With Child (25 page)

"Let me just mark this down here. Now where was it?" Where the fuck is Jules, you bastard? she thought. "Okay, I've got it. So I go back to here and then turn left; that should get me there." God, this
is
her father; she's got his hands, and they have the same eyebrows. "I don't suppose I could use your telephone, just to call and let them know I'm coming?" She knew that he had no telephone, but it was, after all, the sort of thing a lost woman would ask.

"I don't have a phone."

"You don't? Well, I guess it's quite a ways from nowhere. Yours was the first place I saw for miles." Surely she's heard me, Kate thought in desperation. She has to be here, and the cabin is too small for her to be out of earshot. I'm going to have to leave; he's not going to let me in. She wavered, then decided to try just one last nudge. "Just one more thing, then, and I'll let you get on with your evening. I wonder if I could be really intrusive and ask if I could use your bathroom? If I have to go another hour on these roads, I'll just burst." At least I know you have indoor plumbing, you bastard. I don't have to worry about being pointed to an outhouse.

He studied her, looked over her shoulder at the beat-up car, and then took his right hand off the door and stepped to his left. Taking a deep breath, and mightily tempted to elbow him in the gut as she went past, regulations be damned, she went up the two steps and walked past him into the house, into a room with a threadbare braided rug on the worn linoleum floor, mismatched sofa and chairs in front of an oil-drum woodstove, and the arsenal of a survivalist on racks on the walls. She had just time to notice an open book, a spiral notepad, and a pen on the Formica kitchen table when her body froze at the sound of a shotgun shell being jacked into place.

"Turn around," he said. She did so, slowly.

"What are you doing?" she demanded in outrage and fear, neither of which were feigned, not with the barrels of a shotgun two feet from her chest.

"A woman like you would rather pee her pants than come into a lonesome house with a strange man. Who sent you?" Shit, it wasn't just Jani who gave Jules her brains, thought Kate wildly.

"Marsh?" a tentative voice said from behind Kate.

Kate jerked, and then with her hands well out from her sides, she swiveled her head to look at the inner door.

Jules was wearing grubby, overly large jeans and a plaid shirt that had to belong to Kimbal. On her feet were the boots they had bought in Berkeley, one of them with string in place of the original laces. Her haircut had grown out and had a hacked-off appearance. A wide bruise darkened her left cheekbone, and her eyes looked at Kate without recognition.

"Go back to your room, Julie."

"But Marsh, I just wondered --"

"Julie," he said in a voice like a quiet whip crack, "I said go."

The child looked out from under her lank bangs at her father, and at Kate, then stepped back into the room and shut the door quietly. Kate turned her head back to the man with the shotgun.

"Is that what you wanted to see?" he demanded. "That's my daughter. She's mine, and if that bitch of a mother of hers sent you to fetch her back, that's just hard luck for you. Out."

For a moment, Kate felt weak with relief: He was going to let her drive away, thinking her an informal envoy, and no great damage would have been done. However, halfway to the car he said, "Stop right there. Hold out your left hand."

She knew the sound of the rattling metal even before the handcuffs hit her wrist. The sharp jab of the shotgun barrel against her spine kept her from moving, but she broke out in a sweat, oozing fear, and it was all she could do to keep a whimper from finding its way up her throat.

"Other one," he ordered, and when she did not move, he barked, "I'll shoot you down right here if I have to."

He won't, she tried to tell herself. There's no reason for him to do more than drive me off his land in some humiliating manner. Besides, I do have backup; a dozen men are watching through their scopes from that small hill off in the distance. Just keep him calm, and delay. If Jules has the sense to go out the back window, they'll see her and move up quickly. Just take it slowly...

She bent forward so he could have her right hand, and felt the metal cuff slip around it. Kimbal took the gun out of her spine. "I used these on Julie when she tried to run away, back in the beginning. I knew they'd come in handy again."

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Me? I'm not going to do a thing. However, those dogs of mine, they know it's about time they were let out, and they're not going to be too happy about you trespassing."

Kate heard another jingle, and she looked back, to see him thumbing through a key ring. He selected what looked like the key to a padlock and began to move toward the cage and the quivering dogs.

"Marsh," came the voice again.

"Julie, go back in the house," he said without looking up.

"Marsh!"

"Julie," he began in a growl, and then stopped. "Baby, we won't need that. This lady's leaving on her own." Kate turned and saw Jules in the doorway. She had a revolver in her hand that looked as if it belonged in a Western, but it was clean and looked well cared for, as had all the rifles on the wall. She had it in her right hand, pointing at the ground.

"You can't hurt her, Marsh."

"Julie, this is Daddy's business. Take the gun and put it away before you hurt yourself." He sounded as if he were talking to a six-year-old, but then Jules was acting strangely young, as well.

But determined. "Let her go, Marsh. Don't let the dogs out."

Both adults stood still, squinting into the late sun at the thin young girl in ill-fitting clothes, hanging on to a gun that probably weighed more than her arm did. Kate stared not at the gun, but at the tear that was trickling down the young face.

"Julie, you're going to be in big trouble, girl. It'll be the belt for sure if you don't get yourself inside right now." His anger at her disobedience was under thin control.

"Marsh," she said around her tears, "I can't let you hurt her. Let her go. I'll stay here with you. Just let her go. Please!"

That was when Marsh Kimbal made his mistake. Had he simply walked up to Jules to take the gun from her hands, she would certainly have let him, but he lost his temper. He pivoted around with the shotgun coming up, centering it on Kate.

"Daddy!"

It was more a scream for help than a warning, but Marsh Kimbal's entire body jerked in reaction. He whirled, and Kate turned, and they saw Jules standing on the ground now, thirty feet away, the big revolver held in her trembling hands in the position Kate had taught her on the shooting range, pointing straight at her father. Tears welled up and no doubt obscured her vision, but she was biting her lip in concentration, and Kate knew that if Jules fired a shot, there was a good chance that she would hit him. Kimbal knew it, too.

"There's a bullet in the chamber, Daddy. I know how to shoot. Let her leave."

He wavered. If she had been anyone but his daughter, he might have turned the shotgun on her, but this was the daughter he had sought for over ten years, and he could not bring himself to kill her. At the same time, had she been anyone but his daughter, he would have known that if he simply approached her, talking calmly, he could have had the gun for the taking..

But this was his own child defying him, and the step he took toward her was not conciliatory, but furious. She saw it, and she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

The shot almost hit him. Had she kept her eyes open, it would have, but it went wide - not by much, but enough. It tore his left shirt sleeve in passing, then went zinging and bouncing against the wire of the dog cage before raising a long plume of dust out into the floor of the scrub desert. One of the dogs went yelping for shelter; the other snarled and leaped at the wire.

But Kate did not see the results of the shot; she only saw that for one brief instant, Kimbal had forgotten her. Hoping fervently that Jules would not continue to pull the trigger in her panic, she threw herself against him.

The shotgun went off, deafening Kate and- taking out half the windows in her rental car but drawing no blood, and Kate continued to shove against him with her head and shoulder, butting him off balance and backward, knowing full well that, cuffed as she was, there was a point at which he would regain control, and then either he would kill her or Jules would shoot him, and Kate didn't know which possibility caused the greater panic. So she shoved hard against his stumbling body until she felt the jar as he fetched up against something solid. She leaned into him hopelessly, knowing it would be over in a matter of seconds, and then, inexplicably, he screamed. Startled, she drew back slightly; he screamed again, and looking up at him, she saw that he had flung out his left arm to catch himself as he hit the wire cage. Half the hand had gone through the wire and the excited dog, growling murderously, had seized it between its teeth.

She moved half a step back, braced herself, and with all her strength swept her left foot against his legs. The momentum unbalanced her and she went down on one knee, but he, too, fell, screaming again as the dog's teeth tore free. While Kate struggled to her feet, he cradled his left wrist in agony, started to rise, and then fell limp and silent as Kate's conservative leather shoe connected with the side of his skull.

Pain shooting up her arms and down the leg she had landed on, bent over double, her arms behind her back, Kate looked around for Jules. She found her standing as before, unhurt, lowering the heavy gun to the ground.

"Hey, J," she panted, and felt a grin begin to grow on her face.

"I knew you'd find me, Kate. I knew it."

"Jules, sweetheart, where are the keys to these handcuffs?" she demanded.

"I don't know."

Kate racked her brain, trying to visualize the key ring that Kimbal had taken out and probably dropped back into a pocket when he was interrupted by Jules. She couldn't remember seeing a handcuff key, and there had only been half a dozen keys on the thing, but then she'd only seen it for a moment. She looked at the man speculatively.

Jules spoke up. "He doesn't keep them on his key ring. They're somewhere in his room."

No time, then; he was stirring already. The wound in his hand, though dramatically pumping dark red blood all over him, would not be enough to keep him unconscious, and Kate was loath just to keep kicking his head until her backup arrived. She wavered; he stirred again; and she knew that she could not be standing there helpless when he came to. Jules could tie him - but one look at the girl's face and Kate knew she couldn't ask her to go near the injured man. That left two options: awkward flight, with the dogs behind them as soon as Kimbal woke, or Kate's freedom.

"I have to get these cuffs off. You're going to have to shoot them."

Jules tore her eyes from the man who was her father. "There was only one bullet in the gun."

Kate paused for a look of admiration. "God, girl, you sure made it count. Okay, there'll be another shell in the shotgun; that'll have to do." She gently nudged the shotgun across the uneven ground until it lay at Jules's feet. "Now, you haven't shot one of these before, so I'll talk you through it." Words, Kate thought; words would keep Jules moving as nothing else would, her only tool to keep the shock in the girl's face from immobilizing her completely. "Our word for the day is ballistics, okay? First of all, sit down, on the ground with your legs apart. That's right - we don't want you to shoot your nose off here. Now, pick up the shotgun and point it at the sky, kind of jam its butt into the ground to keep it stable, because it has quite a kick. Fine. Now, I'm going to try and get the chain of the handcuffs over the barrel, and you're going to pull the trigger."

Kate bent down close to Jules, facing the opposite direction, trying to look over her shoulder and see her hands, trying at the same time to put as much of herself as possible in front of Jules to protect the girl from stray shot.

"Maybe I should go look for the keys."

"There's no time, Jules. He's waking up."

"I don't think he'll --"

"Jules! We have to do this now or he's going to bleed to death!" Kate didn't think it likely, but she needed Jules to keep going. "Hold the butt steady and ease the trigger back slowly."

"I don't think --" Jules started to say, but over her voice and the noise of the frenzied dogs Kate thought she heard a groan, and cold panic shot through her.

"Jules, pull the trigger!"

Jules pulled, and for the second time, the gun exploded a foot from Kate's head, sending her sprawling on the weedy ground, her shoulders feeling as if they had been ripped from their sockets. She got to her feet and stumbled over to Kimbal, fighting to unbuckle her belt with her sprained and trembling arms. With the remnants of the handcuffs riding her wrists like a pair of punk bracelets, she wrapped the length of fake white patent leather around the man's arm, putting on pressure and watching the pulse of blood slow. She hoped it was because of the tourniquet rather than the approach of death - not that he would be any true loss to the world, but the girl did not deserve to see it.

"Someone's coming," said Jules.

"About time," she muttered. Indeed they were coming, car after governmental car. It had seemed longer, but within four minutes of the shot, the tide of men began to spill out of the cars and wash over them, taking over the care of the wounded man and transforming the remote shack into a bustling center of forensic activity.

Sometime later, after Kimbal had been taken away but before the animal-control officer had arrived with the dog tranquilizers, someone thought to slap some bandages on Kate's scraped knees and the parts of her hands that had been singed by the shotgun blast. She sat on the edge of her car's backseat, brushed clear of glass crumbles, and looked elsewhere while the medic swabbed and taped. He finished, she thanked him, and when she looked up, Jules was in the door of the shack, wrapped in a blanket and cradled in the shelter of Al Hawkin's arm. She was pale with shock and red-eyed, and she looked at Kate with an unreadable expression on her face. Kate got to her feet.

"I'm okay, Jules. Marsh Kimbal's going to be okay. You're safe."

Jules did not answer, but in a minute she turned to Al and allowed him to fold his arms around her. He held her, looking over her head at Kate with a face nearly as devastated with relief as his stepdaughter's.

"Kate, I..." he began, and choked up. She stumped over to where they stood and draped her own arms painfully around the two of them. They stood that way, oblivious of the activity and noises, until the aches in Kate's arms began to turn into shooting pain, and she reluctantly stood back. Al blew his nose, Kate reached into her pocket for a Kleenex and blew her own nose, and finally Jules looked up and said in a small voice, "Can I borrow that?"

Kate began to laugh, and in an instant the three of them were dissolving again, this time in tears of laughter.

"Kate --" he started again, when he could speak, but she interrupted him.

"Take her home, Al. Jani's waiting."

He hesitated, then nodded, and with his arm still around Jules's shoulders, he began to guide her toward the cars. When they had taken a few steps, Jules stopped and eased her head out to look at Kate.

"I knew you'd come," she said. "I knew it."