34
SEAN WAITED IN the darkness beneath the stairs. A few seconds ago he had been lying with Louise, holding her close, her body burning against his chest as if she had a furnace inside. The front of his shirt still damp from her sweat, it now chilled him. Her breath rattled and wheezed.
He had risen from the mattress when he heard the buzz of the motorcycle approach. Now the footsteps above, crossing to the trapdoor. The rattle of the lock, the snap of the bolt, then light breaking in. He stepped back, let the shadows swallow him.
Collins trudged down the first few steps, stopped a third of the way from the top. Sean raised his hands.
‘Sean? Where are you?’
He remained still and silent, his hands ready.
‘I’ve got medicine for your sister,’ Collins said. ‘Come on out, now, let’s get her well again.’
Still and quiet.
‘Sean, come out where I can see you. I don’t want to get mad at you.’
She took one step down. Then another.
‘Come on, now. I’m dog tired and I haven’t got the patience for this.’
Now she descended further, faster, and Sean watched her boots through the gaps between the steps. When her heels were at his eye level, he reached out and grabbed her ankles. Barely a touch, but it was enough.
There was a moment that seemed to stretch out for an age: her feet skimming the edges of the steps, her arms windmilling. Then she toppled forward, hit the stairs so hard he felt the force of it through the floor and the soles of his shoes. Collins rolled the rest of the way down, her shoulder and head glancing off the steps. She landed heavy on the floorboards, flat on her back, and he heard the air expelled from her lungs.
Move, he thought. Now.
Sean sprang from behind the stairs, around to the foot of them, and up, two steps at a time. A cry from below, rage and fear. He didn’t look back, but as he neared the top, he felt Collins’ weight on the steps below.
He reached the opening, out onto the cabin floor. His feet slipped from under him as he tried to halt, to turn back for the trapdoor. He scurried across to it, saw Collins charging up toward him. He reached for the door, hauled it back and over, threw it down with everything he had. Collins cried out again as it came down on her head, her hands scrabbling at the floor.
Sean ran for the door, leaped across the porch, onto the pine-needle carpet of the forest. Clean, cool air in his lungs, he passed the motorcycle and sprinted for the trees.
‘Stop!’
He weaved between the pines, left and right, ready for a bullet to take him off his feet.
‘Stop, you little—’
The voice had not drawn closer. Maybe he could outrun her. Maybe.
Then a tree root snagged his toe, and up was down, and he saw the ground fall away and rise again as he sailed weightless for a moment through the air. He rolled down the incline, shoulder then hip hitting the soft ground, end over end. Collins appeared in his vision as he came to rest. No air in the world, he tried to get his feet under him, but she hit him hard, body to body, putting him back down again.
Fight, he thought. Fight or you’ll die.
He balled his hands into fists, threw them at her, felt them connect with the soft flesh of her breasts. She dropped her full weight on him and tried to grab his wrists. He snaked them out of her grasp, punched her sides, reached behind her, grabbed at fabric. Her hard flat palm slammed into his cheek, a white flash in his head, then black dots in his vision. She put a knee on his chest, pinning him in place.
‘Jesus Christ, do you want me to kill you?’ she shouted, her voice echoing through the trees. ‘Your sister too? Is that what you want?’
Sean blinked up at the sky. High above, an airplane left a trail against the deepening blue. Somewhere amid the fear, he wondered if someone might look down and see him trapped here. Then Collins leaned down, her nose almost touching his, and he couldn’t see the plane anymore.
‘I will do it,’ she said. ‘Don’t you doubt that for a second.’
She reached back, seeking something.
For a splinter of a second, Sean thought, Oh God, she’ll know, she’ll know and she’ll kill me. Then she pressed the pistol’s muzzle against his cheek and relief flooded through him. He almost giggled with the force of it.
She pressed harder. ‘I’ll put a bullet in your fucking head, you hear me? You and your sister both. I’ll do her first and make you watch.’ Collins lifted her knee from his chest, pushed up onto her feet. She aimed the pistol at his forehead. ‘Get up and walk.’
Sean lay still for a moment, staring at the sky, looking for the plane. He found the trail, followed it until he saw the craft through the branches. Then he got to his feet, dusted the browned pine needles off his T-shirt and jeans.
Collins waved the pistol back in the direction of the cabin. ‘Move,’ she said.
Sean did as he was told, breathless, his head down as he walked.
‘I don’t think you’d do it,’ he said as they entered the clearing.
‘Shut up,’ Collins said.
‘I think the sheriff would,’ he said, risking a glance back at her. He saw the pistol still trained on him. ‘But you wouldn’t. Because you have a kid my age.’
‘Shut your mouth and get inside.’
A shove between his shoulder blades sent him stumbling across the porch and through the door. He walked to the trapdoor and the top of the steps. Louise still lay where they’d left her, eyes staring up at him from her sweating face.
Collins followed him halfway down before she stopped. He paused at the bottom to look back up at her. She indicated the paper bags on the floor.
‘There’s your food,’ she said. ‘And a bottle of antibiotics. Give your sister three now, and another three later tonight. She needs to get better if you want to leave here.’
Sean got down on his knees, looked through the bags, set aside the sandwiches and fruit. There, a small bottle that rattled when he lifted it. Amoxicillin, it said.
‘You try that shit again,’ Collins said, ‘then you’ll see what I will or won’t do.’
She turned and climbed the steps, let the trapdoor slam shut, locked it.
‘You left me,’ Louise said.
Startled, Sean turned his head to her. ‘What?’
‘You ran away and left me,’ she said, her eyes hard and unforgiving.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she said. ‘I saw.’
Sean crawled across the floor to kneel beside the mattress. ‘I didn’t run away,’ he said. ‘I just needed to get something.’
‘Get what?’ she asked, lifting her head.
He reached inside the front of his jeans, found the metal with his fingertips. ‘This,’ he said. ‘Look.’
‘What is it?’
Before her eyes he opened the lock knife he’d taken from Deputy Collins’ pocket, let her see the shining blade.