30

It took a lot for Rufus to get disoriented. He liked to tell people he just knew where things were. He explained it this way: he’d tell people to think of the place they knew better than any other. He’d tell them to imagine being there with their eyes closed.

“Would you still know where you were?” he’d ask.

“Sure,” they’d answer.

“Could you find the door?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course you could, because you know the place. That’s what it’s like for me in these mountains. I just know them.”

He wished he could see people’s expressions when he told them this. He imagined they were either amazed or just disgusted because they thought him a liar. The comparison was patently ridiculous. A room was nothing like the mountains that made up the Fingers. A room was a few hundred square feet, while the Fingers were miles and miles of rough terrain, riddled with rocks and snakes and deadfall, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter. He found his way. The sun helped. He could get his bearings by feeling it on the side of his face or the back of his neck. The slope of the ground helped too. Generally, that would tell him which way the mountains were.

Still, there were times he’d get turned around, have to backtrack, retrace his steps to the last place he’d had his bearings. But completely disoriented like he was now?

Not often.

The only thing he knew for sure right at this moment was he was inside a vehicle, moving down the road, the sun on his right shoulder, which meant he was heading south. But beyond that, he was utterly confused.

He’d heard the vehicle coming toward him as he made his way out of the barn toward Earl’s truck, but he’d assumed it was just a random vehicle on the highway and it would soon fly past. But it slowed—he heard the brakes grabbing the tires and the engine downshifting—and turned into the driveway. He stepped off into the grass hoping to give it room to pass by, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t stop and ask him what he was doing there. But he also couldn’t help but wonder who it might be. Lyda? Mr. Duncan? Savanna, God forbid?

He’d never in a million years thought anyone would still be living here. Jesus, if he’d only known. He would have stayed home. Opened some beers, told Earl everything from the safety of the Fingers.

The car coming down the drive stopped, idling nearby. He kept walking. A car door opened. He waited to hear it shut. The sound didn’t come.

He tensed, listening closely. He heard the wind, the sound of an airplane passing overheard in what he believed to be the northeast quadrant of the sky, an insect—maybe a dragonfly—buzzing in high grass off the road. But nothing else. Whoever had opened the car door had yet to move from inside the vehicle.

He continued to walk, listening closely.

Still nothing. The airplane droned away, trembling and fading. The dragonfly buzzed closer. He felt it clip the seat of his overalls. The wind stopped. He smelled something like aftershave, except sweeter, nearly rotten.

“Who’s there?” Rufus said. An alarm had begun to rattle inside him. This was the sixth sense, if he had one, the sure knowledge that the person—represented only by the sound of the car door opening and the smell of the menthol from the aftershave—meant to harm him.

But there was more than that, wasn’t there? The person’s silence, their absolute stillness, spoke to him as much as any sound or smell. This was a person who understood that Rufus wasn’t to be taken lightly. Which meant he’d had an encounter with them before. Either that, or they’d been made aware through someone else that he wasn’t any ordinary blind fool.

“Have a good day then,” he said, and started on toward the road. He walked alert, every muscle as tense as his senses that waited for the first indication—be it sound or smell—that the person was coming for him.

He made it to the road and turned left, walking toward the setting sun. He felt it on his face. Three steps, four steps, five. Was he going to make it? Had the person just given up that easily?

Just when he almost believed it had all been a false alarm, he heard the seat squeak inside the car and then a boot heel came down on the gravel. Rufus picked up his pace, walking faster. The boot heels began to crunch loudly now. Repetitively. He ran.

The boot heels stopped. A whistle came from his pursuer, sharp and long, like one of those wolf whistles men used to do when a pretty woman walked by. The kind that showed appreciation but also something darker, suggesting the woman wasn’t just relationship material but also a kind of potential prey. In that way, it was the perfect sound.

Rufus ran faster, staying on the side of the road, where he felt like an oncoming vehicle would have plenty of room to avoid him. It was only when he left the ground, flying into the dark horizon, briefly, like an airplane with no windows, that he understood the whistle had not been for him.

It had been for whoever tripped him.

He hit the asphalt hard, his right elbow taking most of the force. Better than his face, he thought, as he felt hands on his back. They raised him up powerfully. No sooner had he begun to struggle than he felt the gun muzzle jammed into the middle of his back.

Still no words spoken. The gun said everything he needed to know.

Part of him considered fighting. He doubted whoever it was would shoot him out here in the middle of the road in broad daylight, but he decided against it. He didn’t even know who he was dealing with, which meant making a bet like that was foolish for sure. Instead, he let his body go limp to indicate he had given up.

“Who are you?” he said again as the man (it had to be a man, didn’t it?) physically wrenched him around by the shoulders and began to walk him toward the car, the gun still pressed into the middle of his back. It was right against his spine, and Rufus felt like that was another sign. Whoever it was knew what he was doing.

And they also knew enough not to speak. Silently, the man guided Rufus to the car, where he was pushed into what he quickly realized was the back seat.

Leather. Clean. New-car smell. Power locks from the sound of them all clicking down at once.

“Can you at least tell me where you’re taking me?” he said.

No answer. The car pulled out of the driveway and turned to the right. East.

He was sure of that much.

*   *   *

But now, after what he guessed had been nearly two hours of continuous driving, which included several endless doughnuts in a field to disorient him, he wasn’t sure of anything. His mental radar was off-line. He was truly, truly in the dark.

The men in front were so steadfast in their silence, he gave up trying to engage them and instead focused on other details that might help him make some determination about where he was and whom he was with.

Initially, he’d suspected it might be a sheriff’s county vehicle, but after touching the man’s hair in front of him, he knew there was no glass separating him from the front seat like there would have been if it was a sheriff’s vehicle. As soon as he touched the man’s hair, his head moved. Rufus reached out again, trying to feel the head again, but instead all he felt were two large hands around his wrist. They flicked his hand back on itself, bending his wrist at an extremely awkward—and painful—angle. He gasped and settled back in his seat.

The message was clear. Hands to yourself.

“Asshole,” he said.

No reply, just the thumping of irregular pavement under the rolling wheels.

Wait. That was something. Irregular pavement. He focused on the pattern of thumping. Maybe if he could memorize it, he’d be able to recognize the pattern again. Of course, that assumed he ever escaped his captors. He had a sinking feeling they might be taking him somewhere to kill him.

He wasn’t ready to die. Hell, he hadn’t even fixed himself yet. He still needed more time to figure out how to live with what he’d done, how to simultaneously move forward and never let himself forget the guilt, because forgetting was its own kind of guilt, happiness its own accusation.

But why? Maybe that was the most important thread he needed to follow. Had Harden connected him to Earl? Was it possible he was one of the two men in the front seat? Possible, he supposed, but unlikely. Harden would be in his seventies now, too old to be chasing people around the county.

But if not Harden, who? Who else would have reason to do this? Who else might feel threatened by Rufus?

There was Jeb Walsh, or course. He’d held a grudge against Rufus and Earl since the day they had greeted him outside the library in downtown Riley nearly a year ago. Of course, greeted wasn’t really the word for what had happened that day. A better term might be accosted. Rufus had seen Walsh’s descent on Riley and the Fingers coming and had had no intention of sitting by idly and just allowing him free rein. Walsh wasn’t the kind of man who was used to being challenged directly and had been trying to exact some revenge against Rufus and Earl ever since. Kidnapping Mary had been his first failed attempt. Why wouldn’t he try for Rufus next?

The answer wasn’t clear. But one thing was. All of those possibilities were preferable to who Rufus believed was behind his abduction: Savanna.

He wasn’t ready to deal with her again. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready for that if he lived a million years.