Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake)(102)

We have to get the chains off, and there’s no way around it; that’s going to hurt him. They’re tight. Dragging them down is the only real option, and working them past the pants he’s still wearing is impossible. I yank the pants free and let them float away. He’s just down to underwear now. My hands are shaking, my fingers numb. I get a grip on my side of the chains and slide them down half an inch. My fingers slip off, and I yell into my regulator with frustration. Javier gets his side. We’re tearing open Sam’s wound, but that doesn’t matter now; I can see that he’s moving sluggishly but not helping. Not tracking. His body’s shutting down.

I yank hard, feel sharp, needlelike pains as my fingernails crack and snap. I don’t care. I get the chain lower. Sam thrashes against the pain. I keep pulling, knowing I’m hurting him, knowing I can’t stop even if everything in me cries out against it. I ignore it, I will do this, I will . . .

Then the chains slip over the point of his hipbone, and go slack. They slide down his pale legs and hit the bottom with a thump of viscous silt. I drag in a sweet, canned breath, drop weights, and then we rise, me and Javier, with Sam held between us. He’s barely moving. Stay with me, baby. Almost there. Almost there.

He’s too limp as we tow him toward the bank. I’m exhausted, shaking all over, breathing way too hard and too fast. The pressure’s left me with a vicious, throbbing headache, but I don’t care about that. I care that Sam isn’t moving.

I’m first out of the water, and I grab Sam’s limp arms and pull him up onto dry land toward Kezia, who’s waiting with a metallic survival blanket. “Sam?” I yank off my mask. “Sam!” Javier pulls Sam’s mouthpiece away. Oh God, he’s not responding, his eyes are open but he’s not looking at me, and this can’t happen, it can’t.

Not after all we’ve endured. Please, no.

I see some life creep back into his eyes, and the hard, black pressure on my chest melts, and I cry out in relief. My eyes blur, and I let the tears fall.

Sam shudders and takes two huge, whooping gasps of air before he chokes out, “Connor. Get Connor!”

Everything goes still inside me. I look at the lake, and I fall back into nightmare. I lock eyes with Javier, and see he’s shaken too. I can’t ask. I can’t. I’m so afraid of the answer.

Javier says, “Sam, is Connor in the water?” Eerily calm, his voice. I’m screaming inside. Falling apart. If my son is in that water, I will die looking for him.

Sam whispers, “No,” and I squeeze my eyes shut and cry harder. It’s relief, but it hurts in its intensity. I bend over and rest my hand on Sam’s shoulder to keep myself from falling. When I can open my eyes again, Sam’s looking at me. He looks ghastly—pallid, lips the color of lilac, shivering. But he’s alive. “They took him to the women’s quarters. He’ll be there. Go get him. I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

I kiss him. My lips are cold and wet and trembling, but his are like kissing a glacier. But he’s there, and he’s alive, and I send him all the fierce, warming devotion I can through that press of our skin. I can taste the foul water on both of us. I don’t care. I’d drink the lake dry to save him.

“I’m going to get him,” I tell Sam. “Javi, there should be a rope to get you back up the fence. J. B. was going to drop one. But he’ll need both of you to help him up.”

“You’re not going by yourself,” Javi says. “Gwen—”

I shake my head. Kez can’t manage Sam on her own; it’s a long way to the fence, and getting him up, safe, and warm will take two people. I can’t go.

I need to find our son.

I put the mask back on, and the regulator, and I plunge back into the lake before anyone can stop me.

The fastest way to my son is on the other side.





27

CONNOR

Aria’s a problem. And as she draws in breath to scream, I grab her and put my hand over her mouth. She’s small enough I can pick her up off the ground and hold her there while she struggles and squeals. The water’s still running, and Vee turns on even more taps, so I don’t think anybody else can hear the struggle over that. But someone’s going to come looking, fast.

Vee rips down one of the stall curtains. It’s thin stuff, and she pulls out her own switchblade to cut long strips. One is a gag. The other two she uses to tie up Aria’s hands and ankles. We dump her in the corner of the bathroom stall as she wiggles and tries to scream.

Sister Harmony pauses as a siren starts to wail somewhere outside. It sounds like a tornado alert. Then I hear Father Tom talking, but I don’t know what he’s saying over the running water. Sister Harmony must be able to understand it, because she grabs the lamp and charges out of the bathroom. Vee and I chase after the light.

Sister Harmony’s not stopping for the screams and shouts of the other girls and women, or the crying children. She races down the aisle, and from behind she looks like a comet flying through the dark, with ghosts shouting and flailing all around her in their white nightgowns.

I don’t know what Sister Harmony is going to do until she bangs on the locked door and shouts through it, “Help! Help, they’re in here! Save us! They’ll kill us all!” She shoves me back against the wall, and Vee realizes what she’s doing before I do, because I see the gleam of that knife in her hand. I don’t want to use mine. I pick up a table instead and hold it.