He put his wrists together, extending them toward Jude. "Go ahead. Tie me up."His voice cracked and he started crying. "Better show my dad I can take my punishments like a man now."
At that moment, I felt my heart break. I wanted to wrap my arms around Calvin and tell him it was going to be all right, but it wasn't. Nothing was all right. He wasn't all right. This warped, damaged version of him was beyond help. I wondered what Mr. Versteeg would say when he found out what Calvin had done.
Would he feel responsible? I didn't think so. He would shun Calvin, wanting to distance himself from his son's disgrace.
Jude twisted Calvin's arms behind his back.
I started crying too. I felt hollow and uprooted inside, but I didn't think I was sad. Or maybe I was. Sad because I had loved Calvin, and I didn't understand how the boy I'd loved had grown into someone so brutal and destructive. Sad because I would have done anything to help him. But now I wasn't sure anyone could have helped him.
"Where are Lauren's belongings?" Jude said. "Where did you put them?"
"In the ditch behind Idlewilde,” Calvin answered with soft resignation.
"I was just there,” I said. "I didn't see them."
"There's a loose board on the underside of the footbridge." Calvin's shoulders were slumped, his chin tucked against his chest. "If you wiggle it free, there's a hollow space up there. I put everything in an envelope."
It was so unlike Calvin to help us, even though he realized he was cornered and there was no way out. Had it taken defeat to change him? Before I could untangle Calvin's motivations, Jude ushered me toward the cabin with a jerk of his chin.
"Let's tie him up first."
Inside Idlewilde, Jude shoved Calvin into one of the kitchen chairs. I went upstairs to get the rope Calvin had used to tie Jude, and together we secured Calvin's wrists and ankles to the chair. He didn't struggle. He sat unmoving, eyes blank, staring into near space.
He said, "1 guess this proves 1 was never good enough. Not good enough to be the guy you wanted. Not good enough for Stanford. Not even good enough to get away with murder." He laughed, a choked, forlorn sound. "Too bad 1 wasn't born a girl. Korbie's been getting away with murder her whole life."
Jude turned to me. "Show me the ditch."
CHAPTER FORTY
Jude and I knocked on every board under the footbridge. We double-checked our work. But each board was nailed tight.
"He lied,” Jude said. "There's nothing here.”
”Why would he lie?"
Jude and I looked at each other. And then we bolted for the ladder, hoisting ourselves out of the ditch as fast as we could.
I made it to Idlewilde first, racing into the kitchen where we'd left Calvin tied to the chair. My feet stopped working at the sight of Calvin swinging idly by the neck from the kitchen chandelier. Behind me Jude cursed, and rushed forward, uprighting the tipped chair below Calvin's twitching feet, jumping onto it to cut down the body.
"Knife!" he ordered.
I grabbed one from the drawer and Jude snatched it out of my hand, sawing viciously at the rope. The last fibers snapped apart and Calvin fell to the floor, limbs sprawled.
I probed his neck for a pulse. Nothing. I tried his wrists, then went back to his neck, pushing my fingers against the stubble under his throat. At last I felt a weak but steady beat. "He's alive!" Jude gazed down at Calvin's open but vacant eyes. Both pupils were fully dilated, making his eyes appear almost entirely black. A slurred, blubbering noise slipped past his lips. Clear fluid drained from his nose.
"I don't think we got to him fast enough,” Jude said, kneeling beside me and gently turning my head away.
Tears filmed my eyes. "What's the matter with him?" "Brain damage, I think."
"Is he going to be okay?" I asked, crying harder.
"No,” Jude answered truthfully. "No, I don't think he is."
Time seemed to expand, slowing down to a crawl, and as I watched Calvin's body convulse on the floor, a tidal wave of memories surged through me. They say that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. They never tell you that when you watch someone you once loved dying, hovering between this life and the next, it's twice as painful, because you're reliving two lives that traveled one road together.
One blink later, time contracted, snapping me back to the kitchen. I remembered why the deafening clap, clap, clap of a helicopter thundered overhead. I remembered why my hands and feet throbbed with cold, why Jude's blood was streaked across my coat sleeves.
I grabbed Jude's hand and together we ran outside, squinting against the gale-force winds blowing down from the helicopter hovering over the clearing behind Idlewilde.
"It looks like a private helicopter,” Jude yelled at me above the engine's whine.
"That's Mr. Versteeg's helicopter!" I cried back.
"I see two search and rescue volunteers on the ground and one man with a rifle." He pointed at the shadows at the far end of the yard, directly below the chopper. "They must have rappelled down."
Two figures swaddled in red, and wearing white helmets, darted across Idlewilde's snowy lawn. I recognized the man behind them, the man carrying the rifle. Deputy Keegan. He and Mr. Versteeg hunted elk together every year in Colorado.
I cried out in relief, waving frantically. They couldn't hear me over the helicopter, but they had flashlights. They would see us any second now.
"You'll tell the police about Calvin,” Jude said urgently. "You'll show them the map."
Hot tears of joy streamed down my face. It was over. The nightmare was finally over. "Yes."
Jude said, "I'm sorry I have to do this, Britt."
Then he grabbed me from behind and pressed Calvin's gun into my hairline above my ear. Using my body as a shield, he dragged me backward, away from the search and rescue volunteers and Deputy Keegan, who hustled through the snow toward us.
"Stay back or I'll shoot her,” Jude yelled.
A sick feeling climbed up my throat, but I managed to croak, "Jude? What are you doing?"
"I said stay back!" Jude shouted at the men again. "I'm holding Britt Pheiffer hostage, and I will shoot her if you don't do exactly what I say."
A spotlight glared down at us from the hovering chopper, momentarily blinding me. The whirling blades gusted snow off the branches, and I raised my arm to block it. Why was Jude telling them I was his hostage? We should be running toward them, not away.
Jude hauled me into the forest, his arm latched painfully across my chest. He weaved erratically through the trees, but the spotlight found us easily. It also made visible the bold contrast of Jude's red blood splattered on the pristine snow at our feet. His wound was bleeding more heavily.