Long lost

I didn't have time to explain. I had to get them outside before the fumes spread farther and the house exploded. With one last frantic blow, I knocked away the ring that held Kate to the wall.

She and Jason were too frightened to move.

I grabbed their chains and dragged them toward the gap in the doorway. I squeezed into the tu

Daylight gleamed through the open trapdoor.

"You're almost free, Kate! Jason, you'll soon be out of here!"

But as we started up the stairs, Jason gaped and jerked back. He screamed. Above us, a shadow loomed into view, blocking part of the light. Then the light was blocked totally as Petey slammed the trapdoor shut.

18

Smoke billowed thicker from the fake light switch. I coughed but couldn't clear my lungs. A rumble above the trapdoor warned me that Petey was sliding the heavy workbench onto it. I drew my pistol and shot toward the noise. As four bullet holes appeared in the trapdoor, I realized in dismay that the muzzle flashes from my pistol might detonate the fumes.

My ears rang from the shots. Gasoline now covered most of the floor. Frantic, I looked around for a way to get out. Above the laundry sink, the boarded-over window caught my attention. I ran back for the hammer, raced toward the laundry sink, and pried the boards from the window.

It was the type that had to be pulled up on an angle and held in place by a hook in the ceiling. When I opened it, I heard the wind, which had become even stronger since I'd entered the house. Feeling a gust hit my face, I lifted Jason. He struggled as I pushed him through the opening. I lifted Kate, shocked by how little she weighed. The sight of the outdoors, of freedom, gave her some life. With greater energy, she squirmed through the window's opening, desperate to get away from me.

Any moment, I feared, a searing blast would rip me apart. I climbed onto the sink, and just as I shoved my chest through the opening, the sink pulled away from the wall, crashing under my weight. I grabbed a branch on a shrub and dangled. The branch bent. I sank.

I clawed at the earth, kept slipping back into the basement, braced my elbows against each side of the window, and stopped. Below me, the concrete wall tore my jeans as I kneed against it, struggling to squirm upward. Even with the wind at my face and the smoke coming past me through the window, I smelled the gasoline.

I grabbed another branch and pulled myself hand over hand through the opening. But the buckle on my gun belt wedged against the sill. I tried to raise my hips, working to ease the buckle over the sill. I heard it scrape on the concrete. I sucked in my stomach, raised my hips as high as I could, felt the buckle slip free, and tugged forward harder, inching through the opening. My hips came through. My thighs. As soon as I was on my handstand knees, I surged up.

Adrenaline burned my muscles as I raced from the bushes at the side of the house. I saw Petey's truck, which the boards over the window had prevented me from hearing when he'd returned to the house. I didn't see Kate and Jason, but I was certain that, even dazed, they'd have known enough to run in the opposite direction from the truck. I whirled to charge after them toward the back of the house, to cross the clearing and reach the cover of the forest…

And found myself ten feet from Petey, who aimed a shotgun at my chest.

He trembled with rage.

I couldn't draw my pistol and shoot before he pulled the trigger. Even if I hit him, my 9-mm bullet might not kill him, but with a shotgun at ten feet, he was sure to blow my chest apart.

"Stop, Petey!" With my beard, I couldn't be sure he recognized me. "It's me! It's Brad!"

Even before I shouted, his eyes had narrowed. He looked startled. Straining to see past my beard, he realized who I was.

The wind buffeted us so hard, I could barely hear him murmur, "Brad."

"Listen to me! Did they tell you who Lester was?" I shouted, doing the only thing I could think of to distract him from shooting. "Do you know why they took you?"

"Lester," he murmured.

"Did they tell you Lester was Orval and Eunice's only child?"

Smoke poured from the basement window.

Moving away from it, I had to keep distracting him. "Did they tell you he died, that they went crazy with grief?"

The house would soon explode.

"They'd already lost three children to stillbirths!" I kept my voice raised, inching toward the trees. "The rest of the Dants were dead! Eunice couldn't conceive any longer. Lester was their only chance of continuing the family line."

Petey sighted along the shotgun's barrel. "Lester."

As smoke billowed, I moved closer to the trees. "They were desperate to replace him. But they couldn't do it in Brockton. That was too close to home. They might have been recognized."

Petey kept pace with me, the shotgun aimed at my chest.

"So they set out on the interstate, driving from one town to another. They waited for God to direct them, to put a boy of the same age before them. They tried one town after another. They crossed from Indiana into Ohio. They passed Columbus. They came to Woodford." I spoke faster, more intensely. "We'll never know what made them leave the interstate and pick our town. Something must have seemed a sign from God. As they drove this way and that, they turned a corner, and there you were, all by yourself, pedaling down a street that seemed deserted."

" 'Can you tell us how to get to the interstate?'" Petey said it with such bitterness. " 'Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the end of the world?'"

The smoke worsened. I tasted it as I neared the trees.

He moved with me, his finger looking tighter on the shotgun.

"They took you, and they put you in that underground room, and they told you your name was Lester, and they punished you if you didn't act like their son."

"Lester."

I thought I saw flames beyond the smoke at the basement window.

" This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' Luke, fifteen, twenty-four," Petey said.

"When you told me you'd been molested, I thought you meant sexually."

I took another step.

So did Petey.

The wind gusted harder.

"But you didn't mean sexually. You meant molested in your mind. In your soul. They wanted you to be Lester so much that they beat you and starved you; they treated you like an animal, until you didn't know who you were. It was so awful that in the end you were ready to be anybody they wanted you to be as long as they didn't hurt you, as long as they took away your bodily wastes and gave you something to eat."

"They taught me the good book," Petey said. " The truth shall make you free.' John, eight, thirty-two."

"The truth is, you can be free. I'll get help for you, Petey! It's not too late! Once the police understand why you did what you did, they'll want you to get help, too. I promise you, life can be better. Don't let Orval and Eunice destroy you again. Stop being what they made you into, Petey."

"Don't call me Petey!"

My voice broke. "I can't tell you how sorry I am. I know that your life changed because of me, that everything would have been different if I hadn't sent you home from that baseball game! But, damn it, we were just kids. How was I to know that the Dants were going to grab you? Nobody could have known about them. You were just my little brother tagging along. I didn't mean for it to happen, Petey." Tears streamed down my face. "There wasn't a night since you disappeared that I didn't beg God to bring you back safe, that I didn't plead for a second chance. Let me make it up to you, Petey. Please, let me try to give you the life that Orval and Eunice took from you."