Deadfall by Robert Liparulo Page B

honey.”
    Declan reached behind him and came back with a long knife. It was thick and heavy looking. A military weapon or something hunters were getting into nowadays. He turned it in the air, letting light glint off it. He stepped closer to Dillon.
    â€œNo!” She wanted to scream, but it came out a hoarse whisper.
    â€œYou can keep your boy,” Declan said. “But I want you to know something.”
    He brought the knife to Dillon’s face, pressing the tip to his cheekbone. Dillon’s eyes flared wide. He sucked in a sharp breath, as he had in September when he got his Hep B immunization.
    â€œDon’t,” Laura said, straining against the powerful hands.
    Declan drew the blade down, leaving a thin red line, then he pulled it away. The cut on Dillon’s face grew thick with blood. It stretched to his jaw as a rivulet leaked out.
    Laura hissed.
    â€œI want you to know that I’m not above hurting a child. So be quiet. Be good. Don’t cause trouble, and we’ll get along. Understand?”
    Her eyes flashed at him. She showed her teeth, thinking she would say something. Nothing came out. She hoped her expression was enough. Enough to let him know that he would pay for harming her son. Enough to warn him against trying it again.
    â€œI’ll take that as an agreement,” Declan said. He pursed his lips and kissed her through the air. He left, followed by the teen.The man holding her turned her around, walked backward to the door. She knew he would shove her hard into the room. By the time she recovered, the door would be shut and locked again. Instead, his hands came off her like a vise coming undone. She stepped away and glared back. It was the black man, Bad. She gave him the same fierce expression she had given Declan.
    He returned it and growled.Then he laughed, stepped through the doorway, and locked them in.
    She dropped to her knees before Dillon. She hugged him tightly. Whenever Tom had approached Dillon to hug him, he’d say he was going to squeeze him like a Go-Gurt, a yogurt treat that you had to squeeze out of its packaging. She tried to hug him that way now.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” she said. She leaned back to examine the long vertical line on his face, black now in the dim light. Gently, she wiped at it. “Are you okay?”
    He nodded. “Are you?”
    She laughed, relieved. At least for now he seemed himself, always so concerned about other people.
    He said, “They want us to obey them.”
    She braced him between her hands, looked into his eyes. “Well, they don’t know us very well, do they?”

13
    Hutch woke to the gentle but insistent chime of his watch. Quietly, he unzipped his sleeping bag to retrieve the clothes he’d put inside it the evening before. He maneuvered past Phil. The man had taken up snoring since their last camping trip, probably the result of his weight gain. He emerged from the tent into the cold, dark morning. Plumes of breath formed in front of his face as goose bumps popped up on his arms and thighs under his long johns. His muscles contracted in an effort to fend off the cold. It was four o’clock, still three hours before dawn.
    He set his clothes on a rucksack near the tent. Standing outside the shelter in only his skivvies, he surveyed the campsite by the light of a quarter moon; the campfire had gone out hours before. He saw no evidence that animals had come to inspect their presence, that humans had made a covert visit, or that anything unsavory had fallen or blown, slithered or crawled into camp.
    Fog filled the ravine, at the bottom of which the river gurgled and sluiced out of sight. Moonlight illuminated the gently swirling mist, reminding Hutch of the dry-ice fog that churns from the witches’ cauldron in stage productions of Macbeth . It climbed the banks and sent tendrils snaking into the campsite and surrounding forest. It billowed away from him as he made his way down