“Where’s my son?”
Vee sits back and looks up, and I realize that Lanny’s put her hand on Vee’s shoulder. My daughter looks pale but steady, and she crouches down and takes my hand. “Mom, I need you to be calm,” she says. “Okay?”
“Are you all right?” It bursts out of me in a blind panic, because if she’s been hurt . . . but she looks okay. I think she’s okay.
“I’m not hurt,” she says. “Mom . . . I’m sorry.” Her reluctance to tell me what she has to say makes me shake, and tears burn like acid, boiling up in a hot, melting rush.
“They took Connor,” she says. And I immediately, irrationally react, trying to move, to stand, to find him. “Mom. Mom! He’s going to be okay. They won’t hurt him, they’re just—they’re holding on to him until you get this Carol person, right? And we’ll do that. We’ll get her.”
She’s trying so hard to be the adult right now. She’s scared to death, and she’s holding on to Vee for support. “You said you found help?” I say to Vee, and I realize I’m still not myself; I didn’t mean to say that out loud. “Who—”
She points, and I turn my head. I’m expecting Kezia, a full contingent of Norton police, but instead I see an old man with a thick white beard and cold blue eyes.
It’s Jasper Belldene. The pill-pushing Santa of Norton. I’m hallucinating. I have to be. But the blinding headache I’m fighting off, the taste of metallic blood—that’s all too real.
“Easy,” Jasper is saying, and holds up steady when I try to scramble up to my feet. “Hold on, there, woman, take it easy!”
The effort makes my head go gray and throb even harder, and I need all their help to get me upright and standing. “Sam,” I say. “Where’s Sam?”
I’m still in my own living room. The silence is as deafening as the panic alarms I remember before I passed out. The damage to the ceiling and the wall looks raw. Spots of blood on the rug, but I think it’s mine, or maybe Sam’s. Where is he?
Jasper Belldene looks at me with a mix of dispassion and keen focus. “Best I can tell, your man tried to take on two out there,” he says. “Signs read that there was a hell of a fight. Looks like he made it into the RV, but the RV done took off. So I guess they’ve got him and your son too.”
It’s like an icy stab to my chest. I have trouble getting my breath. Focus! I scream at myself inside. Think! I can’t. I pull free of Lanny’s hands and stagger to the front window. It’s still dark outside. The police car is there, but someone’s turned the flashing lights off. My SUV and Sam’s truck are still parked. “Where are the police?” I ask. “You called them?”
“No,” Jasper says. “And neither will you, if you want those boys back.”
It isn’t that I forget the headache, or the pain; it’s that they cease to matter. I shove it aside, along with the fear. Fear will only slow me down. I turn my face toward Jasper and say, “You’re part of this. You said you’d come after us.” He’s an old man, and I’m barely standing, but I’m about to lunge for him anyway.
He must see it, because he holds up both hands. “Ain’t saying we don’t have issues,” he says. “But you agreed you’d move, and I think you mean to keep that promise. I wouldn’t have nothing to do with kidnapping your boy. Whoever these people are, they ain’t mine.”
“Then why are you here?”
He points at Vee. “Girl there called,” he says. “She’s a friend of my boy Olly. She said there was trouble here. Ms. Proctor, we ain’t got time for this. Your neighbors might be hunkering down, but I guarantee they’re on 911 right now—”
“Why would you help me?”
“Fact is, you live ’round here, Ms. Proctor. You’re our neighbor. They’re strangers come in to do you harm.” He smiles. It’s cold, and I see the predator under the friendly disguise. “Besides, this is a chance for us to horse-trade a little. I help you find these bastards, you get your girl to say my son didn’t have nothing to do with that girl getting hurt up at Killing Rock.”
“Police are going to get involved,” I tell him. “These kidnappers took their car and uniforms. Did you find the officers?”
“Trunk of their own cruiser,” he says. “Trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys in their undies. My son Jesse took some photos for posterity. They’re all right. But the clock’s running fast, Ms. Proctor. Better decide quick if you want my help.” He’s staring at me, but I can’t read anything in his face.
I grab for the SUV’s keys. I miss.
He’s shaking his head. “No good tearing off after them, even if you could drive without passing out. And you got no idea which way they went.” I don’t like the smile he gives me. Or the look in his eyes. “I do.”
I feel every muscle in my body tighten. Painfully. “Where?”
“Favors for favors is how we do business. Now, my girl Florida, she’s one hell of a smart kid. You know anything about drones?”
“Drones,” I repeat.
“I had my boy Jesse follow that RV when it left; it went up onto an old logging road, don’t even have a name. Florida got a drone up and landed it on top of the RV before it got off that road. So we can track it . . . or I can just have Florida fly that drone on back home.” He pauses. We both register the sound of sirens coming. “Time’s up. I’m good either way.”
I swallow hard. I feel fragile now, all my bones turned to milky glass. I hurt. My head’s throbbing so hard I see pulses of red in front of my eyes. What he’s asking is a terrible thing. And I can’t decide for my daughter. She’s the one who’ll have to lie.
I look at Lanny, and she says, without a second’s pause, “I’ll do it. Anything, Mom. If it gets Connor and Sam back, I’ll say whatever he wants.”
“And your whole clan leaves,” Jasper says. “You pack up and you leave Stillhouse Lake when this is done. Agreed?”
Like my daughter, I don’t hesitate. “Agreed,” I say. I offer my hand. He takes it.
“If it helps salve your conscience, Olly ain’t no killer. He’s foolish, and he’s a good man in a fight. He may sell some recreational drugs now and again. But he never wanted Candy hurt. That was all on Bon, the idjit.”
Lanny bites her lip and nods. “That’s true,” she says. “I mean, I’m pretty sure. Bon admitted it.”
I walk to her and take her in my arms. I press my forehead to hers and whisper, “I’m sorry, baby.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “We’re going to find them.”
Jasper grunts, but makes no promises. His phone makes a chiming sound, and he looks down at it. “Spotters say Johnny Law’s coming ’round the lake. You tell them what happened here, but leave us and that stuff about the drone out. You have your girl change her statement. Then come out to the lodge, and we’ll get to finding your boys.”
“Lodge?”
“I suppose you’d call it our compound,” he says, and huffs, as if he takes that personally. “Anyway, I’ll have Jesse waiting to lead you up when you’re done. You bring Vee and Lanny; my wife will look after them. Best you bring what you need for some days.”