Panic

He thought of Luke Hanrahan, driving off with fifty grand; and the night Dodge had stood outside the Hanrahans’ house with a baseball bat and been too afraid to act.



And by the time Heather pulled up, he felt a little better.



Heather wouldn’t tell him anything in the car. “What’s this about?” he asked her.



But she just kept repeating, “Just hold on. Okay? She’ll want to tell you herself.”



“She?” His stomach flipped.



“Nat,” she said.



“Is she okay?” he asked. But Heather just shook her head, indicating she would say no more. He was getting annoyed now. This was a bad time; he needed to focus. His stomach was tight with nerves. But at the same time he was flattered that Heather needed him—flattered, too, that Nat might have asked to see him. And they still had two hours before full dark. More than enough time.



There were two cars in Nat’s driveway, one of them a battered Chevy truck he didn’t recognize. He wondered if this was some kind of intervention for her and got that crawling feeling under his skin again.



“What’s going on?” he asked again.



“I told you,” Heather said. “She’ll want to explain it herself.”



The door was unlocked. Weirdly, although the light was rapidly fading outside, there were no lamps on in the house. The air was dull and gray, lying like a textured blanket over everything, smudging out details. Walking into Nat’s house, Dodge had the feeling he used to get in church: like he was trespassing on sacred ground. There was wood everywhere, lots of nice-looking furniture, things that screamed money to him. But not a sound.



“Is she even here?” he asked. His voice sounded overloud.



“Downstairs.” Heather moved ahead of him. She opened a door just to the right of the living room. A set of unfinished stairs led down into what was obviously a basement. Dodge thought he heard movement, maybe a whisper, but then it stopped.



“Go ahead,” Heather said. He was going to tell her to go first, but he didn’t want her to think he was afraid. Which he was, for whatever reason. Something about this place—the silence, maybe—was freaking him out. As if sensing his hesitation, Heather said, “Look, we’ll be able to talk down there. She’ll tell you everything.” Heather paused. “Nat?” she called out.



“Down here!” Nat’s voice came from the basement.



Reassured, he headed down the stairs, into the musty, humid, underground air. The basement was large and filled with discarded furniture. He had just reached the bottom of the stairs and turned around to look for Nat when the lights went off. He froze, confused.



“What the—,” he started to say, but then he felt himself roughly seized, heard an explosion of voices. He thought for one second this must be part of the game, a challenge he hadn’t anticipated.



“Over here, over here!” Nat was saying. Dodge struck out, struggling, but whoever was holding him was big, fleshy, and strong. A guy. Dodge could tell by his size, and by the smell, too—menthol, beer, aftershave. Dodge kicked out; the guy cursed, and something toppled over. There was the sound of breaking glass. Natalie said, “Shit. Here. Here.”



Dodge was forced into a chair. His hands were twisted behind him, tied up with something. Duct tape. His legs, too.



“What the fuck?” He was yelling now. “Get the fuck off me.”



“Shhh. Dodge. It’s okay.”



Even now, here, Dodge was paralyzed by the sound of Natalie’s voice. He couldn’t even struggle. “What the hell is this?” he said. “What are you doing?” His eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark. He could just make her out, the wide contours of her eyes, two sad, dark holes.



“It’s for you,” she said. “For your own good.”



“What are you talking about?” He thought, suddenly, of the car parked on Pheasant Lane, the mason jar of gasoline and Styrofoam, nestled in the engine like a secret heart. He strained against the duct tape binding him. “Let me go.”



“Dodge, listen to me.” Nat’s voice broke, and he realized she’d been crying. “I know—I know you blame Luke for what happened to your sister. For the accident, right?”



Dodge felt something ice-cold move through him. He couldn’t speak.



“I don’t know exactly what you’re planning, but I won’t let you go through with it,” Nat said. “This has to stop.”



“Let me go.” His voice was rising. He was fighting a panicked feeling, a sense of dull dread in his whole body, the same feeling he’d had two years earlier, standing on the lawn in front of the Hanrahans’ house, trying to get his feet to move.



“Dodge, listen to me.” Her hands were on his shoulders. He wanted to push her off, but he couldn’t. And another part of him wanted her and hated her at the same time. “This is for you. This is because I care.”



“You don’t know anything,” he said. He could smell her skin, a combination of vanilla and bubblegum, and it made him ache. “Let me go, Natalie. This is insane.”



“No. I’m sorry, but no.” Her fingers grazed his cheek. “I won’t let you do anything stupid. I don’t want you to get hurt.”



She leaned even closer, until her lips were nearly touching his. He thought she might be leaning in to kiss him, and he was unable to turn away, unable to resist. Then he felt her hands moving along his thighs, groping.



“What are you—?” he started to say. But just then she found his pocket and extracted his keys and phone.



“I’m sorry,” she said, straightening up. And she did truly sound sorry. “But believe me, it’s for the best.”



A wave of helplessness overtook him. He made a final, futile attempt to free himself. The chair jumped forward a few inches on the concrete floor. “Please,” he said. “Natalie.”



“I’m sorry, Dodge,” Nat said. “I’ll be back as soon as the challenge is over. I swear.”



She was fumbling with his phone, and the screen lit up temporarily, casting her face in brightness, showing the deep, mournful hollows of her eyes, her expression of pity and regret. And lighting up, too, the guy behind her. The one who’d wrestled Dodge into the chair.



He’d gained weight—at least thirty pounds—and he’d let his hair get long. Fifty grand wasn’t sitting too well on him. But there was no mistaking his eyes, the hard set of his jaw, and the scar, like a small white worm, cutting straight through his left eyebrow.



Dodge felt a fist of shock plunge straight through him. He could no longer speak, or even breathe.



Luke Hanrahan.



heather



HEATHER WAITED IN THE CAR WHILE NATALIE AND LUKE did whatever they had to do. She was trying to breathe normally, but her lungs weren’t obeying and kept fluttering weirdly in her chest. She would have to go up against Ray Hanrahan now. There was no giving in or weaseling out.



She wondered what Dodge had had planned for tonight. Luke hadn’t exactly known either, although he’d shown Nat and Heather some of the threatening messages that had come from Dodge. It was surreal, sitting in Nat’s kitchen with Luke Hanrahan, football star Luke Hanrahan, the homecoming king who’d gotten kicked out of homecoming for smoking weed in the locker room during the announcement of the court. Winner of Panic. Who’d once assaulted a cashier at the 7-Eleven in Hudson when the guy wouldn’t sell him cigarettes.



He looked like shit. Two years away from Carp hadn’t done him any good, which was shocking to Heather. She thought all you needed to do—all any of them needed—was to get out. But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.



He’d found Nat, he said, because of a betting slip that had reached him all the way in Buffalo. And because of that stupid video—the one filmed at the water towers, which showed Dodge with his arm slung around Nat. Nat had been the easiest of the remaining players to locate, and he was hoping he could talk her into helping him convince Dodge to bow out.



Nat emerged from the house at last. Heather watched her talking with Luke on the front porch; he was nearly double her size. Crazy how several years ago, Nat would have freaked at the idea that Luke might ever look in her direction or know who she was. It was so strange, the way that life moved forward: the twists and the dead ends, the sudden opportunities. She supposed if you could predict or foresee everything that was going to happen, you’d lose the motivation to go through it all.



The promise was always in the possibility.



“Is Dodge okay?” Heather asked when Nat slid into the car.



“He’s mad,” Nat said.



“You did kidnap him,” Heather pointed out.



“For his own good,” Nat said, and for a minute she looked angry. But then she smiled. “I’ve never kidnapped someone before.”



“Don’t make a habit of it.” They both seemed to have resolved not to mention their fight, and Heather was glad. She nodded at Luke, who was getting into his truck. “Is he coming to watch?”



Nat shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She paused, and said in a low voice, “It’s awful, what he did to Dayna. I think he must hate himself.”



“He seems like he does,” Heather said. But she didn’t want to think about Luke, or Dodge’s sister, or legs buried beneath a ton of metal, rendered useless. She was already sick with nerves.



“Are you okay?” Nat said.



“No,” Heather said bluntly.



“You’re so close, Heather. You’re almost at the end. You’re winning.”



“I’m not winning yet,” Heather said. But she put the car into gear. There was no more delaying it. There was hardly any light left in the sky—as though the horizon were a black hole, sucking all the color away. Something else occurred to her. “Jesus. This is Anne’s car. I’m barely allowed to be driving it. I can’t go up against Ray in this.”



“You don’t have to.” Nat reached into her purse and extracted a set of keys, jiggling them dramatically.



Heather looked at her. “Where’d you get those?”



“Dodge,” Nat said. She flipped the keys into her palm and returned them to her bag. “You can use his car. Better to be safe than sorry, right?”



As the last of the sun vanished, and the moon, like a giant scythe, cut through the clouds, they gathered. Quietly they materialized from the woods; they came down the gully, scattering gravel, sliding on the hill; or they came packed together in cars, driving slowly, headlights off, like submarines in the dark.



And by the time stars surfaced from the darkness, they were all there: all the kids of Carp, come to witness the final challenge.



It was time. There was no need for Diggin to repeat the rules; everyone knew the rules of Joust. Each car aimed for the other, going fast in a single lane. The first person to swerve would lose.



And the winner would take the pot.



Heather was so nervous, it took her three tries to get the key in the ignition. She’d found the LeSabre pulled over on the side of the road, practically buried in the bushes. It was Bishop’s car—Dodge must have borrowed it.