We lower ourselves to the fire. The wood crackles, but gives off little warmth. It doesn’t take long for smoke to start flooding back into the cabin. The chimney must be partially blocked by a bird’s nest or leaves. My lungs are too full of water to make room for the smoke. Jo strips down and starts ringing the water out of her clothes. I can hardly move, but I manage to kick my shoes off. Nothing else.
Jo takes my shirt and helps me with my jeans. I look down at my body. It’s gray and covered in bruises and lumps and scrapes. We’re both in our underwear. I don’t want to strip any further-not because of Jo, but because if Cyris comes back in I don’t want to die naked. Side by side we sit, clutching each other for warmth though we’re so cold that hugging achieves nothing. Cyris could burst in and kill us, but if we step back outside the cold will do the same thing. Only fire can help us. Jo puts two more logs onto it.
I glance at my watch. The two minutes have already passed. We’re heading up to three.
I nod toward the bag in the center of the room. “There are clothes in there.”
Jo stands and grabs it. It’s difficult opening the bag, but we rescue the clothes Landry had been wearing. Beneath them is a towel. He came prepared to get wet. Or bloody. Either way he was right. Jo towels herself down, then I follow suit. I’m still freezing and my body hasn’t given up shaking. I can feel the heat from the fire, but it is only warming up my skin. It’s my core that’s chilled. I pull on Landry’s shirt. I give the pants and jacket to Jo.
“You take the jacket,” she says, handing it back to me.
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
“No, really, Charlie, you’re not. Take the jacket.”
I shake my head, which is a mistake for anybody sporting the kind of headache I’m sporting. I almost pass out. “No,” I tell her.
She pulls on the pants and puts on the jacket. She does the jacket up. It’s not a great fit. Then she finds the envelope with my account of what happened in one of the pockets. She tosses it onto the fire. “We don’t need it,” she says. “Let’s just go to the police and tell them.”
“Can we get a lawyer first?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’m not sure. Anyway, we have to go,” I say, happy I can now feel the words coming from my mouth. She nods. Rags of smoke are hanging lower in the air. I could reach up and my hand would disappear into them.
“I know,” Jo says. She hooks out the two logs she just put into the fire and puts them into the duffel bag, which smothers the flames. She pushes the bag into my chest.
“Hug this,” she says. “It isn’t much, but it’s something.”
The bag feels like a lumpy hot water bottle.
She picks up her wet pants and hunts through them for the keys.
“How did you drive my car?” I ask. “I had the keys.”
“Like this,” she says, and she pulls her own keys out of her pocket. “They were still in my handbag,” she says, “and I never took off the spare for your car.”
It makes me feel good to know she never got rid of the key, as if by keeping it she was also keeping the chance that somehow we would get back together.
We scoop up our wet clothes. I carry the duffel bag and Jo carries the clothes and we step outside. Landry’s shoes are too big for me, but they do the job. The ground plucks at them as we run toward the cars. Cyris doesn’t jump out from the trees and shoot at us so I figure things are picking up. The rain hasn’t eased off and perhaps it never will. My arms and legs feel warm, but my stomach and chest are cold. Landry’s car is right out front, but I can’t see my car or Cyris’s.
“Where’s the car?” I ask.
“About twenty yards that way,” she says, and I follow.
I keep hugging the duffel bag even though it has cooled somewhat. We reach my car and dump the clothes into the back. There are still two stakes in the backseat. I take one out for protection.
Jo climbs into the car. I tell her to wait for me, and I run over to Landry’s car. It’s unlocked, and I pop the hood and grab hold of the cords going to the spark plugs, and I tug on them as hard as I can until two of them snap off. I carry them back to my car and climb in. I’m not sure how much time we’ve wasted. Five minutes, I guess. Ten at the most. I turn the key and the motor kicks into life. So does the heater. I turn it to high and it blasts cold air at us that is warmer than we are. It starts to warm up. So do we.
“Cyris followed you, right?”
“Must have,” Jo replies.
“Where’s his car?”
“Maybe he parked further away so he could sneak up.”
Makes perfect sense. A guy like Cyris isn’t going to drive right up to the cabin.
“Just like you did,” I say.
She flashes me her first genuine smile since I tied her up and kidnapped her. “Exactly.”
I gun the engine, put the duffel bag in my lap, and start my three-point turn. It takes me around six or seven points to do it. We head back up the track and come across Cyris’s car. It’s blocking the road and there’s no way around it. Only it’s not his car, it’s Jo’s car. Jo gasps when she sees it. It makes her realize that Cyris has been to her house.
“If he’d followed you to my place,” she says, “wouldn’t he have just come inside?”
“I imagine so.”
“Which means he didn’t follow you there, did he?”
“No.”
“Which means he found my address at your house, figured out the connection, and came looking for me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“So if you hadn’t come around. .”
“But I did. That’s all that matters.”
“You saved my life,” she says.
“No. All I did was put it in danger by not going to the police when I could have.”
“If you’d gone to the police, they wouldn’t have sent somebody to protect me.”
“I know. You realize I’ll probably end up in jail,” I tell her.
“Let’s hope not.”
I try to imagine Cyris’s state of mind when he saw me being arrested. Was he happy or pissed off? I don’t know. I don’t even know if Cyris has a state of mind. What I do know is his plans were altered. With nothing else to do he followed.
“What if he’s in there?” I ask, nodding toward her car.
“He won’t be in there. If he’d made it back he would have come to the cabin.”
I separate her keys from mine, so mine stays in the ignition and the car stays running. “I guess,” I tell her. I open my door. “Lock up behind me. And if there’s any problems, get the hell out of here.”
“Charlie?”
I lean down and look back in. “Yeah?”
“Don’t forget what we discussed earlier.”
“The police. Right. We’ll go right there. I promise. I’ll just move it and be right back.”
The rain starts to soak me, but I don’t care. I pause and look back to make sure she’s locking her doors. She is. The headlights blind me, leaving colored flashes streaking across my vision. I rub my eyes with my fingers, trying to arrange the colors back into some type of sensible order. There’s a key in the ignition. Not her key, but some kind of generic key that isn’t really a key, but looks more like the handle of a screwdriver.
I twist it. It works. I turn the lights on, shining them at Jo. Hers are shining right back. I turn my heater on high, aiming the air at my feet and face. I try to get into reverse gear, but my hand is wet and it slips off. I wipe it across the passenger seat, then try again. This time it works. I twist around to look out the back window.
At the same time Cyris pops the backseat down and crawls out of the trunk.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Money makes the world go round. It makes it, yeah, it makes it, yes it does, but revenge is why he’s out here, not money-he knows because he checked the note in his pocket. Somehow he thought it was about the money, and in thinking that it has become that, because now he can use Feldman and his wife to earn some quick cash. And he loves cash. He loves it about the same as he loves revenge.