt you. Never hurt you.”

  Mumbling, he rolled closer to her car. She rolled the window up except for a narrow crack so she could hear him. The desperate longing expression on his face gave her a sick feeling.

  “Look, Mr. Kaminski, I don’t want you to come closer.”

  “Don’t jump. Stay with me. Don’t jump.”

  Then it hit her. Was he talking about her mother? Was he remembering what had happened during the carjacking?

  “I’m not going to jump, mister. It’s okay. Let’s just talk. Can we talk for a minute?”

  He lifted one hand to rub against his face, and she saw that it shook with a harsh tremble. Back at Rocky Peak, she’d often volunteered with Meals on Wheels to bring elderly residents their dinners. She knew that tremor. Some of her clients shook like that but had no dementia—it was called essential tremor. For others, it was a symptom of deeper neurological issues. Did he have dementia?

  He blinked his eyes and refocused on her. “Who are you?”

  She decided to stick with the grocery story because it seemed to offer a layer of safety. “Well, I’m here about your groceries. But then you seemed to recognize me, and I’m curious why. Do I remind you of someone?”

  Fluctuating emotions shifted across his face as he stared at her. Recognition one moment, confusion the next. All she could do was hope that the fog would clear, just for a moment, and he’d have something to tell her.

  Finally, he passed a shaky hand across his eyes, his expression landing on lost. “Dog food. Need dog food.”

  “Dog food?” Disappointment cratered through her. She wasn’t going to get anything from this man. Between his psychological problems and his probable dementia, he was useless to her.

  Pushing aside her despair, she focused on the sad man in the wheelchair. It couldn’t be easy for a dementia patient to live alone all the way out here. “Are you sure you need dog food?” she asked gently. “I don’t see any dogs. Don’t you want some food for yourself?”

  “I have dogs. Many dogs. Best dogs.”

  “Okay,” she said, humoring him. “That’s nice. Well, I should probably get going to pick up your dog food.” She wasn’t quite sure how to manage that piece of the puzzle. Maybe find the nearest grocery store and ask if they delivered groceries to Janus Kaminski? Should she tell them that he didn’t have any dogs and they should stop bringing him dog food?

  Pity for him rushed through her. Yes, he’d done bad things in the past. But now he was just a pathetic old man, his wits gone, immobile in his wheelchair.

  Just look at him now. With much effort, he’d turned the chair around and was heading back toward his house. But he was running into problems with the terrain, which sloped upward. He didn’t quite have the strength to push the wheelchair uphill.

  “Hang on, let me help you,” she called out the window. It would just take a second, then she’d get out of here and go back to Mark. They’d figure out another way to find her mother.

  She hopped out of the car and hurried after Janus in his wheelchair.

  Bad move.

  He looked over his shoulder at her, terror gripping his features. Didn’t he recognize her from three seconds ago? He plucked at the locket around his neck—but it wasn’t a locket, it was a whistle.

  He blew into it with a piercing sound that made her eardrums rattle. She clapped her hands over her ears and turned back toward her car.

  In the next second, dozens of thumping footfalls raced after her.

  She looked behind her in horror.

  Dogs. So many dogs. Snarling, growling, slobbering dogs. Probably about five of them, all bounding after her.

  She launched herself toward her car, but one of the dogs nipped at the back of her shoe. Stumbling, she tried to catch her balance but landed flat on her face. The car was so close, just a few arms’ lengths away. The dogs surrounded her, nipped at the legs of her pants. She felt their teeth all the way through the denim.

  She shouted in the direction of the wheelchair. “Make them stop! Please!”

  But she could barely be heard through the din of growls and barks and another rumbling sound in the background.

  Just for a second, she squeezed her eyes shut, wondering if this would be her very last conscious moment on this earth. If so, she wanted to think happy things. She wanted to picture snow and trees and eagles and fairy houses and…Mark.

  Mark.

  Her eyes flew open—and there he was. Jumping out of an unfamiliar vehicle. Eyes on fire with fury.

  24

  For years, that damn pack of dogs had haunted Mark’s nightmares. He never willingly went near a dog. He would never in a million years own one.

  But he knew how to control these dogs. Even if they weren’t even the same dogs, after all these years, they’d probably been trained the same way. He put his fingers to his mouth and made the sound he’d perfected at the age of six.

  The piercing whistle drew the attention of the pack. They stopped, confused, milling around, looking from him to Gracie, who was still facedown on the ground. Which order to follow? The “protect me” order from Kaminski or the “stand down” order from him?

  He made the sound again—incredible how it came back to him so easily. He’d tried to block out so much of what had happened, especially the dogs. They weren’t bad dogs. But Kaminski had trained them to follow his commands, and that made them terrifying.

  Gradually, each of the dogs sat back on their haunches, then lowered their bellies all the way to the ground. That was the key—take on the alpha role. Make them understand that you were the dominant one. He used his gaze as a weapon, pinning each one of them in turn with an unblinking stare that they knew meant business.

  After about five sweaty minutes, they were all on the ground, their growls transformed into whimpers.

  “Get in your car, Gracie,” he said in a low voice. It wasn’t even shaking—amazing, considering he’d nearly had a stroke when he saw those dogs coming after her.

  She rose to her knees, trembling, and wiped her palms on her jeans. She was so pale, her face matched the whitewash on the old water tank. Her eyes stood out like sea glass, and he noticed a touch of dampness at the corners.

  She must have been terrified. Probably still was.

  “Go on,” he said gently. “Get in and lock the door. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Finally, she got all the way to her feet and stepped toward the car door, cringing away from the dogs. They didn’t budge, though they watched her alertly.

  When she was safely inside, door locked, he snapped his fingers at the dogs. They leaped to their feet and followed at his heels as he strode toward the wheelchair…and the man who’d held him prisoner and treated him like a six-year-old slave.

  A vacant blankness filled Kaminski’s eyes. “My dogs,” he mumbled. “No dog food. Got dog food?”

  Holy shit. The man didn’t remember him. Maybe he didn’t remember anything. Did he have fucking dementia? The irony almost made him laugh. Mark had tried so hard to block out his memories, and in the meantime, old Janus had lost all of his.

  If he had a choice, he’d rather remember. And fuck it all, he did have a choice.

  He grabbed hold of the handles of the wheelchair and pushed it up the hill toward the red-planked, one-story barn. He swung open the door to show the old man the stacks of cases of dog food. There were even more of them now. “I think you’re covered,” he said.

  The pack of dogs leaped past him and trotted toward the back of the barn, where an assortment of rawhide bones littered the floor. Mark shuddered at the sight of them and the ancient, threadbare dog beds that lined the walls.

  He’d slept back there, too. Except he hadn’t slept much, fearful of the sound of the whistle that could come at any moment. At first the dogs would sniff him and growl, but eventually they got used to him, and he to them.
He often warmed himself against their furry bodies.

  But the second that whistle blew, their minds weren’t their own anymore. They belonged to Kaminski. The quivering man in the wheelchair, who kept convulsively gripping the whistle around his neck.

  Mark grabbed the cord and pulled it over Kaminski’s head. “Sorry, I can’t let you have this anymore.”

  Oddly, Janus didn’t put up a fuss. Was this even the same man who had kept him here as a prisoner? Ordered him to make his coffee and clean the dogs’ barn and occasionally hammer on a piece of metal for his sculptures? It hardly seemed possible.

  No wonder he hadn’t gotten any heads up about Kaminski leaving home. He probably never did anymore.

  One of the dogs trotted back toward them. Mark didn’t recognize this one. He was a silky Border collie with an alert twinkle in his eye.

  “New around here, huh?” he asked the dog. He saw from her tag that her name was Angelica.

  Angelica. That rang a distant bell.

  She sat on her haunches next to Kaminski’s wheelchair and rested her head on the man’s knee. He patted her gently with a shaky hand.

  “Stay here,” Mark told him roughly. “I’ll be right back. I need to make sure you aren’t keeping any prisoners around.”

  He strode out of the barn and found Gracie waiting for him just outside, clean and graceful as a nymph against the grimy junkyard setting. The sight of her brought new fury coursing through his veins. “I told you to wait in the car.”

  “I did. Then I got worried.”

  “You should get out of here. Drive back to the hotel. I have to bring that truck back.” He gestured at the Hummer that he’d paid another guest a thousand bucks to rent for the day.

  “No. I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  “So it’s okay for you to come here alone but not me?” He turned away from her and headed for the house. Every outbuilding he passed, he pushed open the door and peered inside, looking for any sign of a human being.

  But all he saw were empty spaces and filth and piles of scrap metal. It didn’t look like anyone except for Kaminski had been here in years.

  Gracie followed after him. “I’m sorry I left. I was trying to spare you this.” She waved her hand at the property. “This can’t be easy for you.”

  He whirled on her. “You know what wasn’t easy? Watching those dogs go after you. That’s why I didn’t want you to come here on your own. One of the reasons.”

  “You could have told me about the dogs,” she said. “A little warning would have helped a lot.”

  “It never occurred to me that you would ditch me like that.”

  With a fierce shove, he pushed open the door to Kaminski’s studio. The stench of burnt metal and acetylene filled his nostrils. Janus must still be working, still creating his weird metal sculptures from random pieces of recycled machinery.

  As a kid, none of it had made any sense to him, and he’d been too frightened to pay much attention to the art. As an adult, he could sort of see the artistry involved. The extreme angles and odd juxtapositions were actually quite expressive. Who knew that the two old ironwork handles, placed just so, actually looked like frowning eyebrows? Or that a tin pie plate made a poignant open mouth?

  He knew that Kaminski’s pieces hung in well-known galleries, and that some people paid hefty amounts for the privilege of owning one of them. But he would never be interested in the man’s art because he knew the dark side of his manic process. Once, Kaminski had made him stay up for three nights while he welded together a piece.

  “Wow.” Gracie let out a breath filled with awe. “I don’t even know what to think about this stuff. It’s…compelling?”

  Mark kicked aside a watering can that lay on its side on the dirt floor. “I can’t believe he hasn’t burned the fucking place down by now. Do you think the man back there has any business running a blowtorch?”

  “No. What do you think we should do?”

  “Do? What do you mean?”

  “We can’t just leave him here. He could hurt himself.”

  “So?” He hardened his voice. The fuck if he was going to be sympathetic to the man who’d ruined his life. Janus could burn his entire place to the ground for all he cared. “It’s not our problem. Or our business.”

  “But what about those poor dogs?”

  “They could have killed you.”

  “You’re right. They could have. But they didn’t. They’re not trained to kill, or they would have.”

  Tell that to his nervous system, which had nearly exploded at the sight of her surrounded by the pack.

  But she was right. If they’d been trained to kill, he would never have survived his time here. One of Kaminski’s temper tantrums would have been the end of him.

  “We should call Social Services,” Gracie said firmly. “He can’t be living alone out here. He’s got dementia, and he can’t even push himself up the hill in his wheelchair. He forgot he had all that dog food, what if he forgets that he has dogs? What if he stops taking care of them?”

  “Unlikely. Those dogs are everything to him.” But even as he said that, it felt wrong. There was something else he cared about. Someone else.

  “Angelica,” he said, remembering the Border collie’s name tag. “What does that name mean to you?”

  She tilted her head, still scanning the studio and its contents. So many works in progress were crammed into every corner, it was probably dangerous even to be standing here. He tugged at her hand to pull her toward the door, but she shook him off.

  “Wait. Angelica.” She pointed to the back wall, where one portion hadn’t been blocked with pieces of sculpture. Words were scrawled in an orderly list on the dingy white paint. He squinted at them and saw that Gracie was right. Angelica was one of the words written on the wall.

  They both stepped closer, making out more names. Marie. Donna. Chastity. Maureen. Ilsa. In all, about ten names were listed.

  “They’re all women’s names,” Gracie said slowly. “Maybe they’re all women he was in love with? Do you think maybe my mother is one of them?”

  “Maybe. Who knows? The man’s a nutcase.”

  “He seems like the obsessive type to me.” Gracie swept her arm wide to encompass the studio.

  “That’s definitely true. In my experience, once he got something in his head, he never let it go. He hung on like a leech.” Something was slowly taking shape in his mind, a memory. A mystery that had nagged at him even back then. “Come here. I’m remembering something now.”

  He walked to a desk tucked in the very back of the studio. Surrounded by clutter, piled with metal plates and cans of paint and other junk, it looked as if it had been abandoned years ago. But there was something…

  Yes, there it was. A projector.

  And on the floor next to the desk, a pile of DVDs.

  Kaminski had screamed at him when he’d interrupted him once while he was watching one of these DVDs. He’d thrown plates at him and yelled at him to get the fuck out or he’d kill him, and to never come back if he wanted to stay alive.

  Mark shuddered as the memory came back to him physically. One of the plates had hit him across the cheekbone, and the bruise had lasted for a week.

  He slowly went to the DVDs and lifted up the top one. Sight of Magic, it read. The back cover summarized the movie. When Maureen Blake loses her sight in a terrible accident, she gains something she never expected—her vision.

  “Maureen,” he said out loud. “That’s one of the names on the wall, right?”

  “Yes.” Gracie used her phone to take a picture of the wall of names.

  He grabbed another DVD and read aloud.

  “A stunning family drama about a Texas oil family torn apart by betrayal and lies. When they bring a new nanny onto their sprawling estate, the charming Ilsa sets a series of disastrous events into motion.”

  “Ilsa!” Gracie exclaimed. “That’s another one.”

  “Those names are characters from movies.”


  Gracie’s face fell. “That doesn’t help at all. My mother isn’t a movie character.”

  Mark closed his hand around the reassuring weight of the whistle. It gave him a heady sense of control—and chased away the helpless feeling that had haunted him for so long.

  He could do this. They could do this.

  A sense of power flooded his system.

  “Maybe we should see what those movie characters have in common.” He picked up two cases and turned them over, scanning the credits. “Who played Maureen and Ilsa?”

  “I’ll check IMDB.” Gracie tapped on her phone.

  He looked at more of the DVD cases. “No need. Holy shit. Those names are characters played by the same actress. Laine Thibodeau.”

  “Laine Thibodeau? I don’t know her. Do you?”

  Mark shook his head. “No, and I’ve never seen any of these movies, either. I don’t usually go for the scream-queen flicks.”

  He heard a sharp intake of breath from Gracie’s direction. She was staring at her phone, her face pale. “Oh my God. Mark, look at her.”

  He took her phone from her limp fingers.

  As soon as he saw Laine Thibodeau’s headshot, he knew they’d found Gracie’s mother.

  In the photo, Laine’s face was angled provocatively, the light molding her cheekbones, a sultry pose that showed off her world-class bone structure, white-blond hair, and turquoise eyes. Laine was more glamorous, more polished than Gracie, her features more chiseled, her skin tone more ivory. But the resemblance was too strong to miss.

  Gracie couldn’t drag her gaze away. “Do you think she’s—”

  “She looks just like you. Don’t you see it?”

  “I mean, yes. Sort of. She’s more…perfect than I am.” Her forehead crinkled.

  “That’s a professional headshot, that’s why. Come on, she’s got to be related to you one way or another. Should we find out?”

  She lifted her eyes, looking troubled, biting her lip. “I don’t know. I mean, is she alive?”

  “Yes. She’s only forty or so.” He checked the site again. “Forty-one, according to this.”