Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,71
did not recognize the awful timbre of her wounded voice. “Max. Don’t let him kill you too. Don’t let that little bastard take you away from me.”
I looked down from over my shoulder and her face was barely visible in the dark but what light there was caught the tear on her cheek. She was hallucinating, confusing one of the boys here with the teenager who killed her husband. But she’d somehow slipped me into the muddled equation.
“I won’t, baby. No one’s going to take me away, Sherry. But you have to eat, honey. You need to get strong.”
While I talked, I used my free fingers behind me to unwrap the chocolate and then looked over my shoulder and moved it to her mouth. I rubbed it against her lips and then sighed when I felt her tug at it. The busyness outside continued but even if one of the crew came back in now I didn’t care. When Sherry stopped nibbling I went down and retrieved the water bottle and tipped it onto her lips. Most of the water ran down over her chin and neck but I could hear swallows and just the sound of it made my own throat cooler. With my hands tied it took a few minutes, hell, maybe more than a few, before I heard her say, “More.” Again I gave her the chocolate first, then the water, and the pull was stronger and the swallows more full.
“She dead?”
It was the first thing Buck said after someone kicked away the pry bar and all three walked in. His flashlight beam had swung first to the wall where I’d been and then to Sherry where I now crouched. I had to turn my face away from the brightness and I could tell through the open door that it had gone full dark outside. The boys were carrying a big cooler and an old Coleman lantern and set them down in front of the makeshift kitchen counter.
“No. Not yet,” I said. “And if she does die, you boys move up the line from simple looters to murderers. That’s going to look real nice on your résumé up at Raiford, Buck.”
The young ones snickered. They’d gained some bravado since they’d been outside, hacking at the windows of the next room, maybe even gaining entrance. More likely, though, they’d realized how isolated we all were. If a tree falls in the woods with no one to hear it, does it make a sound? I heard one of them pumping the lantern and then the flash of a match. Wayne lit the mantle and turned up the gas and the throaty, hissing noise was accompanied by a brightening glow that nearly filled the small room.
Unexpectedly, Buck stepped over to me and grabbed a fistful of my shirt over the shoulders and with a strength that surprised me he used his leverage to yank me halfway up and then drag-toss me to the western wall. I rolled over once and tumbled into the electronically locked door. Without a word he then pulled Sherry’s bed out away from the wall and positioned himself at the foot and shoved it across the plank floor until the head of it banged against the wall beside me.
“There you go, Freeman. Take care of your woman over there,” he said. No more “mister,” no more “sir.” Buck had turned mean. The boys looked a bit shocked at the sudden outburst, but then those subtle, that’s-what-I’m-talkin’-about grins came to their faces. Tough guys now. All three of them.
“All right,” I said, wincing at the sting of the new abrasion where my face had met the floor. “Cut my hands loose and give me that first aid kit so I can change her bandages.”
Buck stared at me for a moment. The light was behind him, his eyes in shadow and too obscured for me to see what was in them. Then he reached into his back pocket and came out with a knife in his hand. He flicked open the blade with his thumb and a snap of his wrist and then motioned to the one called Marcus to take it.
“Cut loose his hands,” he said. When the boy hesitated, he turned on him. “I ain’t repeatin’ myself to you little fuckers again. That shit’s done. You do what I say, when I say!”
The boy took the knife and stepped over to me, bent behind me and sawed through the tape between my wrists. At the same