Winterkill - C. J. Box [107]
Twelve people, most of them men, had exited trailers or campers and trudged to the toilets. In the stillness, he heard them cough, hack, and make disgusting sounds in the toilets. None of them was Spud Cargill. None of them was Wade Brockius. None of them was April.
Then she was there. Joe had almost fallen asleep despite the cold and his awkward stance. But when he saw the small woman, Jeannie Keeley, emerge from a trailer with a small blond girl, he knew it was April.
He watched and listened. Their footfalls weren’t as percussive in the frozen snow as the men’s had been. When they passed the nearest window, he ignored Jeannie and saw April’s frail profile against the light. The glimpse didn’t reveal much. He couldn’t have seen bruises, if they were there, or pain on her face. She just seemed vacant, glassy-eyed. Her snowboots shuffled. Jeannie led her by the hand to the outdoor toilet.
April went inside and shut the door. Jeannie stood outside and waited, smoking a cigarette.
When April was through, Jeannie took her hand and they walked back together. April raised her face, which caught some light from a window, and said something to Jeannie. Jeannie laughed, and bent her head down to April and said something back, which caused April to laugh. The girl had a husky laugh, a belly laugh that Joe loved to hear. But the sound of it now filled him with violently mixed emotions.
They entered the trailer and shut the door, and April was gone.
Joe blinked.
If he wouldn’t have known who they were, or what the circumstances were, he would have described the scene as heartwarming. The mother, Jeannie, obviously cared enough about the welfare of her daughter to walk her to and from the outhouse. They held hands, and April reached up for Jeannie’s hand when she exited. The joke, whatever it was, was appreciated by her mother. And her mother bent down to share something that made both of them giggle.
Joe wasn’t sure this is what he had wanted to see. He had envisioned a scenario where April, in tears, was dragged through the camp. If he’d seen that, he could also see himself running into the camp, throwing Jeannie aside, and rescuing April. He would carry her through the snow to the snowmobile and roar down the mountain. But that hadn’t happened. Not at all.
He couldn’t believe that April was in a better place. That was inconceivable. But unless he literally stormed into the trailer and took her—kidnapped her—there was little he could do.
He was freezing, and conflicted. There was nothing he could do here, and Joe shook snow from his parka and prepared to go back to his snowmobile.
When “Danke Schoen” started up, Joe turned in surprise and dropped a glove in the snow. He had not been four feet from the tree he had been hiding in when the song blasted through the night and scared him. He stood and listened, stunned. Where was it coming from? Then he remembered the speakers he had seen when he last visited the compound.
From inside trailers, he heard shouted curses. Someone threw something heavy into a wall. If the intention of the song was to drive the Sovereigns crazy, Joe thought, it appeared to be working.
A door flew open and a man Joe didn’t recognize stood framed in the light of his propane lamp. He swung an automatic rifle up across his body and leaned into it. A furious burst of fire lit up the night. Although the man was shooting at the speakers—and hitting them, judging by the sharp pings of metal—and not toward Joe, Joe sunk to his haunches and dug for his Beretta.
Another burst shredded the speakers with holes, but did little to stop the sound.
The song ended and, after a brief pause, started up again. Only this time it was louder.
Joe heard a sudden rustle close behind him, but he was too slow, and too cold, to react. He felt a heavy blow above his ear that sent him sprawling clumsily forward, snow filling his nose and mouth.
He never actually lost consciousness, but the orange flashes that burst across his eyes and