Brother (28 page)

“Do it, brother.” Any shade of amusement was now gone from Rebel's voice. He was all business, and his patience was waning. “Prove yourself and we'll keep Alice in the basement for you. She'll probably hate you for a while . . . but if she don't love you yet, I'm sure she'll learn.”

Michael took a single step forward.

Alice screamed behind her gag in protest.

Lucy thrashed and wept, desperate to get away, but the chair didn't budge.

Michael hesitated as she fought to loosen her restraints, hoping that the tape would give, that somehow she'd jump up and make a mad dash for an exit without someone tackling her to the ground.

Reb slapped an encouraging hand between Michael's shoulder blades. “You've seen 'em struggle before. She ain't any different.”

But she
was
different. She was Alice's best friend. If ­Michael killed her, Alice's life would be spared—at least for the moment. And that was all he needed, a moment; just enough time to figure out how to get her out of there, how to get her free. But it also meant that Alice would hate him. She'd never look at him the same way again.

“I'm gettin' bored here,” Reb complained.

Michael swallowed, his fingers tightening around the hilt of the blade. He considered spinning around and slicing where Reb's leg met his torso, cutting right through his femoral artery and watching him drop like a wet rag. But it would have been no good. As soon as he did it, Wade would be on him. And Momma wouldn't spare any of them. Even if by some miracle he managed to get away, he'd be running from that farmhouse alone. Alice and Lucy would be dead.

But if he killed Lucy, maybe he and Alice could live.

“Do it,” Reb growled behind him. He gave Michael a forward shove.

Michael stumbled toward Lucy, who was now staring at him with impossibly wide, imploring eyes.

No choice.

“Do it.”

No way around it.

“Fucking
do it
.”

It had to be done.

Michael lifted the knife with a shaky hand.

Alice exhaled a muffled cry.

Lucy stared up at the blade, her face a mask of desperation.

Michael squeezed his eyes shut.

“Do it or Alice is dead,” Reb said. “But not before I bury myself inside her.”

Michael's arm began to wobble. His fingers began to loosen, ready to drop the knife.

An involuntary act of defiance.

A revolt.

“Fine,” Rebel hissed. He was suddenly moving across the dining room toward Alice and Wade. Alice gave a shriek when she saw him coming. Michael shot a look to his side, watching Reb approach the pair with impatient steps. Reb reached into his pocket and drew out his switchblade.

“No,” Michael said, but there was no volume in his voice. “No!” he repeated, but it was nothing but a whisper, nothing but Reb upon Alice.

Alice weeping.

The blade popping out of its handle.

Michael turned back to Lucy.

Every sound in the room was muffled.

Every move elongated like a slow-motion movie reel.

Lucy shook her head, her hair fiery in the muted light, her eyes squeezed shut as the butcher knife cut through the air.

Her eyes darted open.

The blade slid into her stomach.

Shock replaced fear.

She stared at him, wordless.

You killed me. You . . .

He drew the knife out of her flesh, deep burgundy blossoming beneath her billowy top, weighing down the silken fabric with its heavy, sopping wetness.

He pulled back.

Stabbed again.

Lucy threw her head back, a cry ripping from inside her throat.

He thrust the knife into her again. A third time. A fourth. A sixth and a tenth. Until her moans fell silent.

He stabbed until he was sure she was dead.

Until the suffering was through.

Only then did the knife fall from his grasp and clang against the floor.

Michael stumbled backward. His eyes were fixed on the dead girl taped to the dining room chair. A pool of blood bloomed around her feet. It dripped down the wooden chair legs and crawled between the floorboard cracks. His attention only wavered when Alice released a sound so desperate that he was sure Rebel had killed her anyway. But Reb was standing a few feet away, his switchblade clean, his eyes fixed on Michael, that leering grin having returned.

Wade shoved Alice out of the room. Michael urged himself to follow, but he couldn't move. Momma silently drifted out as well, mostly likely to help Wade with the storm door, with the chains beneath the house, with securing Alice to the wall down there.

They left Rebel and Michael staring at one another, a dead girl between them. Finally, Reb reached into his pocket and slid a folded scrap of paper onto the table along with the keys to the Delta, the eight-ball keychain smacking the tabletop.

“Your
real
present, from me to you,” he said. “Happy birthday, baby brother.”

Reb stepped out of the dining room, and Michael was left staring at the keys. It was only after he swept the folded scrap of paper off the table that he realized the Delta was merely a means to get to his gift.

On the paper, a crude map: a sketched drawing of where Michael was headed.

A lopsided little house, green shutters flanking the windows.

M
ICHAEL HAD DRIVEN
a few times in his life, but despite the foreignness of Rebel's car, he didn't have time to be nervous. He climbed into the driver's seat, shoved the key into the ignition, and threw the car into reverse. The Delta peeled down the dirt road toward the highway that would take him to the address scribbled across the top of the paper. The idea of that house he had gazed upon from atop a peaceful hill tied his stomach into knots. The thought of running down to the basement to check on Alice had crossed his mind, but he hardly considered it. The key to Alice's safety was in that cottage ten miles away. He understood now that everything was happening by careful design; this was Rebel's master plan. If Michael wavered, Reb was liable to call the whole thing off and carve Alice a brand-new smile.

But by the time he reached the intersection where the dirt road met a lonely West Virginia highway, he leaned back in the driver's seat, shifted into park, and fell apart. The sobs tore out of him, one after the other, coming so quick he couldn't catch his breath. He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and cried into his blood-streaked hands. For Alice and how scared she must have been. For Lucy and that final pleading look she had given him, knowing that he was the only one in the world who could have spared her life . . . and yet he hadn't. He wept for all the girls, from his present to his past, each one unique in their own way. Their smiles turning into screams. Their wrists and ankles bound. Their faces turned up to the sky in search of God—as if he could possibly exist in a world where men like Rebel and Michael Morrow were allowed to live.

He grabbed the steering wheel with tear-streaked palms and squeezed it tight, his knuckles turning white. He tried to shake it free of the dashboard, as if that momentary flare of aggression could somehow subdue the pain he felt.

Thoughts of Alice shook him out of his temporary state of turmoil. As if summoning another magic trick, she managed to reach out to him from her prison beneath the farmhouse and lull him into a strange state of emotionally wrecked calm. If he followed the steps, he could help her. If he placated Reb by doing what he said, he could save her, and maybe himself.

When he arrived at his destination, he pulled into the gravel driveway and stopped a good distance away. He stared at a house he recognized yet couldn't believe he was seeing again. The place had once given him a strange sort of peace, but now only filled him with dread. He sat motionless for what felt like forever, trying to convince himself that he had the wrong place, even though there was no question that it was the right one.

Lights burned inside, as though someone was home, but Michael knew it couldn't be. The same lights had been on the night they abducted the woman who lived there. They'd been on for days, as if in memorial to the house's former owner. He imagined the woman coming home, covered in blood, dragging her feet. Perhaps she was just inside, sitting in front of the TV, a scorned ghost waiting for her murderers to return.

Michael cut the engine but left the keys in the ignition. He pushed open the door and rose from the car. And for whatever reason—whether his senses were heightened or it really was warmer than usual—the evening heat hit him head on. It was heavy and oppressive, trying to push him down into the earth, to pin him where he stood. Something was trying to keep him from moving forward with whatever plan Rebel had set in motion. If it hadn't been for Alice, he would have stood there for the rest of his life, staring at the lights that seemed so melancholy in the way they shone through closed curtains. He stared at the front door they had left open days before, undisturbed by a single visitor.

He left the car door open and the dome light glowing in his wake, as though doing so would somehow help him get back to where he had come from. Gravel popped beneath the soles of his boots as he passed the small bistro table and chair beneath the bowed branches of a pine. Birdhouses swung from jute rope slung across the tree's branches, its leaves shivering in the breeze. Stopping near the front entrance, Michael stared at the slash of light that shone through the open space between the door and the jamb. He remembered how the woman had fought. How she had thrashed in Reb's arms. How she had breathed Michael's name into the quiet of the bedroom.

Please, Michael, don't . . .

He was afraid to go inside, but he pushed open the door enough to slip in anyway. His heart leapt into his throat when a man's voice swam into his ears. It was professional-­sounding, like a cop's or an FBI agent's. The voice spoke in low, gruff tones. At first he was sure he'd walked in at the worst possible moment. The police were scoping out the place. Someone had reported the woman as missing. They were there, investigating, looking for clues, and there was Michael, stepping right into their arms. He twisted where he stood, ready to bolt out the door. But he stopped when the voice was cut off by a commercial. A Dr Pepper jingle played into the room.

Michael peeked around the corner of the foyer and into the living room. The place was empty. The television was on.

He inhaled slowly and stepped further inside, his arms at his sides, his hands balled into anxious fists. He didn't understand what he was doing there, had no idea what he was looking for. Rebel had left no instruction, only an address, as though whatever Michael was supposed to find was so obvious that clueing him in would have spoiled the game.

The interior was quaint—a perfect match to the exterior that had given him a fleeting sense of peace. The living room was simple. A couch and an armchair faced an entertainment center. An open can of soda sat on a coaster next to a bookmarked paperback novel. The NBC peacock flashed on the screen before some sort of made-for-TV movie took its place. Michael's gaze drifted to the fireplace and the mantel above it, drawn to a framed photo that sat there. He approached slowly, careful not to upset anything, and stopped in front of a family photo. A mother and father smiled at the camera. A little girl in a pink dress was balanced on the mom's hip. A little boy threw a peace sign at the camera.

Lights burned bright in the kitchen. He left the fireplace behind and entered a simple room with Formica countertops and linoleum floors. A pot rack hung from the ceiling above a small kitchen island. It housed a collection of cookbooks as well as another framed photograph. A glass-encased pillar ­candle sat next to it. This time the little boy was front and center. He was hugging the leg of a man who looked as though he'd just crawled out from the furthest depths of the earth. A mole person. The man mugged for the camera while the boy wore his father's orange hard hat, a light attached to the front. The frame was engraved:
FOREVER WITH YOU
.

Michael rubbed the back of his neck as he turned away, a slow-growing panic burgeoning at the base of his guts. What if he didn't figure out the puzzle? What if there was no puzzle at all? What if all this had been a trick to get Michael out of the house? What if Rebel never intended to let Alice live?

He turned in a circle, struggling to see the clues, to find anything of significance that would lead him to an answer.

That was when he saw a stark blot of white against the hallway's wood-paneled wall. A folded sheet of paper was tucked beneath the edge of a picture frame.

Stepping into the hallway, Michael hesitated. His fingers hovered mere centimeters from the paper, stalling, knowing that whatever the note revealed would somehow change his life. And then, as if that very thought spurred him on, he snatched it from the wall and unfolded it.

Reb's sharp, angular handwriting was scrawled across the page:
WELCOME HOME
.

The photo it had been tucked beneath was of the same small family—Mom, Dad, and two young kids posing in front of that very same green-shuttered house. Dad had hoisted the little boy onto his shoulder. The boy's arms jutted out like a superhero about to take flight. Mom was laughing as though Dad had just told a particularly funny joke. Dad wore a charming half-smile as the toddler in Mom's arms reached out to her father, wanting to join her brother higher up. Michael looked down the length of the hall. The walls were covered in similar framed photographs, offering to tell the family's story, much like Alice's comic-strip panels.

The next photo was of the two kids, chocolate Easter bunnies clutched in their hands, their smiling faces smeared with melted confection. They were small—the boy maybe three or four, the little girl younger than that. But before the boy could grow into his sneakers, he vanished from the pictures like a ghost.