Sticks and Stones (22 page)

They climbed the fence. Sandra’s jeans got ripped and she got a splinter in her thumb. Daniel was three steps ahead by the time she got herself free from the ragged planks. He headed for the side but there were bars on all the windows. They could see inside some of the rooms, curtains pulled wide. They were empty.

The front door was unlocked.

Danny looked over at her, flicked the safety off on his gun, and led her inside. The house was surprisingly normal. A little musty with a smell that reminded Sandra of the potpourri her mother had brought home once, a long time ago. Here, the smell was dispersed. Maybe from the open window. There was a breeze from somewhere – it swept the long hallway, rustling the thin curtains, pale light streaming inside. They met no one until they reached the kitchen.

It was the man from the parking lot.

He sat at the table sipping a cup of tea. The tablecloth was linen, a pale yellow. A tiny, elderly woman sat at his side. Her throat was slit. White hair stuck to the blood where the skin was paper thin, with a blue network of veins. Sandra swallowed and heard Danny cock his gun.

The dark haired man set down his teacup. Then he smiled at them.

“Finally,” he said. He wore good clothes. Not fancy, but crisp and clean. “I was afraid you didn’t get the message. Have a seat.”

They didn’t move.

“No?” If anything, his smile grew. He looked maybe Danny’s age. Maybe a bit older. When he looked up, eyes free from the shadows of his hair, Sandra found herself swallowing again.

His eyes were black, black as night, and she felt her heart stop.

Because she remembered a flicker-thought of her dream, of
another black-eyed human
. Someone who saw it all as a game.

You
, she thought.

“That’s too bad.” He picked up his spoon, stirred his tea. “Pardon my reach, my dear.” He leaned forward to pull the sugar closer. He nudged the old woman’s shoulder and her neck wound gaped wide.

Danny followed him with his gun.

“Where’s my brother?” His voice didn’t even shake. Sandra was proud of him – she felt broken all to bits. Her nerves certainly weren’t steel. This wasn’t at all like her dream. It was a warped version. Everything was off-kilter.

The man frowned, spoon click-clinking against the side of the china cup. There were tiny pink roses and delicate ivy on the lip – daintily small in his large hands. “I hoped we could have a civilized conversation.”

“Where is he?”

“Straight to business.” The man raised the china in salute. “I like that.”

Danny shifted the gun, finger loose on the trigger.

“Now, don’t be hasty.” The man’s eyes flickered to the basement door – it had bright white wood paneling and a hook-latch screwed near the top. Their gazes followed and he laughed. “You didn’t think I’d keep him here, did you? I’m not quite that stupid.”

A muscle in Danny’s jaw ticked. “I can shoot you right now.”

“You’d never find your brother if you did.”

“Who said I’d kill you?”

The man had the audacity to laugh. “I like you.” That grin stretched with rows of pearly teeth and Sandra’s stomach filled with bile.

“Danny,” she tried, wishing he’d step back, closer to her. He’d been hovering inside the kitchen doorway, but he kept moving further into the room, leaving her standing there all alone. The black-eyed man gave her a look, like he could see right inside of her, through and through, and Sandra shuddered.

“He’s nearby,” he said. He pointed one finger and used it to push away the woman, who was sinking toward his shoulder. Then he stood. Danny’s gun hand jerked and Sandra wondered if his arm was getting tired. He didn’t say anything, even when the man stepped around him. At the table, the woman’s momentum finally pulled her off the chair. Her thin bones made an awful sound as she met the floor. Without flinching, the man continued to the kitchen door, so close that Sandra could see the pores on his face. The circulation in her fingers was cut off by her grip on the knife.

“Excuse me,” he said. His broad smile seemed sharper when directed at her. Sharp like his own blade. Sandra wondered where he kept it. His jeans were so tight the pockets were nearly painted on.

“You know,” he said, as she backed up, as far as she could without bumping into the wall or into Danny and still feeling too close, “you can’t keep changing things.”

He took a step past.

“Now I’ve got to fix it,” he said. “I don’t enjoy cleaning up your mistakes.”

Sandra knew her chills weren’t from the opened window. She remembered her dream, chasing this man – remembered running and following and watching him kill
everyone
. It was too late; they were already tangled in his web.

“You weren’t hiding very hard,” the man said. “I recognized Jack. Oh, I didn’t know he was
Jack
at the time. One or the other.” He tipped one hand, body relaxed and tone so easy that they might’ve been talking about the weather. About something other than visions and deaths. “It took a bit, but he did talk.”

Now, Danny surged forward. He pointed his gun right at the back of the man’s head.

He wasn’t afraid.

“He’s still alive.”

“Why?”
This time, Danny’s voice did shake. Sandra wasn’t sure he’d registered the black eyes, knew just how dangerous this man was.

“You weren’t supposed to be like this.” For a moment, the man’s smiled dimmed, seemed slightly discouraged. “We’ve all got our roles to play.” Then his smile returned, fake, never reaching his eyes, and he turned, facing sideways to keep an eye on them and the gun. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small paper card. It had writing on it in blue pen. Sandra had been wrong, she realized. He did have blood on him. Just a smudge. There. On his thumb. He flicked the card at her.
Jeremiah Epps
, Sandra suddenly knew, even though the name wasn’t written. It was only an address. “You’ll become what you were meant to,” he said. “Just like your father.”

Danny’s finger moved on the trigger, eyes wide, but Jeremiah was backing down the hallway, flicking a finger at the scrawled address as he passed her. “Your brother’s one block away, in the basement.” He disappeared out the front door.

Chapter Twenty-Two

They found
the warehouse. It was abandoned, full of garbage and crates and rats. They also found the basement. And they found Jack.

Danny stayed back with the gun, covering the door as Sandra broke forward, sliding to a stop on the cement. Awake, but bloody, Jack jerked when she knelt beside him. Sandra wasn’t sure if he saw her, or if he understood, but she talked, kept saying, “It’s us,” and “You’re okay,” and “We’ve got you,” as she unraveled the rope tying his feet, tried to get at the rope around his wrists, too. He was in the corner of the room and there wasn’t much space to work in. The rope was slick with blood – kept slipping from her fingers. Jack was gasping something, voice too slurred to make out.

Danny pushed her to the side. His knife slid in behind the knot and Jack jerked back, rolling and ready to kick out with his feet but he was free and Sandra wondered why she hadn’t thought of that. Her head was all muddled. She hated being so muddled.

Jack sputtered, voice full of liquid. It was questioning and Sandra gently wrapped her hand around his. “We’re here,” she said again. She angled herself, let Danny move in behind, get his arm tucked around his brother to lift him off the floor. Easier said than done. Sandra hoped his ribs weren’t cracked. He resisted the move, in obvious pain, and his head fell forward. Sandra made sure he wouldn’t go falling the other way. His forehead ended up on her collarbone.

There was fresh blood leaking across her skin.

“C’mon, Jack,” Danny whispered, grabbing at him again. Jack’s jacket was gone. And his shoes. His shirt and jeans were in rough shape. “Let’s get you out of here.”

He made a sound, agreeable, but couldn’t do much to help. Sandra kept him steady but Danny was the one who lifted him, had to get him right off his feet because his knees wouldn’t hold. It looked awkward and uncomfortable and probably caused more pain, but that didn’t matter as long as it got him out of there fast. Sandra led the way, holding Danny’s gun.

For once it didn’t feel so wrong – it wasn’t horrible to hold if she was protecting them.

They didn’t see Jeremiah Epps lurking around. They didn’t see anyone, even after getting outside. Sandra crawled into the backseat, cushioning Jack’s fall into the car and trying to keep him upright. “Where do we go?”

Jack rolled his face into the skin of her neck. Sitting slouched was hurting him but she didn’t have the heart to move him away. Instead, she reached up; he curled his arms around his ribs and she carefully wiped the sweaty hair away from his face. It turned her fingers red. She could feel his lashes flutter against her skin as they watched Danny settle, listened to the engine purr with the turn of the key, rumbling awake.

“No hospital,” Jack wheezed out.

“Jack…” Sandra began.

“That’s stupid,” Danny told him.

“Is not,” Jack slurred, but his eyes rolled closed, body slumping further into hers. Danny didn’t bother arguing, but paused, undecided, before pulling onto the road. He met her eyes in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know.” Jack didn’t stir. “Stitches and Band-Aids won’t fix this.”

“No,” Danny said. He still looked angry. Furious. And Jeremiah Epps had gotten away. Sandra couldn’t even imagine how horribly this could go. “The police will get involved.”

Sandra knew. She kept her hand in Jack’s hair. “Do we tell them about Jeremiah?”

Daniel’s smile turned particularly vicious. “I think we do.”

~

Sandra didn’t have to try too hard to be upset, especially after they wheeled Jack away for x-rays. Daniel held her hand like a good pretend brother, looking angry and pale and drained. They both had blood on them, Danny more than her – a big mark right across his chest where he’d held his brother.

“I don’t know,” he said to the police for the fifth time. “He went to get lunch and never came back.”

They were just passing through, they said.

Road trip, they said.

Didn’t have any enemies, they said.

Didn’t ever think something like this could happen.

If the officers talked to Fred, they’d be screwed. You couldn’t leave out something like beating a man to get him to talk without looking bad. Couldn’t include it without looking bad either.

Sandra sighed when the police walked away, wondering how long it would take them to realize they weren’t the Darius family – realize the credit card wasn’t theirs, either. They weren’t to go anywhere. The waiting room was quiet and so were the halls, intercoms crackling intermediately, calls for doctors and nurses and room numbers, muted from where they sat. The chairs were new and comfortable and Danny didn’t let go of her hand even after the policemen left. She wasn’t even sure if he was aware of the gentle sweep of his thumb, back and forth, back and forth. Sandra hated waiting.

“The last time I was in a hospital, you were the one in the bed.”

“I don’t blame you.” Danny squeezed her hand. “You can’t see everything.”

Sandra made a thin sound. She might have rolled her eyes. She was too busy staring at their hands to pay much attention.

“You’ve saved us a hundred times over. You can’t see everything.”

“Apparently Jeremiah can,” she said, and Danny had nothing to say to that.

~

It wasn’t so bad.

Sandra stared at Jack in the bed, small and vulnerable, reminiscent of Danny years and years ago.

His ribs were cracked, but not broken. And other than some superficial cuts that needed stitches, he really wasn’t that bad off. He’d had a minor concussion. Still had bruises and scrapes. No broken bones.

Jeremiah could have done much worse; he’d slit that woman’s throat, after all.

“Hey,” Sandra whispered, moving the cup of ice chips over and setting down a can of pop on the table. His face almost looked worse, all cleaned up. The old bruises were completely covered by the new. He had one cut on his cheek and another by his hairline, held together by little bandages, the skin around slowly turning a myriad of colors.

“Huh?” he said, confused. Danny touched his shoulder on the other side, fleetingly light. There were chairs against the wall, at the foot of the bed, and he moved to sit down as Jack’s eyelids fluttered.

“Ungh,” Jack moaned. “Where’m’I? Hospital?”

“Yeah,” Sandra said.

“Fuck you, ‘anny.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“Said s’no hospitals.”

“We weren’t risking it.”

Jack sighed, breath hitching a little, protesting lungs. “Hate tchu.” Jack cracked his eyes, but couldn’t find Danny in the direction he was staring and closed them again. He did manage to crook his middle finger up. Sandra thanked God that she’d never had brothers.

“P’lice talked chtu me.”

“Yeah?” Danny still looked pretty amused at the mangled words coming out of Jack’s mouth. Sandra thought it was partly from the drugs; partly from his horribly fat lip. “What did you say?”

“Dunno. ‘M drugged, asshead.”

Danny made that sound – the one that was almost a laugh. “Tell them the truth if they come back, okay?”

Jack made a breathy sound, full of pain, and shifted even though it made him grunt. “Why?” he asked, the word finally coming out clear.

Danny shrugged. “Because we weren’t in the wrong? I want him found. Hell, I’ll even sit down with a sketch artist if it’ll get them after him.”

Jack’s face went numb, kind of mute and unreadable. It looked odd on him. Then his bruised eyes flickered and a sarcastic grin stretched at his cheeks and his puffy lip. “Don’t know if the police wan’ to talk to me. I called ‘em some not so nice things.”

Sandra snorted, she couldn’t help it, and Danny’s lips twitched even though he was trying to look serious. “You make friends wherever you go.”

“‘M drugged. Not my fault… Dick.”

Jack’s smile looked painful and Sandra went and plopped down in the other chair, elbow digging into Danny’s side and eyes hurting with the effort to not laugh or cry. Danny’s knee jerked with nerves.

“You didn’t get him,” Jack finally said, long after they’d thought he’d fallen asleep, room full of quiet and Sandra full of worry.

“No.”

“I almost—” Jack cut himself off. “I mean, I got loose, once. I got him, but…” His head shook, a head shake maybe. He looked sort of demented and kind of really lost and Sandra had to look away. “I wanted to kill him. I came so close.”

Which was a horrible admission. Sandra wanted to ask why he hadn’t. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“It felt like losing.”

Danny made a sound, full of surprise. Sandra was sure, if he’d been the one kidnapped and he’d had the shot, he would’ve killed Jeremiah stone cold dead.

Danny scratched at an old scar on his arm and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

~

Danny woke her with a hand on her shoulder. His skin felt abnormally hot. Or maybe she was just very cold. There was a vent in the ceiling, cool air raining down. “Hey,” he said again, a tone that made her think it wasn’t the first time.

“Mmmph?”

“We’ve got to go.” He was whispering and Sandra turned over to stare at the clock on the wall. It was late. Really late, and she wondered how Danny had conned the night nurses into not kicking them out again. They’d been the bane of the hospital staff for the past two days. Danny shook her again, pulled her right up out of the chair. He waited, at least, until she had her footing before he let go. “We’re getting out of here,” he said.

There wasn’t anyone at the desk.

In her vision timeline, Sandra would’ve thought he’d killed the nurse. Here, the thought barely crossed her mind – made her follow Danny guiltily down the hall. There was a wheelchair waiting outside Jack’s room. Jack was waiting, too, in his bed, bleary-eyed and frazzle-haired. He wasn’t okay, but they both seemed eager to go and nothing Sandra would say would change that. They were both as stubborn as their father. Jack slowly rolled off the bed, too proud to take much help, even if it was from her. He grumbled about the chair as well, but Danny said it was either the wheelchair or his shoulder and Jack, predictably, chose the chair. A bit ungraciously, but whatever. Sandra kept watch down the hallway, waiting for one of the night nurses to come bustling out from a room and catch them in the act of fleeing. Her eyes felt crusted over, head all cottony.

“Feel like I should be humming Batman,” Jack said, as Danny snuck him out the door and toward the corridor stairs. Sandra repressed the giddy urge to giggle. Daniel scowled at them, unimpressed. Behind his back, Sandra and Jack shared a smile.

They left the wheelchair by the stairs, helping Jack all the way down. It was a slow descent, but there was far less risk of being seen. The front door had a manned desk and Danny had been busy the past few days. He knew exactly where to go. They escaped out a side door into the parking lot. Danny had left the car close.

Jack laid down on the backseat. Danny didn’t tell her where they were going and Sandra’s eyes drifted shut after the first ten long minutes. When she woke, the car was stopped and Danny was on his way back from a motel office, harsh yellow light spilling out onto the night dark pavement. She twisted in her seat. Jack’s eyes were still closed, and she could see the slow, gentle rise of his ribs. The car door opened, dipped down slightly as Danny slid in. He’d left the engine on and it revved as he pulled into reverse. Sandra let her eyes fall closed in one long blink. Somehow, the car had turned off and they were parked, motel door opened. The car’s rear door was pushed wide. Danny murmured. Jack groaned and pushed himself half up before he relented and let his brother get a hold of him and help him from the car. Sandra got out, wincing, knees cracking. Then she got the bags from the trunk, along with the Tylenol Danny had pocketed from the hospital.

The motel wasn’t so bad – definitely not in the top five they’d stayed in, but not in the bottom either. The air smelled clean and the beds were made. There were lamps on the side tables and the television looked like it might pick up more than two channels. If there was hot water that didn’t run out after just one shower, Sandra would be ecstatic.

Jack groaned, tucking himself onto the farthest bed. He didn’t bother trying to remove his new boots and Sandra shucked them off on her way past, slinging the bags down outside the bathroom wall. Jack lay with his feet bare. He hadn’t done his jeans up all the way in the hospital and his large, worn shirt was half buttoned. Danny didn’t seem worried about Jack’s comfort, so Sandra left it, continuing on to the bathroom.

The florescent light overhead was harsh and drained all the color from her tired face. There were plenty of clean towels and sharp little patterns in the tile of the bath. Sandra couldn’t tell if they were ivy or thorns all twisted together. She didn’t really care since the water was warm, but it gave her something else besides her toes to stare at as she stood there, trying hard not to think.

She worried about Jeremiah Epps – what they’d do to him. What he’d do to them. It scared her,
terrified
her, that he knew the things she knew, maybe saw more than she did, and he was out there making a new future. Just like them.

His was simply a lot more blood-spattered.

She needed a clear head. She needed to
see
for Jack and Danny, and for Lem, too. Except, Sandra couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking; her fingers and her arms and her whole body on vibrate. She ended up on the bottom of the tub, thinking about Jack’s beaten face, his black-bruised ribs and wrists and ankles and how Jeremiah Epps could have killed him instead of leaving him alive.

They kept trying so hard not to fall. But what would happen with someone there to push them over?

Sandra shut the water off, let it sluice over her, her muscles left stiff and tight. She tried to get the shakes under control before leaving the bathroom but didn’t fare well, ending up back in the main room with Danny wrapped around her, standing in the narrow space between the two beds.

Danny still had his gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

Sandra wanted to tug it away – throw it far. Instead, she tucked her hands into the hem of his shirt and held on tight.