Page 51 of Leave No Trace
‘I told you I would.’ I managed a shaky but genuine smile.
‘You saved me. I couldn’t escape, couldn’t get free. I didn’t even know where I was trying to go, except I had to go somewhere and they weren’t letting me. It was a nightmare and I couldn’t wake up. Every time I almost surfaced, they would feed me another dose, push me back down. I was lost until I saw you. I think I saw you.’ Confusion flickered over his face as he tried to remember. ‘You were walking away from me and I was screaming for you to come back, but you wouldn’t turn around and I couldn’t reach you. Ikept calling for you. I was afraid if I stopped saying your name I would forget again. I would forget you... and if I forgot you, then I would forget me.’
He leaned his forehead into my temple. I could hear him swallow.
‘When you lifted that mask tonight, your face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.’
I closed my eyes and pushed the words out slowly, patiently. ‘When someone kidnaps you, the proper response is thank you.’
He laughed, more a rumble of chest against my shoulder than actual noise.
‘Thank you, Maya Stark, for saving my life.’
‘You’re welcome, Lucas Blackthorn. Any time.’
The sound of boots thumped up a set of stairs and then a door opened and slammed again.
Harry came back into the room carrying an old, metal case and a folding chair. Lucas moved to crouch near my head while Harry examined me and I noticed for the first time I was shirtless and my sports bra was stained with sweat and blood. Unwrapping the bandage, Harry leaned over and smelled the wound, then mopped up the area under my right rib cage with alcohol swabs that felt like acid. Once clean, it looked strangely like an Easter egg had been carved out of my stomach.
‘What did this?’
‘Rebar. And a douche bag.’
‘Good. No splinters or shrapnel from rebar or douche bags.’ He consulted a small, worn manual. ‘Might have nicked your liver, but it doesn’t look too deep. We can disinfect and sew you up. I don’t have much for pain, though.’
Lucas went to the car and brought back the first aid kit, where I’d stored all the stolen medicine from Congdon. I argued – those pills were for Josiah, not me – but Lucas wouldn’t even acknowledge that I was speaking. He handed the whole thing to Harry and wrapped his hands around mine, maybe for comfort, maybe to keep me from knocking the kit away. Harry found some lidocaine spray and doused the area, then stared at the blood still pooling in the center of the wound while waiting for the anesthetic to take effect.
‘That’ll help some, but might still hurt when I stitch it. Do you drink?’ Harry asked.
‘No.’
‘That’s good. But it’s not a bad day to start.’
I could feel the needle when he began piercing the skin, but the lidocaine dulled the worst of it. After Harry stitched the wound he told us we needed to eat. I didn’t think I could, but Harry cooked us venison steaks and fries like it was the most natural thing to do at three in the morning, then pulled up chairs in front of the couch so he and Lucas could dig in. He didn’t ask us what we were doing here, why Lucas wore a state-issued smock and pants, or why I looked like the loser of a vicious street brawl. He joked about the patchy electricity as his lamp flickered and turned off at random. Raccoons in the lines, or maybe mice.
‘It’s been a while, girl,’ Harry said as Lucas practically licked the juice from his empty plate.
‘Eight years. Give or take.’
‘She don’t call. She don’t write. She just shows up, bloody, every decade or so.’
Lucas sat up straight. ‘Is this where... ?’ He let the question hang.
‘I used to see this girl every summer when she and her mom came up to their cabin over there.’ He waved through the wall, as if Lucas could see it. I tried not to think about what lay beyond the wood paneling and the darkness outside. ‘Only neighbors I could stand. Quiet. Kept to themselves. Probably ran into them more paddling the Waters than I ever did on our property line.’
Lucas dropped his fork on the carpet and barely noticed. ‘Wait. We’re in the Boundary Waters?’
Harry nodded. ‘Starts at this shoreline here and stretches right out to heaven.’
Lucas half turned and his eyes lit up with the knowledge. The impulse to get up, to escape into the forest, shimmered through him as clear as sunlight and I felt torn in half – wanting him to disappear, to leave before the authorities found us, and yet aching for him to stay, to keep looking at me the way he had ever since I lifted that ski mask and showed him who I was.
‘The last time I saw this one’ – Harry gestured to me with his steak knife – ‘I’d been out fishing on Basswood all day and what do I find when I pull up in front the house? A gangly girl, sitting cross-legged on my front step with dried blood covering her face. She stared at me like she’d been waiting all day and I was late.
‘Are you all right?I asked.
‘I killed someone over there. She pointed toward their cabin.With this rock,she added and held it up, like she’d be happy to use it again if I took a wrong step. It gave her a power, I saw. She was safe with that rock.
‘I went to the cooler in the back of my pickup and held up the pike I’d caught.I fished these today,I said.Have to go around back and clean them. Do you want to come?’
