So Cold the River (2010) (45 page)

He was just about to tell her to stand up when he heard a car door slam.

He crossed to the window fast, stared out into the rain, and saw the car that had pulled in. Not police, but a Toyota sedan,
unfamiliar to him. The driver’s door opened and a tall, dark-haired woman stepped out, holding her arms up to shield herself
from the rain. She ran out of sight, headed for the porch. For the front door.

“Who’s here?” Anne McKinney said.

“Not a word, bitch,” Josiah said. “Not a word. You speak, our visitor gets shot. It’ll be your choice.” Then he lifted the
shotgun and walked out of the living room and down to the front door. He hadn’t even made it there before the doorbell rang.
He pulled
the door open, keeping the gun in his left hand and using the door to screen it from sight.

The woman didn’t give any real start or indication that she was expecting someone other than Josiah. She just said, “I hope
I have the right address. I’m looking for Anne McKinney?”

She was even better-looking up close, the sort of woman Josiah wouldn’t be able to hit on until he was at least ten beers
into the night because the odds were so great she’d shoot him down, and Josiah didn’t take rejection well. Raven-colored hair
with some shine to it, damn near flawless face, body that would catch plenty of looks despite being a little on the skinny
side. While Josiah studied her, she turned and looked over her shoulder at the howling storm and said, “Is that a tornado
siren?”

“Yes,” Josiah said. “And you best come inside quick.”

“You don’t think I can make it back to the hotel if I hurry? I just stopped by to pick up a few bottles of water from Anne.”

A few bottles of water. He hadn’t been certain of her relevance until now, but this brought a smile to his face that was no
longer forced, as authentic and genuine a grin as he’d had in some time, and he said, “Oh, you’re picking them up for Mr.
Shaw?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll get them for you, but come inside and visit with Mrs. McKinney until the siren stops. It’s the only safe thing to do.
I insist.”

She took one last, hesitant look back at her car, and right then a good-size branch pulled down from one of the trees in the
yard and broke into pieces on the ground. She turned away, said, “I guess I’d better,” and then stepped inside.

He had the door closed before she noticed the gun.

A
NNE COULDN’T SEE THE
front door from where she sat, and the wind and siren kept her from making out the words, but the sound of the unknown woman’s
voice, gentle and kind, put a sickness through her so powerful she moved her hands to her stomach. It was a feeling she’d
had only a time or two in her life, the last coming when they swung the ambulance doors shut with Harold inside and assured
her that it wasn’t over yet, even though everybody knew that it was.

A minute later the stranger was standing there in the living room, a beautiful dark-haired woman with panicked eyes. Anne
tried to meet those eyes and convey some sort of apology, but Josiah was shoving her over to the chair by the window and telling
her there were two barrels to his gun, plenty to go around.

He had her sit in the old straight-backed sewing chair that Anne had upholstered herself some years back, then grabbed the
duct tape he’d carried in originally and cut off a strip. She started
to resist but he lifted the shotgun and pointed it at Anne and said, “You fight, that old bitch gets shot. Go on and test
me. Go on.”

The woman gave Anne a long look, one that lifted tears to Anne’s eyes, and then she let Josiah tape her wrists together. Anne
just stared back helplessly. The panic she’d done such a fine job of fighting when she’d been alone with Josiah was coming
on strong, and she could feel it in her heart and stomach and nerves, everything going fast and jangly now, the way the wind
chimes blew in a strong storm.

“Old Lucas will be answering phone calls now,” Josiah was saying as he cut off more tape and wrapped it in circles around
her forearms, pinning them together. “Yes, he’ll take caution in his tone this time around.”

Lucas? Who on earth was Lucas?
“I don’t know Lucas,” the new woman said.

“Bullshit! You’re his whore of a wife, sent people down here to spy on my home and ask questions of my family—”

“That’s not who I am.”

He struck her. It was an open-handed slap that raised a white imprint on her check but no blood, and the sound of flesh on
flesh took Anne’s breath from her lungs and sent the tears spilling free.
Not in my home,
she thought.
Oh, no, not in my home
…

“There won’t be any more lies!” Josiah bellowed. Anne was mentally begging the other woman for silence—Josiah had been peaceable
enough when he was agreed with—but instead she ignored the slap and objected again.

“I’m not who you think I—”

There was a second slap, and Anne gave a little shout, but the new woman was not moved to silence.

“I’m Eric’s wife—Eric Shaw’s. That’s who I am! I don’t know anything about Lucas Bradford. Neither does he. We’re both just
trying to—”

This time he passed on the slap, choosing instead to take the woman’s hair in his fist and jerk it sideways. She gave a cry
of pain and then the chair had overbalanced and she was on her side on the floor, still talking.

“We’re just trying to get away from here while the police figure out what’s going on.
I don’t know Lucas Bradford!
Do you understand that? I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t care about me. I’m nothing to him.”

Josiah dipped sideways and came up with Anne’s kitchen knife in his hand, snatched it from her end table and held it at waist
level with the blade pointed out.

“Josiah, no!” Anne shouted. “Not in my home, don’t you harm anyone in my home.”

He froze. She was taken aback, hadn’t expected any reaction, but he stopped his assault completely and swiveled his head to
face her.

“I’ll ask you not to use that name any longer,” he said. “If you’d like my attention, you can call for Campbell. Understand?”

Anne didn’t know what to say. She just stared at him with her mouth agape, and he turned from her, dropped to one knee, and
took a handful of the woman’s hair again and used it to lift her head, moved the blade toward her throat, and Anne could look
no more, squeezed her eyes shut as warm tears beaded over the lids and chased wrinkles down her cheeks.

“Look in my purse,” the woman on the floor said in a ragged voice. “If you’re going to kill me, you ought to at least know
who I am.”

For a long moment Anne didn’t hear a sound, and she was fleetingly afraid that he’d made a silent slice with the knife, leaving
the poor woman bleeding her life out on Anne’s living room floor. Then she heard the boards creak as he rose and opened her
eyes to see him crossing the floor to where a leather purse lay on
its side, a lipstick and cell phone dumped out of it already. Josiah grabbed it and turned it upside down and a cloud of papers,
coins, and cosmetics fluttered out and clattered onto the floor. In the center, landing with a dull, heavy thump, was a wallet.
Josiah flung the purse at the wall and scooped the wallet up, tore the clasp open and flicked through it. For a long time,
he stood staring in silence. Then he snapped the wallet shut and stared at the woman in the overturned chair.

“Claire Shaw,” he said.

“I told you.”

He seemed almost calm as he gazed at her, but somehow Anne was more afraid now than ever.

“You’re his wife,” he said. “Eric Shaw’s wife.”

“Yes. And we don’t know Lucas Bradford. We have nothing to do with the Bradfords. If you want money, I can get you money,
but you have to believe that we have nothing to do with the Bradfords!”

“I can get you money,” she said again. “My family… my father… I can get…”

Her voice trailed off as he walked back to her. He still had the knife in his hand but now he knelt and picked up the roll
of duct tape, pulled out a short strip and cut it free with the knife. She was trying to say more when he bent at the waist
and smashed the tape roughly over her mouth, running his fist over it to make sure it was secure.

“Don’t hurt her,” Anne said softly. “Josiah, please, there’s no cause to hurt anybody. You heard what she said, they have
no idea—”

“What?” he said. “What did you just say?”

It took her a second to realize he was upset about the use of his name. He actually wanted to be referred to as Campbell.
He was standing there in front of the bloody drawing he’d left on
her window, asking to be identified as a dead man. She’d never heard of anything so mad.

“Don’t hurt her,” she said in a whisper. “Campbell? Please don’t hurt her.”

He grinned. Showed his teeth in a wide smile, as if the use of Campbell’s name was something delicious to him, and Anne felt
a bead of chilled sweat glide down her spine.

He turned from her, still smiling, to stare out the window. A moment later Anne realized he wasn’t staring out of it but
at
it, at the blood silhouette he’d drawn there that had now gone dry on the glass.

“Well,” he said, “what now? You told me to listen. I’ve tried. And this bitch isn’t worth a thing to me. Not a thing. I’m
standing here holding a handful of nothing, same as I always was. But I’m ready to listen. I’m trying to listen.”

The wind rattled the glass against the old wood frame as he stood there and stared at it, stared as if there were something
in it that could offer help. Down on the floor, Claire Shaw was silent, watching in obvious astonishment and horror.

“You’re right,” Josiah told the window. “You’re right. ’Course she’s not worth anything to me—none of them ever was. That
isn’t what it’s about. I don’t need the dollars. I need the blood.”

Anne’s mouth had gone chalky and her heart was fluttering again.

“I’ll deal with them first,” Josiah said, voice softer now, thoughtful, musing. “Finish what needs to be finished, and then
I’ll come back to that hotel. They’ll remember me when it’s done, won’t they? They’ll remember
us
when it’s done.”

He swiveled his head back and locked his gaze on Anne.

“Get up.”

“What? I don’t—”

“Get up and go down into the basement.
Now
.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Anne said. “Don’t you hurt that woman in my home.”

Josiah dropped the knife to the floor, stepped over it, and collected his shotgun. Lifted that and swung the barrel to face
Anne.

“Go down into the damn basement. I ain’t got time to waste tying your wrinkled old ass up.”

It was only then, the second time that he said it, that she realized exactly what was being offered—the shortwave, the dear
old R. L. Drake. A lifeline.

She stood up, legs unsteady after sitting for so long, and, with one hand braced on the wall, went to the basement door and
opened it and started down the steps. There was a light switch mounted just beside the door but she didn’t reach for it, preferring
to walk down into the dark rather than chance his seeing the old desk with the radio.

He didn’t even wait till she’d reached the bottom of the steps before slamming the door shut. That plunged her into
real
darkness, and she stopped and gripped the railing. She heard some banging around and then something smashed into the door
and the knob rattled. He was blocking the door, locking her in.

She slid her hand along the railing and took a careful step down into the blackness, then another. A splinter bit into her
palm and she gasped and stopped. Upstairs Josiah was saying something she couldn’t understand, and then she heard footsteps,
too many to be just him. The front door opened and then banged shut. She stood still and listened and when she heard the motor
of his truck start, she thought,
Oh, no.

They were on the move. He was leaving, and he was taking that woman with him.

Anne had to hurry now.

She took another step, down into the dark.

K
ELLEN AND
E
RIC WERE
still standing in the same spot in the woods when they saw the cloud. The rain was coming down in furious gales and the wind
was howling now, sounded like something alive, like something wounded and angry, and it was Kellen who pointed up at a bank
of purple clouds that seemed to be separating and joining and separating again, partners in some strange turbulent dance.

“I don’t like that,” he said. “We got to get out of here, man.”

“I need to find that spring,” Eric said, feeling numb as he watched the clouds. “I’m going to need that water, Kellen. It
might be the only thing that will work.”

“Then we’re going to have to come back for it,” Kellen said. “We’ve got to leave now.”

Eric stared at the clouds but didn’t move or speak.

“Come on,” Kellen said, and when he pulled Eric away by the arm, it was with the ease of a grown man moving a child.
Only when he realized Eric was finally cooperating and running alongside him did he loosen his grip.

“Gonna be slick!” he shouted in Eric’s ear. “Watch your ass. We run fast enough, we’ll be back at the car in a few minutes.”

They ran down the hill and found the dry channel and splashed through it. It was a dry channel no longer—the slab they had
used to cross was a foot underwater now. The Lost River filling it from beneath even as the rain attempted to do the same
from above.

Eric’s legs didn’t feel steady, seemed to be operating more out of momentum than muscle control, but he kept up with Kellen
as best he could and kept moving. Finally the edge of the tree line was in sight, and from there it was maybe a half mile
through a field of short scrub pine to get back to the car.

They broke out of the trees into a roar of wind and ran right up to the barbed-wire fence. Eric was ducking to his hands and
knees again, thinking, the hell with looking graceful, he just wanted to be on the other side, when Kellen reached down and
grabbed the back of his shirt and spoke in a hiss of awe.