“I think they believed you were effectively off the radar by the time you were an adult,” said Lineberry.
“Ito found us. Who’s to say someone else couldn’t?” she countered. “It wasn’t like they had changed my name. I was still Atlee Pine. How many of those are there?”
“I don’t have a good answer for that. I really don’t.”
“And you could have found me, if you had really wanted to. I have my own Wikipedia page someone set up when I was competing for the Olympics. I became an FBI agent. My name appeared in the news from time to time.”
Lineberry wouldn’t meet her eye. “I…I guess by then I had just stopped looking. And your father didn’t tell me where you and your mother were when I went to help him.”
“Sure he didn’t. Ignorance is bliss, right, Dad?”
“What…what will you do now?” asked Lineberry, who was looking paler by the minute.
Before answering, Pine stood. She looked down at the fragile Lineberry.
“I came here to find my sister. I’m a lot closer than I was. And now I’m going to do all I can to bring her home, even if you won’t.”
“What are you saying? I want that, too. She’s your sister, but she’s also my daughter,” said Lineberry.
“Oh really?” she snarled, her face contorted in fury. “You don’t give a shit about either one of us.”
“Atlee, of course I do,” he said, stunned by her reaction. “How could you say that?”
Pine closed her eyes and when she reopened them she stared out the window at the cottage. Something seemed to occur to her, and she turned and stormed out.
“Where is she going?” said Lineberry.
Blum said nothing.
A minute later they both saw Pine on the rear grounds, marching resolutely toward the cottage.
Chapter 78
THE RAIN WAS STARTING TO FALL more heavily as Pine neared the cottage construction site. There were five men framing away, two on ladders and three on the ground.
She stopped in front of the cottage and called out, “All of you leave now.”
The men glanced curiously at her but continued to work.
Pine pulled out her gun and her FBI shield and called out, “FBI, everybody leave. Now!”
Now the men all stopped what they were doing and looked at her, and then glanced at each other nervously.
Pine knew they probably thought she was unhinged.
And maybe I am.
A large man in a construction hat gingerly headed over to Pine.
“Ma’am, we got a job—”
Pine pointed her gun at the sky and fired two shots. “Now!” she screamed.
Some men scrambled down ladders, others on the ground grabbed lunch coolers and coats, and they all hustled from the area, looking back at her with panicked gazes. Pine watched as they exited the rear gate, jumped into their trucks and cars, and sped off.
Pine lifted her pants leg and took out her Beretta backup gun. She laid both guns on a wooden table, slipped off her jacket, placed it on the table, and placed a waterproof tarp over them. As the rain started to pick up even more, she stepped inside the shell of the cottage and looked at the wooden framing.
She knew exactly why she was here.
He took something from me. The truth. My truth. And now I’m going to take something from him.
She spied a sledgehammer, picked it up, studied the configuration of the framing, and then lashed out and hit a king stud near the front doorway. The wood splintered. She hit it again and the double boards broke free. She next took out the crippled studs underneath a window adjacent to the doorway and smashed out the sill plate. When she broke out a stud next to that, a portion of the framed panel gave way. Pine next took out a whole row of studs. She kept striking away at the wood until the entire wall broke loose and fell outward, landing in the grass.
Pine wielded the hammer like a baseball bat as she attacked another section where the walls intersected. She swung away and splintered wood and ripped out nails that flew everywhere. The entire panel finally came crashing down, but with her last swing the hammer’s wooden handle splintered and then broke in half.
The rain was pouring down now as the heavens completely opened up. Flipping her hair out of her eyes, Pine, her chest heaving with her exertions, approached the third section of wall, sized it up, and used a whip kick to crack a board on the lower section. Then she aimed higher and kicked one short board clear from the framing nails used to hold it in place. The metal of the nails looked like dead, gray worms stuck in the wood that remained.
She kicked at another board and then used an elbow strike on a sill plate to break it in half. A chop on another board took out a section of wall along with the window frame that it held. She tore out other parts of the framing using a series of kicks and hand and elbow strikes.
The wall panel, uncoupled from the one next to it, was swaying now, and Pine repeatedly kicked at it as the rain streamed down and the wind howled. Her breaths were coming in gasps now. She then pushed and pushed and tugged and kicked, and with a scream of intensity, she finally managed to topple the wall.
She turned to the last section standing and faced it like it was every nightmare she had ever endured, and she had more than most.
Before she attacked it, Pine turned around and stared up at the house where Lineberry and Blum were watching her.
Inside the room Lineberry moaned, “I have to stop her. She’ll hurt herself.”
Blum firmly clenched his arm.
“You will not stop her,” she said sternly. “She’s your daughter, Jack Lineberry. And she needs to do this. And you are going to stand here and watch while she does.”
Every muscle Pine had was twitching uncontrollably, like she was an addict going through withdrawal. She could barely see for the rain, and she had to keep pushing her hair out of her face. In exasperation she looked around and spied a soaked cloth on the floor and used that to tie her hair back. She charged the last wall and slammed her shoulder into it. As the only wall remaining, it didn’t have the support and thus the strength of the other three walls. But it also was not going down that easily.
For the next full minute Pine kicked and punched and pulled and tugged, but she was far weaker now, so exhausted that her strikes were feeble.
You are not going to beat me.
She sat on her haunches, eyeing the wall like it had been the cause of every tragedy in her entire life. Pine couldn’t even catch her breath anymore, and her limbs were shaking so badly she couldn’t kick or punch if she wanted to.
In desperation she looked around, and her gaze finally alighted on what she needed.
She staggered over and gripped the handles of the portable cement mixer. It was heavy-duty and set on a pair of rubber wheels. She hoisted it by the handles, pointed it directly at the wall and pushed off, slipping and sliding on the slickened floor, but gaining traction and speed as she went. The cement mixer hit the middle of the wall and drove right through it, taking Pine with it.
They both sprawled outside. Pine lay face-first on the ground and turned over in time to see the wall implode and tumble down.
Her mission complete, she rose up on all fours and vomited. Then she collapsed to the wet grass and lay there for a few moments. She rolled over, stared up at the dark sky, and let the rain cover her like dirt in a grave.