State of Emergency

CHAPTER 18


Northern Idaho

12:20 AM





Marie Pollard sat in the corner on a lumpy mattress that had been thrown on the floor. It was clammy and damp and smelled of mildew. Simon slept next to her leg, rolled up in a striped beach towel—the cleanest thing she could find in the vacant farmhouse. A tamarack fire popped in the woodstove in the corner, helping the ancient boiler keep up against the chilly wind that rattled the windows and creaked at the walls. Marie had no idea what time it was. Ripped from everything she knew, she found it impossible to focus. Her eyes hurt when she breathed. She’d been crying so long her skull felt as if it were full of molten lava.

Lourdes straddled a kitchen chair that she’d turned backward. Resting her chin on bare arms over the backrest, she stared down with squinting black eyes at Simon. Marie tried to make small talk, to find some connection in their womanhood—but Lourdes only ignored her.

“Your baby is very ugly, Marie Pollard,” she finally said, using both her names as if they were one word. “You know that, don’t you?” She spoke without lifting her chin from the back of the chair, making her sound bored.

Marie bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

Lourdes arched her back, looking up at the ceiling. “I have never understood what people see in babies,” she said. “They are like insignificant worms at the bottom of a bottle of tequila. I drink them down without a second thought.”

Mercifully, Lourdes’s cell phone began to ring. Her eyes brightened when she looked at the number. The hint of a smile perked her lips. The frown came crashing back the moment she noticed Marie looking at her, but she couldn’t hide the girlish lilt in her voice. Turning, she walked down the hallway.

Marie let her head fall back against the wall, happy for a moment’s freedom from the woman’s hateful stares. It gave her time to catch her breath and take stock of the situation.

Lourdes and her two cronies had loaded them up in the backseat of a cramped four-door pickup that reeked of stale fish sticks and tobacco. None of the neighbors on their quiet street noticed a sobbing Marie and her little boy being trundled off to who knew where. She’d taken a rape prevention course with her women’s group at church the year before and the words of her instructor came back with the brilliant clarity of a bolt of liquid lighting. If you are assaulted and find yourself being forced to go to a second location, fight with all you have because that second crime scene will almost always be a murder scene.

Marie couldn’t fight. She wasn’t even sure where they were. She remembered headlights playing off a dense pine forest and drifted snow when they turned off the blacktop of Highway 95 at some point after they left Moscow. But terrified with worry over Simon, her brain had lost all sense of time and distance.

The two men hardly spoke to her at all. The one they called Jorge walked with a bad limp and swore under his breath at every step. He was in his forties, and had a sizable belly, which made the limp worse. Though he was injured, the other two seemed content to let him do the lion’s share of the work. He unloaded the truck. He brought in wood. Now, Marie could just make out his right shoulder around the corner of the far wall, where he hobbled around in the kitchen making pancakes.

A large television in the dining area flickered with the news. Marie didn’t know if he even thought about it, but Jorge kept the volume down, allowing Simon to get a little more sleep. He got cranky without a nap and she was terrified of what Lourdes would do if he launched into one of his crying fits.

Pete, the second man, slouched in a sagging recliner and killed zombies on his smartphone. Not far into his twenties, he wore his Carhartt ball cap turned sideways like some sort of farm-boy rapper. A tiny blond soul patch bristled under his bottom lip.

Jorge leaned around the wall. He’d used the tail of his checkered flannel shirt as a towel and it was covered in flour. “You think the kid will eat some pancakes?”

“How’d I know?” Pete muttered, entranced in the gore of his iPhone. “I look like a baby to you?”

“A little bit.” Jorge smirked.

Ignoring him, Pete leered at Marie, licking his lips. Before he could say anything Lourdes skulked in from the back room. Marie could feel the heaviness of her presence before she even rounded the corner.

“The worm will eat what we feed it or it will starve,” she said. “It makes no difference to me.” She carried a laptop computer with the screen half closed. Stooping down beside the mattress, she shoved it in front of Marie.

“Tell him you and the worm still live and breathe, Marie Pollard,” she said, flipping up the screen.

Marie found it hard to breathe when she saw Matt’s face. The image was jerky and pixilated from the connection, but it was Matt. He was pale and his beard already bristled like it needed trimming.

“Are you all right?” His eyes sagged with guilt.

“Yes.” Marie nodded, blinking back tears.

“Simon,” he said. “Can I see Simon?”

She turned the computer toward the baby. “He’s sleeping.”

“You’re not hurt?”

“We’re fine,” she said, whispering in spite of herself. “I don’t understand, Matt. Who are these people?”

“I’ll explain everything when this is over,” he said.

Lourdes grabbed the computer and slammed it shut. “That’s enough,” she said. “He knows you are alive.”

It felt to Marie as if the evil woman had just torn away her heart. She pressed her head against the wall, eyes clenched tight as Lourdes leaned in close enough she could smell the odor of her heavy powder makeup.

“Do not get your hopes up, Marie Pollard. You will never understand. Before this is over, I will find out if your little worm tastes better boiled or fried. . . .”

On the mattress beside Marie’s leg, Simon threw his head back and began to wail.