The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (The Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mysteries) (38 page)

Beth was already shaking her head. “He and Luke
got into a huge argument right in front of the trailer. They didn’t want to
give up the keys to their only vehicle. Luke was yelling about running low on
supplies. Especially with another prisoner, he said. Justus told them it was just
for tonight. Father’s going to decide what to do with us by tomorrow.”

“So now what?” I felt like joining Priella sitting
in the dirt. “Even if I go back to Megiddo, I don’t think I can break into
Father’s house without getting caught, and I have no idea where to look anyway.
For all I know, Baara or Justus has sounded the alert. The whole church is
probably looking for me.”

“Baara wouldn’t do that,” Beth said.

“Yes,” I said. “She sure as hell would.”

“Baara killed Enoch.”

I squeaked a little when my thoughts materialized
out of thin air, and then I realized it was Priella who had spoken.

“No way,” Beth said as Priella struggled back to
her feet.

“She did,” Priella said in a voice that sounded
like cobwebs had grown over her vocal cords. “I knew Enoch wouldn’t leave
without me. Not for good. When he left the church the first time, he was just
going to get us set up and then come back for me. And he did. If we had just
gotten in the car and gone, we would have been free. But Enoch wanted to talk
to Father. He felt he owed Father that much. And then he just… disappeared.”

Beth reached over and took Priella’s hand.
“Disappeared?”

“He never came back to the room to get me. I was
all packed. After it got dark, I snuck out and tried to look around, but his
car was gone and there was no sign of him. I thought…”

“You thought he left you behind,” I said.

She nodded, tears streaming down her face. “But
then a day or so after you came, I overheard Maliah talking to Gabriel, and it
sounded like he was telling her she was officially a widow. He said you found
something in the woods. That bitch never even shed a tear. I wanted to ask you
what it was you found, but by then I was afraid they were watching me. And to
be honest, I was never really sure I could trust you. I didn’t know why they
assigned you to my room. When I heard Enoch was dead, I really freaked out. I
didn’t know if he told Father I was leaving with him or not. When Father
ordered me shunned, I knew I was in danger.”

“I wondered about the room assignment too,” I
said. “With everything going on, they must have just screwed up.”

“But why do you think Baara had anything to do
with it?” Beth asked.

“I had to meet with Father. Baara was kneeling at
his feet the whole time, smiling this really weird… Father told me if I’d been
as obedient as Baara, he could have overlooked many things. As it stood, he
didn’t know if I had just allowed Enoch to taint my thoughts or if I had an
evil spirit indwelling me too. That’s why they put me in there.” Priella nodded
at the shed and shuddered. “To sweat the devil out.”

“It’s worse than that,” I added. “Baara admitted
killing Enoch, right before she did this.” I raised my skirt up. “She stabbed
me with a baling hook.”

“Holy crap,” Beth whispered.

“Look, now that we’re all caught up, we really
need to get the hell out of here. We can fill in the details later. If we can’t
walk out and we can’t steal a car, what are we going to do?”

This was a poser.

“You guys have to go ahead without me,” Priella
said. “I can hide in the woods tonight. By tomorrow you could have the—”

“That’s not happening,” Beth said. “We have no
idea how long it might take us to find help, especially if we’re walking. I’m
not even sure where we are and Sawyer County probably has a higher bear
population than people.”

We all looked warily at the woods.

“Beth’s right.” I said. “I don’t think you would
make it in the woods overnight. You’d probably die of exposure. Hunters and
off-roaders may love it, but this county is mostly lakes and woods with a
couple of small towns sprinkled in. I know we’re somewhere southeast of
Hayward, but—”

Beth grabbed my arm. “Trails.” She pointed at the
tarped ATVs.

Thank you, God.

“This could work,” I said.

“Maybe,” Beth said. “We need the keys.”

I turned to Priella. “Any idea where they might
keep them?”

“None. The only time I could hear anything over
the music was if they were in the yard fighting.”

“Okay, let’s not make this more complicated than
it needs to be,” I said. “You guys wait here. I’m going to slip over and see if
they’ve left them in the ignition. This is Wisconsin, after all.”

But of course a bunch of meth cooks were a tad
more security conscious than the average Wisconsinite. They had covered the
three machines with a heavy tarp, which I didn’t bother trying to pull off. 
Instead, I slipped underneath and crawled from ATV to ATV. They were fairly
clean for off-road vehicles, making me wonder if they were only used for travel
between camps. None of them had keys conveniently left in the ignition.

But there were two sheds. The other sat on the
opposite side of the trailer. I didn’t remember seeing a padlock on it, so in
the interest of being thorough, I scooted across the rutted drive. It was
indeed open, but it was full of miscellaneous yard tools, including a lawn
mower that reeked of gas. I didn’t see any keys. 

By the time I made it back to the other women,
Priella had reverted to sitting on the ground.

“Find anything?” Beth sounded strained.

Priella looked up hopefully.

“No,” I said. “If Justus didn’t take them, they’ve
got to be in the trailer.”

“Okay, look.” Beth’s turn. “We’ve got to get in
there. If we could get Maggie alone, she might be willing to come away with
us.”

“Two problems. How do we get Maggie alone, and how
can we be sure she’ll come with us?”

“We’ll need a diversion. As far as whether she’ll
come with us, there’s no telling. We can only try,” Beth replied.

I rubbed my eyes. “How do we set it up so that the
guys are diverted and Maggie isn’t?”

Priella said, “I don’t think Maggie ever comes out
of the trailer. I mean I’ve never heard her. It’s always Luke or Ben who bring
me my food. Unless Father calls for a mandatory meeting, they’re usually the
only ones that go to Megiddo too.”

“Maybe if we leave the shed door wide open and
make a big ruckus, they’ll follow one of us into the woods?” I said. “Then the
other two could get in the cabin, grab the keys and hopefully Maggie. The
diverter can circle around once she gets the guys out deep enough. Then we all
take off.”

Beth chewed her lip. “It’s not good, but it’s all
we’ve got.”

Priella shrugged. “We can’t get caught. You know
that, right? If Maggie doesn’t want to come, we can’t spend a lot of time
convincing her. As soon as they see I’m really gone, they’re going to alert
Father and the Seven.”

“More like Father and the Three or Four,” I said.
“So, the big question is, who’s going to be the diversion?”

Priella lowered her head, staring at the dirt in
front of her face. I looked at Beth. She rubbed her sore arm.

“Oh, come on.” I hiked my skirt back up and
pointed to my gouge. “I was
stabbed
. With a
hook
!”

“I’m older than you,” Beth countered. “Way older.”

“Six years, Beth. That’s not—” I heaved a sigh.
This was going nowhere, and we all knew who was going to be running around the
woods being chased by crazed meth heads.

“Maybe we could just reason with them,” I said
weakly.

“We’ll need a place for Priella and me to hide,”
Beth said. “Maybe under the tarp?”

“No.” Priella rose and stood beside us. “What if
they decide to send someone to Megiddo? They might take one of the
four-wheelers. How about the other shed? If I really was escaping, I’d never
hide there.”

“Or we could trade our bodies in exchange for the
keys,” I tried. “Like ATV hookers.”

Beth scooted around the shed and pulled the door
open. It started to swing shut.

“Or prayer! We haven’t tried that yet.”

Priella waded into the weeds and came back
dragging a branch. They wedged it under the door to prop it open.

Beth finally turned to me. “Wait til we’re in the
other shed, then go ahead.”

“Go ahead? Go ahead and what? Scream ‘come and get
me, boys?’”

“You’ll think of something. Good luck.”

As soon as they got inside, I hurried over to the
path entrance. I stood poised like a track runner, ready to sprint off the
mark. Then I cut loose with a yell loud enough to wake the dead. I took off
like a popped cork but paused about five feet in to see who was coming.

No one. I stopped and waited. Still no one came
bursting out of the trailer after me. I walked back to the yard. Beth stuck her
head out, and I gave her a WTF shoulder shrug. She shrugged back.

Obviously, they couldn’t hear me over their stupid
metal band racket. I searched the ground and came up with a rock the size of my
fist. I threw it as hard as I could at the door. I could only hope that they
wouldn’t stop to ask themselves why Priella would do such a thing before making
her escape. Since the rock landed ten feet short, I didn’t have to wonder for
long.

The “
really?
” face that Beth shot me from
the shed sizzled my face. I flipped her off. 

Found another rock. This time I crept forward
until I was fewer than twenty feet away. Only an imbecile could miss at this
distance. I thought about it and moved another five feet closer. Then I hurled
that sucker at the lab window and sprinted for the path. Glass shattered.
Someone screamed.

I tore down the path, running until my chest hurt,
then plunged off-trail, behind a thicket of scraggy bushes. I paused a moment,
but I couldn’t hear anything over the roar in my ears.

I was too exposed. I moved at an angle, away from
the path but afraid to go too far in case I got lost. I hid behind a huge oak
tree, got control of my breathing, then peeked around the trunk. I could hear
them. They were coming.

Lots of yelling. Men, I thought. The men were
coming. I knew I had to lure them farther away, but my muscles locked, my
breath coming in little, begging squeaks.

I still couldn’t see them, but the racket they
were making sounded like they were almost on top of me. I needed to run, but my
fingers clenched so tight they peeled bark off the tree. If I didn’t run now,
they could get ahead of me on the path. If they did that, they might not keep
going. If they thought they had lost my trail, they’d head back to the trailer
for the ATVs or to call in reinforcements.

I had to. I took a deep breath and pushed off the
oak into a stumbling run. I ran parallel to the path, the overgrowth dense but
not impassable. Still, it slowed me down. And it sure made enough noise to
entice Luke and what’s-his-face to follow me.

Which was proved true when they shot at me.

Holy shit
. The shotgun blasted again. I
lurched to the right, ran several feet, then dropped and rolled. This would
have been movie-star impressive except the drop happened right after I tripped
over a batch of exposed tree roots. I belly crawled another twenty feet, twigs
stabbing my legs and hands, and huddled behind a fallen tree trunk, panting and
as wide-eyed as any hunted prey.

Guns were
not
part of the plan.

I struggled to get control of my breathing so I
could listen for the men, but before I could manage to, they went jogging past,
following the path around a bend. As soon as they were out of sight, I took off
in the opposite direction at a dead run. This time I stuck to the path to make
better time, despite the danger of greater visibility. I had to get back to
Beth, and there was no telling how much time we might have before Luke and his
buddy came back.

With luck, Beth would have gotten the ATV keys and
convinced Maggie it was time to go. I hoped when I got there she would have the
machines running, pointing down the drive with the other women ready to go.

But no. The tarps hadn’t even been removed from
the vehicles. I went straight inside.

Chapter Thirty-Five

T
he front door
opened into the dismal living room where I had spied Luke sleeping on the
couch. I had a mini freak-out when I thought I saw someone sitting in the
matching recliner, but it was just a pile of laundry—dirty by the look of it,
jackets flung over the back in lieu of a coat rack. On the wall next to the
door hung a homemade plaque with five brass C-hooks. Only one pair of keys
dangled from it—house keys, I could tell. I hung a left into the
kitchen-slash-meth lab and found the party.

Maggie looked like she had been up for days. Her
dark hair lay in greasy strands around her shoulders. Agitated and visibly
shaking, she stood with her back to the row of barrels, a butcher knife in her
hand, business end pointed at Beth. Priella was nowhere to be seen, but I could
hear someone rummaging around in a back room and hoped it was her.

“It’s okay, Maggie,” Beth was saying. “We want to
help you. Your mom sent us.”

“My mom?” Her initial confusion turned to anger.

Meth-intoxicated tweakers with butcher knives and
an attitude made me nervous.

I said, “Reggie is worried about you. She wants
you to come home.”

“I told her to leave me alone. She doesn’t
understand.”

“But we do,” Beth said. “We’re part of the church,
just like you. You can trust us.”

“You’re doing all this—” I spread my hands wide,
indicating the lab. “You’re doing this for the church. For Father.”

The anger receded from Maggie’s face, but she kept
shifting from one foot to the other, swinging the knife point back and forth
between Beth and me. When Priella emerged from the back room wearing somebody’s
flannel jacket and a navy blue stocking cap, Maggie grew even more agitated.