Chapter 23
T he hammer Nick had discovered buried in the pile of hay wasn’t mantled with rust, as he had initially thought.
In the deepening afternoon light, he saw that it was covered in blood. The dried blood fluttered away in brittle flakes as he ran his thumb across the surface.
He tried to piece together what might have happened.
Had someone used the hammer as a weapon? Against whom? The Overseer? Or perhaps one of the “helpers” had used it to punish one of their captives.
Clutching the wooden handle in both hands, he surveyed the barn walls, trying to remember where he had found those loose boards. He lurched toward the wall, chains rattling.
He located the most promising section in a far corner near the back wall. There, several boards had warped and revealed a slice of daylight a couple of inches wide. He inserted the claw side of the hammer head, adjusted to get some leverage, and pushed.
Wood groaned and creaked, and the gap widened.
He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. He slipped the claw into another loose section and pushed again, his arms trembling from the effort, his chains clinking.
A rusted nail popped out, rolled into the dirt. The gap was about six inches wide, large enough to admit his foot. He bent close to the opening he’d created and peered outside.
He saw tall, thick weeds, and the sweet fragrance of wildflowers swirled around his head.
Encouraged, he pried loose another slat of decaying wood, tossed it aside. Then he peeled back another one and knocked it away. After he had loosened yet another piece, he estimated that he had enough space to squeeze through. He lowered himself into a crawl.
Behind him, the barn door rattled.
Nick froze, his heart pounding. Half-heartedly, he thought he could try to fit through the gap he had made, but he knew intuitively that he would never make it. One of the helpers would see him trying to wriggle through, grab his ankles, and reel him back in.
The door swung open, and in that rush of sudden brightness, Nick saw a slight, familiar figure slip inside and shut the door.
“Hey, Mr. Nick,” a soft voice said, in a whisper.
It was the girl that he and Amiya had encountered earlier in the woods. The runaway.
Clutching the hammer, unsure of her intentions, Nick rose. “Over here.”
The girl hurried toward him, her footsteps feather-light across the straw.
“What’re you doing in here?” he asked.
Anxiety glimmered in her eyes, but she met his gaze without looking away, and he realized in that moment that she was older than she looked.
“I’m helping you escape.” She took a small silver item from her dress pocket that looked like a key. “We’ve gotta hurry. I think one of the field hands saw me come in here, and they can’t be trusted. They’ll snitch to a helper in a New York minute.”
Nick blinked. The sudden turn of events had made him dizzy. “I, uh, had opened up a hole, here.”
“We might still need to use it. Quick, give me your hands.”
He offered her his shackled wrists. Using her key, she unlocked one restraint, and then the other. Then she knelt and disengaged the shackles on his feet.
“I don’t even know how to thank you,” he said, massaging his chafed wrists.
For the first time she offered a brief smile. “I’m Raven, by the way. Don’t thank me until we get clear of the plantation.”
“I can’t leave without my girlfriend, Amiya. They took her away to?—”
“They took her to the big house; I saw it,” Raven said. “I can’t sneak in there—it’s too dangerous. We’ll have to figure out something else, but first we need to get off the plantation.”
“How old are you, anyway?”
“I’m seventeen.” She gave him a challenging glare. “Please, no snide remarks about how I look like a little kid. I’ve heard them my entire life and I’m not in the mood. Now let’s move .”
She grabbed one of his hands as if he were a child and tugged him toward the barn door. The door rattled, and Raven halted in mid-step, spun, and pushed Nick in the back.
“Go through the hole you made,” she whispered. “Hurry, hurry.”
Nick slipped the hammer into a belt loop of his Levi’s. Getting low to the ground, in a crab-walk stance, he scrambled forward. His knee joints popped like firecrackers. Straw spun in his face. He reached the gap in the boards just as the barn door banged open.
“I know y’all in here,” a male voice said. “You can’t run off. Come on out.”
“Keep moving,” Raven whispered, nudging him forward.
Nick crawled forward on his hands and knees, the edges of the boards scraping against his shoulders and back. A splinter speared his neck, and he bit his tongue to hold back a cry. He wove into the tall weeds on the other side.
Raven slipped through the hole after him as quick as a shadow, fitted one of the boards back into place.
“That’ll do for a little bit,” she said, coming beside him. “Stay low to the ground. The weeds will give us some cover.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Just follow me.” She grabbed his hand again, as if he were a child who needed to be led. “Let’s go.”