Purgatory Ridge

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.