Winston hit his mother in the face and told her to make some pretty noise.
Luther crying angry tears now.
His mother said something that caused him to hit her again, and this time, she cried out and made a strange noise.
Winston didn’t hit her again, just moved over her faster and faster.
Rufus said, “Close your eyes, Katie. Go someplace else.”
Ben said, “Little girl, if you close your eyes, I’ll f**king cut you out of your skin.”
Luther clambered to his feet, took two steps down the dune, and stopped.
He turned around, went back to his hiding spot.
Wept bitterly into his shirt.
If he ran down to the bonfire and tried to stop this from happening, he’d only get hurt, tied up, maybe even killed.
He was five years old.
Tiny.
Weak.
Slow.
He couldn’t stop anything.
Couldn’t save his family from these terrible men.
The complete helplessness crushed him under terror and shame—a weight he would never be rid of.
Luther looked back toward the bonfire.
Winston was on his feet now, pulling up his trousers.
“Sorry about the sloppy seconds, brother,” Winston said, taking the shotgun from Ben.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I plan on breaking new ground.”
“Excuse me?”
Ben pointed at Katie.
“Oh…all right then.”
“You son of a bitch!” Rufus cried. “She’s eight!”
Ben smiled. “That’s what I call a selling point.”
“I’ll kill you,” Rufus said.
Ben squatted down in front of Luther’s father. He cocked back his fist and swung down, hitting Rufus in the face with a blow that cracked bone.
Luther couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t just sit there and watch this happen for another second. Anything, maybe even death, would be better.
He crawled down the front side of the dune, the voices getting louder and clearer.
“Let me tell you what’s about to happen,” Ben said to Rufus. “This is your last hour of living. In that hour, you’re gonna watch me hurt your little girl. Hurt her so good. And you better watch every f**king second. And then—”
“Why?” Rufus screamed. “What have we ever done to you?”
“Didn’t you hear what Winston told you? It’s fate. All your miserable lives you been racing toward this moment. Toward this awful end. And now it’s here.”
Rufus was hysterical, blubbering. “We’re a good family. We’re decent people. We’ve never hurt anyone. Why?”
Maxine lay unmoving in the sand, and as Luther crawled closer, he wondered if she was dead.
“‘Cause we like it, you stupid f**k,” Ben seethed.
Then he stood, pulled out his pocket knife, and flicked open the blade.
Luther crawling faster and faster through the sand.
Ben stared down at Katie.
“I don’t think I got your name, sweetheart.”
Katie squirming, trying to scoot away.
Rufus said, “I’ll do anything you want. Anything. Please don’t do this to my little girl.”
“I’m Ben,” Ben said to Katie, kneeling down beside her.
Luther was twenty feet away.
Ben grabbed Katie by the back of her shirt and dragged her toward him through the sand.
He rolled Katie over onto her back, her wrists bound, arms pinned underneath her.
She was crying, and Rufus begging, and Maxine still trapped in her horrified daze.
Luther stopped.
Ten feet behind Ben.
Hidden in shadow just outside the ring of illuminated sand.
As Ben cut into the side of Katie’s yellow swimsuit, the girl began to hyperventilate.
Luther telling himself to get up, run full speed at the man, claw his eyes, hit him, just do something to make this stop—
“Ben, you hear that?” Winston said.
Ben looked up and down the length of the beach.
It took him a moment, but Luther heard it too over the constant crush of the breakers—the low rumble of an engine.
In the distance, a pair of headlights appeared, and then another.
Winston walked over to Rufus and put the barrel of the shotgun against his throat.
“Where are the keys to the truck?”
“In the ignition.”
“Maybe they won’t even stop,” Ben said.
“Maybe they f**king will. Maybe there’s a half-dozen people coming to crash the beach party. We’ll never get off this island if word gets out.”
Ben closed his knife, slipped it into his pocket. Then he scooped Katie up and threw her over his shoulder.
“No!” Rufus screamed.
“What are you doing?” Winston asked.
“Taking a little something for the road.”
The twin growl of the approaching trucks was getting louder—fifty, maybe seventy-five yards away and closing fast.
“Kill ‘em,” Ben said, stumbling toward the truck.
He dropped Katie in the bed and climbed in behind the wheel.
“No,” Winston said. “If the trucks don’t stop, we’ll come back.”
Winston rushed around to the passenger-side door as the Dodge grumbled to life.
The tires slung a stream of sand and the Dodge whipped around and sped off into the darkness like a phantom—no headlights, no taillights.
Rufus screaming after his daughter.
The oncoming trucks roared past, one on each side of the bonfire, and in that half-second of firelit illumination, Luther saw the truck beds crowded with teenagers hollering and drunk, beer bottles raised to the sky.
A midnight race down the beach.
Luther got up and started toward the bonfire.
Rufus still screaming from the bottom of his soul, “My baby girl! My baby girl!”
Maxine was coming to her feet, and when she saw Luther, she said, “Darling! You’re alive!”
He ran into his mother’s arms and she held him tight for five seconds.
Shaking.
Sobbing.
Then Maxine went over to Rufus and tore at his knots until the rope came loose.
“We have to go,” she said. “They’ll come back.”
“We can’t leave,” he said, sitting up. “Not without Kate.”
“They were going to kill all of us, Rufus. They’ll finish the job if they come back and we’re here.”
“I’m not leaving my little girl!”
Maxine stared north up the beach, the noise of the trucks steadily dwindling away.
“I’m taking Luther, and we’re going to the sheriff’s house. Stay if you want.”