“Yes, sir!” they chimed together.
“Ungrateful bastards,” muttered the man. Finally I found a weak link in the net and succeeded in ripping a hole large enough to shove my wrist through. Frantically, I began pulling at the ropes, but a flash of pain in my side made me grit my teeth and hold perfectly still while it passed. The glass puncture from the mini-mart had reopened. When it was manageable again I resumed my attack on the net.
“Charlie got me a little prize today, and for that, he gets a little prize of his own, don’t he?”
Charlie unclasped his hands, and looked up at the man with interest.
The man reached into his pocket and removed a handgun. I froze. It was my gun.
He placed it in Charlie’s hands.
“Thanks, sir!” The others gathered close around him as the man began to stumble in my direction. He belched again as he came close, and then smiled, revealing a mouthful of crooked, rotting teeth. His breath was enough to make my stomach heave again. The smell of alcohol wafted off of him.
“Pretty little thing,” he whispered. I watched him, holding my breath. He stuck a finger through the net and poked me in the side. I couldn’t help wincing; his finger pressed right against the cut the glass had made.
“Tickle, tickle, tu-tu!” He giggled. The net began to sway again.
I fought the urge to scream.
“Now why were you all alone out there?” he mused. “I know you must have friends.”
I sensed he wasn’t asking me. The boys had gathered in a half circle behind him.
“She had friends,” said Charlie. “But some Blues came and snatched ’em up.”
“They see you?” asked the man.
“Nah,” said Charlie. “They might’ve though, what with that dog making all kinds of noise. Nearly got us found out.” He kicked the ground, spraying dirt on the youngest boy. “He’s always trying to blow it for us. Can’t keep his yap shut.”
The boys silenced as the man turned around. He clucked and shook his head from side to side. “You gonna handle this, Charlie?”
Charlie looked confused. “Sure. Sure, I’m gonna.”
“Well?” said the man expectantly when Charlie didn’t move. “When a dog gets unruly, you got to put him down.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. As I waited, the small boy began to weep. He fell to his hands and knees and managed a weak bark. He crawled up to Charlie’s leg and pawed at his knees.
“Ruff,” he said between sobs. “Ruff, ruff, right, Charlie?”
Charlie, scrawny armed and trembling, held out the gun.
“Stop it,” I said, unable to hold my silence any longer. “I let my friends go, not the kid.”
“My pretty bird sings!” The man clapped his hands together, then paused and frowned, his neck doubling as he pulled his chin down. “I’ll hear you sing some more later, I think. First, someone needs a lesson.” He made a pouty face and pretended to sniffle.
He grabbed the back of the dog boy’s shirt and hoisted him up, then began to drag him toward the trailer.
“Stop!” I struggled against the net, ripping a larger hole. My whole arm was free now.
“Charlie, she’s gettin’ free!” whispered one of the boys.
Charlie watched the door to the trailer slam shut, and then stalked toward me.
“You have to stop that man,” I told him desperately. “Let me go, I’ll do it.”
Charlie’s face contorted into a twisted smile. He reached in his pocket and removed my silver necklace, and then swung it like a pendulum in front of my face. The Saint Michael pendant, along with Chase’s mother’s ring, were still hanging from the end.
“You want this?”
I couldn’t help it; I reached through the hole and tried to snag it. Charlie pulled the necklace away at the last second, laughing. He tried it again, only this time I glared at him, losing his gaze only briefly as the net made a slow turn.
From within the trailer, a shot rang out. I stared at it in horror, as if I might be able to see through the walls, see what the man had done.
“Soldiers!” called a male voice from beyond the brush encircling the campfire. This voice was older than the others, vaguely familiar, though distorted by the forest, and I searched madly for some sign of origin.
For a moment no one moved. Then Charlie dropped my necklace, and the gun, and he and the boys scattered into the darkness. I threw every bit of strength into peeling back the net, but it spun and swayed, making the task more challenging.
The door to the trailer never opened.
A shadowed figure raced from behind the trees and I bucked against his sudden hold on the net.
“Hold still,” Sean said between his teeth. Never in my life had I been so happy to see him.
The net ripped, and I fell halfway out, suspended upside down. He tried to catch me, but his arm was weak and couldn’t support my weight. A flash of a knife, and another rip, and I fell flat on my back, the wind knocked out of me.
“Come on!” He dragged me to my feet. “I wasn’t kidding—there’s soldiers fifty yards behind us!”
“Wait!” I felt my way across the ground as another burst of shots echoed in the woods behind the trailer. Finally, my fingers grasped the metal chain, and I snatched it up, running after Sean into the darkness.
He hesitated twenty steps in, and I smacked into his back. Without so much as a glance at me he cocked his head to the side as if looking for something.
“Soldiers?” I whispered. As if in answer, another round of gunfire erupted from behind us. Several male voices began to yell all at once.
“This way.” He sprinted to the right, and I tore after him. We ran until we reached a small dirt road, and then kept to a ditch, sloshing through the muck toward a series of houses. I didn’t hear Sean’s labored breathing, or the grunt of pain that came every few steps, until we slowed.
A small delivery truck came into view, parked in the high grass between two houses. Only then did we speak.
“Where’s Chase?” I gasped, a new panic enveloping my senses.
White stars were twinkling in my vision and I blinked them away. I was so thirsty and tired since we’d stopped.
Sean didn’t answer. He swung open the passenger door and fell back against the seat. His shirt, though still drenched with blood, was bulky around the shoulder, and as he drew back the collar I saw that it had been bandaged with the supplies we’d brought from Endurance.
“Did you get her?” came a low voice through the darkness.
I turned to find Jesse stepping from the shadows into the weak ring of light cast from the overhead lamp in the cabin of the truck. A small boy was thrown over his shoulder, carried like he weighed no more than a sack of flour. It was the boy they’d called a dog, and he stared straight ahead blankly as Jesse set him down. It took a moment to connect the slash of blood on Jesse’s shirt with the boy’s presence.
That was why the trailer door had not reopened.
Jesse and the boy were not alone. Several other boys followed him. A half dozen, a dozen. Almost all that I’d seen, including the little psychopath with the gun, Charlie. He didn’t look so tough with his dirty cheeks tear-stained.
“The hunter,” I heard one whisper. “The one that took Will.”
“He came back for us,” said another.
Jesse had done this before. That meant he’d been to Endurance before. My head felt muddled. I couldn’t make sense of it right now.
“Get in the back of the truck, all of you,” Jesse ordered.
“Where you takin’ us?” asked Charlie.
Jesse faced me, not those behind him. It was only Sean and I who saw his mouth tighten and his gaze fall.
“Somewhere safe, kid,” he said.
Another wave of dizziness took me and I gripped the open car door for support. It was because of all the running, I told myself. Lack of food and water.