Here and Gone(87)

She moved closer yet and said, ‘Let my children go.’

Whiteside felt a hysterical laugh rise up to his throat, but he swallowed it.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘There’s a man will pay me a million dollars a child. Three million for a pair. Now, you can plead and you can beg and you can threaten all you want. But there ain’t a word you can say that’s worth more than three million dollars. Is there?’

Audra stooped down and reached for the crowbar on the floor. It scraped on the concrete as she lifted it and straightened. She held it loose at her side.

‘One last time,’ she said. ‘Let my children go.’

Whiteside looked at the crowbar in her hand. ‘What are you going to do with that?’ he asked.

She looked him hard in the eye and a finger of cold fear touched his heart.

Then Audra swept the crowbar up and across, slamming it into the flashlight. It careened across the basement, its bulb flickering out as it went.





56


AUDRA SAW THE brilliant muzzle flash as she threw herself to the floor, felt the pressure of the discharge in her ears. Through the whine she heard small feet sprint away into the dark and then a hoarse, angry cry.

She got to her knees, kept low as she advanced into the black.

Another muzzle flash, this time aiming in the direction the footsteps had run. She held her breath through the sound of pulverized concrete crumbling to the floor until she heard the footsteps again, running to the far end of the room.

Whiteside fired again, and she felt the bullet zip past her head. She dropped down onto her stomach, remained still as tins fell and rattled, liquid glugging out of a container. The sheriff screamed in rage, his voice rising to a piercing shriek.

Audra crept forward on her belly, her eyes locked on the point of the last muzzle flash, the crowbar held off the floor for fear of giving herself away.

‘Goddamn you,’ Whiteside shouted. ‘Goddamn you to hell.’

The voice above her head, she fixed its position. Another few inches, coarse concrete scraping her elbows and knees.

‘Goddamn you,’ he said again, his voice withered down to a high keening.

Audra got to her knees, swung the crowbar, putting her shoulders behind it. The metal connected with bone, and Whiteside screamed. She heard his body slam into the floor and she rose, the crowbar over her head, ready to bring it down on any part of him it could find.

She saw the flash once more, beneath her now, and felt something hot tug at her shoulder. Before her mind could register the pain, she swung the crowbar hard, felt something break as it struck. A rattle as the pistol skimmed across the concrete, a clang as she lost her grip on the crowbar, and another cry of pain.

Audra roared, an animal fury erupting from the heart of her. She straddled him and raised her fists, brought them down, raised them, brought them down, again and again, each blow sending shocks up through her wrists and elbows and shoulders. She heard the pounding of flesh, and it sounded like music, and she laughed and laughed until she had no air left in her lungs.

Someone cried, stop, stop, please stop, but the voice was far away in the darkness, a pathetic whimpering that meant nothing to her.

A flash of lightning filled the room, a brilliant flickering, and she saw Whiteside below her, his arms raised up to protect his face. Then a slapping and rattling sound, more flashes, making it appear as if Whiteside danced under her, all jerking movements and slashes of red.

‘Mom,’ Sean said.

She froze, her bloody fists above her head, and turned to her son’s voice.

There, across the room, the flashlight in his hands, his sister by his side. He shook the flashlight, smacked it against his palm, trying to keep the bulb alive.

‘Mom, stop,’ he said.

Behind them came Danny, the revolver aimed at Whiteside.

Audra dropped her hands. She crawled off Whiteside’s body, toward her children, onto her knees, stretched her arms out wide. They came to her, the hot damp skin of their faces pressing into hers, her arms swallowing them up, their bodies joining together.

She wept as the flickering light danced around them.





57


THE SUN HAD climbed high above the trees and washed the clearing with warm light. She felt the heat on her skin and relished it. Of all the things that should have been important to Audra at that moment, the sun in the sky should have been the least. But still, there it was.

Whiteside sat on the porch, his bleeding head bowed, his swollen right arm cradled in his lap, his left bound to it at the wrists by his own handcuffs. He had screamed at the pain as Danny had forced his broken arm into place. Now he trembled, sweat mixing with the blood from his nose and lips, forming pale-red streams down his chin.

Sean stood watching him. He’d asked if he could have a pistol to hold on Whiteside, to guard him. For a moment, Audra had doubted if her boy would have the nerve to aim a weapon at another person. Then she saw a new coldness in his eyes and she knew different. The realization had caused an ache in her heart that still echoed through her. Even so, she told him no. Whiteside wasn’t going anywhere.

Danny had found an old first-aid kit in the cabin’s basement and now he tended to the wound on Audra’s shoulder as Louise lay curled in her lap. Just a graze, he said, but it hurt like hell when he sprayed it with antiseptic. He packed the wound with gauze and pressed tape over the area to seal it in.