and the babies? Would he spot her lower body, shoot first, and ask questions later?
Sweat poured off her brow and she began to breathe short and fast. She realized she was starting to panic and forced herself to take deep breaths, to calm down, to take things one step at a time.
She began to move her upper body back and forth, trying to get enough momentum to rock forward up onto her hands and then push herself up out of the hole. But she gasped in pain; one of the sharp pieces of wood had found her broken ribs. And she knew for certain now that she was bleeding. She could feel the blood soaking the side of her blouse.
Biting against the pain, ignoring the fact that she was wounded, Bree tried rocking to her left. It worked, giving her just enough room to sharply wrench her weight up onto her right elbow and then her right hand, which found one of the sharp pieces of wood sticking in her ribs. She pushed at it, trying to get it out of the way so she might rock to her right and get her left hand down.
But when she did, the piece of wood snapped away, taking another board with it.
Her right arm and shoulder scraped down through the hole. Her gun went through, too. She heard it clang below in the darkness.
Her left elbow and forearm slid toward gravity, and she began to thrash and grope wildly beneath her.
Chapter
76
For a second or two I thought Carney had heard the noise above me, Bree, no doubt, and I got up my gun, figuring he’d come out of the room to check. But the screaming of babies in that confined space must have masked the sound of the crash, because I heard the woman Kelli say, “Course you will do it, Mommy. You’re a crack whore and we know what crack whores will do.”
“When times get rough and the drugs get thin,” Kevin added.
“I won’t do it!” Cam Nguyen screeched, and I pushed at the passage door, getting it open enough for me to squeeze through into the root cellar.
“Then I’ll make you, Mommy,” Carney said, and I heard a sickening thud that set the babies off all over again.
“That’ll fix her,” Carney’s sister said. “Fix her good, Kenny-Two.”
Gun up, I took two steps toward the open door, sniffing the air, smelling body odor and diapers and fear.
“I’ll get her on her knees,” Carney’s brother, Kevin, said.
I took three more soft steps and then a fourth sideways into the light that streamed from the door, looking straight into the chamber of horrors.
Cam Nguyen was slumped in a chair. Her head swung lazily the way a boxer’s will when he’s been dazed by a blow. Her nipples and lips had been smeared with lipstick, making them grotesquely large and gaudy. The babies squalled on the floor next to the tub, which was now close to full. But where were Carney and the others? They had to be either to the immediate left or right of the door.
I heard the rattle of metal to the left as I eased toward the doorway.
From what sounded like the same side, Carney said, “Is everybody in? The ceremony’s about to begin.”
The muzzle of my gun leading, I did a head bob left. My brain registered the fact that no one was there an instant before white fireworks went off in my head, blinding me as I stumbled forward and crumpled.
Chapter
77
Groping crazily beneath her with her right hand, Bree felt the burned boards under her left elbow splinter and then collapse. As she fell, her right cheek struck the jagged edge of the hole, which stabbed and cut her. Her head twisted from the pain and her right arm snapped up to protect her face from further damage.
That reflex saved her life. She felt something hit her hard beneath her upper arm and elbow; and for an instant she was hung up on something metal, tubular and strong, like a pipe. The rest of her body swung forward beneath it, dislodging her, and she fell a third time.
She was only in the air a foot or two before her shoes smashed against the lip of something, which threw her forward, prone on a molded metal surface. The pain that shot up through her ribs was electric, searing hot, and probing. Her face felt like she’d been clawed.
But Bree wasn’t falling anymore and miraculously she’d managed to keep hold of the Maglite, which shone forward, revealing an old but gleaming Coca-Cola sign leaned up against the stone wall and boxes and piles of dusty junk. Shaking, wincing in pain, aware of the blood trickling down her cheeks, Bree shined the light around, and understood her location and just how close she’d come to dying.
She was up on the hood of a seatless and wheelless old tractor. Falling through the floor, she’d hung up on a roll bar meant to protect the driver. Immediately behind and below the tractor was a harrow with dozens of circular blades meant for breaking up sod. If she’d hit there instead of here, she would have been found impaled and dead.
“I won’t do it!” Cam Nguyen screeched.
Bree heard her much more clearly that time, but again below her. Was there a subbasement? How in God’s name would she get down there? Despite the blows she’d taken, gritting her teeth against the pain, she rolled over, sat up, and threw her legs over the tractor’s dashboard.