Cruel World(72)

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s in shock. She doesn’t seem to be hurt, other than what they did to her.”

“Cut her loose and then we should go.”

“I’m not sure she’ll be able to walk,” Quinn said, still looking down.

Alice regarded him. “She’s not coming with us.”

He glanced up. “What? What do you mean? We can’t just leave her here. What if there’s more of them back in Belford? What if they show up here and find her?”

“What if they show up and find us? We need to go. Now.”

“We’re not leaving her. She’s innocent.”

“How do you know? She could be with them and had a falling out with her beaus here and is being punished.”

“If it were you, would you want me to leave you behind?” he said, moving closer to her. Alice hesitated and began to form a reply, but he cut her off. “If it were Ty?”

She closed her mouth and breathed out a long sigh through her nose before whispering to him. “My son wet his pants during this ordeal because he was so scared, and you know what he was worried about? He was worried about you seeing.”

Quinn frowned. “Why?”

“Because he’s a six-year-old blind boy that still thinks the world is magical and that you’re our savior.”

Quinn glanced over her shoulder to where Ty sat on the side of the road. His head was tilted back, and he was listening to the sound of the light breeze hushing in the branches. In his hands, he turned the wooden dowel over and over.

Quinn blinked and gazed down at his boots.

“He is my life, and I’ll sacrifice anyone, including you and me, to keep him safe,” Alice said. She threw another look at the woman near their feet. “We leave her as soon as she’s well enough.”

“Fine.”

Quinn brought the woman to her feet and cut her bindings away. He untied the gag and gazed into her eyes, looking for some sign that she saw him also, but there was nothing but a profound haze on her features as thick as the fog that sometimes came in off the Atlantic.

“You’re safe,” Quinn said, leading her to the Tahoe. Alice was already in the backseat beside Ty, a handgun pointed near her feet.

“She can ride shotgun. And if she tries anything, she’s dead. Hear me, sleeping beauty?” Alice said.

Quinn helped the woman inside the SUV and shut the door, pausing as he rounded the crushed rear hatch.

In the distance, the sound of an engine revved. Then again. Closer.

He hurried to the driver’s side and climbed in. In a moment, they were barreling down the road, the wind humming through the vehicle the only sound.





Chapter 16



Respite and Rain



They drove through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.

Quinn took random turns at first, going south, then west, then east, then west again. After they stopped near a cornfield that would never see a new crop, and heard no sound of pursuit, they continued on a turnpike, making better time than they had on the back roads. The woman stared out of the passenger window for hours and finally drifted off to sleep, her head craned back, snoring softly.

In a clearing containing a housing development like some kind of engineered mold against the land, a group of stilts milled around a small brick building. Quinn quit counting when he reached sixteen. Just before the herd was out of sight, two of them wrenched the building’s steel door from its hinges and plunged inside. He thought he saw the flash of gunfire, but couldn’t be sure.

In late afternoon, he pulled off on an exit and circumvented a small suburb that promised food, fuel, and hotels. On its opposite side, he followed a curving road that led past a gravel drive traveling up through a stand of trees. He waited and glanced over his shoulder at Alice who cradled Ty’s head and shoulders in her lap, his eyes shut with one hand cupped to his cheek. She looked at the drive and then shrugged. Good as any, her look seemed to say.

The driveway wound to an opening that held a narrow, stone house. Its two stories stared down at them with dark windows but nothing moved behind them. A child’s plastic pedal-bike was overturned on the greening lawn, some kind of colorful Frisbee lay beside it.

Quinn carried his rifle up the short steps and tried the knob. It held fast in his hand. As he turned, Alice bent and removed a patio block from beside the house’s landscaping. Beneath it rested a rusted key, which she plucked from the rock and tossed to him.