“Max is there. Karen is making casts, taking the prints. Ryan found the tracks of a small car or maybe an old-style Jeep behind the stable, leading away up the bridle trail, back into the woods.” Juana looked at Clyde gently, her cop’s reserve falling away. She was close to Charlie and the chief, the small department was like family.
“Whatever the hell this is,” Juana said, “I hope the bastards burn-that we can make them burn.”
Even as evening fell, the cabin and the little cubbyhole kitchen remained intolerably hot, the walls pressing closer, so that Wilma felt there wasn’t enough air. Sweating, confined by the tight ropes, panic gripped her, making her feel almost out of control. She wanted to scream and to beat at the walls, to tear at the rope, tear it off, and she couldn’t even get a grip on it.
She seldom lost it like this. She was trained not to panic, but her training had gone to hell; she wanted to scream, and keep screaming until someone somewhere heard her.
Violet had taken the butcher knife, jerking it from Wilma’s clenched hand with surprising strength, and was carrying it away with her, toward the stairs. Wilma watched her retreating back; how thin her shoulders were, every bone visible beneath the flimsy shirt.
“You don’t think I can hide you,” Wilma said, trying not to beg. “You’re wrong. You don’t believe the federal authorities can keep you safe. I know they can. Witness protection has hidden thousands of folks with far more dangerous men after them than Sears, and those women are doing fine.”
Violet paused, but didn’t turn to look at her.
“You’re destroying what may be your only chance for freedom, Violet. I can get you into a safe house far away, out of the state. New identity, new name, all the papers. New driver’s license, new social security number. You can start over, free of Eddie’s abuse, do as you please with your life.”
As she tried to gain Violet’s attention, she prayed that in Gilroy her credit card would be found. But that was a real long shot, you couldn’t lay your life on a card lying in the gutter, a card that would probably be swept up by the street sweeper and dumped in some landfill.
“We can hide you in a little house or apartment in the most unlikely small town, somewhere no one would think to look. We’d alert the sheriff there to watch out for you, he’d be the person you could go to anytime if you were afraid. You could be living where no one would beat you, threaten you, hurt you, Violet.”
“He’d find me,” Violet said in a flat voice. “There’s nowhere he wouldn’t find me.”
“He won’t find you if he’s in prison. If you help me get him there, he can’t follow you. I have enough on Cage and Eddie to put them both behind bars for a long time.”
Violet turned, a question in her eyes.
“Believe me. A long stretch in the federal pen.”
“What happens when Eddie gets out? He wouldn’t be locked up forever. He’d know I helped you, he’d come after me.”
“Not if he can’t find you.” She was losing patience with Violet, but she couldn’t afford to snap at the girl. Violet, with no sense of self-worth, could easily become useless to her. “What’s the alternative?” Wilma said gently. “You’re going to sit here like a lump waiting for him to come back and beat on you for the rest of your life? Or kill you? If he’s in jail where he can’t get at you-”
“I don’t believe you can lock him up. He never-”
“He has aided and abetted Cage’s escape, the escape of a federal prisoner. He has kidnapped a retired federal officer. Both are offenses with long mandatory sentences. Mandatory, Violet. The judge has to send him away.”
Violet looked hard at her.
“If the law can make Eddie for theft, too, if Cage and Eddie have made some big haul-if that’s what Cage is looking for, that added to the other offenses could put Eddie in prison for the rest of his life.”
“And Cage, too?” Violet asked warily.
“Of course, Cage, too. That’s the law. Both locked up where they can’t hurt you.”
Violet was very still; Wilma watched her, trying not to let her hopes rise. No matter how much psychology Wilma had studied, it was still hard for her to relate to the masochistic dependence that made an abused woman love and cling to her tormentor. Wilma was too independent to understand the self-torturing, or guilt-ridden pleasure, an abuse victim took in harsh mental lashings and harder physical blows, even in wounds that could be fatal. Such an attitude disgusted her, went against her deepest beliefs. Disgusted her because these women had abandoned their self-respect, were committing self-abuse by their complicity.
She wanted to shout and swear at Violet, almost wanted to strike the woman. No wonder such women were ill treated. Violet’s cowering submission made a person want to hit her.
Violet looked at her for a long time.
“I can help you,” Wilma repeated; she was tired of this, tired of everything. “I will do all I can to help you, will use every kind of assistance that the federal system has to offer.” She prayed she wasn’t promising more than she could deliver. “But you have to want to be rid of him-and first, you have to help me.”
Violet’s blank expression didn’t change. She didn’t speak; she turned back toward the wall and disappeared behind it. Wilma listened in defeat to her soft footsteps mounting to the upper floor.
But then, swallowing back discouragement, she reached awkwardly behind her again to fight open the next drawer, to scrabble blindly for another tool sharp enough to cut her bonds.
21
W hen Cage Jones grabbed Charlie Harper, the only witness was the white cat-the only witness who could speak of what he had seen in the alleyway and behind the Harper stables. The other animals could not.
It had taken more courage than Cotton thought he possessed to go to that ranch seeking out the tall redheaded woman and ask her for help for the captive human. He had never in his life approached humans except to steal their food in the back alleys where his clowder had sometimes traveled.
But he had once seen Kit speak with the redheaded woman, and that lady had seemed gentle and respectful of his kind, so he’d thought maybe it would be all right. He had heard her promise that if ever his small, wild band should need help, she would come. Cotton remembered.
But now the redheaded lady needed help, perhaps to save her life.
Approaching the ranch, three times he had nearly turned back. But at last, shivering and ducking away from nothing, he had come down through the woods, avoiding the bridle trail, not wanting even to leave paw prints.
When he slipped into the stable, the horses had stared over their stalls at him with only mild interest, but the two big dogs in their closed stall had huffed and sniffed under the door, then had barked and kept barking, and in a moment he heard the door of the house open. When he looked out of the stable, redheaded Charlie Harper was coming across the yard to see what they were barking at. He’d tried to steel himself to speak to her, but he was so frightened he had ducked into the stall that held saddles, shivering, not daring even to peer out-and the next moment he was filled with guilt because his presence had brought her there.
He’d heard a vehicle approach from behind the barn where there was no road, only a horse trail. Little rocks crunching under its wheels. The dogs were barking too loudly for Charlie Harper to hear it stop quietly beyond the closed back door. But Cotton had slipped out of the saddle room’s open window and around to the back, along the side of the barn, concealing himself among the bushes as best he could considering that he was blindingly white and seldom able to hide very well.