Here and Gone(69)

The blow caught Danny on the left side of his jaw, rocked his head back and to the right. His legs disappeared from under him as the room tilted. He hit the floor shoulder first. Although every instinct told him to get up, fight back, he made himself stay down. As his mind and vision steadied, he put a hand to his cheek, tested his jaw. No break, maybe a tooth loosened, that’s all. He’d had worse.

‘Stand up,’ Whiteside said.

Danny spat on the floor, saw blood on the linoleum. ‘I’m okay here,’ he said.

‘Get up, goddamn it.’

Whiteside drove his boot into Danny’s flank, below the ribs. Danny’s diaphragm convulsed, expelled the air from his lungs, denied him breath to fill them again. He tried to get onto his hands and knees, crawl away, but Whiteside kicked again, this time connecting with his thigh. Danny rolled onto his side, held his hands up, enough.

‘Get on your feet,’ the sheriff said. ‘You got ten seconds before I kick every one of your ribs in.’

Danny got his knees under him, then doubled over with a coughing fit until his sight blurred. Whiteside’s hard hand gripped him under the arm, hauled him upright.

‘All right,’ Whiteside said, stepping away. ‘Mr Lee, I would appreciate it very much if you would put your shoes on and accompany Deputy Collins and me outside.’

‘Am I under arrest?’

Whiteside pulled a revolver from the back of his waistband. He cocked the hammer, levelled the muzzle at Danny’s stomach.

‘No,’ he said, ‘you are not under arrest.’





39


SEAN’S HANDS BLED and his shoulders ached. He’d been working at the wood all night, driving the blade in, stabbing, digging, twisting, chips and splinters falling away. By inserting the blade between the edge of the trapdoor and its frame and running it along the length, he’d been able to find where the bolt was located. The door was composed of nine boards screwed from the other sided to a Z-shaped frame. He had considered trying to pry the frame away from the boards, but he knew the blade would break long before he even loosened it. Instead, he concentrated on the area around the bolt. The board it was attached to was no more than a half inch thick, and the wood was old. Not rotten, but not as strong as it had once been. Even so, it was slow and hard work, and blood trickled down his forearms.

Sean had paused a while ago to rest and give Louise the second dose of antibiotics. The first had already seemed to have an effect, her forehead cooler to the touch, her shivering abated. Now she sat upright on the mattress, watching her brother at the top of the steps.

‘You nearly done?’ she said, her voice hoarse.

‘No,’ he said.

After a rattling cough, she asked, ‘When will you be done?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Not for a while yet.’

‘But when?’

‘In a while,’ he said, raising his voice.

‘When we get out, are we going to find Mommy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where will she be?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then where do we go?’

‘I don’t know. We just run, as far away as we can.’

‘But where?’

‘I don’t know. Look, just lie down and get some sleep. I’ll tell you when it’s done.’

She did as he suggested, lay down on the mattress, her hands clasped beneath her cheek for a pillow. Sean felt a tug of regret for getting snippy with her. He dismissed it and went back to work.

A memory crept in from a faraway place in his mind: a lecture from his father, one of the few times Patrick Kinney had tried to communicate with his son. About the importance of hard work. Nothing good in life could be gained without effort. Hard work was how he accounted for his wealth. But Sean suspected it was more to do with his grandmother’s money.

So far he had chipped the wood away from two of the screws that secured the lock to the door. He guessed there were four. All he had to do was weaken the wood around the screws, push up on the door as hard as he could, and the lock would tear away. It had taken a good many hours to locate the first screw, but from that he’d been able to figure out the position of the second. Now he was having trouble finding the third.

Sean tried a spot closer to the edge. He stabbed upward, burying the blade’s tip maybe a quarter inch. Then he rocked it back and forth in line with the grain, then against it, widening the cut. Another stab, more rocking and twisting, and a piece the size of a thumbnail fell away. One more and …

There. The hardness inside, something unyielding. The screw. Now he had to circle it, strip and chip away the wood, leaving the screw nothing to cling to.

He couldn’t help but grin, relish the savage pleasure of it.

A few minutes later he had worked about two thirds of the way around the screw. Already he could imagine the splintering, cracking sound the lock would make as it tore away, how the air would feel when he and Louise were out there in the trees. How wonderful it would be. Encouraged, he dug harder and deeper, twisted the knife further.

Then the blade snapped.

He’d been applying his weight to the knife, putting his shoulders behind it. Then it was gone and he was pushing against air, falling forward, the handle still gripped in his bloodied fingers. He let it go, reached out for the rail, grabbed hold, cried out as splinters bit into the already raw flesh. His body turned around that point, his legs carrying his momentum, and his shoulder taking the worst of it.