Cloaked in Malice by Annette Blair Page B

hygiene, with a gold tooth that glinted in the moonlight.
    What was this? Depp without makeup?
    He wrenched my wrist, raised my arm, my throbbing hand between his smile and my fear—mine, Madeira Cutler’s fear, because I knew, even if Bepah didn’t, what would happen next.
    And it began. Caveman brought his knife blade to rest at the base of the ring finger on my right hand.
    One of us screamed.

Fourteen

What the “Utility Suit” of England, the “Victory Suit” of America, and “Everyman’s Clothing” of Germany had in common was their economic use of fabric and simplicity of design.
—GERDA BUXBAUM

    I came out of my trance screaming louder than I thought I could, my right ring finger still throbbing, Nick holding me tight while he soothed me uselessly, and finally kissed me to stop my screams.
    I presumed that when I started kissing him back, he knew his ploy had worked. Still, he took his time letting me go. “Are you all right?” he finally whispered, his lips an inch from mine.
    I raised my right hand, surprised there was no blood—I’d never seen it tremble like that—and saw my healthy ring finger encircled by my mother’s wedding ring. “I’m all right. Where’s Paisley? More important, where’s that shirt?”
    “She’s got it inside.”
    We found her curled in the chair I’d seen her Bepah hold her in, wearing his shirt, her own on the floor by the chair.
    “It belonged to your Bepah,” I said. “Was he your grandfather?”
    Paisley wiped her eyes with his shirttails and nodded. “Can we leave this place for now, but can we come back later? I need a break, but I’m not done here.”
    “You’ve got it,” Nick said, helping her up. “Are you all right?”
    She smoothed the shirt’s worn sleeve. “I am now.”
    “Ready to talk?” I asked.
    “No, thanks. But I will be. First I need to sort some things in my mind.”
    Nick left the door open as he went out to the dirt road and used a pair of binoculars to look around the island. He even climbed a tree to get a better look, then he jumped down to land in front of us. “Can you find the farm from here?” he asked. “I presume you’ve seen the shack before, but not in years maybe.”
    “You’re right. I had no idea it was here when I lived on the farm, which isn’t to say that I didn’t know about it before the farm.”
    Ah, progress. I hoped.
    Less than a mile later, we saw the farm for the first time. “That’s it,” Paisley said. “That’s where I grew up.”
    Part fortress, part compound, part prison, the place didindeed have all the trappings of a farm with an old house at the center of the acreage. With two floors, an attic, and what looked to be a central chimney, it sat on a bit of a hill with a small turret at its peak.
    Structured neither of wood nor brick, the house was covered with those rippled shingles made of a pressed wood substitute from the Depression. It brought to mind the study of clothes rationing and the way make-do-outfits changed fashion history, influencing how we all dress today.
    Still, the house itself was odd. It was built like wood might not have been available, though the place was surrounded by trees. I supposed they might have been saplings back then and I guessed they needed a forest to keep the place hidden.
    Nick stepped toward the fence and Paisley screamed.
    “There’s a keypad here,” he said, taking a tiny kit from his pocket. With it, he connected some kind of stylus to the keypad, and hit a few buttons on both. We heard a zap, a click, and a set of double doors opened wide. He turned to us. “Not only are we in, Paisley, but the fence is no longer electrified.”
    “I’ll take your word for it,” she said.
    “She doesn’t believe you,” I said. She had plenty of good reasons not to. But Nick didn’t know all of that yet.
    He grabbed at the fence and shook it, while her newest scream became a whimper.
    “I had no idea how hard this would be for you, Paisley,” I said.