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.