“You—” Kelly hauled in a giant breath, his shoulders hitching up and down. “You promise?”
“I promise you. Only hours from now I’ll be on my way. I’ll be on my way and I’ll do my best to bring her back. I’ll go and I’ll do my best.” Owen let his eyes slide closed, darkness swooping in around him, the wetness against his chest proof against the monsters that so often plagued him. “I’ve got you, and I promise you.” He settled back in his chair and let Kelly climb into his lap, curling up against him much as he had the pillows earlier, now with the extra barrier of Owen’s arms to hold the world at bay.
As Owen swallowed back his own tears, listening to the boy continuing to weep, his thoughts weren’t what he’d expected. Instead of the I’m so fucked he might have thought only a day ago, his focus was on helping make everything about Kelly’s life better. Starting with bringing his little sister here, dragging her straight out of hell to do it if he had to.
An hour later, he sat opposite the boy at the breakfast bar, having carried him there and placed him carefully on a stool. Owen’s sweatshirt was on the boy’s frame, plucked from his own body when Kelly had shivered. Scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and toast with a smear of butter and jam sat on plates in front of each of them.
Kelly was perched on top of his stool, knees drawn up and under the shirt, eating with his hands. Utilizing a fork was beyond him in this frame of mind, and Owen didn’t tell him he needed to do otherwise. No need to put more stress on the boy when it simply wasn’t necessary.
“Is there anything else about the man you think I should know?” Kelly had expressed a strong interest in doing what he could to help Owen, and while he’d already shared a lot, Owen wondered if there was more the boy might have to say if given the opening. “Do you remember what his normal routine was when he’d arrive at the cabin? Little details can really help me.”
Kelly’s eyes glittered behind the fall of hair covering part of his face. He studied Owen, paused in the act of taking a bite of toast. “Like what does he do?” Owen nodded, and Kelly sat upright, tossing the hair out of his eyes. With his wrists balanced on his knees, the food dangled, forgotten as he thought hard about Owen’s question. “Before he gets there, he checks the batteries. They’re in a wooden box outside the wire. He checks those, and if we didn’t hear his truck beforehand, we’d hear the hum as he turned up the voltage. The collars let us know.” He raised a hand, fingers gliding down his bare neck, a smear of jam left in their wake. “That way, we’re waiting at the porch when he drives up, like he likes. Checking his pack, he called it. If one of us was sick and couldn’t go to the porch, he’d go looking for us. The shed for the pack is positioned so he can see it from his back porch, but not the front. He didn’t like it if he had to go looking for us.”
“The batteries keeping the electric fence live are outside the area secured by the wire itself?” That made a brutal kind of sense, actually. If the power source was within the grasp of the older kids, they would have made quick work of disabling it and escaping. “So he stops to do maintenance and then drives into the yard?” Kelly nodded, and Owen let the boy see his pleasure, giving him a quick smile in response. “That’s great. Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of thing I need to know. What about other visitors? Did he ever bring anyone with him when he came?” This was a fishing expedition to see if any of the same-interest buyers had ever come calling. “Or was it always just Earl, I mean the man?”
“It was just the man. A couple of times he left with one of the pack in the crates in the back of his truck, but while me and Shiloh were there, he never brought anyone in with him. Could hear him talking to people in the cabin, but they weren’t actually there. Like a phone call or something.” Kelly took a bite of the toast, shifting the bread to one side of his mouth, talking as he chewed. “Both times when he took one of the pack away, it was older kids, ones who’d been there a while.” He swallowed, took another bite, and performed the same process of shifting it to one cheek, chipmunk-style. “Hey, Owen, you think he took them to the same place he took me? You think they’re out there, waiting for someone to find them?” Kelly’s bright eyes dimmed. “You don’t think he’d take Shiloh there, do you? She’d be afraid in the woods. She’s scared of the dark and being alone.”
“No, Kelly. I don’t think he’s taken Shiloh to the forest. As to whether he’s ever taken any of the children to where he dropped you off, I can’t say. I didn’t see any of them yesterday.” He shifted a strip of bacon from his plate to Kelly’s, enjoying the boy’s appreciative if brief smile. “I did see you. I’m glad I was there when I was. Another thirty minutes and I’d’ve been walking away, so I’m real glad you woke up when you did.”
“So your gatherers are working right now?” That was how he’d explained how he was finding the information needed for him to plan a successful attack on Earl’s compound. The description of the scripts set free on the darknet to search and find all of Earl’s vulnerabilities had morphed into Owen having helpers. Gatherers, as Kelly had nicknamed them. “When will you know that they’re done?”
“I’ll get an alert.” As he spoke, the phone in his pocket buzzed against his leg, and he held his breath. It had been a simple one-second signal. If it were followed by a more complex signal, it would indicate his searches had been successful. If the one-second pulse continued, Owen would need to return to his computer to see what else needed attention. The device buzzed again, another single-second vibration. Here we go. “Hey, bud, you stay there and finish eating, okay? I gotta check on something quick.” He shoved his plate towards Kelly. “I’m done, so if you want more bacon, help yourself.”
He stood and walked around the breakfast bar, and couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to smooth his hand over Kelly’s skull, fingers threading through the boy’s thick hair. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Kelly made a sound, his mouth crammed full of toast as his hands stretched towards the food Owen had left on his plate. “Stay here.”
In his office, he flipped the monitor on and angled it away from the doorway, just in case Kelly followed him faster than expected. A quick review showed him Earl’s vehicle on the move, the man’s mass framed in the driver-side window. Owen watched the route taken, keying up a real-time map to track his progress. It was only a couple of minutes later that his destination became clear. The man was headed to the compound.
Shit.
Owen couldn’t wait for additional information. Whatever advantage he’d had gained by gathering knowledge had run out. There was no more time. He needed to leave now and drive like hell to beat the man there, sort out what kind of a coup he could stage given the presence of so many children, and locate and rescue Shiloh. The other kids too, of course, but for them, the rescue would entail calling the authorities. Owen intended Kelly and Shiloh to disappear as if they’d never been Earl’s victims.
“Think like Alace.” He rocked his head back and stared at the ceiling, gaze tracing the faint patterns he could make out in the textured surface. “How can I slow the man’s roll?” He could dispatch a fake BOLO easily enough, but he wanted to slow the man, not keep him from showing up entirely. The vehicle’s age was working against him, no onboard systems to hijack and foil performance. “Think, man.” He could coordinate a blockade that would be looking for a different vehicle, effectively slowing Earl without making him abandon his trip to the remote and isolated cabin. Hmmmm.