Worse, she remembered what waited on the other side. How this woman would handle her reality-when she was able to comprehend it-would affect Sabrina’s own chances at survival.
She didn’t speak when the woman first began to show clear thinking because she could hear the voices upstairs and she didn’t want to draw the attention of whoever was up there. Each time the woman looked at her, Sabrina held one finger in front of her lips, urging silence. She didn’t want to risk speaking until she was sure she was talking to someone who was responsive.
When the woman said, “How long have I been here?” in a whisper, it was obvious that the moment had arrived.
“Maybe five or six hours,” Sabrina whispered back. “It’s hard to keep track of time. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here. A few days, at least.”
That news brought horror to the other woman’s face, but Sabrina didn’t say anything to soothe her. There was nothing to say. This was reality. She’d either accept it and fight alongside Sabrina or deny it and panic and risk them both.
She didn’t look like a panicker, though. When she’d finally been able to make sense of the handcuff and assess her situation, she’d taken stock of her surroundings and then asked that one question, trying to reason things out, not simply react.
“Who are you?” Sabrina asked.
“My name is Lynn Deschaine.”
“I’m Sabrina Baldwin.”
The woman cocked her head. “Baldwin.”
“You’ve heard my name before?”
“I met your husband. You’re the reason…you’re why he was so strange.”
She had met Jay? This seemed incomprehensible, like someone bringing a message from the dead.
“Where was he?” Sabrina said. “How is he? Do they have him here or…” She heard her voice rising, took a breath, then whispered. “Where do they have him?”
“Nowhere,” Lynn Deschaine said. Her dark hair had fallen over her face as she shifted, and she blew it away to clear her eyes. “He was at home. We interviewed him about the vandalism on the lines. Mark was right. Your husband was scared of us. Because of you. You were already gone, weren’t you?”
Sabrina was listening, but her brain had stuck on he was at home. That news gave birth to tangled emotions-relief that he was safe, but also astonishment at the idea of him just being at home talking to people about vandalized power lines when she was up here, chained to a cabin wall.
As if sensing this, Lynn Deschaine said, “I think he’s going through the motions to keep them happy and keep you safe.”
Sabrina nodded numbly. Sure, that was it, he just wanted to keep her safe. But still, she felt betrayed.
“Do you know more about them?” Sabrina said. “About why we’re here?”
Lynn seemed to choose her next words carefully.
“I don’t know why we are here, if you mean the specific location, but I understand why they have us. I know why they have me, at least. I’ve been investigating him for years.”
“Eli?”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
This time, Lynn didn’t hesitate. “If you gave Charles Manson the mind of Nikola Tesla,” she said, “you would find yourself with Eli Pate. Or so he thinks.”
Sabrina had a strange memory then. A clear recollection of the way the lights had blinked on the morning of her kidnapping, the outage that summoned Jay out of the house and into the storm. Just like a knock, she thought. Like there was evil at the door, announcing its presence. They’d blamed the storm then, but by midday she’d known it wasn’t really the storm. She just hadn’t known it was Eli Pate.
“How many do you think are up here?” Lynn asked.
“At least three. Maybe more. When they brought you in, you were talking about Violet’s son. They seemed concerned about him. Who is he?”
Even in the shadows, she saw something change in Lynn Deschaine’s face. “I don’t even know anymore,” she said. “I fell asleep feeling this horrible guilt because I hadn’t told him the truth. I thought I knew more than he did, and that wasn’t fair. But he knew more than I did. He knew exactly where I was headed.”
“They don’t seem to agree,” Sabrina said.
“What do you mean?”
“You were incoherent when they brought you in. But the idea that you were with him seemed to…shock them, really. They never lose their composure, but they came close when they heard that.”
For a time, there was silence. Then the quiet was shattered by the sounds of engines. Voices rose briefly, then faded away until the second engine started. Actually, the second and the third-two different pitches that merged into one sound.
“Not motorcycles,” Lynn said thoughtfully. “Maybe a four-wheeler?”
“Yes,” Sabrina said, and she was disappointed with herself for not recognizing the sounds first. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“And they’re only arriving. They’re not leaving.”
They looked at each other in silence as they contemplated what that meant.
Thirty minutes later, another engine. Five minutes after that, another still. Then two more.
Sabrina and Lynn had stopped looking at each other.
44
Mark’s uncles had spent some time on the rodeo circuit, though neither was much of a rider. Larry was a trick-rope artist, as good as any Mark ever saw, and he could shoot like he’d been born with a gun in his hand. All of the stunts in Westerns that people said couldn’t be done in real life, Larry did in real life. He’d toss a quarter in the air and draw a revolver and put a hole through the center, shooting accurately by fanning the hammer, and even though he wasn’t a lefty, he was better with his left hand than most marksmen were with their right. For a couple years he’d done sporadic stunt work for film and TV gigs. Then, as the popularity of the Western died and computer effects removed the need for any real human achievement, he was just an unemployed trick-shooter with a few stories about Hollywood starlets.
He drank on those stories for years, though. His brother began to call one of Larry’s actress conquests the Annuity because of how consistently the tale paid out for him. Chivalrous.
By now enough years had passed that Larry would have had to wait for people to Google the names of the starlets he’d bedded before he began the stories, and even then, nobody would have bought him a drink just to listen, but he was still shooting. Matter of fact, he was giving lessons, and that was how he’d met Eli Pate. It wasn’t trick stuff, and it wasn’t pistols.
“Your mother told me she knew a guy who wanted to learn how to shoot a sniper rifle,” he said as he and Mark sat in the small cabin and the early-morning light began to creep down from the peaks and fill the pines. Larry had started a fire in the ancient cast-iron woodstove and the small space quickly filled with heat.
“Now, usually when your mother says I met this guy, it’s trouble from the get-go,” he said, and then he caught himself and awkwardly added, “Sorry, Markus.”
“Come on, Uncle. It’s not like I don’t have a sense of the woman.”
Larry nodded ruefully and ran a hand over his unruly white hair as if to flatten it against his skull. He was sitting close to the stove, the fire poker still in one hand.
“So I never look forward to meeting the fellas, but, you know, I needed the money at that particular juncture. I’d hit a hard spell.”
Larry had spent his life hitting hard spells like a bug hits a windshield.
“At the time I was working for an outfitter in Wyoming named Scott Shields. He’d bought a ranch just outside of the Bighorns, had plans to put in a bunkhouse, get a good cook, set it up right, you know? He’d made his money up in Alaska, guiding for bear and moose out on the peninsula, but he was a Wyoming kid and wanted to come back. I met him through your mother. They had a good situation all the way around.”