Charges (39 page)

Vincenzo wiped the boy’s rear end with baby wipes then used some toilet paper to make the area dry. He dressed Daniel again then applied a liberal dose of hand sanitizer to both their hands. Daniel sniffed at his hands for a couple of minutes.

“You guys want to sleep outside, or in the truck?” Vincenzo asked.

“Where are you going to sleep?” Gabby asked.

“Outside.”

“Can we sleep with you, Tony?”

“Sure.”

31

“Sleep” wasn’t what Vincenzo remembered it as being.

The kids had blankets inside their father’s backpack, and Gabby took hers and draped it over her after allowing Vincenzo to apply some insect repellant.

“It’s not as smelly as the spray daddy uses,” she declared. She fell asleep almost immediately. Vincenzo knew it was a coping mechanism. She’d seen her father dying in a bloody froth before her very eyes and narrowly escaped the clutches of a pedophile, and sleep was the only way she could shut that stuff out. Vincenzo was worried about her, but time was what she needed. And the more she slept, the less she would have to worry about.

Daniel was a different story. He fidgeted and murmured. He kept touching Vincenzo’s lips with his fingers. As the night deepened, Vincenzo gave up trying to stop him and suffered through the contact. He’d tried putting his arm around the kid, but that didn’t help. In fact, Daniel didn’t seem to want Vincenzo to initiate any kind of contact at all. It was frustrating, and Vincenzo wrestled with his own emotions as the boy persistently touched him. Finally though, whatever biofeedback the contact elicited seemed to work, and the boy’s breathing became deep and regular.

Before dozing off, Vincenzo checked to ensure the M1A was tucked in next to him. The Beretta was still in its holster at his waist. Sleeping with loaded weapons was uncomfortable enough, but having them so close to young hands made him nervous. But he would be more nervous if he needed a weapon and didn’t one close at hand.

He was jolted awake by Daniel’s wailing. The boy was sitting up, and tears poured down his face in an endless stream as he slapped the sides of his head with both hands. Vincenzo had no idea what was going on. He looked around, but the darkness was complete. All he heard were the trillings of nighttime insects and the wind rustling the leaves overhead. And Daniel’s ceaseless crying.

“Easy, guy!” Vincenzo said, grabbing the boy’s wrists.

Daniel struggled, his cries increasing. Vincenzo pulled the boy toward him, wrapping him up in a hug. Daniel kicked and thrashed.

“Daniel, stop it,” Gabby said sleepily.

“Daddy please,” Daniel said. “Daddy please.”

So he knows his dad is gone
.
Guess he’s not so mentally isolated after all.
“Ssh. Daddy will be here.”

“Daddy please,” Daniel repeated. “Momma please.”

“Easy, guy. Easy, now.”

It went on like that for almost an hour. Daniel thrashed and moaned and cried out and asked for his parents, and Vincenzo just held him and tried to comfort him as best as he could. At the same time, he felt a building hostility inside him, a cold anger directed at the boy and, to a lesser extent, his sister.
I’m not cut out for this, not now
.

Still the paragon of compassion, eh
paisan
?
the snarky little voice sneered.

Go fuck yourself.

Eventually, Daniel wound down. His tight body slowly relaxed, and his breathing became deep and regular. Before fading out, he reached out and touched Vincenzo’s lips. “Daddy,” he whispered before drifting off to sleep.

No, kid. I’m not your fucking father.
Vincenzo sighed, turned away from the boy, and stared into the darkness for a long while before he too fell back to sleep.

###

Both kids were still sleeping when the sky began to brighten. Vincenzo got up quietly and checked the area. The Blazer was unmolested, even though he’d forgotten to camouflage it. That was a mistake. He’d need to ensure that was done before hitting the sleeping bag next time. He eased the tailgate open and tried to figure out what the kids would eat for breakfast. He remembered the doughnuts and reached up for them. The box was gone. He looked back at the kids, thinking Daniel had taken them, but the box was nowhere to be seen. Scanning the area, he spotted it inside some brush. A raccoon or some other animal had scarfed down the baked delights, leaving barely any crumbs behind.

That’s just fucking great
.
Outstanding. You idiot, you
knew
the kids were looking forward to those things!

There were bags of cereal and canned milk inside the Blazer, as well as oatmeal and even a plastic bag of Pepperidge Farms mini bagels. He examined the bagels through the bag. There was no mold growing on them.
Good.
Maybe that would do the trick.

He took out his toothbrush and floss and cleaned his teeth vigorously, something he had also neglected to do the night before. He spat into a bush then felt his bowels rumble uncomfortably. He grabbed the toilet paper and entrenching tool and quick-walked over to the hole. Unbuckling his belt, he removed the Beretta from its holster and laid it on the ground beside him as he squatted. He let loose a cavernous fart then ejected the remains of yesterday’s meals into the earth.

“Ew! I see it coming out!”

Vincenzo’s sphincter slammed shut fast enough to break the sound barrier. Gabby stood off to one side, her face screwed up with an expression of disgust.

“Get back to the truck!”

“That’s really
gross
!” Gabby said.

“Get. Back. To the. Truck.
Now
!”

She made a retching sound and ran back.

“Damn kid,” Vincenzo whispered.

“Daniel! Where are you?” Gabby called a moment later.

Vincenzo groaned.
Oh, fuck me.

He finished in record time, cleaned himself, then hastily scooped dirt over his mess. He charged back to the truck, entrenching tool under one arm, as he squirted hand sanitizer into his palm. He looked around and didn’t see either Daniel or Gabby in the pre-dawn gloom.

“Kids!” he called, trying to keep his voice low. He shut the tailgate and reached for the Beretta. He had only an empty holster. He’d left the pistol back at the latrine site. With a curse, he blundered through the brush to reclaim it then returned to the truck. At least he still had the rifle slung; otherwise, he would have forgotten that, too.

“Kids!” he yelled.

“I can’t find Daniel,” Gabby said, trotting around the other side of the Blazer.

Vincenzo unlocked the driver’s door, pulled the .45 from between the seats, then pushed her inside. “Stay in here with the doors locked. If anyone shows up who isn’t me, honk the horn. If Daniel shows up, honk the horn. You understand?”

“Yes,” Gabby said, nodding seriously. “Daniel likes to run away.”

“Thanks for telling me that now,” Vincenzo said, pressing down on the door lock.

“He doesn’t come when you call him!” Gabby shouted. “He’s a very bad boy!”

“No kidding,” Vincenzo muttered.

Heading across the trail, he found a slight furrow in the brush. He stopped and listened but didn’t hear anything.

“Daniel? Daniel! Do you want a doughnut?”

To his right, he heard something stir.

“Doughnut, please,” Daniel said.

Vincenzo snorted and pushed through a set of chest-high bushes. “Well, how about a bagel, instead?”

He found Daniel standing in a small clearing on the other side of the brush, one hand flitting before his face. When Vincenzo saw the woman in camouflage kneeling beside Daniel and holding the boy’s other hand, he stopped dead cold and started to raise the rifle.

“Let’s take it easy there, champ,” muttered someone behind him. “You lower that rifle right now, or I’ll put two in the back of your head.”

Vincenzo froze then turned his head slightly toward the voice while keeping his eyes on the woman. Beyond her, another shape rose up from the ground, a man in a camouflaged outfit covered with tattered cloth. He knew from working on a military shoot once several years ago that it was called a ghillie suit.

“We know you have a couple of pistols,” the woman said. “Please just stay right where you are, okay? We’re the good guys here.”

Another man in a ghillie suit appeared next to Vincenzo. The guy reached out and took the M1A then lifted up Vincenzo’s shirt and pulled the Beretta from its holster and the Springfield from the small of his back. He was an older guy with bushy gray eyebrows and clear blue eyes that glittered behind the sheer camo veil that covered his face.

“Almost forgot this, didn’t you?” he said, holding up the Beretta with a smile. “I had me quite a quiet chuckle while watching you go back for it.”

“Doughnut, please,” Daniel said.

“I just came for the kid,” Vincenzo said.

“We know,” the woman responded. “We’ve been watching you all night.”

Vincenzo frowned. “What?”

“We have hide sites all over the area, so we can observe traffic that comes through here,” the older man said. As he spoke, another guy drifted up on Vincenzo’s left. He held an AR-15-type rifle trained on Vincenzo’s chest.

“All right. Well, whatever you guys want to do. So if you don’t mind, I’ll take the boy and my belongings, and we’ll get back on the road,” Vincenzo said.

“Well, see, it just doesn’t work that way,” the older man said. “See, you know where we are.”

Vincenzo blinked. “Man, I don’t even know
who
you are, and as soon as we’re back on the road, you’ll never see us again. I couldn’t tell anyone where to find you, other than somewhere off US 40 in eastern Ohio.”

“Don’t mess with the man, Terrell,” the woman said. She got to her feet and let go of Daniel’s hand. “Okay, little guy. Go to your dad.”

Daniel stood there and looked at his fluttering hands. He glanced up at Vincenzo. “Doughnut, please.”

“Better break the news to the little man,” the older guy, Terrell, said. “We watched the ’coon take down that box of doughnuts. A waste, that was.”

The woman looked from Daniel to Vincenzo. Something flickered in her clear hazel eyes. “Your son’s autistic?”

“He’s not my son,” Vincenzo said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Vincenzo nodded. “Their dad... well, there’s a group of people moving through Pennsylvania. They caught up to this family, and the father isn’t here any longer,” he said, trying to speak around what had happened but still give the people an idea of what had gone down.

“So you took the man’s kids?” Terrell asked.

“What, did you expect me to leave them with those guys?” Vincenzo shot back.

Terrell snorted and looked around at the rest of his crew. “Heh, guy’s got some gumption. Surrounded by people with rifles pointed at him, and he wants some repartee.” He sobered and turned back to Vincenzo. “No, actually, you shouldn’t have left them with whoever you came across. What happened to them?”

Vincenzo nodded to the M1A slung over the man’s shoulder. “I got lucky because they didn’t know I was there. Once they took down the man, they exposed themselves. When they went for the kids, I hit them.” Of course, it hadn’t happened
exactly
like that, but Vincenzo wasn’t about to tell them he’d had every intention of slipping away unnoticed before the biker guy had spotted him.

“So you don’t know these kids?” the woman asked incredulously.

“No. But I guess they’re my—what?—charges, I guess,” Vincenzo replied.