Читать книгу Ransom Canyon - Jodi Thomas - Страница 9
ОглавлениеLauren
A MIDNIGHT MOON blinked its way between storm clouds as Lauren Brigman cleaned the mud off her shoes. The guys had gone inside the gas station for Cokes. She didn’t really want anything to drink, but it was either walk over with the others after working on their fair projects or stay back at the church and talk to Mrs. Patterson.
Somewhere Mrs. Patterson had gotten the idea that since Lauren didn’t have a mother around, she should take every opportunity to have a “girl talk” with the sheriff’s daughter.
Lauren wanted to tell the old woman that she had known all the facts of life by the age of seven, and she really did not need a buddy to share her teenage years with. Besides, her mother lived in Dallas. It wasn’t like she died. She’d just left. Just because she couldn’t stand the sight of Lauren’s dad didn’t mean she didn’t call and talk to Lauren almost every week. Maybe Mom had just gotten tired of the sheriff’s nightly lectures. Lauren had heard every one of Pop’s talks so many times that she had them memorized in alphabetical order.
Her grades put her at the top of the sophomore class, and she saw herself bound for college in less than three years. Lauren had no intention of getting pregnant, or doing drugs, or any of the other fearful situations Mrs. Patterson and her father had hinted might befall her. Her pop didn’t even want her dating until she was sixteen, and, judging from the boys she knew in high school, she’d just as soon go dateless until eighteen. Maybe college would have better pickings. Some of these guys were so dumb she was surprised they got their cowboy hats on straight every morning.
Reid Collins walked out from the gas station first with a can of Coke in each hand. “I bought you one even though you said you didn’t want anything to drink,” he announced as he neared. “Want to lean on me while you clean your shoes?”
Lauren rolled her eyes. Since he’d grown a few inches and started working out, Reid thought he was God’s gift to girls.
“Why?” she asked as she tossed the stick. “I have a brick wall to lean on. And don’t get any ideas we’re on a date, Reid, just because I walked over here with you.”
“I don’t date sophomores,” he snapped. “I’m on first string, you know. I could probably date any senior I want to. Besides, you’re like a little sister, Lauren. We’ve known each other since you were in the first grade.”
She thought of mentioning that playing first string on a football team that only had forty players total, including the coaches and water boy, wasn’t any great accomplishment, but arguing with Reid would rot her brain. He’d been born rich, and he’d thought he knew everything since he cleared the birth canal. She feared his disease was terminal.
“If you’re cold, I’ll let you wear my football jacket.” When she didn’t comment, he bragged, “I had to reorder a bigger size after a month of working out.”
She hated to, but if she didn’t compliment him soon, he’d never stop begging. “You look great in the jacket, Reid. Half the seniors on the team aren’t as big as you.” There was nothing wrong with Reid from the neck down. In a few years he’d be a knockout with the Collins good looks and trademark rusty hair, not quite brown, not quite red. But he still wouldn’t interest her.
“So, when I get my driver’s license next month, do you want to take a ride?”
Lauren laughed. “You’ve been asking that since I was in the third grade and you got your first bike. The answer is still no. We’re friends, Reid. We’ll always be friends, I’m guessing.”
He smiled a smile that looked like he’d been practicing. “I know, Lauren, but I keep wanting to give you a chance now and then. You know, some guys don’t want to date the sheriff’s daughter, and I hate to point it out, babe, but if you don’t fill out some, it’s going to be bad news in college.” He had the nerve to point at her chest.
“I know.” She managed to pull off a sad look. “Having my father is a cross I have to bear. Half the guys in town are afraid of him. Like he might arrest them for talking to me. Which he might.” She had no intention of discussing her lack of curves with Reid.
“No, it’s not fear of him, exactly,” Reid corrected. “I think it’s more the bullet holes they’re afraid of. Every time a guy looks at you, your old man starts patting his service weapon. Nerve-racking habit, if you ask me. From the looks of it, I seem to be the only one he’ll let stand beside you, and that’s just because our dads are friends.”
She grinned. Reid was spoiled and conceited and self-centered, but he was right. They’d probably always be friends. Her dad was the sheriff, and his was the mayor of Crossroads, even though he lived five miles from town on one of the first ranches established near Ransom Canyon.
With her luck, Reid would be the only guy in the state that her father would let her date. Grumpy old Pop had what she called Terminal Cop Disease. Her father thought everyone, except his few friends, was most likely a criminal, anyone under thirty should be stopped and searched, and anyone who’d ever smoked pot could not be trusted.
Tim O’Grady, Reid’s eternal shadow, walked out of the station with a huge frozen drink. The clear cup showed off its red-and-yellow layers of cherry-and-pineapple-flavored sugar.
Where Reid was balanced in his build, Tim was lanky, disjointed. He seemed to be made of mismatched parts. His arms were too long. His feet seemed too big, and his wired smile barely fit in his mouth. When he took a deep draw on his drink, he staggered and held his forehead from the brain freeze.
Lauren laughed as he danced around like a puppet with his strings crossed. Timothy, as the teachers called him, was always good for a laugh. He had the depth of cheap paint but the imagination of a natural-born storyteller.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten an icy drink on such a cold night,” he mumbled between gulps. “If I freeze from the inside out, put me up on Main Street as a statue.”
Lauren giggled.
Lucas Reyes was the last of their small group to come outside. Lucas hadn’t bought anything, but he evidently was avoiding standing outside with her. She’d known Lucas Reyes for a few years, maybe longer, but he never talked to her. Like Reid and Tim, he was a year ahead of her, but since he rarely talked, she usually only noticed him as a background person in her world.
Unlike them, Lucas didn’t have a family name following him around opening doors for a hundred miles.
They all four lived east of Crossroads along the rambling canyon called Ransom Canyon. Lauren and her father lived in one of a cluster of houses near the lake, as did Tim’s parents. Reid’s family ranch was five miles farther out. She had no idea where Lucas’s family lived. Maybe on the Collins ranch. His father worked on the Bar W, which had been in the Collins family for over a hundred years. The area around the headquarters looked like a small village.
Reid repeated the plan. “My brother said he’d drop Sharon off and be back for us. But if they get busy doing their thing it could be an hour. We might as well walk back and sit on the church steps.”
“Great fun,” Tim complained. “Everything’s closed. It’s freezing out here, and I swear this town is so dead somebody should bury it.”
“We could start walking toward home,” Lauren suggested as she pulled a tiny flashlight from her key chain. The canyon lake wasn’t more than a mile. If they walked they wouldn’t be so cold. She could probably be home before Reid’s dumb brother could get his lips off Sharon. If rumors were true, Sharon had very kissable lips, among other body parts.
“Better than standing around here,” Reid said as Tim kicked mud toward the building. “I’d rather be walking than sitting. Plus, if we go back to the church, Mrs. Patterson will probably come out to keep us company.”
Without a vote, they started walking. Lauren didn’t like the idea of stumbling into mud holes now covered up by a dusting of snow along the side of the road, but it sounded better than standing out front of the gas station. Besides, the moon offered enough light, making the tiny flashlight her father insisted she carry worthless.
Within a few yards, Reid and Tim had fallen behind and were lighting up a smoke. To her surprise, Lucas stayed beside her.
“You don’t smoke?” she asked, not really expecting him to answer.
“No, can’t afford the habit,” he said, surprising her. “I’ve got plans, and they don’t include lung cancer.”
Maybe the dark night made it easier to talk, or maybe Lauren didn’t want to feel so alone in the shadows. “I was starting to think you were a mute. We’ve had a few classes together, and you’ve never said a word. Even tonight you were the only one who didn’t talk about your project.”
Lucas shrugged. “Didn’t see the point. I’m just entering for the prize money, not trying to save the world or build a better tomorrow.”
She giggled.
He laughed, too, realizing he’d just made fun of the whole point of the projects. “Plus,” he added, “there’s just not much opportunity to get a word in around those two.” He nodded his head at the two letter jackets falling farther behind as a cloud of smoke haloed above them.
She saw his point. The pair trailed them by maybe twenty feet or more, and both were talking about football. Neither seemed to require a listener.
“Why do you hang out with them?” she asked. Lucas didn’t seem to fit. Studious and quiet, he hadn’t gone out for sports or joined many clubs that she knew about. “Jocks usually hang out together.”
“I wanted to work on my project tonight, and Reid offered me a ride. Listening to football talk beats walking in this weather.”
Lauren tripped into a pothole. Lucas’s hand shot out and caught her in the darkness. He steadied her, then let go.
“Thanks. You saved my life,” she joked.
“Hardly, but if I had, you’d owe me a blood debt.”
“Would I have to pay?”
“Of course. It would be a point of honor. You’d have to save me or be doomed to a coward’s hell.”
“Lucky you just kept me from tripping, or I’d be following you around for years waiting to repay the debt.” She rubbed her arm where he’d touched her. He was stronger than she’d thought he would be. “You lift weights?”
The soft laughter came again. “Yeah, it’s called work. Until I was sixteen, I spent the summers and every weekend working on Reid’s father’s ranch. Once I was old enough, I signed up at the Kirkland place to cowboy when they need extras. Every dime I make is going to college tuition in a year. That’s why I don’t have a car yet. When I get to college, I won’t need it, and the money will go toward books.”
“But you’re just a junior. You’ve still got a year and a half of high school.”
“I’ve got it worked out so I can graduate early. High school’s a waste of time. I’ve got plans. I can make a hundred-fifty a day working, and my dad says he thinks I’ll be able to cowboy every day I’m not in school this spring and all summer.”
She tripped again, and his hand steadied her once more. Maybe it was her imagination, but she swore he held on a little longer than necessary.
“You’re an interesting guy, Lucas Reyes.”
“I will be,” he said. “Once I’m in college, I can still come home and work breaks and weekends. I’m thinking I can take a few online classes during the summer, live at home, and save enough to pay for the next year. I’m going to Tech no matter what it takes.”
“You planning on getting through college in three years, too?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know if I can. But I’ll have the degree, whatever it is, before I’m twenty-two.”
No one her age had ever talked of the future like that. Like they were just passing through this time in their life, and something yet to come mattered far more. “When you are somebody, I think I’d like to be your friend.”
“I hope we will be more than that, Lauren.” His words were so low, she wasn’t sure she heard them.
“Hey, you two deadbeats up there!” Reid yelled. “I got an idea.”
Lauren didn’t want the conversation with Lucas to end, but if she ignored Reid he’d just get louder. “What?”
Reid ran up between them and put an arm over both her and Lucas’s shoulders. “How about we break into the Gypsy House? I hear it’s haunted by Gypsies who died a hundred years ago.”
Tim caught up to them. As always, he agreed with Reid. “Look over there in the trees. The place is just waiting for us. Heard if you rattle a Gypsy’s bones, the dead will speak to you.” Tim’s eyes glowed in the moonlight. “I had a cousin once who said he heard voices in that old place, and no one was there but him.”
“This is not a good idea.” Lauren tried to back away, but Reid held her shoulder tight.
“Come on, Lauren, for once in your life, do something that’s not safe. No one’s lived in the old place for years. How much trouble can we get into?”
Tim’s imagination had gone wild. According to him all kinds of things could happen. They might find a body. Ghosts could run them out, or the spirit of a Gypsy might take over their minds. Who knew, zombies might sleep in the rubble of old houses.
Lauren rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to think of the zombies getting Tim. A walking dead with braces was too much.
“It’s just a rotting old house,” Lucas said so low no one heard but Lauren. “There’s probably rats or rotten floors. It’s an accident waiting to happen. How about you come back in the daylight, Reid, if you really want to explore the place?”
“We’re all going now,” Reid announced, as he shoved Lauren off the road and into the trees that blocked the view of the old homestead from passing cars. “Think of the story we’ll have to tell everyone Monday. We will have explored a haunted house and lived to tell the tale.”
Reason told her to protest more strongly, but at fifteen, reason wasn’t as intense as the possibility of an adventure. Just once, she’d have a story to tell. Just this once...her father wouldn’t find out.
They rattled across the rotting porch steps fighting tumbleweeds that stood like flimsy guards around the place. The door was locked and boarded up. The smell of decay hung in the foggy air, and a tree branch scraped against one side of the house as if whispering for them to stay back.
The old place didn’t look like much. It might have been the remains of an early settlement, built solid to face the winters with no style or charm. Odds were, Gypsies never even lived in it. It appeared to be a half dugout with a second floor built on years later. The first floor was planted down into the earth a few feet, so the second floor windows were just above their heads giving the place the look of a house that had been stepped on by a giant.
Everyone called it the Gypsy House because a group of hippies had squatted there in the ’70s. They’d painted a peace sign on one wall, but it had faded and been rained on until it almost looked like a witching sign. No one remembered when the hippies had moved on, or who owned the house now, but somewhere in its past a family named Stanley must have lived there because old-timers called it the Stanley house.
“I heard devil worshippers lived here years ago.” Tim began making scary movie soundtrack noises. “Body parts are probably scattered in the basement. They say once Satan moves in, only the blood of a virgin will wash the place clean.”
Reid’s laughter sounded nervous. “That leaves me out.”
Tim jabbed his friend. “You wish. I say you’ll be the first to scream when a dead hand, not connected to a body, touches you.”
“Shut up, Tim,” Reid’s uneasy voice echoed in the night. “You’re freaking me out. Besides, there is no basement. It’s just a half dugout built into the ground, so we’ll find no buried bodies.”
Lauren screamed as Reid kicked a low window in, and all the guys laughed.
“You go first, Lucas,” Reid ordered. “I’ll stand guard.”
To Lauren’s surprise, Lucas slipped into the space. His feet hit the ground with a thud somewhere in the blackness.
“You next, Tim,” Reid announced as if he were the commander.
“Nope. I’ll go after you.” All Tim’s laughter had disappeared. Apparently he’d frightened himself.
“I’ll go.” Lauren suddenly wanted this entire adventure to be over with. With her luck, animals were wintering in the old place.
“I’ll help you down.” Reid lowered her into the window space.
As she moved through total darkness, her feet wouldn’t quite touch the bottom. For a moment she just hung, afraid to tell Reid to drop her.
Then, she felt Lucas’s hands at her waist. Slowly he took her weight.
“I’m in,” she called back to Reid. He let her hands go, and she dropped against Lucas.
“You all right?” Lucas whispered near her hair.
“This was a dumb idea.”
She felt him laugh more than she heard it. “That you talking or the Gypsy’s advice? Of all the brains dropping in here tonight, yours would probably be the most interesting to take over, so watch out. A ghost might just climb in your head and let free all the secret thoughts you keep inside, Lauren.”
He pulled her a foot into the blackness as a letter jacket dropped through the window. His hands circled her waist. She could feel him breathing as Reid finally landed, cussing the darkness. For a moment it seemed all right for Lucas to stay close; then in a blink, he was gone from her side.
Now the tiny flashlight offered Lauren some much-needed light. The house was empty except for an old wire bed frame and a few broken stools. With Reid in the lead, they moved up rickety stairs to the second floor, where shadowy light came from big dirty windows.
Tim hesitated when the floor’s boards began to rock as if the entire second story were on some kind of seesaw. He backed down the steps a few feet, letting the others go first. “I don’t know if this second story will hold us all.” Fear rattled in his voice.
Reid laughed and teased Tim as he stomped across the second floor, making the entire room buck and pitch. “Come on up, Tim. This place is better than a fun house.”
Stepping hesitantly on the upstairs floor, Lauren felt Lucas just behind her and knew he was watching over her.
Tim dropped down a few more steps, not wanting to even try.
Lucas backed against the wall between the windows, his hand still brushing Lauren’s waist to keep her steady as Reid jumped to make the floor shake. The whole house seemed to moan in pain, like a hundred-year-old man standing up one arthritic joint at a time.
When Reid yelled for Tim to join them, Tim started back up the broken stairs, just before the second floor buckled and crumbled. Tim dropped out of sight as rotten lumber pinned him halfway between floors.
His scream of pain ended Reid’s laugher.
In a blink, dust and boards flew as pieces of the roof rained down on them and the second floor vanished below them, board by rotting board.
Lucas reached for Lauren as she felt the floor beneath her feet crack and split. Her legs slid down, scraping against the sharp teeth of decaying wood.
The moment before she disappeared amid the tumbling lumber, Lucas’s hand grabbed her arm just above her wrist and jerked hard. She rocked like some kind of human bell as boards continued to fall, hitting her in the face and knocking the air from her lungs.
But Lucas held on. He didn’t let her disappear into the rubble. He’d braced his feet wide on the few inches of floor remaining near the wall and leaned back.
When the dust settled, she looked up. He’d wrapped his free arm around a beam that braced a window. His face was bloody. The sleeve had pulled from his shirt, and she saw a shard of wood like a stake sticking out of his arm, but he hadn’t let her go. His grip was solid.
Tim was crying now, but in the darkness no one could see where he was. He was somewhere below. He had to be hurting, but he was alive. The others had been above when the second floor crumbled, but Tim had still been below.
Reid jumped into the window frame that now leaned out over the remains of the porch. The entire structure looked as if it were about to crash like a hundred deformed pickup sticks dumped from a can.
Reid didn’t look hurt, but with the moon on his face, Lauren had no trouble seeing the terror. He was frozen, afraid to move for fear something else might tumble.
“Call for help.” Lucas’s voice sounded calm amid the echoes of destruction. “Reid! Reach in your pocket. Get your phone. Just hit Redial and tell whoever answers that we need help.”
Reid nodded, but his hand was shaking so badly Lauren feared he’d drop the phone. He finally gripped it in one hand and jumped carefully from the window to the ground below. He yelped a moment after he hit the dirt and complained that he’d twisted his ankle. Then he was yelling into his cell for help. They were still close enough to town to see a few lights in the distance. It wouldn’t be long before someone arrived.
Lucas looked down at Lauren. “Hang on,” he whispered.
She crossed her free hand over where his grip still held her arm. “Don’t worry. I’m not letting go.”
Slowly, he pulled her up until she was close enough to transfer her free hand to around his neck. Her body swung against his and remained there. Nothing had ever felt so good as the solid wall of Lucas to hang on to.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so. Don’t turn loose of me, Lucas. Please, don’t turn loose.”
She felt laughter in his chest. “Don’t worry, I won’t. I got you, mi cielo.”
They inched along the edge of the wall where pieces of what had once been the floor were holding. “Tim?” she called. She tried to shine her light down to see Tim, but there was too much debris below. His crying began to echo through the night, as did Reid talking to Mrs. Patterson on the phone.
“She must have been the last person he called,” Lucas whispered near Lauren’s ear. “So when he hit Redial, he got her.
Lauren brushed her cheek against his. “She’s the last person I’d turn to for help.”
“I agree,” Lucas answered.
Their private conversation amid the chaos helped her relax a bit.
“Send everybody!” Reid kept yelling. “We need help, Mrs. Patterson.” When he hung up he must have dialed his brother because all at once Reid was cussing, blaming the mess they were in on whoever answered.
“Hang on, Lauren,” Lucas whispered against her hair. “I’ll try to reach the window.”
“I’m scared. Don’t let me fall.”
He bumped the top of her head with his chin. “So am I, but I promise I’m not letting you go.”
Finally Lucas reached the window that Reid had dropped from, and he lowered Lauren slowly to the ground outside.
“I got her,” Reid shouted just as car lights began to shine through the trees. Emergency vehicles turned off the main road and headed toward the Gypsy House—one volunteer ambulance, a small fire truck, along with one sheriff’s cruiser and Mrs. Patterson’s old gray Buick tailing the parade.
Lauren watched Reid move toward the men storming through brush.
“We’re all right,” he shouted. “I got Lauren out, but Lucas and Tim are still in the house. I was going in after them next.” When he spotted the sheriff in the half dozen flashlights surrounding him, he added, “I tried to tell them this was a bad idea, sir, but thank God I went in to help Lauren, just in case she got into trouble.”
The first men hurried past Reid, ignoring him, but finally Sheriff Brigman and an EMT stopped.
Men with bright flashlights moved into the house with ropes and a portable stretcher. She could hear Lucas yelling for them to be careful and guiding their steps. Tim was somewhere below, still crying.
Her father shone his light along her body. She could feel warm blood trickling down her face, and more blood dripped down from a gash on her thigh. “I’ll take her from here, son,” he said to Reid as if she were a puppy found in the road. “You all right to walk, Reid?”
“I can make it, sir.” Reid limped, making a show of soldiering through great pain.
“We’ve got the boy,” someone yelled from inside the house. “He’s breathing, but we’ll need the stretcher to get him out. Looks like his leg is broken in more than one place.”
Her father never let go his hold of her as they watched Tim being lifted out of the house. One of the EMTs said that, besides the broken leg, the boy probably had broken ribs. The sound of Tim’s crying was shrill now, like that of a wounded animal.
She listened as her father instructed the ambulance driver to take Reid and Tim. They needed care on the way to the hospital. He picked up Lauren and carried her to his car as if she were still his little girl. “I’ll transport her to the emergency room. She’s got wounds, but she’s not losing much blood.”
“Lucas is hurt, too,” she said as the boy who’d saved her life was helped down from the second floor window. Lucas was the last to leave the haunted house. He’d made sure everyone got out first.
The sheriff nodded. “Make sure he’s stable and put him in my car, too. I can get them both there faster than the ambulance can.”
Two firemen followed his orders.
Lauren looked over her father’s shoulder as Lucas moved clear of the shadow of the house. She’d had far more than the little adventure she’d wanted tonight. When her father set her in the back of his cruiser, she wondered at what point she’d gone wrong and swore for the rest of her life she’d never do something so dumb again.
One of the men from the volunteer fire department bandaged up Lucas’s arm and wrapped something around her leg. The sheriff oversaw the loading of the other two injured, then returned. She could almost feel anger coming off him like steam, but he wouldn’t step out of his role here. Here he was the sheriff. Later he’d be one outraged father.
Wrapped in blankets, she sat in the backseat of her father’s cruiser with Lucas and watched everyone load up like a small army. Mrs. Patterson had tripped in the darkness, and two firemen were taking her home for treatment.
She looked over at Lucas sitting a foot away. He was leaning his head back, not seeming to notice that his forehead dripped blood. He’d saved her and helped bring out Tim. She realized he’d passed her to Reid so he could go back for Tim. No one was patting him on the back and saying things like “great job” as they were to Reid.
Lauren seemed to have been labeled “poor victim” and Lucas was invisible.
“You saved me tonight,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell my dad? He thinks this whole thing was your fault, thanks to Reid.”
“The truth isn’t worth crossing Reid. Let him play the hero. All I care about is that you’re all right. If I spoke up, I might not have a job tomorrow. One word from Reid and the foreman will take me off the list of extras hires, or worse, tell my father to find another job.”
“We’re alive, thanks to you.” She was touched that he worried about her. “The cut on my leg isn’t deep. But I owe you a blood debt for real now.”
“I know.” His white teeth flashed. “I’ll be waiting to collect it. You’ve got to save my life now.”
Her father climbed into the car without saying a word to them. He spoke into his radio and raced toward the county hospital, half an hour away.
Lauren didn’t feel like talking. She knew the sheriff was probably already mentally composing the lecture he planned to give her for the next ten years. Worry over her would be replaced by anger as soon as he knew she was all right. She’d be lucky if he let her out of the house again before she was twenty-one.
In the darkness, she found Lucas’s hand. She didn’t look at him, but for the rest of the ride, her fingers laced with his. They might never talk of this night again, but they both knew that a blood debt bound them together, and sometime in the future she’d pay him back.
