Red - Jack Ketchum [15]
There are scars all over her.
Where the hell has she come from? he thinks.
And where the hell has she been?
As he pulls her free of the net he sees that he’s neglected to remove a single small brown ornamental starfish from within its folds. He’s overlooked it. He shakes his head.
With her it will be wise to overlook nothing.
He digs the plastic cable ties out of his pack and binds her feet together and binds her hands behind her back. Her skin is surprisingly warm and pleasing to the touch. As though she burns at some slightly higher temperature than he does.
He unpacks and spreads out the beach towel that said TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE HAVING RUM and rolls her onto it and starts dragging.
Twenty minutes later with several stops for his Evian bottle he has her up and into the back of the Escalade. It’s only then that she stirs.
He uses the Remington on her forehead before she comes fully awake.
She’d have one hell of a headache. But he doesn’t want her awake for quite some time yet. Though the prospect of that time thrills the hell out of him.
He puts the car in gear and heads home. The Escalade purrs.
In his mind, so does Cleek.
SEVEN
Monday morning and nobody home, just as he knows it will be. The kids at school. Belle and the ladies of the Rotary Youth Exchange at their weekly tea-and-coffee klatch over at Trudy Forget’s place. He has the house to himself. And the cellar.
Like his father before him Chris has always been a handy kind of guy. He can cane a chair, replace the drive belt on a lawn mower, paper a wall or fix your plumbing like a pro. So outfitting the fruit cellar has hardly been a challenge at all.
The only question in his mind is, will she stay out or will he have to whack her once again.
He hauls her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and then eases her carefully down to the lawn while he opens the cellar door. Hauls her up again and walks her down the stairs. Damn! this lady stinks! First thing he is doing to have to do is wash her down. With extreme prejudice. And he is going to need a shower himself just as soon as this is over.
The entire south side of the cellar is clean save some empty one-by-twelve pine shelving starting midway up from floor to ceiling. He sits her propped against the wall. Stands back a moment. Catches his breath. Watches her.
She doesn’t move. Good.
He takes two cable clamps from the shelf behind him — self-locking, polymer and stainless steel — kneels down and slips her wrists into them. From these depend a pair of high-tension tow cables threaded through sturdy eye bolts in the wall above her head. These he’s fastened to a single cable which connects to a hand-cranked winch bolted to the wall beside him.
Cleek walks over to the winch and ratchets her up.
When she’s upright in a standing position he adjusts her legs so that they conform to the pair of clamps bolted to the wall behind her, slips her ankles inside and tightens the nuts with his crescent wrench.
He smiles.
She hangs there like a rag doll.
His rag doll.
Now that he can safely risk it he decides she demands closer inspection.
He checks her hands. Calloused beyond belief. Nails thick and cracked and yellowed. They’ll need some trimming. Her toenails too.
He runs his hand over the matted poultice at her side. Get rid of that. Fix it up with Bacitracin and a proper bandage, first thing.
Then her collarbone, her breastbone, covered with scars old and new, large and small. He traces the smooth wide white scar from breast to hip. The scar above her eye that ran through the blasted eyebrow to her ear.
The scars are a roadmap of rough living.
She’s been through lord knows what.
What he has here is a survivor. That means she is going to be…very interesting.
~ * ~
The Woman slinks awake.
Perhaps it