SHE HEARD THE THUNDER coming from a long way off, and her first thought was Rain. She let herself imagine the feel of it, cool against her face, running down her festering back, quenching the fire there. She lifted her head, as if to greet the raindrops, and pain shot through the stiff muscles of her neck and shoulders.
Time and pain. They were two strands of what bound her. The hours dragged. Her body seemed to chronicle each minute with a new aching. She couldn’t sleep, refused to let herself. She needed to be aware, even if it meant feeling everything. She needed to believe something might break for them, even if there seemed nothing she herself could do. Vigilance and hope. What other allies did she have?
The thunder grew nearer, big cracks that sounded as if they were splitting the earth. Blind, she pictured the forest shattered where the lightning hit, the ground scarred black. It wasn’t a pleasant image and she tried to shake it. A strong wind rose in advance of the storm. She could feel the air pushed through the gaps in the old cabin, and she could hear the creak and groan of the trees as they bent. If there were rain, she knew it wouldn’t be gentle.
The storm overtook the cabin. Lightning flashed so brightly that even through the disgusting cloth across her eyes she could see the night illuminated. Immediately after each bolt, thunder made the ground tremble as if, compared with what the heavens wielded, the earth under Jo was nothing. The lightning seemed to strike all around the cabin, frighteningly close. Although she’d thought that after what she’d already been through, nothing could scare her further, she was terrified.
Between the claps of thunder, she heard a growing roar, like a huge wave sweeping toward her. A few minutes later, hail hit the cabin. The din as the stones pounded the old roof and walls was deafening. The end of the world would be no less terrible, Jo thought. As frightened as she was, her greatest concern was for Stevie, for whom even a normal thunderstorm was a nightmare. She longed to be holding him, comforting him.
God, she prayed, more desperately than she ever had, please help us.
And the hail left. As suddenly as it had come.
In the quiet that followed, she heard Stevie whimpering softly.
“Are you sleeping,” she hummed to him. She was relieved to hear his quivering little echo.
More time passed. Hours, it seemed. She was afraid for Scott. She thought she could hear him, his shivering almost audible. Was he coming back, the man who’d given them food and a bit of hope? His concern had seemed genuine, and his promise to return with the insulin had seemed sincere. Still, a man capable of kidnapping was probably capable of almost anything despicable. Maybe it was part of the plan, a sort of good cop-bad cop scenario. One terrorizes, the other gives hope, and in that way they keep the hostages caught in indecision, incapable of escape. The man who’d brought them to the cabin was vile, there was no doubt in Jo’s mind. He was fully capable of the cruelty he promised. But the other was an unknown. And even if he meant well, what control did he have over anything?
She could barely keep her eyes open. For a moment, she closed them.
She was dreaming instantly. Of walking through a strange house. Looking for Cork, but unable to find him. She opened a door and something black leaped at her and she woke.
The dream turned her thinking to the house on Gooseberry Lane. It was the only place she’d ever lived that she let herself love. She could see Cork and Rose and the girls gathered at the kitchen table. She could see the worried look on all their faces. Imagining their helplessness made her want to weep, and she yanked herself away from that weakness. Instead, she imagined her family in council, considering action. Cork wouldn’t sit by and let this happen. Jo didn’t know what he would do exactly, but she knew that somehow he was working his way toward her. She wrapped all her hope around the solid belief that somehow he would come.
She was dreaming again. This time it was a horrible dream full of fire. She woke with a start and found that the air she breathed was full of smoke, so thick she could feel the texture of it in her nostrils when she breathed. She listened. No tree frogs or crickets. None of the usual night sounds. The only noise from outside the cabin was a dry crackle that sounded like a thousand feet marching across a bed of brittle branches. The march was accentuated now and then by the boom of a big bass drum.
Fire.
She began working her wrists desperately over the ragged edge of the post, trying to cut the duct tape that bound her. The smoke grew thicker, and the sound that only minutes before had seemed distant rose to a constant roar punctuated by the boom of trees exploding. The fire was moving rapidly toward them. She felt the current of the air shift as it was drawn in to feed an immense body of flame.
Please, God, no. Not this way.
Behind her back, her wrists covered a territory of only inches as she strained, twisting against the ropes. Then she felt the slight resistance as the tape snagged on a big splinter. She tried to calm herself, to focus on the delicate trick of notching the tape, for she knew that if she pulled too hard, the splinter would simply break off. She began to cough, and she could hear Grace and the boys coughing, too. The cough made it hard to be delicate with the tape. Sweat soaked the bandanna across her face. The air was growing hotter and moving faster as it was sucked in to feed a monster that was almost at the doorstep.
Please, God. Over and over again as she struggled, she prayed that simple, desperate prayer. Please, God.
But it seemed God had not listened, because the splinter broke away from the post, and Jo screamed through the tape that sealed her mouth, cursing an end that was too cruel to believe.
Then she felt a hand on her ropes.
“Don’t move.”
Jo recognized the voice of the man who’d gone for the insulin.
A knife blade slipped between her breasts and quickly severed the rope. Jo leaned forward and his hands were at her wrists, cutting them free. He moved to her ankles as she pulled the bandanna from her face. The cabin was filled with smoke made luminous by a pulsating glow that came through the doorway. The man moved to Grace and Scott. As he freed them, they pulled the hoods off their heads. Last, he bent over Stevie, who ripped the strip of cloth from his eyes as soon as his hands were free.
“Come on,” the man shouted over the roar and boom of the fire. He headed out the door.
Grace was right behind him, holding onto Scott’s hand. Jo followed with Stevie in tow. Outside, smoke thick as fog rolled off a tide of flame that had engulfed the trees on the far side of the clearing, a little over a hundred yards away. Sparks had ignited fires in the tall, dry grass that surrounded the cabin. The man who led them ran a crazy zigzag between islands of flame. Stevie’s small legs couldn’t keep up and he fell. Jo turned back and scooped him up in her arms. When she turned around, the fire had closed in front of her, blocking her way. She sprinted left, toward the only gap she saw. She cleared the wall of fire just as the flames licked at her heels. She saw a truck with a camper shell parked among the trees at the clearing’s edge. The tailgate was down. Grace and Scott were sliding inside. The man was gesturing furiously for Jo to hurry. When they reached the truck, he lifted Stevie and tossed him in back. Jo leaped in beside her son and the man slammed shut the tailgate and dropped the door of the camper shell, locking them inside.
The fire moved with incredible speed. Already it had eaten the cabin and the whole of the clearing and was now racing through the crowns of the pine trees along the logging road. Jo knelt and peered through the rear window of the cab and through the windshield beyond. The man jumped in behind the wheel. Over his right shoulder, Jo could see that the tiny corridor of road ahead of them was solid fire on both sides. The man glanced back and in the glow of the flames, Jo looked into his face and he into hers. He turned away, jammed the truck into gear, and gave it gas. The tires spun on dry dirt, then caught. The truck hit second gear and the flaming corridor at the same time. Jo dropped and clutched Stevie to her. Fire splashed against the sides and rolled off the tailgate. The air inside the camper shell grew so hot it threatened to sear her lungs.