They broke apart instantly and ran to the right side of the road, each behind a tree. Vega pulled the Springfield from the holster and flipped the safety. She watched Cap do the same with his ancient Sig. They waited for another shot, which didn’t come. But then they heard voices, loud but unintelligible. Fighting. Vega peered through the branches to the cabin but could see no detail, all the windows dark.
“One of them didn’t want the other to take the shot,” she said.
“Are we certain they’re shooting at us and not each other?” said Cap.
Vega strained to hear specific words but couldn’t get anything, just a “goddammit” here or there from McKie and high-pitched screeching from Dena.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re getting itchy in there, and they’re armed,” said Vega. Then she said, as if it were a full sentence, “So.”
Cap squatted, looked over his shoulder and around the tree at the cabin, then back up to Vega. There was a bluish tint to his face, from either the early light or exhaustion.
“So this is the thirty minutes,” he said.
Vega said again, “And they’re armed.”
Cap exhaled through his nose audibly and then barely shook his head, ending a conversation between himself and himself.
Finally he said, “Why don’t you go around back, see if you can get in. I’ll get in the front door.”
Vega huffed out a laugh. “And then what the hell are you gonna do?”
“If the girls aren’t in plain sight, then I’ll talk, distract them while you look around.”
“What if they are in plain sight?”
“Then I’ll talk, distract them, wait for you, then we shoot to wound. Below the knees, no torso. Stay away from arteries. We need to know what they know.”
Vega nodded.
“Let’s get a little closer first,” he said, standing.
He took a few steps to another tree, and then another. Vega followed him, hiding behind the same trees. Soon they reached the clearing around the cabin, which was wider than the house of the old man with the truck, more square footage but still shabby, the exterior a chipped red wood with metal-paned windows and an open porch running along the whole front of the house.
“You good?” said Cap.
Vega nodded, and then started to make her way around, moving through the trees, kept the Springfield pointed down, both hands on it. Through a side window, she saw shapes, people moving. She glanced at Cap, who was staying low and thin against the tree, and she pointed to the window and then to her eyes. I see them right here. Cap gave her a quick up nod.
She continued, slowly, tree to tree, passed a pair of sloped cellar doors and an old beige Honda with a peeling New York Giants sticker on the fender. The car the girls were taken in. When did Kylie realize Evan Marsh was not her friend, and neither was John McKie? When did the fear close in? Vega shook it out. Not her concern, and as usual, the wrong questions.
Vega left Cap’s line of vision, went behind the house. McKie and Dena were still fighting, the volume sounding the same, which meant, Vega hoped, that they had not moved too much, that they were still where Vega had just seen them, toward the center of the house and not right up front. Cap knew he had to get the twenty feet to the porch unseen, then under the window.
Why don’t I keep my goddamn vest in the trunk anymore? he thought. It was in the attic at home, in a cardboard box with untaped flaps, covered in dust. The short answer was that he had not foreseen this particular situation. He had not predicted a week ago that he would be working on a police and federal investigation and would be participating in an armed hostage rescue. He momentarily grabbed hold of the idea, allowed himself to feel the fear of it, closed his eyes and thought to Nell over the father-daughter telepathic hotline—I love you, Bug.
That was it for the fear. He opened his eyes, gripped the Sig tighter, and ran for the house.
There was no porch at the back of the house, just three narrow steps leading to a rusted screen door, wires frayed at the bottom. The inner door, red with a square window, was closed behind it.
Vega stayed in the trees. She could still hear the fighting but faintly. She tried to see through the window in the door, but the shadow from the screen was too dark. So she crouched and hustled to the door, up the three steps.
She looked in.
A small room, full-size bed in the corner, with a sheet and a thick blanket in a pile, a dresser with a lamp on top. Bottles, papers, candy wrappers on the floor.
Vega opened the screen door slowly; a squeak came and went. She grabbed the handle, pressed her thumb down on the thumbpiece, and the door was not locked. The country, she thought, with an element of disdain. She pushed the door open with a little bit of pressure; it opened with the soft pop from the rubber door sweep. Then she was in.
She took a couple of light steps. The door to the rest of the house was wide open, but Vega couldn’t see anything except a hallway wall. Where are you, Little Bad?
And then her answer: a girl’s scream.
Cap heard it as he squatted underneath a window on the porch, facing the woods, the hoarse cry followed by sobbing and garbled words in the same high child’s voice. The hair on his arms straightened out, the skin on his neck iced from the sound. He heard Vega in his head: thirty minutes.
Now he could hear McKie clearly: “Shut her up, Dena, shut her up!”
“Fuck you!” Dena shouted, then murmuring to the girls, Cap assumed. Babysitter of the fucking year.
He felt footsteps shake his ribs as they grew closer, stopping right behind him. He made himself as flat as he could against the wall, guessed that McKie was looking out the window above his head.
“They’re fucking gone,” said McKie. “They’re gonna bring the fucking National Guard on this place.”
Cap could hear the slur—drugs or booze or both. Suspect not thinking clearly, volatile, armed.
“Get her out,” yelled McKie, his voice cracking.
Her. A child—Kylie or Bailey—made a mournful sound like a wounded animal. Cap’s eyes fell on the cellar doors in front of the porch, and then there was movement, two or three sets of feet coming forward, to the front door, right next to him.
He ran on his haunches, keeping the Sig tight in one hand, pushing off the porch with the other like a chimp, and turned the corner just as the door opened. He sat against the side of the house now and peeked around the edge, tried to breathe and slow his heart rate as he saw who came out.
Vega still couldn’t see. She heard the front door open and people run out, so she left the small bedroom and stepped into the hallway, pressing her back flush against the wall. Now she saw more of what she guessed was the living room, a yellow wingback chair, another open door leading to a bathroom. Dead mice and boiled meat filled her nose; she pictured hot dogs in a pan of oil-topped water.
She heard no sound in the living room except a small rustle, and she imagined Bailey Brandt gagged and tied and nearly passed out on a pile of newspapers where they made her sleep.
Wrong! Perry would have said, knocking his fist against his head like it was a door. The hell, Vega, your number-two fuckup (number one was not bringing enough firepower): Never assume you’re gonna find who you’re looking for. Assume you’re gonna find the other thing. Which will generally be someone who wants to kill you. Sometimes they’re the same.
He was telling her, over and over, just like Little Bad and Big Bad, to get out of her head, stop projecting and imagining and hypothesizing, because even if you’re thinking of the worst thing, it was still a kind of optimism, being cocky enough to think you could see the future and get a handle on it. You have no handle—you got your gun and you got the fire; sometimes it’s enough, and sometimes it isn’t.
She got closer to the end of the hallway, and she saw more of the living room—a couch with a sheet over it, a pile of clothes. And just as she realized the hallway was more of a partition, a thin wall between the back room and the front of the house, she heard a creak and a catch of breath, and she turned the corner with her Springfield out. But McKie was right there, waiting for her, swinging a plank of wood at her, and he cracked it over her forehead and right eye. Then it was shock, blood, bright white, then black.
Dena Macht wore cutoffs and a pink tank top, dressed for summer in not-yet-fifty-degree weather. She had the same eyes as her mother—blue and set close together; except hers were bright and agonized whereas Mrs. Macht was past all that, long since resigned to bland disappointment. Dena had a gun in one hand but held it awkwardly, no finger on the trigger. Her other arm was wrapped around Bailey Brandt.
Cap curved his body around like a ribbon and pressed his face against the side of the house so he could get a better look: Bailey’s face was buried in Dena’s ribs; her blond hair was stringy and snaky down her back, and she wore the pink dress she’d been kidnapped in, the tulle wrinkled and ripped in the skirt. Cap shook his head to an invisible audience and bit the inside of his cheeks—those fuckers hadn’t given her a bath or changed her clothes for six days.
Dena did not have the gun pointed at Bailey, but it could be there quickly. These things could unravel in a second, Cap knew. There was no fight and then there were fists, no accident and then a pileup, no gunshots and then, suddenly, blood and brains.
Dena was steering Bailey slowly toward the car when McKie called from the house: “I got one, Dena, I got one!”
He sounded giddy, like a kid catching frogs. Cap cringed. Dammit, Vega, how’d you get caught?
Dena’s eyes went wild as she held the gun up, pointing it at the sky.
“Get her in the car!” shouted McKie.
Dena shuffled toward the car, pulling Bailey, who moved like she was sleepwalking, her bare feet turned in slightly, head still pressed against Dena’s midsection. Cap brought his head back from the edge and just sat for a second against the side of the house, tapping his head on the wall.
He knew a few things: he knew McKie and Dena were planning to take off soon, and he knew he was a man down. Once they were in the car it was over; there would be no way for him to get to his car fast enough, especially if he had to make sure Vega was still breathing. He knew people were easier to talk to when they were apart; together they got mobby, gave each other ideas. He knew he had a matter of minutes to convince Dena.
He knew it was time to talk.
Vega tried to open her eyes, and then the pain landed. She put her hand over her right eye, which was wet, muddy. She looked at the blood on her fingers and touched again right above her eyebrow, and it was like a fucking ocean of pain there, blood rushing from an actual hole in her head. She gasped before she could realize she should keep quiet, looked around and saw she was right in the hallway where she’d been hit, and then he was above her again.
She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows, but McKie grabbed her by the shirt and pulled her off the ground.
“Who are you? Who the fuck are you?” he said, spraying spit in her face.
Vega moved her tongue around in her mouth but it felt gigantic. She tried to say what Perry told her to say to every dumbass skip who asked the same thing, but all she could do was grunt. His breath was rotten, and his teeth were uneven like the broken piano keys in a cartoon.
He asked her one more time and then dropped her, the back of her head smacking the floor. Then it was all snowy static as her eyes rolled up behind the lids.
Cap led with the Sig held in both hands and turned the corner.
“Dena!” he called.
Dena and Bailey both jumped. Dena raised her gun with a shaky arm, aimed it in Cap’s general direction as her eyes scoured the woods, looking for him. Bailey flipped around so Cap could see her face (scared, thin). Dena’s arm slid around Bailey’s clavicle and clutched her tight.
Cap took a step on the porch, made sure she could see him.
“Dena, it’s okay,” he said, as levelheaded as he could sound. Ready to get the cat out of the tree.
Dena tightened her grip on the pistol and pointed it at him.
“Don’t tell me that when you got a gun on me, mister,” she called, her voice high like a much younger girl’s.
“Fair enough,” said Cap. “I’m going to stay right here, okay? I’m not coming any closer. And I have no plan to use this gun—I only have it for Kylie and Bailey’s protection right now.”
He watched the words coil in Dena’s head. She allowed herself to take a breath and readjusted her arm around Bailey, which was a good sign. It meant that Dena was thinking and not yet locked into anything she saw as inevitable. Bailey stared at Cap with giant exhausted eyes; he couldn’t tell how much she was registering.
“My name’s Max Caplan. Your folks told me where I could find you.”
“I know,” Dena said. “My dad called.”
The old softie, Cap thought with a mix of bitterness and sympathy. Probably paid the phone bill for his little girl and didn’t tell the missus. And totally screwed the ambush factor, but Cap didn’t let the anger in because this was the opening. This was the door.
“I talked to your dad for a long time,” he said. “He’s a real good guy.”
Dena bit her lip.
“He loves you a lot, Dena. I think he’ll do just about anything for you,” said Cap. “I know how he feels—I have a daughter too. She’s sixteen. And she’s everything to me. She’s the reason that I don’t give the hell up and drink beer all day. She’s why I’m alive.”
Cap listened to his words as they trailed out of his mouth, echoing back and forth. He took the smallest step forward.
“I think your dad feels the same way about you.”
Dena scrunched up her nose, trying not to cry. This was good. If he could get her crying, he had this, and no one had to get shot. Cap knew this was the time. Make the jump.
“You have to know, Kylie and Bailey’s mother feels the same way about them. You know that, right?”
He waited. Nobody moved.
Slowly, Dena nodded.
Vega woke up in the hallway again. She was on her side now, the blood a steady stream across her forehead. The front of her skull throbbed, and every muscle ached, like she’d just run ten miles without stretching. She opened her eyes just a little and did not see McKie but could hear him in the small bedroom, muttering and moving things around.
She lifted her head, and the pain increased, pounding now, but she pushed, and looked around, didn’t see her Springfield.
Goddammit, Vega, said Perry in her head. You let that redneck grab your dick? Make that shit right quick or you’re dead. Then he would whistle the sound of Pac-Man getting sacked by a ghost, punctuated at the end by a cheerful “Wup Wup.”
She heard thumps from the small bedroom, McKie opening and slamming drawers shut. Vega flipped onto her stomach, the gash above her eyebrow beating like a heart, and she watched blood drip from her head to the floor. She pushed up with her arms and her feet at the same time, her body a plank, and she started to move like that, crawling without her knees touching the ground, close to the wall, until she could just see into the bedroom.
McKie was leaning over the bed, shoving clothes into a cardboard box. He was breathing fast and heavy. Her Springfield stuck out of the back of his jeans. The strip of wood he’d used on Vega was on the floor, a foot from the doorway, two black screws sticking out of the end, dipped in Vega’s blood.
Vega walked her legs to her hands and squatted, the springs of her hamstrings ready. McKie stopped packing and ran his hands through his hair. Vega pinched two fingers into her pocket and pulled out Evan Marsh’s Zippo. You got spare change, Perry would say. Throw it. Buys you three or four seconds, and that’s all you need.
Time was funny that way when the shit got thick—slow then fast.
Vega threw the lighter so it sailed past McKie’s head before hitting the wall and landing on the bed.
He turned his head to the side as he twisted around and reached for the Springfield in his pants, but Vega was already up on her feet. She grabbed the board with one hand, digging her fingernails into it, the pain in her head revving like a chain saw, and she swung at McKie’s hand just as he touched the gun, putting everything from her upper body into it. The Springfield flew to the floor, where it skidded and spun to the corner, and Vega shut the door with the back of her foot, careful not to slam it. McKie screamed, his mouth the end of a black tunnel, and Vega thought, Ugly, ugly, ugly, as she hit him again across the side of the head. Now he fell and quieted down, stunned, and she brought the board down on his back where it broke, snapped in two, the jagged half twirling up in the air.
“What was the question?” Vega said, sounding genuine.
She stomped his ribs with her heel and kept kicking.
“What was the question?” Vega said, louder. “What was the question?”
McKie screamed again and tried to turn onto his back and cover his abdomen with his bloody hand.
“Who am I, right? Right? Right?”
She held her foot right over his face, let it hover. And then she said what Perry had taught her—someone asks who you are, you tell them the only thing they need to know:
“I’m the motherfucker who gets. Shit. Done.”
Then she kicked him once more in the face, and he was out.
The birds got louder, overlapping chirps and squawks that sounded like arguing, but Cap knew that was just him tracing human emotion over it. He thought he heard a thump or two from inside the cabin but couldn’t be sure; it might have been the pounding in his ears.
He had gotten closer, off the porch now, on the ground, level with Dena but still a few yards away. Dena still wasn’t crying yet but was close, her arm loose around Bailey, the hand with the gun wiggly, like the weight would bring it down soon.
“Dena,” Cap said, tried to put on his best Dad voice—firm and kind. “I know this all probably got out of hand very quickly, right?”
She nodded.
“I know, and your dad knows, that you really didn’t have anything to do with this—that John talked you into it, and you did whatever you did because you love him.”
She kept nodding so he kept talking.
“You don’t want anything bad to happen to these little girls. You’re just trying to find a way to fix all this.”
Now the tears came, just some thin trickles, her cheeks pinched.
“So let’s fix it,” Cap said softly. “I can help you. I can talk to the police for you. They’ll listen to me.”
Dena’s jaw jutted out in belligerence.
“How’m I supposed to know that?” she said, her voice tense and muted from her stuffed nose. “Why should I believe you anyway?”
Cap tried to sift out where she’d go next. She was damaged enough to have come this far, but how much further could she go, and which way would she break? Was she so desperate she was about to give up, or would she instead take a nosedive into a dry quarry and take whoever she could grab with her? He had to place a bet and pray on that ticket like anyone else.
“Because I’m going to put my gun down. Right here, okay?” he said, gesturing to the ground at his feet. “That is how sure I am that you’ll know what to do next.”
Dena sniffed and her mouth went slack. Cap continued.
“That is how sure I am that your dad was right about you.”
Dena shut her eyes for a short second and wiped them with the top side of her wrist.
Cap started to kneel.
“I’m putting my gun down now,” he announced. “No fast moves.”
He placed the Sig on the patch of wild grass in front of him. Came back up to standing with his hands in the air. Dena watched him, her breath staggered and short. Bailey watched him too and started to move her mouth, trying to talk, but no sound came out. She gripped Dena’s arm like it was a pull-up bar.
“Okay, Dena,” Cap said. “Now it’s really up to you.”
The moments that followed stretched long, each one packed full. Acid swirled in Cap’s stomach, coffee surging in his throat. Dena kept her gun pointed at Cap, her hand still shaking. Cap reminded himself to breathe slowly, drops of sweat running from his underarm down to his ribs.
Then Dena began to unlock her arm from Bailey, slowly at first, Bailey still hanging on. Dena moved quicker then, shaking Bailey off and putting her free hand on the gun. Bailey stood motionless, arms at her sides but fingers extended, tense. She was looking at the ground, but her eyes moved all around, to her feet, Cap’s feet, the porch. Cap thought she looked possessed.
His mouth was dry but he swallowed anyway. He had to keep talking but not patronize her. She still had the gun.
So all he said, all that was in his head, was the simplest thing he could think of.
“Thanks, Dena. Thank you.”
Then he shifted his gaze down, to Bailey.
“Bailey?” he said.
Bailey made little fists. Her arms were impossibly thin. Pretzel sticks. The pink dress hung off her, too big. She didn’t look up, but blinked. Cap knew it was good to get any kind of reaction because it meant that even if she was out of it she was not in shock.
“I know your mom,” he said.
Bailey looked at him like he was speaking a language she understood only a few words of.
Dena breathed hard through her nose and pointed the gun at Bailey for a second, only to nudge her.
“Go,” Dena said. “Go with the man.”
Something about Dena’s delivery wasn’t convincing, a singsong bounce in her voice, her eyes skimming from Bailey to Cap and back. Cap glanced at his gun, thought about how long it would take to grab it, just in case she was having second thoughts about where this was going.
Bailey took a couple of steps and then stopped, arms still pinned to her sides. Cap kept his hands raised slightly above his head but watched Dena move from side to side, like a catcher settling in his spot.
“Come on,” Cap said to Bailey, just above a whisper.
Bailey started moving forward again and was almost to him. Sweat streamed down his temples. He could hear nothing—no birds, no breeze, just the sound of Bailey’s small feet shuffling through the dirt.
And then the front door slammed open and there was Vega, half her face covered in blood, aiming her pistol at Dena.
Dena fired at Vega, missing, hitting the door and shattering the frame, splinters falling on the porch in a cloud.
Bailey froze and screamed, a foot away from Cap, and Cap yelled, “Vega, don’t!”
But Vega wasn’t hearing him.
Cap threw his body over Bailey, nesting-doll style, as Vega started to shoot. Shot one was at Dena’s hands before she could fire again; the gun flew to the ground and Dena let out a piercing scream that sounded like a birdcall, blood spraying. She fell back against the car, hands curled into her chest, and howled, started to slide down but didn’t get far.
Vega came down the stairs of the porch, loose-limbed and wobbling like Dorothy’s Scarecrow, and shot again, hitting Dena’s right shoulder. Then one knee, then the other. Four shots. Dena was on the ground now, convulsing, vomit bubbling from her mouth.
Cap pushed Bailey’s face into his shoulder so she wouldn’t see. Vega staggered toward Dena.
“Vega!” Cap called, trying to wake her up.
She turned to him and lowered the gun. He got a better look at her face now, the blood coming from someplace on her forehead that was distended and starting to swell. She regarded him with her non-bloodied eye, but Cap knew she couldn’t see him—the eye was rolling and squinting, her head starting to droop and then snap back up, like someone falling asleep on a plane.
“Where’s Kylie?” she said.
She fell to her knees, then forward, and passed out, dirt swirling around the outline of her body.
Cap wanted to go to her but didn’t want to let go of Bailey, who was gripping his sleeves. She pulled her head away from him gently and looked up at him, whispered with her puppy breath, “Kylie’s not here. Evan took her.”