Chapter 40
N ick blew out his candle, shadows rising to surround them like a gathering of old friends. Raven went to grab her rifle, but Nick put his hand on her arm and shook his head.
“We shoot at him in here and the gunshot will echo and alert every helper at Westbrook.” He had dropped his voice to a whisper. “We’d be trapped.”
She grimaced as the realization settled over her, lowered the weapon. She whispered: “What you wanna do?”
“Get out of here before he finds us.” He motioned behind her. “We can empty one of those sacks of rice over there and store our things in it. I’ll have to put together our toys somewhere else.”
They heard heavy footsteps shuffling across the sawdust-covered floor. It sounded as if the helper was methodically searching the warehouse, square foot by square foot.
Nope, he’s not dumb by a long shot , Nick thought. Circles of cold sweat had formed in his armpits.
Raven helped him pick up a sack of rice; it must have weighed at least fifty pounds. He tore open the tough material with the utility tool Grandpa Lee had given him. Together, they dumped the rice in a spot on the corner of the floor, letting the grains quietly pool into a pile.
“All right, let’s hurry.” He swept everything off the table and into the empty sack. He didn’t have anything to tie it closed, so he used his leather belt.
Near the middle of the warehouse, something clanged to the floor. The big man muttered under his breath.
He had gotten much closer to them.
Nick picked up the shotgun off the desk. Pulling the trigger in there would be suicide but he felt safer with the steel in his hands. Raven hefted the rifle, too.
Tank was drawing closer, feet clopping across the floor. Nick hefted the bag of their items over his shoulder, using the belt as a carrying strap.
“This way,” Raven said, and pointed to their left. “We can slip around him.”
The girl had proven adept at sneaking around. He followed her lead without question. She guided him to the end of the row, where they took cover behind a stack of wooden pallets.
Nick paused, listening. It sounded as if Tank was to their right, and behind them.
He nudged Raven, and they continued forward, traveling through alternating patches of shadow and darkening light.
Their footsteps were silent, the sounds of their passage masked by the thin layer of sawdust blanketing the floor.
But Nick’s heart was booming like a bass drum in his chest.
As Nick edged forward across another aisle, his shoulder brushed past something that came loose. He turned to catch it, but too late.
A glass tumbled away and broke against the floor.
A few aisles over, Tank grunted with interest. His footsteps quickened their pace.
Nick and Raven didn’t hesitate. They kept moving, cutting a right into the next aisle. Deep shadows dwelled in that area. Nick squinted to make out what lay ahead of him.
Raven fell over a low, dark shape that blocked the aisle. Some kind of crate. She stifled a short cry, but Nick heard their pursuer chuckle.
He had them running scared, and he knew it.
Nick groped for Raven’s thin arm, grabbed her, and pulled her upright. They ran down the aisle then, knocking past boxes and other packaged sundries, their feet kicking up a storm of sawdust. Stealth didn’t matter anymore. They needed only to get to the doorway.
“Right, go right,” Raven whispered, out of breath.
Nick whirled in the direction she gave him—and ran into a solid wall of pure muscle. He staggered backward a couple of steps, fought to get his bearings.
Tank grunted. He stepped forward into a shaft of daylight.
Outside of working on this nightmarish plantation, Nick thought the guy could have been a defensive tackle on an NFL team. He was easily six-foot-six, over three hundred pounds. This close to him, Nick found his sheer size so intimidating that he felt something in him wilt.
It’s over—we’re not getting past him.
“Y’all ain’t supposed to be in here,” Tank said, in a voice that rumbled like thunder. “Come on back with me to the house and we gonna talk to Miss Lula.”
“Miss Lula sent us in here to get some rice,” Raven said.
“You the runaway,” Tank said, pointing at her. “I ain’t fooled.” He shifted his thick index finger to Nick. “You new here—they told me ’bout you. You ain’t got the mark yet.”
Nick swung the shotgun toward Tank. It was already chambered with a shell.
“Step aside, please,” Nick said. “I don’t want to pull the trigger, but I will if you don’t get out of our way.”
At this, Tank only smiled.
“Go ’head,” he said.
As recently as this morning, Nick was a man who abhorred violence.
When he saw news stories on TV of violent confrontations that ended in death and misery, he tended to think: Why did that have to happen?
Was that really the only way these people could have found a resolution?
He was a gun owner but never thought he’d point a firearm at anyone.
Owning such a powerful weapon was the equivalent of insurance in the event of some extreme circumstance.
He realized that he had arrived at the knife’s edge of extreme circumstances, and he was surprised by the swiftness of his reaction.
He leveled the shotgun at Tank and shot the man in the stomach.
The Mossberg boomed like a cannon in the enclosed space, the windows trembling in their frames, and the recoil snapped through Nick’s wrists.
Grimacing, Tank sank to his knees. Blood peppered his abdomen. But he didn’t go down. Any other man, shot at point-blank range with a twelve-gauge shotgun, would have been flattened like a pancake.
“Let’s go!” Raven said.
Tank roared, face contorted in concentration like a powerlifter performing a dead lift. As if he were absorbing the pain, pushing his body through the agony.
Raven pushed Nick. Nick broke into a run.
He looked over his shoulder. Behind them, Tank was getting to his feet again.
It was yet another incredible incident in a growing collection of improbabilities, and if Nick survived this ordeal, he knew he would never view the world the same way again.
Raven bolted ahead of him, to the doorway. The doors had been pulled shut, for which Nick thought they might be grateful. It might have muffled the sound of the shotgun.
They strained to pull the heavy doors open. Nick heard Tank coming, the man’s furious footsteps increasing in speed.
They hustled through the doorway, into the darkening day. Nick slammed the hasp into place, dug into his pocket, and fumbled out the padlock.
He slipped the lock into the hasp just as Tank rammed against the doors like a caged bull. The doors buckled, wood groaning. The lock rattled, but held. Hands shaking, Nick engaged the padlock.
Roaring, Tank slammed against the doors again.
“All that noise is going to draw someone out here soon,” Raven said, looking around them. “We better get somewhere safe.”