“Then why was it strange?”
“I… I just had a weird feeling. I can’t really put it into better words than that. The black ski mask…”
God, the black ski mask.
“Anyway, I wanted to go up to Luke’s ranch and look around. I asked Joe and Ryan to go with me. We would get on Luke’s bus instead of our own after school. Jonah said no. He had stuff to do at home, but maybe he’d go with us some other time.” I drew in a deep breath. “But I was dead set on going that afternoon, and Ryan decided he would go with me.”
I’ll go with you, Tal. He’d put his hand in mine. I’d kept telling him he was too old for that, that boys didn’t hold hands. God, the kid had followed me everywhere.
“So you and Ryan went, alone, to Luke’s ranch.”
I nodded, my vision blurring… If only I could go back…back…go back, not go to the Walkers’ that day…
Again I clenched my fingers into the armchair… My heart beating rapidly… My stomach churning… My bowels clenching…
I heaved…and blackness curtained around me.
The boy had been walking with his little brother for about an hour. Their tummies were full. Mrs. Walker had given them oatmeal cookies and watermelon when they showed up at her door. “Y’all can look around if you want to,” she’d said. Her eyes were recessed and sad. “Just come back before dark. Do your mom and dad know you’re here?”
The boy had nodded. It was a lie, but their older brother would tell their parents when he got home.
“This is where they found the mask,” the boy said, more to himself than to his brother. The boy looked around. Nothing was visible. Even the Walkers’ house had faded from view this far out. The cattle must not have grazed in this area, because the grass was tall. It brushed his knees.
In the distance stood a little shack.
“Let’s go check out that building,” the boy said to his brother.
His little brother nodded, and they traipsed forward.
The wood was gray and splintered, old. The boy reached out to touch the knotty surface, when—
“Talon! Auuuughh!”
He turned at his brother’s blood-chilling scream, his heart drumming. Two figures had emerged from the structure, dressed all in black, their faces obscured by ski masks. Two large hands held his brother by the shoulders.
Fear and rage rose in the boy. “You leave my brother alone!”
The other pair of hands lunged toward him, but before they could grab him, the boy ran into the man holding his brother, kicking at his shins. “Let go! Let go! Let go!”
The boy was no match for the grown man, and the other had grabbed the back of the boy’s shirt. Still, the boy kicked, determined to free his brother. Brittle fragments of fear inched up his spine, but still he kicked, even as the other man dragged him away. He lodged one last punt with his steel-toed boot to the man’s crotch. His brother fell from the man’s grip onto his knees in the dirt.
“Run!” the boy yelled “Run back to the house! Get Dad! Run, run, run!”
The little boy stood, dazed, immobile.
“Damn it, I said run!”
The other man still held his crotch but got to his feet. The first one shoved the boy down onto the ground. He could no longer see his brother.
Please be running. Please get help, he pleaded silently to his brother.
The boy kicked and screamed, but two grown men were too much for him. They hauled him into the small building.
And lying on a bed by one wall, unconscious, was the boy he’d been looking for.
Luke.
Chapter Thirty