Summer Rental (50 page)

“You can imagine how desperate Adam got when he realized his plan backfired,” Don said. “And that you’d absconded with all his money. Not that I ever really intended to give him a cent,” Don added.

He looked at Maryn with interest. “What are you fiddling with over there?” He stood abruptly and jerked Maryn off the bed.

She cried out in pain as her head hit the sharp edge of the nightstand, and the lamp fell to the floor, its glass base smashing to bits.

Maryn was sobbing softly.

*   *   *

One floor down, Dorie, Ellis, and Julia were riveted to the spot.

“He’s hurting her,” Dorie exclaimed. “Ellis, are you still on hold? Hang up and redial, for God’s sake.”

“What?” they heard Don say, with a low chuckle. “Were you looking for that pistol I gave you? I already looked. It’s not there, is it?”

“The pistol,” Julia whispered. “My God, I forgot to put it back under her mattress.” She sprinted from the room and came back with her beach tote, holding the gun out with a look of horror and fascination.

“What should we do?” Dorie asked. “Y’all, we can’t wait for the cops.”

Ellis clicked the disconnect button. “I’m calling Ty,” she whispered. “He’s out back. He needs to know things are getting hairy in here.”

“Where’d you put the gun, Maryn?” they heard Don ask, and when she kept crying, they heard the sickening sound of a slap, and then Maryn crying harder.

“Do something,” Dorie implored. “He’ll kill her.”

Ellis’s fingers were shaking as she tapped his name on her cell phone. The phone rang twice, three times, no answer. “Come on, Ty,” Ellis breathed. “Pick up. Please, please, pick up.” A moment later, she got his voice mail. “Hi, it’s Ty,” his voice said. “Leave a number and I’ll hit you back.”

“Ty, it’s me,” she said, cupping her hand over the phone, her lips close to the receiver. “The man in Madison’s room is her husband. He’s beating the crap out of her. I still can’t get through to 911. Get your friend, get the cops, get somebody over here now. And hurry.”

“Maryn?” Don’s voice was threatening.

“The gun’s not here,” she cried. “It was stolen from my car the first week I was here. I haven’t had time to get another one. That’s why I put the locks on the door.”

“You’re sure it’s not in your purse?” Don asked, and they heard the clink of change and metal on the wooden floor.

“I told you it was stolen,” Maryn whimpered. “Why would I lie?”

“All right,” he relented. “Maybe you’re telling the truth. Doesn’t matter, does it? Come on, get up. And be quiet.” He slung the briefcase over his shoulder.

Maryn was crying again.

“I said get up, damn it,” Don growled, pulling his own pistol from his waistband.

Maryn gave another cry of pain, and they heard footsteps on the wooden floor.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“You wanted to see Adam Kuykendall, I’m taking you to see him,” Don said. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not alone here, Don,” Maryn said. “My friends—they’ve probably already figured out you’re here. They’ll call the cops. They won’t let you…”

He slapped her so hard her ears rang.

“Friends?” he sneered. “You don’t have friends, Maryn. Those women let you live here—why? Because you paid them? Nobody’s coming to save you, Maryn. It’s just you and me. That’s the way it’s always been. The way it always will be. Now move, God damn it.”

*   *   *

When they heard the sound of the heavy door opening, the slide of the dead bolt, all three of the women knew what was happening.

“Come on,” Ellis said, racing for Dorie’s door. “He’s taking her down the back staircase. Ty’s down there, somewhere. Julia, is that thing loaded? Do you know how to shoot it?”

“It’s loaded now,” Julia said, her voice grim. “I haven’t fired a gun since Daddy showed me how when I was fourteen, but it’ll come back to me.”

“Wait for me,” Dorie said, sliding her feet into a pair of flip-flops.

“Stay here,” Julia ordered.

“The hell I will,” Dorie said fiercely, and the three of them sprinted down the stairs as fast as they could go.

When they reached the living room, Ellis made a detour towards the fireplace. “What are you doing?” Julia whispered.

Ellis raised aloft the heavy wrought-iron poker, and Julia nodded approval.

“Wait a sec,” Dorie ordered, peeling off towards the kitchen. When she came back, she was brandishing a meat cleaver and a butcher knife. “Now we’re set,” she said.

*   *   *

Crouched under the rear stairwell, Ty heard the rusty door hinges squeak, and finally heard the heavy old door swing open. Shit! He felt the vibration of footsteps on the old steel stairway.

Madison was crying. “Don, no. Please, no. I won’t tell anybody. Please…”

“Shut up!” The man’s voice was hoarse, and Ty heard the sickening sound of a slap, flesh against flesh, and Madison cried out again. “Go on, move,” the man ordered. “Move or I’ll, by God, throw you down these stairs.”

Ty looked around for something, anything, to use as a weapon, b
ut the only thing handy was a scrap two-by-four left behind by the construction crew. He looked longingly at the shovels and rakes lying around by the construction site, but that was thirty yards away in the open, and it was too late now to risk making a run. He’d be seen for sure if he tried to move. The staircase shuddered under the weight of the footsteps descending it.

“Move, God damn it,” came Shackleford’s hoarse whisper.

52

The women crept onto the front porch, huddling together in a knot. “I wonder where Ty is?” Ellis worried. She peered out at the driveway. The rain had gotten steadier, and mist rose eerily from the construction equipment and debris scattered around Ebbtide’s weedy yard. “How’d Don get here?” she whispered. “There’s no car in the driveway.”

“Maybe he parked somewhere down the block,” Dorie suggested.

“No good, because then he’d have to drag, or carry, Madison to his car,” Julia said.

“Wait,” Ellis said. She ran across the driveway, veering around the remains of the old garage, towards the lot next door, the one where she’d parked what seemed like months ago to get her first sneak peek at Ebbtide. A moment later she was back, panting and out of breath.

“There’s a black Escalade parked over there, behind that burnt-out foundation,” she told them. “That’s got to be Don’s. Dorie, do you think you can make it over there to the car, like, fast?”

“Of course,” Dorie snorted indignantly. “I’m not a cripple, for God’s sake.”

“Okay,” Ellis said, gesturing to the knives Dorie wielded in each hand.
“Get over there and slash his tires. If he does manage to get Madison past all of us, that should slow him down. And then get the hell away from there.”

“Be right back,” Dorie promised. “Don’t do anything without me.”

When she was gone, Ellis and Julia crouched down and crab walked towards the edge of the front porch.

“What’s the plan?” Julia asked, her voice unaccustomedly shaky. “Ellis, even if I could pull this trigger, I’ve only ever shot at hay bales, in broad daylight, with Daddy right beside me. I’ve got no idea whether or not I could actually hit anything, especially in the dark like this.”

*   *   *

Ty felt the footsteps coming closer. He crouched into a fetal position, willing himself to fade into invisibility. Rain trickled down his head and into his ears, it dripped off the tip of his nose. He blinked and shook his head just slightly, with sudden understanding of the efficiency of Chinese water torture.

“God damn it, move your ass,” Shackleford rasped. “Or I swear I’ll kill you right here.”

“My ankle,” Madison moaned. “I think I twisted it.”

Ty looked up and saw Shackleford shove Madison down the last few steps of the staircase. He saw the gun, too. She cried out, landing in a heap on the matted grass. The man stepped over her and jerked her to her feet. He had a briefcase on his shoulder.

“This way,” he growled hoarsely, shoving her in the direction of the driveway.

Now or never, Ty thought grimly. He stood and launched himself into a flying tackle, fueled more with testosterone than skill, remembering his high school coach’s mantra: “Square up and drive, son.” Ty slammed into the back of Shackleford’s thighs, sending him sprawling headfirst onto the ground.
BOOM!

The gunshot was so close and so loud, for a fleeting moment, Ty wondered if he’d been shot. Madison fell too, and now the three of them were flopping around in the rain and the mud, arms and legs hopelessly entangled.

“What the…?” Shackleford rolled onto his back. Ty slapped awkwardly at Shackleford’s gun hand, managing only a grazing blow,
and Shackleford retaliated with a vicious backward kick to Ty’s gut. Now he was pointing the gun directly at Ty, who was scuttling backwards in the mud, trying desperately to get out of firing range.

Madison somehow managed to scramble to her feet. “No!” she screeched. “No!” She darted forward and managed to land one good kick in her husband’s ribs before he caught her foot and jerked her off balance. She screamed in pain, screamed in fear, screamed until she thought her lungs would catch fire. Senseless with rage, she kicked out at Shackleford, who grabbed her ankle with his left hand and flipped her to the ground.

Seizing the moment, Ty spied a piece of scrap two-by-four, grabbed it, and was advancing on Shackleford. But the other man saw him coming, raised up on his elbows, aimed, and fired.

BOOM!

This time he didn’t have to wonder. Ty felt a searing pain in this thigh.

*   *   *

Ellis and Julia startled at the screams coming from the back of Ebbtide. “He’s killing her!” Julia whispered, peering around the corner of the garage. “We’ve gotta do something.”

“Wait!” Ellis said, clutching the hem of Julia’s shirt. But the gunshots coming from the back of the house canceled the women’s sense of caution.

“My God,” Ellis gasped. “He’s got a gun. And Ty’s back there. He’ll kill them both!”

Before Julia could stop her, or argue for a reasonable plan of action, Ellis was sprinting towards the rear of the house, with Julia close behind. Ellis’s legs felt like concrete. Her lungs, calves, and thighs burned as though she’d set fire to them. But Ty was back there, and that bastard Don Shackleford had a gun. For once in her life, she didn’t have a plan. All she had was adrenaline.

Rounding the corner of the house, in the dim yellow of a single porch light, Ellis saw Madison, her face streaked with blood, flailing around on the ground, screeching and kicking out at the man Ellis knew must be her husband.

Standing over Don Shackleford was a mud-covered Ty Bazemore, with a crazed look in his eye and what appeared to be a two-by-four raised menacingly above Don Shackleford’s head.

In the moonlight, they saw the gun clutched in Shackleford’s hand, pointed directly at Ty’s chest. For a nanosecond, time seemed to stand still. And then Ellis heard her own voice, at a decibel level she didn’t know she possessed. She burst out of the shadows, with Julia right beside her, the two of them screaming like banshees.

Instinctively, the friends split up, with Julia running in one direction towards Shackleford, and Ellis in another.

Julia stopped five yards away, held the pistol out, elbows locked, the gun clutched in both hands, the way she’d seen Clint Eastwood do in all those
Dirty Harry
movies Booker loved so much. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Unlike Clint Eastwood, her voice cracked and the words came out more of a squeak than a roar. Also unlike Clint, her hands shook like a drunk with a bad case of the DTs.

Shackleford’s expression was more of bemusement than terror. He shoved Madison aside and stood easily.

“I’ll shoot your ass,” Julia screeched, planting her feet and assuming the position.

“Sure you will,” Shackleford said, laughing. He raised his own pistol and pointed it at Julia, but at just that moment, they heard an earsplitting burst of siren:
Whee-OO, whee-OO, whee-OO
. Startled, Shackleford turned his head, just for a second.

Whee-OO, whee-OO.

It was all the distraction Ty needed. He slammed the two-by-four across the top of Don Shackleford’s skull, at precisely the same moment that Ellis, crouched behind Shackleford, circled around, leapt into the air, and with an unearthly howl which Julia later described as “half Karate Kid, half feral dog,” made a direct hit to Shackleford’s groin with the fireplace poker.

At which point, the bad guy, Julia said in subsequent retellings, “folded like a Kmart lawn chair.”

53

Ty dropped the two-by-four and limped over to Ellis, gathering her into his arms, deliberately turning her away from the sight of Don Shackleford crumpled on the ground with a gaping gouge across the top of his head.

Julia stared down at Shackleford, who was motionless. Wordlessly, she dropped the pistol, and went to comfort Madison, who had retreated to the cover of the back porch, and was now weeping softly, clinging to the handrail of the iron staircase.

“It’s all right,” Julia said, hugging Madison. “You’re all right. He can’t hurt you anymore. Not anymore. Not ever.” Her voice was soothing, singsongy. Madison shuddered, and Julia petted her, as she would a frightened kitten. “I swear, he’ll never touch you again.”

“You guys!” they heard a voice call. Looking up, Ellis and Julia saw Dorie loping towards them, through the mist. “I heard gunshots. Are you all right?”

“Dorie!” Ellis cried. “We’re okay. We’re all okay. Ty…” Her voice was as shaky as her legs, which now felt like they might collapse under the weight of her. “Ty saved us.”

“You saved yourselves,” Ty corrected her, wincing.
Now Ellis saw the blood oozing from his left thigh. “You’re hurt,” she exclaimed. “Oh my God, he shot you.” She looked wildly around. “Ty’s been shot. We’ve got to get an ambulance.”

“I’m fine,” Ty said wanly, clamping his hand over his thigh. “Just a flesh wound. Like on TV.”

Ellis fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone, but now they heard a different set of sirens, and looking up, saw a procession of blue and red flashing lights: three Dare County sheriff’s cruisers, a K-9 drug enforcement unit, and an ambulance.