Ransom River (19 page)

Rory tried not to look astonished. “The details might be too much for two-year-olds to hear.”

Amber ran an ad hoc day-care center in her home, looking after half a dozen preschoolers. As far as Rory could discern, she parked the kids in front of her television while she watched soap operas on a second set in her kitchen. Amber wasn’t callous or neglectful. She simply moved slowly and found any expenditure of energy to be a massive effort of will.

She laughed. It was a smoker’s laugh, a wet, chesty sound. “Been years since something this exciting happened around here.” She nodded at the toddlers. “I’m giving these little ones a taste of history.”

One of the little ones squirmed, fighting against the sharp sun in his eyes. Another was asleep, a pacifier hanging precariously from her lips. The third looked hot, her cheeks flushed, her brown hair stuck to her forehead in damp curls.

Amber patted Rory’s arm again. “You must have been terrified.
Terrified.
”

“It was rough.”

Riss leaned against the side of the Land Cruiser. She seemed annoyed to be chauffeuring her stepmother around Ransom River with a car full of day-care kids. And she looked overtly bored, as if hearing about the siege was a waste of her time. But her gaze cut across Rory’s chest. She didn’t like Rory getting Amber’s full attention.

And Rory wondered at an envy so powerful, it caused her cousin to anger at the thought of remaining safe while others were threatened at gunpoint. As though Riss considered herself Cinderella, and Rory the evil stepsister who had kept her from attending the ball.

Granted, Riss had gotten the short end of the stick when her father left town. She was nine when Lee Mackenzie—jack-of-all-trades, man who hated cages—took off to Mexico to work as a roughneck in the Gulf oilfields. He still hadn’t come back. Maybe, Rory thought, that was one reason
Riss’s startling eyes either tracked or ignored you. Hard eyes, full of suspicion.

The claw scratched deeper in Rory’s spine. The danger signs were there.

Amber held on to Rory’s arm. “Did the terrorists threaten you? Did they torture anybody?” She patted her chest as though she had palpitations. “Did they do anything dirty to the women?”

Rory said, “No. And I’ll let you get going before these kids lose it.”

“I can barely stand to imagine it,” Amber said.

The little girl with the dark curls lost control and began to cry. Amber patted Rory’s arm and released her. Over her shoulder she said, “Okay, Addie.”

Riss stepped close. She licked her lips and stared at Rory’s feet. Her blue-black hair swung in front of her eyes. “You’re good with that deadpan face. When it’s my stepmom asking the questions. Not so good when somebody tougher confronts you.”

Rory went cold. The little boy in the backseat wailed.

Riss stared at the ground. “If you won’t accept any help or take my advice to talk to the media with me, maybe you shouldn’t talk to them at all. Things can go bad real quick.”

She looked up at Rory through a waterfall of black hair.

“This is not about you and me,” Rory said.

Riss slowly tilted her head, as though Rory had said something absurd.

Riss turned away and got back behind the wheel. Rory’s head pounded so hard she barely heard the car squeal away from the curb.

R
ory stood on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, below sycamores and crimson maples that flickered in the cold sunlight. She felt exposed. She felt like the loose end of a rope that had come untied in a stiff wind and that was unraveling.

She got out her phone and made a call that two hours earlier would have blown her mind.

“Yeah,” Seth said.

“Meet me at the corner of Main and Treacher. By the Dairy Queen,” she said.

“You sound stressed.”

She started walking. “Riss.”

“Five minutes. I’m on my way.”

It started when they were twelve. It didn’t start with Riss.

When they were twelve, Seth had blond hair that fell to his eyes and wore T-shirts with skateboarding logos and a wallet on a dog chain that draped from his jeans pocket. When they were twelve, Rory had learned the hard way never to raise her hand in class. On spring days after school they would go to the river. Upstream of the storm drain, they’d climb the chain-link fence that was supposed to keep kids out. They’d catch tadpoles or skateboard down the concrete banks where the river had been paved over.

The storm drain was three big culverts side by side that ran beneath an entire neighborhood. Eight-foot-diameter concrete pipes that opened like mouths from the side of a reinforced hillside. The winter had been dry, so dirt lay packed along the bottom, with bits of trash and lost things in it. Inside, it was black. The storm drain was a tunnel with no light at the end of it.

One day Seth stood at the entrance and said, “Wonder where it comes out.”

“A mile away,” Rory said. “Probably.”

“Want to find out?”

Her stomach went queasy. “I saw the news once. When it stormed for a week and the Los Angeles River flooded. And this teenager, he got swept in.”

Her voice echoed against the walls of the culvert. Seth picked up a stick and poked at the dirt.

“He was swept so fast, like he was surfing. He got pulled into a storm drain. It was three miles long and the water filled it up to the top. He came out half an hour later, drowned,” she said.

Seth looked in the culvert and up at the sky. It was so blue they could see jets high up, like silver bullets. Telling her: no rain.

He threw the stick aside and turned to her with a smile. A spooky one. “I brought a flashlight. And walkie-talkies.”

“It’s not a good idea.”

“I’ll go first.” He got out the walkie-talkies and gave her one. “If there’s any problem, I’ll call you.”

He turned on the flashlight and walked into the culvert. The light tracked ahead of him. She pressed the button on the walkie-talkie.

“Can you hear me?” Then, because she knew it from TV, she said, “Over.”

The walkie-talkie fuzzed. “It’s dry. Nothing but dry.”

“Come back,” she said.

She stepped closer to the entrance. She couldn’t hear Seth’s footsteps. Then, from the walkie-talkie, he screamed.

Her whole body turned electric. For a second she stood shocked to the spot. Then she pressed the walkie-talkie button and ran inside.

“Seth. Seth.”

He kept screaming.

“I’m coming,” she said.

The light faded to gray. The screaming stopped.

“Seth, where are you?”

She heard a whimper in her voice. Had he fallen into a pit? Did an animal get him? Or a person? A Freddy Krueger?

“
Seth.
”

From the darkness in front of her, the flashlight flipped on. It was aimed up at the ceiling, and it illuminated Seth’s face like a monster movie.

“
Gotcha.
”

She jumped, hard. She came down shouting and punching. Swinging like a wild thing, fists pounding his arm. And he was laughing. Laughing so hard he had to grab his stomach.

“Screw you, Seth.” Spit flew from her mouth. “You stupid ass-face. Butt-clown. You shit-barfing wiener.”

He put up his hands to stop her punching him. “God, you should see yourself.”

“It’s not funny.”

“I got you in here, didn’t I?”

She lowered her hands but the fists wouldn’t uncurl.

“Rory. Look. Nothing’s dangerous back here. It’s just a tunnel. We’re safe.”

But she still couldn’t see the end. Couldn’t see light anywhere except from the flashlight. And all that showed was Seth’s face.

He waited for her to calm down. “Want to keep going?”

She considered kicking him in the nuts. “No. I don’t want to go any farther.”

He waited a moment, mischief in his eyes, as though hoping he could get her to change her mind. Finally he shrugged.

“Okay, cool.”

They walked back toward the exit side by side. When they stepped into the sunlight they saw the group of kids outside. Three guys were at the top
of the concrete bank leaning back against the fence. Standing in front of the storm drain, waiting for them, was her cousin Boone.

Boone was fourteen and in eighth grade and never let younger kids forget it. He was already tall and sometimes he even shaved. And he never looked at you straight on. He might stand right in front of you, like a door, and keep you from walking around him, but he always looked at something off to one side, with a slitty-eyed look. And if you were the thing off to the side he was looking at, watch out.

He was standing on Seth’s skateboard. “What do we got here?”

Threads of cold water seemed to run under Rory’s skin. They were two miles from her house. Four miles from Seth’s.

“What were you two doing in the culvert in the dark?” Boone said.

“Nothing,” Rory said. “Get off Seth’s board.”

“Frenching? Or did you get in her pants, Colder?”

The cold threads crawled beneath Rory’s skin. “Shut up.”

Boone gave a sideways look at his friends. “That’s pathetic, Colder. Could you find anything in there?”

There was no good way around him. And Rory knew if she did get around him, there was always his stepsister. Riss didn’t have to be there in person to be behind him. Riss was sneaky and would find a way to get you later. The question was, how much later.

Seth said, “Looking in your pants and finding nothing. I bet you’re used to doing that, Boone.”

It was like a punctuation mark on the day. A sharpened pencil stuck directly into Boone’s face. Her cousin finally looked at them.

Rory had seen dogs’ eyes when they were angry. Boone’s eyes looked like that.

Boone was strong and when he got angry he just unloaded. It seemed to him that everything and everybody deserved it. Fail to keep him happy, and you got it. People, computers, even a toilet once, that he smashed with a hammer. He was going to beat the shit out of Seth.

Seth didn’t wait for it. He threw himself at Boone and shoved him off balance.

Boone tripped backward and stumbled off the skateboard and fell on his butt. “Shit.”

Seth grabbed the board. “Rory, run.”

She was already scrambling up the far concrete embankment. They heard Boone’s friends laughing. That was only going to make it worse.

They reached the top of the embankment and got halfway up the chain-link fence, clattering and clanging, before Boone grabbed Seth by the back pocket of his jeans and ripped his hands loose. Seth dropped back to the ground.

Rory got to the top of the fence, ready to swing over. Boone pulled Seth up, hauled back, and punched him.

It wasn’t like in the movies. It was an unruly swing, just energy and anger. It spun Seth sideways. Rory’s legs turned to spaghetti. She hovered, tentatively balanced, halfway over the fence. Boone held on to Seth, yanked him around, and got ready for the shit-kickery.

She grabbed the fence tight. “
Boone.
”

He gave her one of the sideways looks. And she booted him as hard as she could in the head.

His head snapped and his hands dropped. That was all the time Seth needed. Rory screamed, “Hurry!”

They got across the fence and onto the frontage road, and that’s when Rory found out how fast and how far she could run. They didn’t stop for fifteen minutes. Her throat hurt and the light seemed like it was spinning. They ran through the side gate at Rory’s house and slammed it shut and bent over, hands on knees, panting.