“Dee. Get up.”
She climbed over Cole, her bare feet touching the freezing floorboards.
Moved through pure darkness toward Canner’s voice.
No locks on the inside of the door, which she pulled open by the wooden handle.
“Sorry to wake you,” Mathias said through the inch of open space between the doorframe and the door. “But you’re a doctor.” He grinned, and in the starlight, she noticed a dark smear across the left side of his face. “Sometimes you get paged in the wee hours, right?”
“Not often. I have a general practice.”
“Well, terribly sorry to inconvenience you, but we require the services of an MD.”
“What happened?”
“Just get dressed. I’ll be waiting right here.”
She followed him through the field, the stars blazing over them in the moonless dark. Arrived at the edge of the woods at a small concrete building half-buried in the ground, which at first blush, reminded Dee of a storm cellar.
Mathias led her down a set of stairs to a steel door.
She hesitated on the last step. “What are we doing?”
“You’ll see.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Do you think the food and the water and the shelter we’re providing to you and your children have no cost?” He pushed open the door and a waft of blood and shit and scorched tissue washed over Dee and conjured the memory of her ER rotation. She looked away from it and braced herself and looked again.
The man, or what was left of him, lay toppled over on the stone floor, naked and manacled to one of the metal folding chairs from the mess hall. He was unconscious in a puddle of blood that appeared as black as motor oil in the candlelight.
Liz sat in another folding chair looking sweaty and happy. She held an iron rod across her lap, one half-inch wide and wrapped at one end with a bulge of duct tape, the finger-grip indentations clearly visible. A blanket had been spread out on the floor beside Liz and upon it lay knives, a drill, a bucket filled with ice water, and a small blowtorch.
“Why are you doing this to him?” Dee asked and the disgust must have bled through her voice because Liz answered,
“This is the man who was on the verge of burning you and your children before we showed up.”
“I know who he is.”
“We’re collecting information,” Mathias said and closed the door. “Unfortunately, he lost consciousness after Liz hit him a few minutes ago.”
Dee stared at Liz. “Where’d you hit him?”
“Right arm.”
“Would you examine him please, Doctor?” Mathias asked.
Dee approached the man named Max, squatting down at the edge of the pool of his blood which was still creeping, millimeter by millimeter, across the stone. She touched two fingers to his wrist, felt the weak shudder of his radial artery. Inspected the mottled bruise that was expanding imperceptibly over the broken bone beneath his right bicep like a cancerous rainbow—red, yellow, blue, then ringed with black. His abdomen was hot and swollen around a bullethole in his side which she guessed had nicked his liver.
“She didn’t kill him, did she?” Mathias said.
“Not quite, but she did break the humerus of his right arm. He probably lost consciousness from the pain.” She noticed Max’s legs, fighting back the rise of bile in her throat as she said, “If you burn him anymore he’s going to lose so much fluid he’ll go into shock and die. I mean, he’s going to die of sepsis in the next day or so anyway, no doubt, but keep burning him, and you’ll lose him tonight.”
“Good to know.”
“Was there anything else you needed from me?” Dee asked, staring at this man who would’ve murdered her children and yet still cringing for him.
“Max did happen to mention that Cole is affected.”
Dee looked back over her shoulder. “Is that a joke?”
“Max told us that when you pulled up to the checkpoint and got out, he saw a light around Cole’s head.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You think?”
“You were torturing him. He’d say anything to—”
“That’s possible. In fact, I hope it’s the case. But just to be sure, Mike’s talking with Cole right now.”
Dee jumped up and started toward the door. As she reached for the handle, something struck her from behind and shoved her up against the cold wall of concrete.
Liz spoke into her ear, “Just settle down, Dee.”
“I’ll f**king kill you if you touch—”
“They’re only talking,” Mathias said.
“You don’t talk to my son without me.” She was trembling with rage.
“Fair enough. Let’s join them.”
She walked between Liz and Mathias, the woman clutching Dee’s left arm in a solid grip that Dee imagined could be crushing if Liz wanted it to be. There was candlelight glowing in the windows of her cabin now, and if she could have broken free she would have run toward it, her heart bumping harder and harder as they approached.
They followed Mathias up the three steps to the door.
He pushed it open, said, “How we doing?”
Dee jerked her arm out of Liz’s grasp and pushed past Mathias into the cabin.
Cole sat on the bed and Mike straddled a chair which he’d spun around in front of the door. Naomi was up, too, sitting against the window, and Dee could see in her daughter’s face a measure of real fear.
She climbed onto the bed, pulled her son into her arms.
“You okay, buddy?”
“Yes.”
“Naomi?”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“Everybody’s fine, Mom,” Mike said, and something in his tone—a note of rehearsed steadiness and authority—and his cleanshaven face and buzzed blond hair reminded her of everything she hated about lawmen.
“You don’t speak to my son without me.”
Mike seemed to disregard this jurisdictional instruction, glancing instead at Mathias.
“Ask the boy about the lights.”
Mathias looked at Cole. “Go ahead, tell me about—”
“Don’t answer him, Cole. You don’t have to say a word to that man.”
“That’s not exactly true, Dee,” Mathias said. “Do you think I’m incapable of arranging a private conversation with your son? You can answer me, Cole. Cole, no, Jesus. . .it’s okay, don’t get upset. Everything’s going to be okay.”