I coughed to cover the sound of crumpling paper under the table and shoved the stolen sample into my pocket as I reached for the pad.
I didn’t want to see my own handwriting. I knew where the tight enclosures on o’s and a’s showed my need for control; I knew how many characters I could get through before my inner analyst lit up and started paying more attention to the lines of my own hand than what I wrote, how my script would come to a self-conscious halt in the middle of a word. Plus, my hands were shaking.
“I forgot my glasses,” I said. “At home. Could you?” I handed the pad back. “How much do you think you’d need an hour?”
Bonnie brightened, brought the pen cap to her lips. A cry started down the hall, and she slumped again, sighing. “This is why I’m getting my own place.”
Her own place? Who lived here, other than her? For the first time since being in Bonnie’s presence, I wondered how much danger the little boy was in. How had he come to be here, and who was due back home anytime? “I’ll go check on him,” I said. “If that’s not too weird.”
Bonnie didn’t seem to see anything wrong with the offer. She held her hands up in surrender. “Fine by me.”
I stood and picked my way through the toy minefield. Bonnie was leaving the family compound. That might explain why she was searching as far away as Sweetheart Lake for a job, but what did it mean? What would happen to Aidan? What was “the deal” she’d made?
The hall was dark, all the doorways closed but one. I made for the strip of light there, my skin tingling. I could just walk in there and grab him? It was going to be this easy? Surely, the room would have a window—and then around the house to my truck. I pictured the back of the house and the woods. If I could find a path through the scrub without crackling leaves. If Aidan would play along. If all the pieces fell into place, I could get Aidan almost all the way to my truck before I’d be visible from where Bonnie sat.
I eased the door open and stuck my head in. The dark room held a set of bunk beds, everything in shadow from the heavy drapes over the window. Aidan sat in the lower bunk, his thumb in his mouth.
“Hi, buddy,” I whispered. I closed the door behind me and made for the window, slinging back the drapes. It was low enough to the ground. I turned the lock. Halfway open, the window stuck and would go no further. It would be a tight fit.
I turned to Aidan. He watched me warily.
“You’re getting so big.” I took a step toward the bed.
Aidan popped his thumb out of his mouth. I stopped. “Do you want to take a ride in a big truck?”
His belly rose under his T-shirt with every breath. “Truck,” he said.
“That’s right. Want to go with me in the truck?” I moved quickly, reaching into the bunk and pulling him out. He lurched for his bed, but I held him tight against my hip. “Let’s go to see the truck, OK, Aidan?”
He stuck his thumb back into his mouth. I grabbed a stuffed bear from the bed and handed it to him. He heaved it over my head. “OK, OK. No bear.”
I carried him to the window and tried widening the opening again. The problem revealed itself—I’d have to put Aidan through the window first and then crawl out behind him. There would be a moment of terror for him, outside, alone, a stranger struggling out of the window after him, and this was when the scream would come. “We don’t have much choice, buddy. You and me, we’ll be friends. Can you be really quiet for your friend?”
Aidan whimpered around his thumb as I slipped his feet through the window. He kicked my hands away. “Easy, easy,” I murmured, and then the door behind me opened.
“Is he giving you trouble?” Bonnie said. “Hey.”
I pulled Aidan away from the window and jostled him against my hip. “Oh, we were just—looking at the squirrels. Josh likes to look at the squirrels.”
Bonnie looked at the window. “Mikey’s afraid of squirrels.”
“Well, you didn’t tell me that, Mikey,” I said, wedging the false gaiety back into my voice. My heart was pounding in my ears. I couldn’t believe my panic wasn’t written on my face.
Bonnie reached out both arms, the notepad in one hand. A trade. I bounced Aidan playfully, but he dove toward his aunt. I pretended to give my full attention to Bonnie’s calculations, written in a lumpy script.
Bonnie walked past me and wrestled the window closed, Aidan clinging to her chest. “I’m going to need at least fifteen dollars an hour.”
“Fifteen.” I nodded quickly, my mind already racing ahead for a second opportunity. Or maybe now was the time to leave and bring back help. “Of course.”
“Although,” Bonnie said, rocking Aidan back and forth, “you probably don’t need me that much.”
Why couldn’t I just wrench Aidan from Bonnie’s arms and run? “Fifteen an hour is fine.”
“Your kid couldn’t be that much work.” Bonnie placed her hand on Aidan’s fluffy hair and turned him away. “Being a teenager.”
I heard only the barest rush of air as something heavy swung toward the back of my head, and then all was black.
Chapter Thirty-eight
The moaning came from a long way off, then it was inside the room, inside my mouth, my own voice clawing at my throat. It was my own.
I could stop it.
Under the silence and my own ragged breath, I heard hisses. Whispers. The whispers stayed where they were.
I am the moan and they are the whispers.
They. Bonnie, holding Aidan in her tight arms and turning his face away just as the hammer came down.
And accomplice. With two-by-four? With baseball bat?
I reached to feel the wound, but my arm wouldn’t move. Paralyzed.
My arms were tied. The room, dark. I imagined boots stepping over me to cover the window and began to shake.
Joshua.
A moan escaped, loud, unbidden, long. The whispers dropped away.
Joshua. All I had wanted. And now.
Baseball bat? Hammer? The entire back of my head was caved in, crushed.
The whispers rose and fell. I woke again without knowing I’d gone under.
Boat oar.
Joshua sat at my side in the dark room. Small Joshua, a baby again. He ran a small fire truck up my arm. “Go,” I groaned. The whispers down the hall stopped. “Go. Before they—”
The door opened and footsteps landed all around me. A woman’s voice. “Stay the hell out of here.” Hands reached into my view and took him away.
My head. I passed out for a while and then the footsteps came back. Something nudged me.
Boat oar. It was new. I’d put it in the oarlock myself.
The moan came from somewhere deep.
Something nudged me again, and I reached for it. I hung onto it as it shook and stabbed at me. A woman’s voice. “Get off, damn it.”
I opened my eyes. The room was black but I could see a figure there. An oar. It really was an oar. The weapon of choice for lake people. My bound hands clutched at it—and, at the end of the long handle, not Ray. Not Ray at all, and not Bonnie or Bo. I hung onto the oar with all my strength, climbing up the handle like someone gasping for the shore.