Margaret couldn't tell anymore, and the line rang twice before a gruff voice answered on the other end, so loud even Margaret standing 3 ft away could hear it. "Yeah. " "It's Wes. " A pause electric with disbelief. "Wes, Jesus Christ. We've had eyes out for you since your bike didn't check in Tuesday. Where the hell are you? " "Blackwater Ridge.
I went down in the storm, Duke, and I'm hurt bad, legs broken, but that's not the problem. The problem is I've got Pierce's people already sniffing around the house where I landed. " Duke's voice went from relief to something flat and dangerous in half a second. "Pierce is on your location. Was here 20 minutes ago, wearing a badge pretending it's a wellness check, but he knows, Duke. He knows I'm here, and he's got a woman's whole life hanging in the wind because of it.
She pulled me off the ground last night, dragged me inside her own house in the middle of that blizzard, patched me up, and she's already stood on her porch and lied straight to Pierce's face to protect me. " There was a silence on the line that stretched long enough Margaret wondered if the call had dropped. "She's got the drive? " Duke asked finally. "It's still on me, but she's not safe anymore. None of us are not with Pierce circling like this. " "Address. " Wes gave it, his voice steadying now that he had somewhere to direct the fear, someone else finally sharing the weight of it. "Duke, I mean it.
Come loud. Whatever Pierce is planning, he needs to see exactly what he's dealing with before he decides to do something stupid to an old woman who never asked for any of this. We ride in an hour, Duke said, and the line went dead. Wes lowered the receiver slowly, his whole body sagging with a mixture of relief and exhaustion so profound it looked almost like collapse. An hour, he said.
They'll be here in an hour. Margaret took the phone from his shaking hands and hung it back on the wall, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all. The weight of the decision settling over the kitchen like a held breath. An hour, Margaret repeated. Wesley, that man out there, Pierce, he wasn't just checking a box this morning.
You said it yourself. He was confirming. What if he doesn't wait an hour to come back? As if summoned by the words themselves, the sound reached them both in the same instant. A second engine, then a third coming up the same driveway Pierce's cruiser had left not 20 minutes before, moving faster this time without any of the earlier pretense of casual patience.
Margaret's blood went to ice. She crossed to the window in three quick strides and looked out through the gap in the curtain to see not one cruiser this time, but two, plus an unmarked black SUV behind them. All three vehicles pulling to a stop at angles across the bottom of her driveway, blocking any possible escape route down the mountain. Wes? Her voice came out flatter and calmer than she felt.
The old teacher's voice, the one that could freeze a chaotic classroom mid-riot. They're back, and there's more of them this time. Wes was already trying to drag himself upright, his face white with pain and terror in equal measure, reaching for the couch arm to pull himself to standing on his one good leg. The cellar, he gasped. You said you had a cellar last night when you were looking at my leg, you mentioned it.
An old root cellar under this house. It's small, it's cold, and with that leg you'll never make the stairs down without screaming loud enough to bring the roof down on both our heads. Margaret, I would rather scream in pain in a hole in the ground than get found sitting in your living room when they come through that door. His eyes found hers, desperate and pleading, and terrifyingly lucid despite everything his body was going through. Please, you've already done more for me than anyone had a right to ask.
Let me at least try to keep you from getting dragged any further into this than you already are. Outside car doors were already slamming more than she'd heard the first time, four maybe five, and Margaret's mind flew through the calculus of the next 60 seconds with a speed that startled her. The cellar entrance was through a trapdoor beneath the kitchen rug, accessible only if you knew exactly where to lift the floorboard seam, something she and her late husband had built themselves 30 years ago as a place to store preserves and in the deepest superstitious corner of both their minds as a storm shelter for exactly the kind of violent weather that had brought West to her door in the first place. Up, she said already hauling him to his feet with a strength she did not know she still possessed. His arm slung over her shoulder, his weight nearly buckling her knees.