Landfall (8 page)

She finally got her shorts down and sat just in time. As she emptied her bladder, a thousand hot needles began piercing her hands and wrists. She ignored them, and tried to think if there was anything at all in the bathroom that could help her.

She ran through a mental inventory and came up empty. Her and Sky’s razors were packed. Even the big nail clippers were tucked inside her toiletry bag. She didn’t even have some bleach or other cleaner to throw in his face.

She cleaned herself and got her shorts buttoned and her belt buckled, then flushed the toilet. The door opened even as the water was still swirling down the pipes. Maggie flexed and stretched her hands for a moment, relishing the movement, then he jerked his head and she stepped out into the hall. The man gestured at her to turn around again and she did, but not before she swore she got a faint whiff of Kyle’s shampoo.

“Pull them pockets out,” he said. Maggie turned her front pockets inside out, and they poked up like rabbit’s ears from her shorts. Then the man patted her back pockets with his free hand, ran his hand along the inside of her waistband.

“Go on, sit back at the table,” he said.

Maggie preceded them into the dining area and sat back down at the end of the table. She caught Sky’s eye, and hated seeing a look of resignation on her face that hadn’t been there earlier.

The man sat Kyle back down, then walked over to Maggie and stood beside her chair. He seemed to be thinking, unsure of his next step. “Put those hands through the chair there,” he said. Maggie considered this. This was the last moment she’d have her hands free, but trying to take him would get her shot and do nothing to free her children. She put her hands through the spindles on the back of her chair.

The man tucked his gun into his waistband and bent to grab her rope. For a moment, Maggie mentally measured the space between her hands and his waistband. He wasn’t especially tall, but he was too tall for her to snatch the gun, even if she could move faster than he could see. Even so, the nearness of it was almost irresistibly compelling.

“Can I sit by my Mom?’ Kyle asked.

The man had just wound the second loop around Maggie’s other wrist, and he straightened up enough to look over Maggie’s shoulder at her son. Maggie moved her wrists just a tiny bit apart and balled her hands into fists.

“You a mama’s boy, kid?”

Maggie’s heart nearly broke as Kyle lifted his chin. “No,” he said quietly. “I just want to sit by my Mom.”

“We got a girl thinks she can mouth off to a full-grown man and a boy that wants to sit by his Mommy,” the man said. He continued tying Maggie’s wrists as he smirked at Kyle.

“Leave him alone,” Sky said. “He’s just a little kid.”

“Aw. That’s real nice,” the man said. “It’s good that you got a girl who can stand up for you, kid.”

Maggie wanted to head butt him. She wanted to scream at him for insulting her child. But more than that, she wanted him to ignore her, so she sat silently, hoping her kids would forgive her for not speaking up for them.

“You think you’re a badass because you hit women and terrorize little kids?” Sky asked.

“I think I’m a badass because I got a gun,” the man said.

He finished tying Maggie’s wrists and straightened, jerked his hand at the kids. “Go on, switch seats. I don’t care. Be closer to your mama, boy, in case you need to nurse.”

Sky and Kyle got to their feet and edged around each other to change chairs. Once they had sat back down, the man walked over to the kitchen and opened up the fridge. He pulled out another Dr. Pepper, opened it, then wandered over to the counter by the sink, where he had dumped Maggie’s gym bag.

Maggie watched him as he unzipped the bag and pulled out her .45 and inspected it like he was at a gun show. As he did, she un-balled her fists and twisted her wrists. It wasn’t much more wiggle room, but it was just enough for her to stretch her middle finger to the overhand knot he’d used to “lock” the loops around her wrists.

Again, she wondered why he’d used such an inefficient knot. It was likely that he’d just made the best of the rope he had, as best he knew. The men she grew up with were all fishermen of some kind, though, and she knew enough to know that there were several marine knots that would have been better.

Maybe he was a landlubber. Maybe he liked sex games and the handcuff knot was all he knew. Whatever the case, she was grateful. She wasn’t sure she could untie the overhand knot with one finger, but she had a better chance than if he’d known what he was doing.

M
aggie picked at the overhand knot for what felt like hours, but probably wasn’t. With the windows boarded, she had lost confidence in her sense of time.

Her hands, like her, were small, and her fingers short and deceptively delicate for a woman who could work the oyster beds and fire several weapons accurately. Her middle finger wasn’t quite long enough for her to gain any purchase underneath the overhand knot, so somewhere along the way she’d switched to picking at the threads of the rope itself to try to dig herself something that she
could
manipulate.

If she could get the simple overhand knot loose, the handcuff knot itself would become expandable and she could be free. To do something she wasn’t sure of yet.

Sky and Kyle dropped in and out of sleep, and Maggie herself nodded off for a few minutes at a time. She was groggy and she was slightly nauseous, and she wondered if she had a mild concussion from either the gun butt to the head or her fall on the stairs.

The man, too, had slept for a few minutes here and there, his chin falling to his chest before he jerked it up again and quickly checked to make sure she was still where he’d left her.

At one point, she had found herself trying once more to engage the man in conversation, more to keep herself awake than anything else.

After looking over at the kids to make sure they were asleep, she had quietly cleared her throat, and he’d looked over at her.

“Why don’t you just take me outside and shoot me? Why sit here all night? You could just be done with it and walk back to town.”

His upper lip had curled just slightly, like she’d put a plate of salad in front of him when he’d asked for a steak. For some moments, she’d thought he was going to ignore her again, but then he spoke.

“Because I ain’t here for me. I’m here on someone else’s part,” he’d said.

“Whose?” she’d asked, though she hadn’t really expected an answer.

He’d glanced over at the kids before he replied. “You’ll know that soon enough,” he’d said, then he’d tried to make his call for the hundredth time.

He’d slapped the phone down after a few seconds. “Damn storm.”

Then he had walked over to look at her bookshelves again, and she’d gone back to her rope.

Maggie hadn’t realized that she’d dropped off again until the noise woke her. The plywood was wrenched violently from the kitchen window, then banged against the side of the house as it was blown away.

Apparently, the man had fallen asleep at some point, too, for both he and Maggie jerked their heads up, and he jumped out of his chair. He looked just as surprised as she was to see daylight. Somehow, Maggie had started to believe it would always be night.

As the man looked out of the kitchen window, the kids roused, and Maggie checked her rope. She had managed to dig herself a ragged little hole in one part of the overhand knot, but she hadn’t yet managed to pull the knot any looser. She dug what was left of the nail of her middle finger into the niche and went back to work trying to pull it loose.

Her best hope was that once she did loosen the ties, she would have a moment while he used the bathroom or was otherwise occupied somewhere else in the house. He seldom left the main room, but he had wandered on occasion. If she were quiet enough, and fast enough, she might get to one of the weapons that he had left strewn on the kitchen counter last night. His .22 was still in his waistband, and she wondered why he didn’t just switch it out for her Glock. She would.

He turned away from the kitchen window and wandered down the hall to the bathroom, walked in without shutting the door. Maggie’s stomach turned a little as she listened to him urinating a night’s worth of Dr. Peppers.

She picked at the rope furiously, and almost stopped breathing for a moment when she felt the knot give just a bit. It was almost imperceptible, but it was movement. She couldn’t help but huff out a little breath, and when she did, she met Sky’s eye.

Wyatt shifted uncomfortably in a chair that felt as though it were made of recycled shopping carts. He’d already done his pee test, and was waiting for the nurse to draw his blood. Apparently, all of this was to save time tomorrow, when he had his surgery, but he failed to see the logic of that.

His phone vibrated in his shirt pocket, and the nurse gave his a disapproving look over her shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll turn it off after this call.” He pulled out his cell. “Hello?”

“Hey, Wyatt, it’s Gray Redmond,” Maggie’s father said.

“Hey, Gray, how was the cruise?”

“It was great, but I was wondering if you’d heard from Maggie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they’re not here,” Gray answered. “We got in about half an hour ago, but there’s no sign of them.”

Wyatt frowned and looked at his watch. “Did you call her?”

“Yes, but it went straight to voice mail. I called the kids, too. Same thing.”

“Maybe there’s a problem with T-Mobile,” Wyatt said. “They might be overloaded with the storm.”

“Maybe,” Gray said. “I was hoping you’d heard from her though.”

“Not since last night. She called to tell me that Kyle came home early, so they were going to head out. That was about six or seven.”

Gray was quiet for a minute. “Maybe we should rent another car and drive home,” he said finally.

“No, don’t do that,” Wyatt said. “I’m sure she’s fine. Maybe traffic on I-10 sucked with everybody headed inland. They may have stopped somewhere for the night and gotten behind. She’s headed your way, so you should stay there.”

“All right, we’ll wait a bit longer. I don’t suppose you could get the Highway Patrol or somebody looking for her?”

“I’m planning on it,” Wyatt answered. “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’s fine. I’ll call you as soon as I hear something.”

“Same here,” Gray said.

Wyatt hung up and thought a minute. He’d talked to Deputy Dwight Shultz earlier, and he knew that what remained of the Sheriff’s Office and the Apalach PD were people who were busy helping with the evacuations and taking emergency calls. The National Guard had been in Apalach since before sunrise, and Apalach was being evacuated, along with several other coastal towns between Cedar Key and Biloxi.

Hurricane Faye hadn’t made landfall, but she wasn’t heading out to the Gulf, either. She’d just been sitting off the coast, collecting and dumping more and more rain. Between the rains and the wind, storm surges of up to six feet had begun flooding the streets along the bay.

Wyatt opened his contacts list and began scrolling, then found the number he was looking for and tapped it. It was answered on the second ring. “Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, Capt. Burrell speaking.”