The man who masters himself is delivered
from the force that binds all creatures.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Chlorophyll faint in Cat’s nose. Darkness. Something moving in the shadows. She turns her head to the movement, squinting, her Glock drawn.
“I am pleased that you have come, Catherine.” Dupont’s calm voice.
She moves toward the sound. “Uh-huh.”
Something small down below Dupont. A groan.
“Joey?”
“He’s here. Breathe deeply child.”
La Blanca is totally dark.
A minute passes before she speaks. “You’ve hurt him?”
“No, he’s just under sedation.” In the moonlight, she makes out the silhouette of Dupont lifting Joey, one hand under his arm. “There now, stand up. Try to stand up. Let your mother see you”
It is all Catherine can do not to rush to Joey, embrace her child.
Dupont continues talking to Joey. “Do you remember where you are?”
“That’s good.”
Joey moves forward, stumbles, and goes down on his knees, Dupont mimicking him in one swift movement so that Joey is in his grasp, Dupont’s hand firmly around his mouth.
Only then Joey realizes his mother’s presence.
He struggles to rise but a hand on his mouth, arm around his chest, holds him down.
“Stay still,” Dupont snarls.
From the looks of it, Joey’s determination is back. He doesn’t want to stay still.
“Joey, do as he tells you,” Catherine says, both trying to comfort and empower her child.
Joey stops fighting and stands, wrapped in Dupont’s grasp.
“That’s very smart, Catherine. It’s all over for me.” Dupont is up, picking something up off the coffee table.
The glimmer of metal catches Catherine’s eye. She watches him stick something up against Joey’s throat.
“Put out your hand, Joey. Feel this. Don’t grab it, feel it.” Dupont’s words are calm, almost serene.
“It’s all right, Joey, do what he says.”
She watches her son’s small hand move across the metal. “That’s right, Joey, it’s a gun. A .22. You know what it can do to you, don’t you.”
Catherine listens to Joey quietly sob.
“Now take your hand down.”
Catherine watches Dupont push the cold muzzle deeper into her child’s throat.
She keeps her own aim direct on Dupont, but she can’t pull the trigger with her son so close.
She hears a thump-thump above before she sees it. Light in the room. From outside. Police. Please God, no. Anything but that.
The chopper hovers for an instant outside the windows. Then, snatched in updrafts and downdrafts, it loses its target point. Catherine tries to wave them off, her sights still trained on Dupont. She hopes they see her. Call it off.
“I wish I could have trusted you, Catherine. I wanted to believe you.”
He is crying.
“Now, I can’t leave Joey to you. You know what they’ll do to me.”
Dupont is bawling.
Oh sweet Jesus, Catherine thinks.
Dupont’s hand bolts down, grabbing the boy by the shirt collar, grasping enough of it that he is able to stand Joey up, his head in the air.
She tries to bring her pistol up at eye level to find him, take a level shot, but her sights are blocked by a curtain billowing. She has no room to maneuver.
“Help me!” Joey screams right at her. He’s been pulled up into Dupont’s arms now, the madman’s left arm around his stomach. Then Dupont tucks the gun and delivers a blade to Joey’s throat in one quick slashing movement. Blood spews out onto Dupont’s pants.
“Oh shit, shit!” Catherine screams, shouting in horrified madness. For a second, she can see Dupont’s face. It is christened in an exquisite rapture, watching her child’s blood gushing like an open bottle of champagne all over him. Cat hears a machine gun go off, glass shattering, the thud of a bullet. Ears numb. Light washes the room.
There is nothing.
Dupont and Joey are gone. She fears this the most.
Suddenly, glass is crunching, a door swinging open to the side of the room.
She rushes forward.
Light now is all around. She feels the night air on her arms and face. Her legs perform a crazy shuffle. Out…hurry…follow them. Stepping on glass shards, she stumbles to the door. One hand with her gun. Legs tensed, she steps into the night. Stairs. She slips, falling backward, scrambling up again. Under her, the gun. Don’t drop it.
Throat gripped in cold, moist air.
Outside now. Turned around. Confused. Trying to feel through the brush. Listen. Follow the trail. Left or right, which way did they go? She can’t think.
“Shit, shit,” she keeps saying under her breath, waiting to catch some sign of where Dupont and Joey have gone.
Something wet under her fingers. What is it? Fingers up to her nose, the smell metallic. Blood. A shuffle in the distance. Cat collapses. Up on her hands and knees now, crawling away from the house, she prays the chopper will not highlight her whereabouts for Dupont. The thump-thump-thump of chopper blades above tell her it is just off the coastline. Behind her, the house looms white against black.
She must stay low, out of sight. Breathing deep until she can stand, walk, run—until she finds them. Cat closes her eyes and turns her head left, then right, her mouth open, gasping for breath. Her hands on her weapon.
She gets off her knees, hears the sound. She hears Joey gagging. It is the sweetest and most horrific sound she has ever heard. For an instant, she is frozen. Thinking what he is doing to her son. She knows she must follow that sound. She makes up her mind not to think about it, about what he is doing to Joey. She runs forward in the brush.
Joey is still gasping. Cat doesn’t want anything to happen to him, but dear God, baby, keep making that noise.
She reaches a cliff face of sorts, taking a tentative, awkward step down the steep embankment toward the cries. She wants to move quickly, to run in their direction, each small, quiet step utterly frustrating. But she has to wait for them to reveal themselves. At the bluff’s top, she catches a glimpse of them a few hundred feet ahead, Dupont stumbling down the cliff face on a steep, barely defined path. His intention is clear. He will escape with Joey or die trying.
Now.