Twenty-Four
Snow was different outside the city. While a dusting of white lent an air of the magical to lampposts and parked cars and storefront awnings, it lay against open pasture like a lover, and brought every beautiful curve and hollow to life. It crusted the pine boughs in crystal sugar shards. It drifted between tree trunks and frosted every fencepost.
At Chaceaway, the animals were indoors, save the chickens, who scratched at the fluffy white carpeting in search of morsels beneath.
“It’s perfect,” Holly said, breath fogging the window in front of her as she surveyed the farm and its blanket of powder. It wasn’t a wet, icy snow – the morning news had described the road conditions as “fair” – but a dry dusting. She wrapped her fingers tight around the mug of tea in her hands. “I’d love to go walking in it.”
“Nah, you don’t wanna do that.” Wynn was building up a fire on the hearth. “It’ll just get your boots wet and make your lungs hurt.” He laughed as he glanced up at her, and saw her hopeful face. “Ain’t you ever seen snow before?”
Holly felt her cheeks warm, embarrassed to be reacting with such childlike wonder to snow. “It snowed right before Christmas. But it’s prettier here. It’s…” She turned back to the window, gaze flying across the snow-draped hillocks. “It’s pure here. No one's touched it.”
The sound of firewood thunking around behind her stopped. Wynn took a breath. “And you want to be the first one,” he guessed. There was a note in his voice that made her think he understood so much more than she could ever explain to him. Like he understood the ecstasy of something first and pure and untouched to someone like her.
“Yes,” she breathed, steam from her mouth shivering against the thin windowpane. She turned to face him again – he was on his knees at the hearth, hands braced on the old stones, watching her. “If that’s alright,” she added.
“Sure, sure.” He heaved to his feet with a wince and a popping of old joints. “We better see about getting you a warmer jacket, though. That thing you brought ain’t worth keeping the barn rats warm.”
She smiled. Being warm had nothing to do with jackets, she wanted to tell him. Michael had proved that to her.
Wynn found an out of style plaid wool coat in the downstairs closet. Black, with an overlaid pattern of brown and mustard and white, it had been chic a few decades ago, and was made of a heavy wool, delightfully warm when she slipped it on and pulled it around to fasten the double rows of buttons. It ended at her ankles, to keep the wind off her legs.
She realized who it had belonged to as she finished off the last button. “This was Camilla’s,” she said, lifting her gaze to Wynn’s. A stab of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t be wearing it. Maybe he really didn’t want his sister’s coat on this girl he didn’t know.
But he smiled at her, zipping up his heavy Carhartt jacket. “It fits you. Thankfully I held onto it, or you’d be in one of these.” He plucked at the front of his jacket. “Hat?”
“Please.”
He handed her a knitted beanie that smelled like mothballs and she snugged it down over her ears.
“Ready?”
“Yep.”
The first step out the back door the snow compressed beneath her boot, the muffled crunching moving through her, ringing electric in her ears, blasting a smile across her face. The air was cold and damp, and the incredible new-fallen snow smell filled her nose.
Perfect, yes.
They took Cassius with them, and the Dane lifted his feet high to get them clear of the snow, leaping and skittering like an excited colt. Songbirds, bright red cardinals and petite chickadees, flittered from branches to the feeders and then back again, stealing bites of black oil sunflower seed as they passed through the yard and skirted the barn. Holly was silent and rapt as she absorbed it, drinking in each detail, pressing them into the scrapbook pages of her mind to pull out and look at later.
“This is a nice trail,” Wynn said as they passed between two tall pines. “I take the dogs down this one a lot.”
There wasn’t anything visible of the path, only a snow-covered clear track between the trees that signaled a trail. Holly followed him down it, trusting his senses and Cassius to get them back to the house later. If nothing else, they were leaving deep tracks. Better than breadcrumbs.
The trees stood like sentinels alongside the track, stoic and impartial. How beautiful were trees? The world’s silent witnesses to countless fits of passion; the keepers of deep woodland secrets; the stakes holding down the windblown surface of the earth, when humans tried to send shockwaves to its core.
Surrounded by tall pines, she didn’t suppress the words that built up in the back of her throat.
“I used to walk in the woods like this when I was a little girl,” she said, breath puffing white. “With my mom. There were all these little secret trails around our house, and we’d pack lunch and spend all afternoon looking for deer and naming the birds.”
“I always liked it out here,” Wynn said beside her. “You can think about things. You can talk, too. And the trees listen.”
She nodded. Yes, her thoughts exactly.
It felt like they went for miles, slow, pleasant progress zig-zagging through forest and edging little white meadows. Then the trees opened up, and Holly spotted a regular sequence of ridges lying beneath the snow in front of them. Train tracks.
“Trains don’t come that often anymore,” Wynn said as she stepped over the rail and kicked snow off the trestles, uncovering a damp wooden tie to stand on. “You can hear the whistle at night. Sounds like a ghost wailing.”
“I bet.” But she was distracted; the tracks had her undivided attention, as she stared down the long tunnel of trees, where they finally disappeared into the gray horizon.
She stepped to the next tie, and the next, then spun and looked down the opposite stretch, ending in a curve that could have been yards or miles away. Distance had no meaning, in the pine-green and snow-white cathedral doming around them.
Time stopped.
“Where do these go?” Holly asked, clutching her mother’s hand as they stood on the worn brown trestles. It had taken hours of walking to come to this spot, this endless stretch of tracks in the middle of the forest.
Lila stared off into the distance, where the tracks met the sunset. The breeze stirred her long dark skirt, fanning it against the slender shapes of her legs, tickling Holly with its ends. Ribbons of hair streamed away from her face. Her eyes were wet and shiny, reflecting the molten colors of the sun as it sank.
“I don’t know, baby,” she said quietly. “But I bet it’s somewhere wonderful, don’t you?”
Holly took a shallow, straining breath, the cold air making her lungs ache. Lila had never found what lay at the end of the tracks. For her, they had only been a fantasy, an out of reach promise of escape. A reminder that the world was full of constant movement, but that time would always stand still for her.
“Holly!” Wynn said beside her, and she snatched her head around.
She had climbed up onto the slick metal rail without knowing it, and as her feet went out from under her, Wynn caught her wrist in one bear paw hand.
“Ah!” She grabbed at his arms, his jacket, staggering down onto level ground, going to her knees when her ankle gave out. But then she was still, and safe, and unhurt, she knew, as she caught her breath.
“That was close,” Wynn said. “You alright? What were you doing?”
She shook her head, not able to explain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t have a worse fall than that,” he said, righting and stepping back from her. “You coulda–”
The rest of his sentence broke off into a masculine yelp, and his left foot flew forward and he collapsed. Above the sharp intake of her gasp, Holly heard the crunch of bone breaking.
“Oh my God! Wynn!” She shot to her feet, rushing to him.
He sat in the snow, his left leg stuck out in front of him at an awkward angle. His weathered face was scored with harsh lines of pain. He grunted and reached for his lower leg, hissing through his teeth when his hand landed on his calf.
“Wynn.” Holly laid a hand on his shoulder, bending over him, more than a little panicked. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
“It’s not your fault,” he gritted out. “It was that damned rock.”
She glanced over and saw it; filmed with slick ice, it had lain hidden beneath the snow.
She grimaced. “God. Do you think it’s–”
“Broken. Yep. I know it is.”
She straightened and pushed her beanie back off her forehead, suddenly hot all over with anxiety. “Do you think you can stand up? I could help you walk back. You could put your arm around my shoulders–”
He shook his head. “That’s real sweet, darlin’, but it’s three miles back and you’re just a little thing. You can’t hold me up all that way.”
Cassius circled his master, snuffling at his face, whining and wagging his tail.
“I’m alright,” Wynn told the dog, stroking his head. “You just calm down, Old Cass.”
Holly knotted her gloved hands together. She’d brought her little red child size gloves, her favorites. They seemed too bright in this gray and white landscape.
“What can I do to help?” she asked. “Is there someone I can call? Can I…oh God, Wynn, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Calm down,” he soothed. “It hurts like a bitch, but it’s just a broken leg. Nobody’s dying.” He managed a pained smile
She gave him a miserable one in return. “I just feel awful about it.”
“I know. But here’s what you’re gonna do. Take Cass here, follow the tracks and go back to the house. There’s no good cellphone signal out here. Find the list of numbers by the phone in the kitchen, and call Fred Mashburn. Okay? Tell him what happened and he and his boys can come help me back to the house.”
She nodded. “Fred Mashburn. Got it. But what about you? Shouldn’t Cassius stay here and keep you safe?”
“Ain’t nothin’ but coyotes in these woods, and they don’t want an old tough strip of meat like me. No. You take Cass. I’ll be just fine.”
“Will you be warm enough? Do you need my hat?”
“No, sweetheart. Go on, now. And don’t you slip and break your leg, or we’ll have to hope Cass turns into Lassie and fetches help for us.” He laughed, but his complexion was paling. His leg was hurting him badly.
“Alright. I’ll be back soon.” With great regret, she left him sitting there. “Come on, Cass,” she called, and with an order from his master, the Dane followed her back down the trail.
“I can’t believe how stupid I am,” she said to the dog once they’d gone a little ways. “Having damn…flashbacks…and getting sweet old men hurt…”
Cassius pulled to a sudden halt beside her, growling low in his throat. The sound scared the hell out of her. She jumped, and glanced up wildly.
“What? What is it–”
Her heart lurched. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, not trusting that what she’d seen was real.
But no, they were still there. Not ten feet up the trail. Standing side-by-side, ugly smudges against the snow.
Abraham and Uncle Jacob.
Jacob smiled. “There she is.”
Michael gave up on finding the Jessups himself. They had no fixed address, and short of going back to Loving Embrace and asking Shaman if he had any ideas as to where they might be hiding out, he was going to have to leave the tracking to the trackers. So that’s just what he did. In the most awkward exchange of his life, he asked Hound and Rottie if they could please, would they mind please, if they weren’t too busy with club stuff, find the Jessups. They’d stared at him with shock before their manners kicked in and they agreed, saying they’d enlist Ratchet’s help.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Hound said. “We’ll have ‘em pinned down by tomorrow, you can put money on it.”
With plenty of assurances from them, he left the clubhouse and headed for home – Chaceaway, which at the moment was the home that had raised him, and the place where his woman waited. It didn’t get much more home than that.
The roads were clear, and though the cold seeped through his clothes and into his skin, the ride out to the farm was a pleasant one. Lighter inside than he’d been in – well, in a long time, he let the wind and the road and the feel of the bike between his legs shake the tension out of him. He breathed in the smell of snow and thought about Holly’s blinding smile when she laid eyes on him, and he felt…he felt happy. Truly, simply happy.
The driveway was going to be tricky, he realized, when he reached the turn and saw that the gravel tracks through the grass were completely snowed over. Then he came to a halt when he saw that there were fresh tire tracks cutting through the snow. Just one set, and they hadn’t been traveled over more than once. Coming or going, who could tell. Maybe Wynn hadn’t had the fridge stocked and he and Holly had gone shopping.
That was what he told himself, as he navigated his Dyna down one of the car tracks. It seemed to take forever, and his pulse knocked harder with each beat, as the bike slid and fishtailed against the snow.
Finally, he reached the clearing where house and barn stood.
His eyes went straight to the Buick. That now-familiar rustbucket that didn’t belong here, at his home. With Holly.
They’d found her.
Michael experienced the most acute, painful panic of his life. It gripped every blood vessel, every nerve, pressed him tight like a vise.
And then he let the sergeant at arms for the Lean Dogs take over. He let it command every part of him that was a screaming, terrified little boy holding onto Caesar’s collar, and propel him into action. He wasn’t nine anymore. Wasn’t helpless.
He was going to draw and quarter the bastards.
He threw his helmet down into the snow and sprinted to the house. Doors locked. Lights on, but no answer to his knock. Delilah came to the door and whined at him through the windows, but Cass wasn’t with her.
He saw the tracks leading away from the house, out the back door, down the steps, toward the trails. Pawprints alongside them. Wynn and Holly had gone walking, and they’d taken the huge stud dog, thank God.
There was no sign of the Jessups, save their bootprints, sized somewhere between Wynn’s massive tread and Holly’s tiny boot marks with their stacked heels. All the tracks led into the woods, down one of the old game trails. Presumably, the Jessups had come to the same conclusion he had, and had followed Wynn and Holly’s prints into the woods.
Michael went to the kennels, ignoring the cacophony of welcoming barks and yips. He needed old, mature, smart trackers, not green pups. He loosed Sammie and Bear, not bothering with leads, snapping his fingers and bringing the two hounds to his heels.
He led them to the head of the trail, pointed out the tracks to them.
“Seek,” he instructed. “Boys, seek.”
They snuffled for long moments, then took off galloping across the snow, headed down the trail.
Michael sprinted after them. He could follow the tracks, yes, but he didn’t want to take chances. He was counting on the baying of the dogs to rattle the Jessups. And he was counting on Cass’s help when he reached them.
Holly rested a hand on the back of Cassius’s thick neck. It quivered as he growled again, a vicious, sinister sound. The sight of the giant dog had halted the men; their eyes flicked toward him nervously.
A dozen thoughts crowded her mind. How had they found her here? Did Michael know? How much of a deterrent would the dog be for them? Could she make a run for it?
She edged back a step. Her pulse was a sick pattering in her ears and throat; it throbbed in every inch of her skin, contracted at the roots of her hair.
All the old fear and helplessness fell over her, a familiar blanket of immobility. It strangled her. It turned her from human to mindless victim. The mantle of the sightless, voiceless receptacle for their abuse.
No, a voice inside her screamed. No, no, no, NO!
Abuse her they might, but she didn’t have to accept it. After all, when had compliance ever spared her?
She curled her gloved fingers around Cassius’s collar. “How did you know I was here?” Her voice only shook a little.
“Shaman knows everything about everyone,” Jacob said. He’d always been the more talkative of the two. “He even knows where your little Michael would hide something he wanted to keep to hisself.” He grinned.
She hated the way he said Michael, the mocking slant to his voice.
She pressed her trembling lips together, lifting her chin, as terror chased through her. “All this time, and you couldn’t find some other girl? Someone prettier and younger than me?” She slipped her right hand into the pocket of the coat, reached into its depths.
Abraham, with a glance for the dog, took an aggressive step toward her. “You belong back home, Holly.”
“Where I can’t tell the police what you did to me? I already told them, and they never believed me.”
He scowled. “You belong with your family,” he restated.
“My family.” A high, crazed laugh burst out of her. “Because they love me? Well, you’re one member short now,” she said, lips skinning off her teeth, relishing the chance to snarl at them. “Dewey’s dead. Michael killed him and fed him to a whole pen full of hogs.”
Beside her, Cassius echoed her snarl with one of his own, his immensely more frightening.
Her father’s face was black with wrath. “Let go of that dog and come over here.”
“Make me.” She pulled her right hand free of the jacket, clenching the gun Michael had given her. She shot one-handed, and the round went wide, clipping Jacob in the shoulder before it arrowed off into the trees.
He clutched at the wound, blood spurting between his gapped fingers. His eyes went round. “Goddamn!” he shouted. Then he lunged at her.
Too late, she realized Abraham was going to reach her first, diving toward her as the shot boomed through the forest like cannon fire.
Holly swung the gun toward him, and he knocked it out of her hand. It spun away, landing silently in the snow.
Cassius lunged, the collar ripping from her fingers, and Abraham screamed as the massive jaws clamped onto his arm.
Holly turned to run –
And an arm caught her around the waist, lifted her high, her feet kicking and swinging through the air, useless.
“No!” she screamed. “Let me go, let me go!” Tears blurred her vision. She kicked wildly, clipping at Jacob’s shins, and he cursed her.
“Shut up, little bitch.” He threw her down into the snow.
She rolled over –
But he was on her already, as if he had more than two hands, trapping her wrists easily and forcing them down to the ground. His face was a twisted mask of rage. Her uncle, who’d raped her at the kitchen sink. The first time a man had come inside her body. Her blood relative.
“Get off,” she shrieked, bucking beneath him, struggling to get her boots in his ribs. She could already feel herself tiring, the awful pull of frightened exhaustion.
Abraham was screaming as the dog savaged him.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. She drew in huge lungfuls of air, fighting for all she was worth, not knowing whether he meant to rape her or kill her, or bind her up with rope.
“No!”
Jacob put her hands together over her head, pinning them together in one hand. Blood seeped all down the outside of his sleeve as he reached into his jacket pocket. The knife glimmered dully, reflecting the silver sky along its wicked length as he withdrew it.
He was going to slice her up. The blood would stain the snow.
Holly gathered herself for one final resistance, and then she heard it: the eerie, yodeling howl of a wolf.
Jacob lifted his head, looking down the trail.
Cassius let out one gruff bark.
No, not a wolf. A Bluetick hound.
Help. Help was coming! Someone had found them!
Holly rolled her head, the snow bleeding its moisture through her hair, freezing her scalp. Racing toward them were two hounds, baying for all they were worth, crying again and again. And behind them…
“Michael!” she screamed when she saw him. “Michael!”
And then the pain.
Cold, so very cold, like ice spearing through her abdomen. Her breath caught, and her heart stuttered, as the awful sharp thrust of cold bit into her belly.
And then the great spill of warmth, heat rushing inside and outside of her, pouring down her belly beneath her clothes, flooding her insides with hot liquid.
The blood.
He’d stabbed her.
“Michael,” she said, as his face became clear. He was running toward them, his knife in his hand.
“I love you,” she whispered. Oh, love, you almost made it in time. Almost.
It was his mother’s coat. The long, plaid wool number with the nipped-in waist and the big pleats in back. His mother had always looked like a movie star in that coat. And it was his mother’s dark hair spilling across the snow. And it was Holly’s pale, green-eyed face, her lips forming his name.
He saw the knife go in, through the layers of coat and clothes, saw the way her face blanked as the pain registered.
The man on top of her stood, pulling the knife from her, its tip dark and dripping with her blood.
Drip-drip-drip onto the snow.
Michael came to a staggering halt. He’d reached them. And she was already dead.
The hounds circled, baying in a frenzy, tails beating in the air.
Cassius lifted his bloody muzzle in greeting. Abraham Jessup clutched at his ruined throat, his savaged belly, his clothes shredded.
“Sammie, Bear,” Michael said, snapping his fingers, and the hounds came, sitting down beside him. Their job was done and they knew it. They were bay dogs.
Cass was the catch dog.
Michael aimed the tip of his own knife at Jacob Jessup, at the man’s sweaty red face. “I’m going to gut you.”
Jessup was scared. Michael could smell the stink of fear on him. But he said, “Why? She isn’t gonna make it.”
“Because it’ll be fun.”
Abraham was groaning, trying to push up on his hands.
“Cass.” The Dane came to him, head tilted at an alert angle, jaws steaming with wet blood. Michael pointed to Jacob. “Hold,” he commanded.
Jacob tried to run, but Cass locked onto his arm, dragged him back. When Jacob tried to stab at him, Cass dodged, released and changed his grip, clamping his teeth onto the hand that held the knife. Jacob screamed and the knife fell into the snow. Blood followed, a trickling stream, steaming when it hit the snow, as Cass’s fangs punctured his flesh.
Michael was prepared for a fight. He was prepared for the wild punch thrown from Jacob’s free hand, and he caught the man’s fist, crushed it tight in his fingers. He was prepared also for the startled, terrified rush of understanding in Jessup’s eyes. The look of a man who knows he’s about to die.
Michael drove his knife into Jacob’s belly, in to the hilt.
Gasp. Hiss of breath.
Then he withdrew it, and ran it through the man’s windpipe.
“Cass, release,” he said, and Jacob fell backward, twitching like a landed fish after he hit the snow.
Abraham whimpered when the huge dog’s jaws closed on his shoulder. Michael knelt beside him, leaned in so he could smell the fear-sweat, so he could whisper in his ear.
“St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil.”
He drove the knife down through the back of Abraham’s neck.
A fountain of blood sprayed down on the snow.
A gurgling, choking sound.
Then he collapsed.
Michael stood. Steam rose from the blood on the knife, the blood on the snow, the sweat evaporating off the bodies as they cooled.
Holly.
Michael reached her in four long strides, struggling through the snow. He dropped to his knees beside her, gathered her up against his legs.
“Holly. Holly!”
Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her skin waxed.
He touched the rend in her coat, felt the sticky drying blood. He lowered his ear to her mouth, felt only the faintest rustle of breath.
“Holly.” He cradled her, lifted her up so he held her in his lap like a sleeping child. “Holly. Holly.”
She was dying.
“Wynn!” Michael called, voice echoing through the trees, coming back to him in strange ripples. “Wynn! Where are you!”
The dogs crowded around him, nosing at his shoulders, whining.
“Wynn!”
He couldn’t wait. There wasn’t time.
She was dying.
He staggered to his feet, holding her still. He shifted her, so her limp head rested against his shoulder. “Holly,” he said one more time, and then he ran.