The child had stopped screaming. I put it from my mind.
For the Chinese, it is the source of chi, for the Japanese, ki, for dancers and gymnasts, it is the center of gravity: the fulcrum around which the body moves. Shift your balance, and everything changes. Balance is also psychological. If your opponent expects you to pull in one direction, he sets his muscles to resist. Mike had put all his weight over my wrist: he was balancing on it; he expected me to pull my hand in instinctively and protect my torso. So I did, but slowly, so he had time to resist, and when he began to push the other way—which pleased me so much I laughed, which startled him, which made it even easier—I thrust both hands up over my head, simple as stretching. His balance followed my wrists, sliding as smoothly as the bubble in a tilting spirit level, and as he fell forward, I pulled both legs under me and bucked. Thigh muscles are enormously powerful. He soared, upturned face comical, and I was scrambling after him on all fours like a strange, bloodied train, Glock in hand—where had that come from?—before he hit the ground. He was lovely and fast, already up on one knee before I pistoned right elbow into his neck, left fist into his solar plexus, and arced the Glock into the back of his skull. He collapsed. I smiled, and stood. Staggered. Pain is just a message.
The Maxima was now forty yards away, veering wildly, jerking, driving again, still in reverse. I wiped the blood from my face, squinted. The child had stopped screaming because she had her teeth buried in the woman’s wrist. I lurched forward. My knee buckled and I almost went down again. Just a message. I ran. In another fifty yards, the Maxima would reach the crossroads where there would be room to turn around. Once it was out of reverse, I’d have no hope of catching it.
The woman slapped the child. The child hung on. The car slowed almost to a stop. I ran. Thirty yards. The woman hit the child again. Twenty-five yards. The child let go. Twenty yards. Now or never. I lifted the Glock, sighted, breathed out, held it, and shot out the left front tire. I moved the gun slightly, sighted on the woman’s chest. Neither of us moved. Slowly, she raised both hands.
I limped as fast as I could to the car. “Out,” I said to the woman. “Now.” Even in rural Arkansas a shot might not go unnoticed. She climbed out warily. There was blood on her right wrist. I could smell her fear. “Turn around. Hands on the roof of the car.” Before she’d even turned around properly I whipped the Glock across the back of her head. I caught her before she fell.
The child had squeezed herself up against the passenger door, as far away from me as she could get. “Open the back door,” I said. She didn’t move. I ignored my knee, ignored the terrible need to hurry, and dredged up her name. “Luz. I need you to open the back door.” She stared at the gun, then my face. The gun, my face. I couldn’t put the gun down without letting go of the woman. Another child… shiny eyes… “Button needs you,” I said. “We have to hurry.” There was no more time. I slung the woman as best I could over my left arm and tucked the Glock back in my waistband out of sight. That’s when I remembered the noise my rib cage had made. I cursed softly, then put that message aside, too. I could just reach the door handle. I got it open and stuffed the woman in. She left a smear of blood on the upholstery. I slammed the door, got in the driver’s seat.
Luz still hadn’t moved or spoken. I picked her up bodily—she was practically catatonic—put her in her seat, and pulled the seat belt round her. The pain was making it hard to breathe.
The tire rim ground on the gravel as I drove the hundred yards back to the rig and the sprawled lump in the road.
Out of the car, open the back door, drag the man to the car, lift and prop, fold and push him on top of the woman. Close rear door. Use remote to lock all four doors. Open door of truck, sigh, walk back to car, open passenger door. “I’m going to move the rig—the truck and trailer—so we can drive past. I’m coming back.” I’m going to pass out. “Stay there.” This time she nodded cautiously.
I got in the truck, turned it on. I could just drive away and never come back. I checked my throat in the mirror: red, but not reopened.
It took four minutes of slow and careful backing and filling before I had the rig on the side of the road, pointing south. Each time I twisted, each time I moved my right arm to change gear, I thought I might throw up. Just a message. The hitch didn’t feel right, but there wasn’t time to check it properly. Somewhere a sharp-eared neighbor might be dialing the sheriff. I turned off the engine, climbed down, went back to the car. The child was so quiet I could hear the two in the back breathing slowly but steadily. The child—Luz, her name is Luz—had unfastened her seat belt.
“Fasten it back up.”
Luz looked at me. “Button?”
“We have a short drive to make first.”
She looked over her shoulder at the woman Goulay and Mike, but didn’t speak. Probably thought I’d shoot her if she did.
I had to slow for every curve. With that tire gone, the car tilted to one side and the front wheels had a tendency to skate. I checked the rearview mirror often. No pursuing traffic. “How far can you walk?”
Now the look I got was full of incomprehension, as though I were speaking Urdu. How many nine-year-olds would know how far they could walk? She could probably manage three or four miles without any lasting damage, and I could always carry her. “There’s a map in the glove compartment,” I said. “Pass it to me please.” I slowed, one hand on the wheel, the other tracing tiny lines. Brink Creek campground was about four miles. The woods there would be dense enough to confuse most city people, and there wouldn’t be much traffic. I handed the map back to Luz, who refolded it and put it back in the glove compartment without being asked. Remarkable adaptation to circumstances. Her early life must have been interesting. Or perhaps all nine-year-olds were this resilient.
The campground was empty. I pulled in under the trees, parked, and pocketed the keys. Luz seemed to listen to the silence.
“Now you have to help me wipe the car down.” I eased Goulay’s heavy coat off her shoulders and ripped away one of her cardigan sleeves. “Take this and rub it all around the steering wheel. It’s very important that you rub every single bit of the surface.”
“Why?”
It wasn’t her fault the Carpenters didn’t have a television. I forced myself to breathe through the pain in ribs and knee, and managed to speak without growling. “Fingerprints.”
While she scrubbed industriously at the wheel and gear stick I tore off the other sleeve and wiped at the doors and roof where I might have touched the metal inadvertently. Then I tackled the shiny vinyl on the backs of the seats and inside windows.
I remembered the belt and wiped that down, too—after I’d retied it around Mike’s ankles. He must be more supple than I’d thought. Just as I was finishing that, he woke. “Don’t,” I said in his ear. “Keep still and you’ll be fine. She’ll wake up in a few hours and untie you.” It would be dark and cold by then. I tucked Goulay’s arms back into her coat.
I motioned Luz away from the car, gave the wheel and stick a quick wipe myself, then threw the ragged sleeve on the front seat.
“Now we walk back to the trailer. It’s a long way.” She didn’t move. “What?”
“My stuff.”
The suitcase, in the trunk.
At first she insisted on carrying the case herself. She carried it two-handed, in front of her, bumping her knees. I tried not to wince.
“When you get tired, let me know.”
I matched my pace to hers, but even at two miles an hour my knee burned. The back of my neck throbbed and every now and then my hands tingled. Some kind of nerve bruise. I felt at my ribs gently as I walked; no obvious splintering. Cracked, perhaps, or maybe just soft-tissue injury at the sternum. Cartilage probably.