Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(72)

She tells him to stand up and he does, still shirtless. Without asking for help, she grabs his belt and loosens it by two notches to accommodate the holsters, one on either hip, the pistol butts facing forward for a cross-arm draw.

She stares at him for a long while and sighs, as if finally recognizing him for the kid he feels like. “Let me put on some coffee,” she says. “Sharpen us up.”

Outside, the paling sky has the look of a watercolor. She hand-grinds beans and fills a kettle with water to set on the stove while he experiments with the pistols, unlimbering them from their holsters, holding them out before him, like the gunslingers in the movies; only his arms waver no matter how hard he tries to keep them steady. It’s more than the pain in his ribs—like a knife wound—it’s the weakness he feels.

He thinks of Claire, huddled somewhere in the dark, and imagines her face turning toward him with relief. That numbs his pain more than the drugs breaking down inside him. He saved her once; he will save her again.

The stove tick-tick-ticks as the burner fails to catch. The smell of natural gas sours the air.

Patrick says, “So they’ve taken her because of you?”

The stove continues to tick like a bomb, and she curses under her breath and opens a drawer and knocks open a box of matches. “Yes.”

“Why do they want you back so badly?”

She strikes a match and drops it on the burner and a blue flare the size of a child foomps to life and knocks them back a step—and then the flame settles. “Because I’m married to one of them.”



*



When Jeremy tells her to please sit down, when he cuffs her wrists, when he tells her he enjoyed their little walk and asks whether she needs anything, she almost tells him about Puck, almost.

Then she realizes this is her chance. Something has been set into motion, something Puck is not a part of, something that will draw from the mountain many men, including Jeremy, who might otherwise bar her escape.

“No.” She fiddles with the cuffs and casts down her eyes in case they might reveal her excitement. “I’m good. Thank you.”

She knows it is only a matter of time before Puck comes for her. From only a few conversations, she has gleaned that he desires her, yes—but for reasons even more complicated he will punish her as if punishing Jeremy.

Her ankles he leaves free. The scissors remain hidden up her sleeve, the blades of them cold against her forearm. She feels her pulse throbbing against the metal, counting down the seconds, the minutes, the hours, until the tunnel system goes quiet, vacated—and then, as expected, she hears the approaching footsteps, kicking through sand like a gathering whisper.

It isn’t clear where her cell begins—there is no definitive space designated as hers, no bars to peer through and knock a tin cup against. The lava tube simply ends—as if, eons ago, some large worm burrowed through the earth until it expired here, its flesh crumbling to sand, its shape remembered in the rocky husk of the tunnel. But if there were an entrance, a line within which she felt jailed, it is where Puck stands now, ten yards away, the bend in the corridor.

Neither of them says anything at first. They both know why he is there.

She can see his jaw working up and down, chewing gum, wetly mashing it with his teeth, snapping it. “It’s snowing, you know,” he finally says.

“That’s nice.” She isn’t sure what to make of this, him talking about the weather. The weather is what you talk about when there is nothing else to talk about. “I like snow.” Nothing could be further from the truth, but she tries to make her voice as sincere and pleasant as possible. She wants his guard down.

He pauses his chewing to say, “Really?” With that, he comes forward, one slow step, then another, the look on his face leading her to believe he is as surprised by what she says as by her seeming friendliness. “Most don’t.”

“This time of year, I do. Christmastime.”

“But then it gets to be too long.”

“I guess.”

His voice lowers. “Around here the winters can be very, very long.” The whites of his eyes glow, but his pupils appear as black as burrows. She feels as if she is falling into them. He has closed the distance between them by half. She is sitting on a rock the size of a buffalo skull, the closest thing she has to a seat, hunched over as if exhausted, but really, she is approximating a crouch, ready to spring forward. She tries to be casual, pretending to scratch an itch, when she pulls the scissors halfway from her sleeve, the blades now tucked sharply against her palm.

He pops his gum again, the sharp report making her flinch, reminding her of the time a boy at school came up behind her and snapped her bra. “Your bitch of an aunt isn’t going to do anything stupid, is she? Isn’t going to tuck tail to the police, spill her guts, tattle?”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“Everyone has their breaking point.” He crouches and reaches out an arm to touch her ankle. “Pretty.”

She shivers. He’s still too far away, faster than her, stronger, and she can’t risk lunging that distance, giving him time to respond. She tries not to be bothered by his touch, but that’s like trying to hold still when a spider dashes across your face. A shiver runs through her and she pulls away her feet. “Stop.”

“Stop?” He works the gum from one side of his mouth to the other. She can smell it now, something fruity. “You think I’m going to stop? You think any of this is going to stop? We’re just getting started. And if you think I’m going to use common words—like ‘You better obey me’ and ‘You ought to treat me with respect’ and ‘You better shut your mouth’—you’re mistaken. Because we don’t believe in words here. We believe in doing. I’m going to do things to you. That’s how you really get people to listen. You do things to them, and when those things are horrible, they listen very carefully. I want you to listen very carefully. You might think you’re being imprisoned in this far dark corner, but you’re in fact being protected. Forget about Jeremy. I am your protector. I am protecting you. All I need to do is snap my fingers and you’ll be cast out to the wolves. The wolves like to bite and they like to sodomize. You’ll feel like you’ve been turned inside out, like you’ve been f*cked by a dozen swords. Maybe after they’re done with you, they’ll keep you around for another round or two, or maybe they’ll be bored and bothered by your whimpering, and if that’s the case, maybe we’ll have a bonfire, a big one. We’ll throw you in it and your skin will melt off and we’ll all laugh and howl and dance around the flames and afterward gnaw on your blackened bones. How does that sound, Claire?”