Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(100)

If he touches my sister . . . No. No, you won’t let him. Mom won’t let him.

I’m still staring at the black window when I hear footsteps. When I turn around, I realize that Mr. Sparks is halfway up the stairs again, moving fast. Mom! I turn and rush for the stairs; I get there ahead of Lanny, who’s running for it too, but we’re still only halfway up when I hear that bookcase swing shut again, and the lock snaps in place.

“Wait,” she says, and drags me to a stop. “We can’t get out that way. We need a plan. There must be another way out of here.”

“But Mom—”

“Help me look!” I hear the shake in my sister’s voice, and when I look at her, she’s crying, but there’s something hard underneath the tears. That’s how Mom looks when she has something to fight against, and fight for. “Come on!”

We’re only partway down the stairs again when we hear the lock disengage. Lanny freezes, and so do I. We turn to look.

Mr. Sparks is dragging our mother down the stairs, holding her by one wrist as he slides her down. She’s lying on her back. She’s leaving a trail of fresh blood behind. I’ve never seen my mom hurt, not like this. She’s not moving. She’s not moving.

I let out a scream, and I break free of Lanny, and I charge up the stairs right at him. My sister’s right behind me. Sparks seems like he has no idea what to do. Just a shocked old man. But that’s just his mask. Like my dad’s words. Like his smile.

He hits me so hard I smash against the wall, and for a second I can’t pull myself up. I find myself stumbling on the stairs, and I realize that Mom’s eyelids are fluttering. Lanny’s struggling with Sparks. “Mom!” My voice comes out as a croak, so I try again. “Mom! We’re in trouble!”

Her eyes fly open, and for a second they’re vague and confused.

Then they fix on me, and they’re not confused at all.

“Get your damn hands off my kids!” she shouts, and she spins around, still flat on her back, and kicks Mr. Sparks from behind. Not in the ass, like I would have, but right up between his braced legs. She kicks him like she means to score a field goal.

He screams. He lets go of Lanny and stumbles down two steps. Then misses a step. Then he’s falling all the way down, and he hits the concrete floor at the bottom and slides limp for two or three feet before he comes to a stop, facedown.

He isn’t moving. The gun slides out of his hand and across the floor. Vera runs to pick it up, and she holds it in trembling hands and aims it at Mr. Sparks.

“Don’t!” Lanny’s voice is hoarse but loud. “Vera, don’t do it!”

“I won’t,” Vee says. “Would serve him right, though.” She sounds tough, but she looks like she’s about to cry. “He was supposed to help me.”

I reach out to my sister. She takes my hand. She’s coughing from where Mr. Sparks had his hand on her throat, and I know how that awful burning sensation feels. “Mom?”

I hold out my other hand, and Mom takes it and climbs to her feet. She sways a little, but I feel her get immediately stronger and steadier as she hugs us to her, and for just that moment, everything’s okay again, everything’s right. It only lasts a second or two, and then she lets us go and moves down the steps. She pauses and presses her fingers to Mr. Sparks’s neck. “He’s alive,” she says. “Help me tie him up. Get his belt.”

I stop her. “We don’t need to.” I grab his phone, his keys, and then I pull the remote control from his pocket. It has four buttons on it. The bottom left one opens the window, I remember. He pressed the top left one upstairs to lock his office door so the knob wouldn’t turn. One of the others must lock the bookcase—probably the right one on the top.

So that just leaves the bottom right one. I point it at the door and press the button.

There’s a harsh buzz, and the steel door pops open half an inch.

Lanny runs down and opens the door wide, and light spills out from the room across the concrete floor. “Hey,” she says, “come on. You can come out now. You’re safe.” She looks back at Mom. “We can put him in here. Right, Connor?”

“Right,” I say. “And leave him.” To die, I think, but I don’t say that. But for a long second I imagine him starving to death in there, falling down, turning to bones and dust.

Lanny looks in the room again. I press the window control so I can see what she’s seeing.

The two women are standing, hands folded. Tarla’s crying, but she’s not moving.

Sandra is the one who breaks. She slumps, gasps, and moves to take Tarla by the hand.

“No!” Tarla says. “No, we can’t, we can’t, he’ll punish us!” She looks scared to death. She keeps pulling away and standing at the foot of her bed.

My mom takes all this in. I see it in her face, in her eyes, in the way she straightens up.

The way she looks down at the man we trusted to keep us safe.

She grabs him by the wrist and drags him limp as a dead fish across the concrete and into the room where the women are. His captives.

The second they see him down and helpless, it all changes. Tarla screams, and it actually hurts to hear it because it’s like months of fear just come boiling out of her and turn into fury. She runs. I think she’s running for the door, but she stops and starts kicking him, hard, over and over, until Sandra grabs her and pulls her on.