WHILE ACKERMAN AND CRAIG HAD BEEN FIGHTING, MAGGIE HAD WORKED ON FREEING HERSELF USING CRAIG’S DISCARDED KA-BAR KNIFE. She was able to cut through the ropes in time to witness Craig’s bloody death throes. She had to look away, bile rising in her throat. She had seen people die many times before and had visited the scenes of several brutal murders after the fact, but never before had she been physically present at the conclusion of such a violent and bloody struggle.
She looked away into the morning sky and tried to purge the images from her memory. Craig had brought it on himself, even asked for it, and would have done the same to Ackerman if he’d been given the chance. Still, she couldn’t shake an irrational feeling of pity for the man.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at Ackerman or at Craig’s body, not now, not while it was all so fresh in her mind. So she went back into the house and freed Louis Ackerman from his bonds.
“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” he asked. “Those men. My grandson killed them all, didn’t he?”
The memory of Ackerman straddling Craig and tearing out his throat flashed before Maggie’s eyes. She couldn’t find her voice, and so she just nodded in affirmation.
“Did he have any other option?”
She shook her head. “No, those men were killers in their own right. They probably would have killed all three of us. And if not us, then definitely him.”
“So it was self-defense.”
“I suppose.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“No, it was definitely self-defense. But he... It doesn’t really matter.”
“What, girl? What were you going to say?”
Maggie looked at a deep gouge in the hardwood floor as if the answers would appear from the swirls in the wood. “I guess it just bothers me how much he enjoyed it. Taking another life should never be that easy, even if it’s justified and necessary.”
The old man nodded. She could see the years of pain and guilt in his eyes. “You never did tell me why Francis is with a federal agent.”
“I guess you could say that he’s a special consultant. To be honest, I really believe that he wants to make some kind of amends for what he’s done.”
“So you think there’s hope for him?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that there’s still hope for your other grandson. You said that you may be able to help us find your son. Please, you can still help make this right.”
A single tear rolled down the old man’s cheek. “I don’t know if that’s possible, but I’ll do what I can.”