Turn or Burn (20 page)

“You have to be kidding me,” I said.

“Sorry it took me so long.”

“Yeah. You’re a few minutes late. What happened to you?”

“Fell into a manhole.” Francesca knelt down and looked at Leanne Dorachek. “You all right?”

She nodded with tears rolling down her eyes. “What is happening? Who are they?”

“I have no freaking idea,” Francesca answered, as she started to cut Leanne free with a knife. I squirmed up to a seated position. Leanne was still naked but didn’t seem embarrassed about it. Must still be in shock. Once she was able, she got up and went for the blanket that had also fallen out of the trunk. She wrapped it around her.

“Are they dead?” I asked, trying to look past the trunk toward the front of the car.

“Not yet,” Francesca said as she cut me free.

I finally stood. My shoulder was still hurting but I didn’t think anything was broken. I walked around to the front of the car. Both men were in there and I could hear ragged breathing. I was on the driver’s side. I knelt down and looked in. They were upside down. Both alive. A stream of blood trickled down the Canadian’s neck and face. Elvin was moaning in pain.

Francesca came up from behind me. “I shot him. That’s when he clipped the tree and you guys rolled. I didn’t mean for all that to happen. I was trying to stop the car.”

“Get the other one,” I said to her. She went around to the other side. I reached in and grabbed the Canadian by his shirt and started to drag him out. Something kept him from moving, and I realized he had his seatbelt on. That seemed funny to me and I smiled to myself. How law-abiding of him. What a good citizen.

I reached around and unclicked him and pulled him out. The bullet had gone right in between his clavicle and his neck but looked like it had missed the major artery. He was foggy but coherent.

“You’re mine now, asshole,” I said. Leaving him lying on the ground, I stood up and looked around. There was a chunk in a tree where we had made impact. No other signs of life anywhere, other than the cabin with the smoking chimney back at the end of the driveway.

I knelt down again and checked his pockets. “I already got their guns,” Francesca said, from the other side.

“Was my Ruger in there?”

“Yep. I got it over here. What do you want to do with them?”

“Get some answers. Let’s take them back to the cabin.”

I grabbed the Canadian by what little hair he had and pulled him up. He was holding the bullet wound, trying to keep the blood from flowing. “Start walking,” I said, and he did. When we got close to Leanne, I said to her, “Follow us. We’ll take care of you.”

She stepped in front of the Canadian and punched him in the face. His head twisted, and a raw sense of justice began to take form.

“Shit,” I said. “You’ve got a hell of a right hook.”

Without saying anything, she wound up again but I put up my hand. “Hold off. You’ll get your chance. We need some answers first.”

She stepped out of our way.

Elvin didn’t look much better off. He was hunched over and limping. Francesca was leading him our way with a gun to his back. She asked, “Why don’t you take these two to the cabin? I’ll go get the Rover.”

“All right.”

“Be right back.” She handed me my gun and disappeared in a run back into the woods. With Leanne at my side, we led our two prisoners back. Once inside, I made them sit on the couch next to each other.

Leanne came over to me with a cup of water and I downed it. “Should I call the police?” she asked.

“Let’s hold off a minute. Why don’t you take a load off? Find your clothes and put some ice on your burn. I’ll take care of these two.”

Truth be told, they weren’t much of a liability. They were both hurt badly from the car flipping. I went up to the Canadian and started feeling in his pockets. His shirt was thick with blood, and he was still holding his neck. At the moment, I wasn’t too worried about how much longer he would last. “Who are you?” I asked. “I’m going to get some answers out of you one way or another, so you might want to go ahead and get used to talking.”

He didn’t say anything.

I found a set of keys on a key ring with a cross. His wallet and a Seahawks lighter were in the other pocket. I opened up the wallet. Thirty bucks in cash and a picture of a woman. “This your wife?” I asked. “She know what you’re doing?” I threw the picture at his face.

No answer again.

His Washington State driver’s license didn’t look much like him at all. He’d lost some weight. “Thomas Henry of Tacoma. I’ll get back to you in a minute. Seems you’re not taking me seriously. You’re going to wish you’d never crossed the border up there. Promise you that.”

I went through Elvin’s pockets too. He flinched as I touched him. He was scared out of his mind and he had good reason to be. Another WA state license. A name that meant nothing to me.

“Now, I need you two to start talking. I’m going to need answers quickly. So tell me, what’s going on here? Who are you people?”

They looked at each other.

“You don’t need permission,” I said. “I highly advise you to look at me like the man who owns your fate. I’ll treat you like you treat me. One of you better start talking.” I leaned over and tapped the tip of the gun on Elvin’s skull. “Elvin, seems you have a little bit of sense down in there somewhere. This is your chance to find some redemption.”

He looked down.

“Okay, let’s see how far you’re willing to take this little game. I’ve been here
many
times before. On both sides.”

I took the Canadian by the neck and pulled him off the couch to the ground. He hit the bare floor with a grunt. Using my foot, I flipped him over onto his back and then went toward the fireplace. I reached down and pulled the branding iron out of the waning fire. Luckily, someone had stuck it back in before we left. I turned toward the men and held the iron up in front of me. “I was worried the fire was cooling down, but this baby’s still glowing. I think it will do the trick.”

Both of their eyes grew wide, and the Canadian scurried backward until he hit the couch. He was still clutching his neck.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “This little thing scares you? It isn’t that bad. I would have thought you’d already had this done. Or is it something you just do to the people you kidnap?”

“You’ll pay for this,” he mumbled, spitting blood.

I clicked a few times with my tongue, like I was telling a horse to move. “I’d worry about yourself right now. You want to tell me where you were taking us? What was the new location Jameson referred to? Where is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I took a few more steps toward him.

“Stay away from me!”

I looked up at Elvin, who was still up on the couch, frozen in fear. “You think he’s pissed his pants yet?”

Elvin didn’t say a word. I noticed Leanne Dorachek over in a chair looking at me. I said to her, “I didn’t think you’d mind if I had to get some answers from them.”

“Stick it down his throat for all I care.”

I smiled and turned back to Elvin, the weak one. “All right. Time’s up. Where’s Jameson headed?”

Nothing.

I took the iron and thrust it at him. Elvin screamed like a child and tried to move toward the edge of the couch. Below me, the Canadian was sliding away. I lowered the iron and pressed it against Elvin’s thigh. His pants burned instantly and I could smell his flesh. He yelled louder. “Get away from me!”

“Hurts, doesn’t it?”

I jabbed at him again, this time getting his shoulder. He screamed. The shirt burned and smoked, and his flesh sizzled as the iron burned its mark.

“Elvin, you know this shit is wrong. You have to. You’re caught up in some kind of groupthink. It’s not right. You know that. I’ll help you out if you’ll work with me. I can see the good in you.”

Nothing.

I raised the iron again.

“You have to stop,” the Canadian said. “He’s not going to say anything. He can’t.”

I looked down and asked, “Why’s that?”

“They’ll kill us if we do. They’ll kill our families.”

“Who will?” I went to him. The glow of the iron was dying some.

“He will.”

“Who is he? Jameson? He doesn’t seem too bad. I’m going to get him whether you help me or not.”

He shook his head and closed his eyes. I raised the iron and he put his hands up in a feeble attempt to protect himself. I got him in the chest. The cloth of his shirt and his flesh sizzled. I pressed hard, making sure he felt it. Making sure he’d have the same mark I had. For a long, long time. He screamed loud and his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed. Lights out.

“Looks like we lost him,” I said, looking back up at Elvin. “It
does
hurt. I’ll admit that.”

Elvin had worked himself into the fetal position on the far end of the couch. He was terrified.

“You’re going to help me one way or another.” I touched him with the end of the iron. Though it was losing its heat, the tip still blistered his skin as I pressed down on his arm.

He screamed like a child.

“Okay,” I said. “Where is Jameson headed and why are you scared of him?”

He closed his eyes and started saying the Lord’s Prayer. “
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name
…”

I lifted the iron and whacked him in the ankle. More crying. “Almost as effective,” I said. “Now, answer my damn question, or I’m going to tie you up and torture you like we’re in Baghdad. Maybe run a wire up under your cuticles…see how far it will go. How does that sound?”

He kept his eyes closed. Kept praying. A pool of urine started to collect underneath him and soak into the cloth of the couch.

“You got ten seconds!”

“Please leave me alone!” he begged.

I raised the iron up again to hit him, but the opening door stopped me. I turned to see Francesca bursting in, out of breath. “We have to get out of here,” she said calmly. “They’re surrounding us. Four or five cars.” She clapped her hands. “
Andiamo
!”

“We’ll talk about it later. We have to go.”

I went back toward the two men I attacked. The Canadian—the tough guy—was still out, probably on his way to dying from his wound. I looked at Elvin. He was in the fetal position on the couch. “Tell them what I’m capable of. Tell them I’m coming for them. We’ll see each other again soon.” With that, I left him there lying in his own urine.

There was only one door out. We started towards it.  
Francesca looked at Leanne. “I hope you can run.”

Without letting her answer, we took off out the door, and I’m sure I can speak for all of us when I say our hearts were pounding. As I hopped the two steps to the ground, I saw several cars speeding down the long drive.

“Where’s the Rover?” I asked.

“Gone. I don’t know. We’re on foot.”

We ran to the back of the house and that’s when I noticed what Leanne was wearing: high heels. “Hold up,” I said. “Give me your shoes.” She looked at me, confused. “Give me your shoes! I’ll rip off the heels. You can’t run like that.”

She pulled them off and I ripped the heel off each one. Then I helped her get them back onto her feet. The cars skidded to a stop out front.

“This way,” Francesca said, darting into the deep woods. We followed her. Francesca and I had guns, but we didn’t need to be putting up a fight, not with our odds. And we really didn’t know what we were up against. After one hundred yards of negotiating the fallen trees and thick underbrush, I turned. Men were coming our way.

“I can’t keep up,” Leanne said, stopping to lean against a pine tree.

“Yeah, you can. Just think about what we’re running from. We’ll slow down some soon…but we have to cover some ground first. They’re right behind us. You with me?”

She nodded, and we ran for another half mile before slowing down. If this had been a stroll, I might have stopped to enjoy the beauty surrounding us. You can complain all you want about the rain in the Pacific Northwest, but nature thrives in it, and what you end up with is some of the lushest landscape on the planet. It was almost rainforest, what we were running through. Some of the tallest trees in the country, plant leaves bigger than your head. But this was no walk in the park, and I wasn’t enjoying myself. We were on the wrong end of a manhunt.

We’d slowed to a jog. Leanne was breathing heavily and grunting. She would have been crying, though I think she was all cried out. “Do you know where we are?” she asked.

“No,” Francesca answered. “But we’ll run into something eventually.”

“I have to stop for a little while,” Leanne gasped. “Please. I can’t breathe.”

We stopped. Leanne folded, sucking air. I was beat, too. I hadn’t run that fast for that far in a while. I looked back and listened. I couldn’t hear anything. Maybe we were okay.

“Where the hell were you?” I asked Francesca, turning to her.

Before answering, she happened to look down—I still hadn’t buttoned my shirt back up—and saw the burned flesh for the first time. “Harper, what did they do to you?”

“Yeah, you were late.”

She reached out for me and touched my stomach near the burn. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Nothing you could do, Princess. What happened to you?”

She put her hands on her hips. “I fell in a hole. Some kind of animal trap, I think. I fell twenty feet. It took me a while to get out.”

I nodded my head. “You hurting?”

“My leg hurts some but I’m alive. We have to keep going. Leanne, you ready?”

“I guess so.” She still had makeup running down her face from earlier, and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she’d never shake what had happened to us today.

“You have to be,” I said. “Find some strength. I believe in you.”

I was thinking about how much faster we could have moved without her—though of course we would never leave her—when the Dobermans started barking.

Leanne nearly went into convulsions. “I can’t do this,” she said. “Please, make them go away.”

“You need to have faith,” I said. Oh, the irony of that statement.