Chapter 3: Don't Be Afraid
The youngest one was crying. He tried to hide it, turning his face toward the wall, but Maggie saw the way his shoulders shook, and she had spent too many years around frightened children not to recognize it. She walked across the barn floor, her shoes stirring the dust, and knelt down in front of him. Her knees protested. She ignored them.
"Look at me," she said, gently.
He looked up. His face was young and dirty, with a bruise darkening along one cheekbone. His eyes were red. "Ma'am," he whispered. "Ma'am, I don't want to die in this barn."
"You are not going to die in this barn," Maggie said. She said it the way she had once told a terrified first-grader that the thunderstorm would pass: as a fact, not a hope. "My name is Maggie Holloway. I have lived on Miller Road for fifty-one years, and I do not leave people in barns. Do you understand me?"
He nodded. "I'm Danny. Danny O'Connell."
"Danny," Maggie said, "I need you to listen to me very carefully. I am going to help you. All of you. But I need to know what happened, and I need to know how much time we have. So take a breath, and tell me."
The big man with the scarred knuckles spoke. "Ma'am, I'm Tom Reyes. I'm the road captain of the Iron Prairie. We're a veterans' riding club, out of Topeka. We were riding through on Highway 36 two nights ago, minding our own business, when we saw something at a rest stop. A truck, being stripped. Men working fast, taking parts off a stolen rig. We stopped to look, and that was our mistake. They jumped us. There were more of them than us, and they had pipes. When we woke up, we were here, chained to this floor."
The man with the bandaged head nodded. "I'm Sam Whitfield. I'm a medic. They took our phones, our wallets, our bikes. They said if we kept quiet, they'd let us go eventually. I don't think they meant it." Tom looked down at his chained ankle. "I have a wife in Topeka," he said. "Her name is Carla. We have two boys, nine and eleven. I told them I'd be home by Friday. I always come home when I say I will. If I don't call, Carla will worry. She knows the roads. She knows what can happen out there." His voice roughened. "I keep thinking about my boys asking where their dad is, and nobody having an answer." Maggie put a hand on his shoulder. "Your boys will see you again, Tom. I am going to make sure of it."
The older man, Earl Boone, added quietly, "They come twice a day. They bring water, sometimes food. They keep us alive because dead men raise questions. But they told us plain: if anyone comes looking, or if we make trouble, it ends differently."
Maggie listened, her face calm, her hands steady. Inside, she was furious. She had spent her life believing that the world was mostly decent, and that the indecent parts could be handled with firmness and common sense. Four men chained in a barn a mile from her house was a challenge to everything she believed, and she met it the way she met every challenge: by deciding what to do next.
"First," she said, "you need water. And food. And I need to see those injuries."
She hurried back to the house, Biscuit trotting beside her, and returned within twenty minutes with a basket: four bottles of water, sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, apples, a first-aid kit, and a blanket. The men ate like men who had not eaten properly in two days, and Maggie tended Sam's head wound with steady hands, cleaning it and rebandaging it, while Tom watched her with something like wonder. Sam leaned back against the wall, wincing as Maggie tied off the bandage. "I was a medic in the Army," he said. "I patched up men in worse shape than me, in worse places than this. I kept telling myself to stay calm, to check the others, to keep track of the time. That's what they teach you. But it's different when you're the one chained to the floor, and the men who did it come back twice a day to make sure you haven't moved." He managed a tired smile. "You did a good job with this bandage, ma'am. Better than some of the field kits I've seen."
"Ma'am," Tom said, "you shouldn't be here. These men are dangerous. If they catch you—"
"Tom Reyes," Maggie said, "I am seventy-six years old. I have faced down a school board, a tornado, and a classroom full of sixth graders on the last day before summer. I am not afraid of Roy Beckett's crew." She looked at each of them in turn. "Don't be afraid," she said, and her voice was warm and iron at once. "I'll save you. I promise." Earl Boone watched her with quiet eyes. "Ma'am, would you mind if I said a prayer?" he asked. "Not a long one. Just a word of thanks. I've been praying since they put us here, and I believe the Lord sent you. I believe He sent you down this road this morning on purpose." Maggie bowed her head, and Earl prayed in a low, steady voice, thanking God for water and bread and a woman who had not walked away. When he finished, the barn felt a little less dark. Maggie stood up, brushing the dust from her knees. "Amen," she said. "Now let's get to work."
She left them with the water, the food, and the blanket, and with something else: the knowledge that someone knew they were there, and that someone was coming back. As she walked home down Miller Road, the sun high now, Biscuit at her heels, Maggie Holloway was already planning. She would need help. She would need to be careful. She would need to make a phone call. But first, she needed to think, because the men in that barn were counting on her, and Maggie Holloway had never yet let anyone down who was counting on her.