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“Get her out of here,” Otto’s dad barked, gesturing toward me.
“What?” I stuttered as hands pushed me gently away from the hole in the floor.
“You got anythin’ you need in here?” Otto asked, coming up beside me.
“Everything,” I said faintly, looking around the room.
“Not carryin’ out the couch,” he replied dryly. “Could you be more specific?”
“My suitcase.” It was behind one of the men, and I would’ve gone to get it, but before I could move, Otto had his hand on my shoulder, stopping me from moving any further into the room.
He strode over to it and made sure it was zipped before lifting it carefully off the floor with one hand.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my coat off the couch. “You can put this on outside.”
I followed him numbly, shoving my boots on by the door as we went. Once we were outside, he helped me into my coat and led me to the passenger seat of the truck.
“What’s going on?” I asked quietly, looking out at my cabin. It was unnerving by being so close to him. I’d imagined him so often that it was startling to actually have him there.
“Those guns are wired,” he replied angrily through his teeth, helping me with my jacket.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means they’re rigged to explosives.” He stared at me, willing me to understand. “Bombs, Esther. You were livin’ in a place with no electricity and fuckin’ bombs under your livin’ room.”
I wanted to tell him that of course I knew what the wordexplosivesmeant, but I couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying. Of course there weren’t explosives under the floor. Why in the world would someone put explosives under the floor? I was pretty sure it had been my dad that put those guns there, because I wasn’t even sure who else knew about the cabin, but even though I wasn’t surewhyhe’d put them there, I knew he wouldn’t put a bomb in the house where his daughter was living. That wasabsurd. He was strict, yes, but he wasn’tcrazy.
My dad wouldn’t even know where to get explosives. He owned a nursery for goodness’ sake.
Our attention was diverted when the men poured back outside, coming down the steps and toward the vehicles. A couple of them walked a little toward the woods, watching the ground as they pulled phones out of their pockets.
Otto’s dad and the big guy walked toward us. As I watched them, I realized why the big one looked familiar—he looked like a slightly older version of Otto.
“That’s my brother Micky,” Otto said as I continued to watch them. “The loudmouth one is my brother Rumi.”
“Rumi looks like your dad,” I mumbled dumbly. “You don’t.”
“Got his eyes. Not the color—the shape,” Otto replied distractedly as they reached us.
“Callin’ in reinforcements,” Otto’s dad said. He looked at me and held out his hand. “I’m Tommy.”
“Esther,” I replied automatically, shaking his hand. Politeness had been ingrained in me since I was born.
“Nice to meet you, sweetheart.” He smiled, and I realized that Otto had also gotten that from his dad. “Sorry we’re meetin’ like this.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said honestly. The older man somehow put me at ease while his son—whom I’d actually been wishing for—didn’t.
“Well,” Tommy said with a sigh. “Those crates are wired so that if we tried to get down there or take any of ’em, they’d blow the fuck up.”
“Are you sure?” I asked dubiously.
“Pretty fuckin’ sure,” Otto’s brother Micky mumbled.
“We’ve got someone comin’ out that has some experience with this shit,” Tommy said with a nod. “He’ll take care of it.”
I stared at the cabin. “And then it’ll be safe to go back inside?” I asked, thinking of all the food I had inside. The stacks of firewood I’d brought in that morning. The phone that I’d left on the table like an idiot.
“Should be,” Tommy confirmed.
