He swiveled back toward the wall, dismissing the insect. I glanced behind me where Stan was shaking his head through the lead glass. Shrugging, I started to pull out the flashcards when suddenly Stan’s face changed. His eyes widened and his mouth opened in a warning I couldn’t hear.
I hesitated and before I could turn around, a giant force threw me into the wall and something was being looped around my neck. The metal door shrieked as Stan wrenched it open and I was pulled back, my body turned into a human shield. The thing around my neck tightened and I panicked, unable to breathe. Lucas had my arms locked behind me in an impossibly strong grip. I fought against it, desperate to free myself.
‘Keys,’ he said in a hoarse voice. I bowed my body against his, trying to find some slack in the cord around my throat, but met only a column of unyielding muscle. If anything, the cord grew tighter.
My vision started to contract, black creeping in at the edges. I kicked viciously, striking his shins so hard they should have snapped in half, and used the rest of my oxygen in the process. The last thing I saw before everything went dark was Stan’s hand, holding out his ring of keys.
I came to on the floor in a gasping, head-pounding mess. Stan lay next to the door, unconscious, and Lucas Blackthorn was gone.
‘Agghhh.’ I grabbed my head and waited for the air to work its way back through my body. When I could get up, I crawled over to check Stan’s pulse and saw blood trickling down from his hairline. He was alive.
A noise came from the hallway. Lots of noises, as my ears started registering them.
I peeked out and saw patients at their isolation windows, banging and shouting. Farther down the hall, it became obvious what they were excited about: Lucas Blackthorn, trying to find the right key to get through the second set of doors.
Without any conscious thought, I slipped Stan’s baton from his belt and darted down the hallway with Lucas’s back the only thing in focus, my progress muffled by the noise from the other patients. At Stan’s station I tripped the emergency security button and lifted the baton. Lucas was only a few feet away now, punching key after key into the old locks, oblivious to the electronic security square mounted above.
I waited, willing myself to breathe quietly while eyeing his upper arms, his thighs, the major muscle groups I could aim for without causing unnecessary injury. He couldn’t have more than twenty pounds on me. Thirty, tops. My fingers flexed over the baton while I mentally traced the route from the front desk to this ward, counting the seconds until backup arrived. Then he flipped the keys over and found the badge, Stan’s security badge, which he stared at for a split second before pressing it to the door, making it beep and flash green. I didn’t hesitate this time. As soon as I heard the locks disengage, I swung the baton into his leg.
He stumbled into the outer hallway, still on his feet, and started to run for the exit at the end of the corridor. I launched myself at him, jumping on his back and sending us both crashing into the wall and rolling to the floor.
He scrambled to get up and I didn’t care how famous he was, I didn’t care if he was lost; there was no way this guy was escaping on my watch. I hooked my legs around his and locked the baton across his chest, trying to pin his arms. Shaking my hold, he flipped us both to our backs, crushing me underneath him, and grabbed for the baton.
Voices and footfalls thundered toward us.
‘A little help,’ I yelled and immediately regretted it. The words were like fire racing through my bruised throat, and I couldn’t help the moan that followed them. At my sound of pain, he released his grip on the baton and fell inexplicably still. We both paused in that crazy position – like a piggy-back ride tipped on its back – before his weight disappeared, lifted off me by the cavalry of orderlies and security staff.
‘Stan!’ I waved some of them toward the ward entrance, before being seized by a fit of coughing.
Automatically I covered my throat with my hands, trying to stop the convulsions while the team clamored around, practically tripping over me to secure our wayward patient. Their boots braced and stomped inches from my head, sending vibrations through the linoleum and into my skull, which felt as fragile as an egg on concrete. No one offered to help me up. Their voices sounded far away, eclipsed by the pull and drag of air in my throat, the unsteady rise and fall of my chest. Only the tremor in the floor, the possibility of being trampled, made me turn my head to the side and that’s when I saw him watching me.
They’d flipped him on his stomach and pulled his arms behind him. He was putting up no resistance and barely seemed aware of their efforts to subdue him. For a strange, endless moment, our stillness separated us from the rush of legs flooding the corridor, from the shouts and determination swarming above. We stared at each other, our faces both resting on the cold, flecked tiles less than three feet apart.
Then a needle flashed in the fluorescent lights, the men picked him up, and Lucas Blackthorn was gone.
2
I should have stayed on site to write up the incident report, but I figured a full body assault earned me a little sick time and the idea of writing it at my kitchen table sounded infinitely more appealing than the desk I shared with the exercise therapist. I almost made it out of the building before Nurse Valerie caught me and dragged me back to the medical ward. As soon as my butt hit the bed, two more nurses appeared, raptor style, and they started tearing into me about the boy who came back from the dead.
‘He’s not a boy,’ was all I could say as they rubbed ointment on my neck. It was hard to swallow.
‘He doesn’t look like a teenager, that’s for sure,’ Valerie replied, trying to give me a pill that I repeatedly rejected. Painkillers and I didn’t mix. ‘He must have had to grow up fast out there in the woods, but they only show pictures of him as an adorable kid on the news.’
‘How do you think he survived all those years?’ another asked and they started tossing out theories from the media. Reporters were falling all over themselves to cover every known moment of Lucas Blackthorn’s life and mysterious reappearance. Hikers gave interviews about stories that had only been campfire yarns before, tales of strange sightings in the wilderness, noises and shadows that had sparked Bigfoot rumors, and every conversation ended with the same question: Where was his father?
Josiah Blackthorn had taken his son camping in the Boundary Waters ten years earlier and neither had been seen since, not until now, when Lucas had emerged from the wild – violent, uncommunicative, and alone. I’d wondered about the Blackthorns, too. Right now, though, the only thing that interested me was the distance between my head and my pillow. As they traded tidbits various journalists had dug up, I slipped my backpack over my shoulder and slunk away.
It was dark as I coasted down the hill from Congdon toward the giant shadow of Lake Superior. The entire city of Duluth, Minnesota, clung to the side of an ancient basalt ridge, fighting the slope toward the water, and you knew you were getting close to my neighborhood when the pavement started buckling like waves on a high wind. Paint peeled off crooked porches where old couches and lawn chairs faced the giant warehouses lining the docks. Lincoln Park was a hop, skip, and a world away from Canal Park, where tourists snapped pictures of the lift bridge, took their sightseeing cruises, and ate their fennel and watermelon salads. We didn’t get a lot of fennel south of Piedmont.
When I pulled up in front of the house, I was surprised to see the lights on and Jasper out in the yard.
‘How’s my boy?’ I opened the gate and a battering ram of slobbery muscle knocked into my legs.
Jasper barked and nosed into me, demanding attention.