Backwoods (7 page)

As he stood there, startled into silence by
this, she turned to the key pad. “Each person here sets his or her
own pass code, a four digital decimal number between 0000 and 9999.
That leaves at least ten thousand available combinations.”

Andrew stifled a groan. “Ten thousand?”

“At least,” Alice said.

“I don’t suppose mine will open this door?”
he asked, hopeful.

She shot him a look. “Not likely.”

He couldn’t hold back a groan this time.

Reaching up, she punched in a series of four
numbers. To Andrew’s surprise, the red light meaning the door was
locked switched over to green and he heard the soft
click
as
it unlocked.

“You know the code?”

“Daddy always chooses binary numbers, using
only zeroes or ones. He says they’re easier to remember. That means
there are only eight possible combinations within the four-digit
limit. I guessed the right one my first day here.”

“Thanks,” he said, impressed.

She turned and walked away, returning to the
living room.

“Uh, right.” He reached for the door. “I
should go now. Good night, Alice.”

All he heard in response was the ghost-like
scritch-scritch-scritch
of her pencil.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lila had fucked him one last time before
dumping him, and to Andrew, that had been the most painful and
humiliating part of their breakup. When they’d finished, he’d tried
to kiss her, but she’d turned her face away. “Gordon and I…he’s
been calling me again and we’ve decided to go to counseling,” she’d
said.

“What?” Stricken, he’d sat up in the bed,
looking at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Andrew, he’s my husband,” she’d begun.

He had shaken his head. “You’re getting a
divorce.”

“He’s asking for another chance. He wants to
try. We’ve been married fifteen years. I owe him that.”

He’d left her apartment and driven home, not
the dormitory room he’d shared at the time, but his childhood home,
the house in which he’d grown up and where his parents still lived.
His father had been gone on a flight and his mother hadn’t come
home from work yet. When she’d arrived, Katherine had found her son
curled in a fetal coil on the couch in the darkened living room.
Even without him saying a word, she’d known somehow, had
understood. She’d gone to his side and knelt, drawing him into her
gentle embrace. He hadn’t cried since his sister’s death, but he’d
wept in that moment like a grief-stricken child, mourning the loss
of his first love.

****

The next morning, Andrew woke to a heavy,
fervent pounding on the door to his room. He peeled back his
eyelids and blinked blearily, bewildered at the bedside clock. Ten
minutes after seven. He’d drawn the curtains closed before turning
in, and a pale seam of new morning sun cut a crooked diagonal
across the floor.

“Mister Braddock?” he heard someone call,
then more of that incessant
thud-thud-THUDDING.

With a groan, Andrew sat up, swinging his
legs around until his feet hit the floor.
No more tequila,
he promised himself, because Suzette’s one-hundred proof variety
was doing a number on the inside of his skull. His tongue felt
leaden and tacky, like he’d been sucking on a sweaty gym sock in
his sleep. Stumbling out of bed, he limped toward the door, raking
his fingers through his hair.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice,
shame on me.
That had been one of his mother’s favorite
sayings. With this in mind, along with memories of Dr. Moore’s face
twisted with murderous intent as he’d brandished that chrome-plated
pistol, Andrew didn’t immediately open the door. “Who is it?”

“Corporal O’Malley,” a familiar voice called
through the door. “I’ve got some good news for you. They just
hauled your Jeep in from the wash-out.”

“Fantastic.” Andrew opened the door. “How
does it look?”

O’Malley laughed. It was all of the answer
Andrew needed.

****

After dressing and trying to comb down the
wild, askew mess of his hair, Andrew tromped down to the compound’s
parking lot. At the back, a small outbuilding stood, featureless
cinderblock walls painted a non-descript shade of tan with a flat
roof, no windows and a large, rollaway door—the compound’s
garage.

Inside, Andrew stood with his hands shoved
deep in the hip pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunched against
a damp morning chill, and watched as soldiers unhooked his Jeep
from the tow straps securing it to a Humvee. The thick smell of
diesel exhaust hung in the air.

The entire exterior of the Wells company
truck was caked in mud, so thick it was impossible to see even a
hint of the paint beneath. As he drew near, one of the soldiers
wrestled the hood open on the Jeep, and Andrew grimaced to look
inside. The engine compartment looked like it had been hosed down
in sludge, with twigs, dried leaves and pine cones tossed in for
texture and variety.

“Shit,” he said.
So much for driving out
of here once the roads are cleared.

He hadn’t thought much about the creature
he’d seen in the road that night, the thing he’d hit—and had since
just about convinced himself that he’d imagined—but curious now, he
studied the underside of the hood, then the top, looking for any
tell-tale damage from the impact. The roll down the hillside had
caused too much to discern one dent from another, however.

“Shit,” he said again, opening the passenger
side door, then dancing back as brown water slopped out, splashing
in a sudden puddle around his feet.

The Jeep’s interior was hidden beneath a
shroud of mud, enveloped in a sour, swampy odor. The airbag, now
deflated, hung from the steering wheel, heavy and waterlogged. He
hadn’t secured his tablet computer when he’d left his last
surveying site, and winced to see it on the floorboard,
camouflaged—and undoubtedly ruined—beneath a veil of mud.

“Shit.”

His area maps were unrecognizable, having
disintegrated in the water. Like strips and scraps of paper mache,
they lay strewn about and stuck haphazardly to the dashboard,
upholstery, floor mats and windows. Sticks, leaves, pine needles
and pebbles carpeted the seats and flat surfaces.

He reached for the glove compartment, tugged
it open. Another impromptu flood splashed out. Grimacing as he
reached inside, touching the slimy, muddy ooze left behind, he
fished out his soggy wallet. As he held it out, pinched between his
forefinger and thumb, and watched it drip onto the top of his boot,
he frowned. “Shit.”

“You’ve got water in your crank case,” the
soldier who’d popped the hood said. While Andrew had been rooting
through the cab with disgust, he’d been tinkering around in the
engine compartment, tugging here and there, prodding at this and
that, pulling dipsticks out for inspection.

Only it turned out to be a
she,
not a
he,
as evidenced by her voice as she said this, and
surprised, Andrew turned around.

“Uh, hey,” he said by way of clumsy greeting.
“Santoro, right?”

The corner of her mouth hooked slightly.
“Santoro. Right.”

She looked different now in broad daylight
and when not soaking wet. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a
tight, prim bun secured at the nape of her neck. Her skin was a
light olive tone, warm and golden, her eyes dark brown and round.
He’d forgotten how short she was, how diminutive and slight.

“You know cars?” he asked.

“I’d better.” She returned her attention to
the waterlogged ruins of his Jeep. “I’m a nine-H-one. A track
vehicle repairer.” Because this was Greek to him—and apparently
obvious in his face—she added slowly, as if addressing a moron,
“I’m a mechanic.”

Other soldiers within earshot laughed at
this.

“I saw water on both your oil and
transmission fluid dipsticks.” Santoro leaned over the engine
compartment momentarily, then turned, cradling one in her hand to
show him. “We can’t even think about starting this thing until we
change out the oil and filter. And there’s no way I’ve got anything
that can fit this here at the base. Not to mention we’ll need to
get up under there, take out your oil pan and try to clear the silt
from it, too. The way your truck was laying in that ditch, you’re
probably looking at water in your gas tank, too, plus past the
seals on your crank case, CV joints and axles.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Andrew
asked.

Santoro dusted off her hands then tucked them
in her back pockets. “I can recommend a good scrap yard if you’re
ever up Long Island way.”

The other soldiers all laughed again.

“Thanks,” Andrew muttered, scowling as he
turned and stomped away. The headache the tequila had brought on
had abruptly intensified.

****

“Hey, Romeo,” he heard Suzette call as he
walked back toward the barracks. He looked up and found her
strolling along the outermost edge of the landscaped grounds, where
the lawn met the forest. Alice was with her, or more accurately, a
fair pace ahead of her, eyes pinned on the ground, seemingly
oblivious to anyone or anything around her.

Andrew mentally calculated the likelihood
that he could simply take off running, duck back into the barracks
and avoid what was sure to be a post-coital confrontation. It had
been his admittedly limited experience in life to date that
women—even when they’d been the instigators of a sexual
encounter—did not like to feel like they’d been ditched in the
aftermath. “Oh, uh, hey, Suzette,” he said, raising his hand in a
half-hearted wave as he tried not to cringe. “You’re up early.”

“Her choice, not mine,” Suzette said, nodding
to indicate Alice. “We do this every morning.”

“Hi, Alice,” Andrew said as she walked past.
Without even glancing up or grunting in reply, she continued
trudging along.

“She’s counting,” Suzette said helpfully.

“Counting what?”

“The number of steps she takes. It’s another
one of her fixations. Right now, she’s counting how many are in the
circumference of the yard. She knows exactly how many there are to
get from her room in the apartment to just about anywhere on the
compound.” She came to a stop within three feet of him. “What’s
that?”

He followed her gaze with his own. “My
wallet. What’s left of it, anyway. They pulled my truck out of the
gulley this morning.”

“That’s great.”

“It’s a mess. There’s mud everywhere. They
don’t think it will even turn over, never mind be drivable
again.”

“That’s terrible.”

On his way from the barracks to the garage,
Andrew had asked Corporal O’Malley about the roads. “Any luck
getting them cleared out?”

O’Malley had chuffed. “We haven’t even
started yet. Not really. We’ve got one Bobcat front-end loader and
a bunch of guys with shovels and picks. You do the math.”

Terrific,
Andrew had thought.

“It sounds like I’m going to be here awhile,”
he told Suzette.

“That’s great.” A hint of a smile tugged the
corner of her mouth up, then she affected a feigned look of pity.
“I mean, that’s terrible.”

He laughed despite himself. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. And thank you, too, by the
way, for the note.”

“Oh.” He winced, rubbing the back of his
neck. “That. I just…I tried to wake you up, but…”

“I thought it was cute. Kind of charming.” As
she walked again, passing him, she added, “I’m making meatloaf
tonight.” A coy glance over her shoulder. “Grandma Ada Jean’s
recipe.”

Because the tip of her tongue slipped out
long enough to swipe daintily at her lip, a subtle but unmistakably
suggestive gesture, Andrew felt the crotch of his jeans grow
suddenly and uncomfortably tight.

“Sounds good,” he said, and because his voice
came out sort of strained, he cleared his throat and tried again.
“Save some for me.”

Suzette winked, walking away. “You got
it.”

CHAPTER NINE

He went back to his room and emptied his
soggy wallet of its contents, spreading his credit cards, driver’s
license, sodden scraps of paper, damp dollar bills and a
foil-wrapped condom out on the bedspread to dry. His insurance
cards, both auto and health, were pretty much paste. Only one piece
of paper had survived relatively unscathed because it had been
folded tightly, doubled in on itself along crisp creases time and
again.

Great,
Andrew thought with a laugh. It
wasn’t funny, but he had to anyway.
Because it’s the one goddamn
thing in my wallet I would’ve loved to see soaked into
pulp.

He sat on the floor at the foot of the bed
and unfolded the page. The blue ballpoint ink his father had used
to write the letter had smeared in places but that was because the
letter had been crammed in his wallet for five years, and not
necessarily because of the moisture. Though it remained legible,
Andrew didn’t really need to read it. He’d pretty much memorized it
by that point.

Please try to understand,
Eric
Braddock had written.
Our family has been through so much in the
last fifteen months. The last thing I want to do is hurt you or
your mother any further. I want her to be happy again, and she
wants the same for me. And as hard as it is to admit it, that means
no longer being married to each other. I’ve found someone else,
someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Andrew crumpled the letter in his hand,
tossed it into the far corner. At about that same time, he heard a
knock at his door.

“Who is it?” he called with a frown as he got
to his feet.

“It’s me, Specialist Santoro.”

“Let me guess.” His frown deepened as he
opened the door half-way. Leaning his arm against the jamb, he
looked down at her. “You found a scrap yard closer than Long
Island.”