The Boy from the Woods(47)

That wouldn’t work.

Nothing would.

He would have to brace for the blow and recover. Plan the next move.

At the last possible moment, Wilde twisted his body hard. It didn’t stop him from getting slammed to the ground. Not at all. He got slammed on the Formica, slammed hard. The air whooshed out of him. But by twisting his body, Wilde had wrenched Thor’s grip enough so that instead of Thor’s arm landing on the meaty flesh beneath the forearm, his elbow took the brunt of the fall.

That hurt too.

One man had a hurt elbow. But the other man—Wilde—couldn’t breathe.

Distance, Wilde thought.

That was his only thought. Distance. Get away from his attacker. Put as much space as possible between himself and Thor.

Regroup, recover.

Still on the floor, Wilde tried to ignore the desire, nay, the absolute need to breathe. That was the thing. He’d had the wind knocked out of him before. It was paralyzing and awful, but what he’d learned with experience was that the paralysis was mostly caused by fear—you feel as though you’ll suffocate, that you’ll never breathe again. That shut down everything. Orders from the brain to the feet or legs were cut off. But Wilde now knew, despite all his primitive instincts telling him otherwise, that his breath would eventually return, faster if he didn’t panic, and so he fought through the temptation to just stay where he was and curl up into a ball until he could recover his breath.

With his lungs bursting, Wilde log-rolled away.

“Get off him!” Ava shouted.

But Thor was relentless. He dove on top of him, driving his knees into the small of Wilde’s back. The jolt sent what felt like shards of glass up his spine. Ava tried to pull Thor away, but he shrugged her off like so little dandruff. Wilde tried to spin, to help, but Thor was having none of it. He snaked his arm under Wilde’s, and the grappling began in earnest. When you look at old movies or training films, it was all about the strikes. Men stood and threw punches, sometimes kicks. The majority of fights, however, ended up on the ground. Grappling matches. Thor would have the size and weight advantage. He’d have the element of surprise. He’d have the fact that Wilde was still trying to catch his breath.

The key to victory often involved sacrifice. Wilde watched enough football to know that the quarterbacks who stood in the pocket, who didn’t wince even when a three-hundred-pound lineman was about to demolish them like a freight train, those were the ones who succeeded. The greats took the hit while never losing focus on their target.

That was what Wilde did right now.

He let the bigger man land a few blows. Because he had one target.

A finger.

He shifted, knowing that Thor would have to grab him near his shoulder to keep him in place. He waited for that. He concentrated on that—Thor’s hand heading for his shoulder—and only that. And when Thor reached for him, Wilde let go with both hands, grabbed one of Thor’s fingers, and bent it back with everything he had.

The finger broke with an audible snap.

Thor howled.

Distance, Wilde thought.

He rolled away again. He could see the toxic mix of rage and pain in Thor’s face. The big man prepared to launch himself again, but a voice cut through the air like a reaper’s scythe. “That’s enough.”

It was Gavin Chambers.





CHAPTER

NINETEEN



Once in the school parking lot, Gavin Chambers packed Thor, who was cradling his broken finger as though it were a wounded pet, into a black Cadillac Escalade and sent him on his way. He put a sheepish Crash into a white Mercedes-Benz S-Class coupe, driven by Crash’s mother. The mother—Wilde knew that her name was Delia—was having none of it. She got out of the car and demanded an explanation from Gavin. Wilde stood too far away to hear what was being said—but he was still close enough to get pierced by the occasional maternal eye-dagger.

Kids from the school had gathered. Wilde recognized Kyle and Ryan and Sutton and a few of the other kids Matthew had told him about over the years. Matthew was there too, looking properly mortified. He met Wilde’s eye as if to say, What gives? Wilde gave him nothing in return.

Eventually, Delia Maynard got back into her car, slammed the door, and drove away with Crash in the passenger seat. The onlookers, including Matthew, dispersed. Gavin Chambers made his way back over to Wilde and said, “Let’s take a walk.”

They strolled between a fence and the building’s brick back. Wilde could see the football field, and more relevant to his past, the quarter-mile track that encircled it. That was the spot of his purported “glory days,” though no waves of nostalgia washed over him. He didn’t suddenly see himself as a sprinting teen or anything like that. You move forward in life. You may give the old you a nod every once in a while, but the old you is gone and not coming back. That was often a good thing.

“I thought the girl was found,” Gavin said.

“She’s gone again.”

“You mind telling me about it?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Gavin shook his head. “What you did here—confronting the kid like that, injuring my man—it makes me look bad.” He stopped. “I thought we had an understanding.”

“That was before Naomi vanished again.”

“And you have evidence that Crash is involved?”