Chapter 7 - THE CRACK IN THE ICE
The sound of Arthur’s truck idling outside the main barn doors felt like a death sentence.
“Take the back chute,” Mark whispered, shoving the probate envelope into my hands along with my father’s silver watch. “There’s an old calf-loading ramp behind the silo. It leads straight down into the willow drainage where Hank is parked. Go! Right now!”
“What are you going to do?” Clara demanded, grabbing her brother’s sleeve.
“I’m staying here,” Mark said. For the first time in his life, his spine straightened, though his hands still trembled. “I’m the one who let them put her in that hole. I’m the one who has to face him.”
“He has a gun in that truck, Mark,” I warned, clutching the heavy manila envelope against my chest. “Your mother won’t hesitate.”
“She’s my mother,” Mark muttered, his jaw tightening. “She won't pull a trigger on her own son. But she will destroy you if she catches you on this property. Get out of here, Elena. Save our baby.”
Clara pulled my arm, leading me through the darkened stalls toward the rear loading ramp. We slipped through the weathered wooden slats just as the main barn doors screeched open on their rusted rollers.
“Mark!” Arthur’s voice boomed through the cavernous timber structure, heavy and slurred with cheap whiskey. “What in the hell are you doing out here in the dark? Where’s your sister?”
Through the wooden cracks of the calf chute, I looked back one last time.
Evelyn walked in behind her husband, her expensive wool coat buttoned tightly to her throat, her hair immaculate despite the damp night air. In her gloved right hand, she was carrying my leather purse—the one that was supposed to be left in my abandoned car.
“Arthur checked the hollow on the way back from town,” Evelyn said, her voice crisp, calm, and chillingly devoid of emotion. “The hole is empty, Mark. Did you dig her up?”
Mark stood in the center of the concrete aisle, the twenty-gauge shotgun lying on the hay bales behind him, completely out of sight. He didn't answer right away. He just stared at the woman who had governed every heartbeat of his thirty years.
“I asked you a question, son,” Evelyn said, stepping closer. Her eyes flicked toward the open door of the tack room. She noticed the fresh lime scattered on the threshold. “You opened the floor safe.”
“It’s over, Mom,” Mark said quietly.
Arthur lunged forward, grabbing Mark by the collar of his denim jacket and slamming him violently back against an oak support beam. “Don't you take that tone with your mother! Where did she go? Where is the girl?”
“She’s gone, Dad,” Mark choked out, refusing to raise his fists. “And she’s got the survey from Vance’s office. She knows about the mineral rights. She knows about the riverboat debts.”
Arthur’s face contorted into a mask of pure, unbridled rage. He raised a heavy fist, but Evelyn caught his forearm with surprising strength.
“Stop it, Arthur,” she commanded coldly.
Arthur froze, his chest heaving, his fist inches from his son's nose.
“She doesn't have a car,” Evelyn reasoned, her eyes darting around the shadows like a hawk searching for prey. “Her phone is in the river near the bridge. She’s on foot, in freezing weather, bleeding and pregnant. She won't make it two miles down the county road before she collapses in a ditch.”
Then Evelyn’s gaze dropped to the floor near the tack room door.
She saw the fresh tracks of two sets of sneakers in the dry dust—one large, one small. And beside them, a single drop of fresh, red blood from the cut on my forehead.
“Clara is with her,” Evelyn whispered, her voice dropping into a register that made the hair on my neck stand up. “Clara took her.”
She turned slowly toward the dark back of the barn, staring straight toward the calf chute where we were hiding.
“Clara!” Evelyn called out, her voice suddenly sweet, maternal, and terrifyingly gentle. “Clara, sweetheart, come out here. Mommy isn't mad at you. We just want to make sure the family stays together. You don't want your brother to go to prison, do you?”
Clara began to tremble beside me, her breath hitching in her throat. The psychological weight of that voice had controlled her entire life. For a second, I thought she was going to walk out into the light.
I grabbed Clara’s hand, squeezing it hard. I shook my head in the dark.
“Run,” I mouthed silently.
May you like
We turned and scrambled down the muddy wooden incline of the ramp, dropping into the cold, waist-high weeds of the drainage ditch. Behind us, Arthur’s heavy boots began to pound across the wooden floorboards, moving toward the rear doors.
“Arthur, get the dogs!” Evelyn’s shrill command pierced the night air. “Don't let them reach the blacktop!”
