“Take the money,” I said. “Just leave her. Don’t—”
I heard a whipping sound and ducked. But he wasn’t striking at me. It was the transmitter. It landed far to my left, toward the valley where the cold air rushed up the side of the mountain. Where was SWAT? The plane?
“Raleigh.” He nuzzled into my hair. “I’m so glad you obeyed.”
I wanted to pull away. But I resisted, still trying to place the voice. Get a sense of his height. Weight. That voice. I turned my head but he jabbed the sharp metallic nose of the barrel.
“Obey the orders,” he whispered. “Then you can have the girl back.”
Grabbing my right elbow, he pushed me forward, walking me toward the trees. We left the trail, and I had to lift my right shoulder to keep the wet tree limbs from swooping into my face. I stumbled forward, for what seemed miles, and then felt water rushing over my boots. Fast and sudden water, a stream washing down the mountain. I kept trying to turn my head and get a glimpse of him, but each time I did he shoved me forward again. My feet sank into another shallow gulley, with another stream.
He told me to stop.
I waited, listening.
Praying. Praying.
His voice was nothing more than a whisper, and I had to strain to hear him over the rushing water. He unlocked the cuffs, the gun still at my back.
“When I start counting, you start running,” he said in the strange whisper. “I’ll count to forty. That’s your head start, Raleigh. Then the hunt begins. I play this game with Courtney. She loves it. You will too.”
“One,” he said.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Two . . . three . . . four . . .”
I ran. My boots slipped. I fell. My knee hit the ground. I leaned forward, trying to stand up.
“. . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . .” He was going faster.
I ran straight into the woods, branches snapping at my eyes. Rain hammered the ground, my lungs felt seared. My throat burned. When I stopped to listen, I was panting too hard to hear. I held my breath. And then I heard him. Crashing through the water.
I started running again, tripping, rolling down the mountain until I hit something. I stood up, one thought streaking across my brain. The plane. Could it see me this deep in the forest? I bolted right, making a blind run in search of that water, that clearing where the plane could spot me. A primal fear flitted between my thoughts like a blade.
Blade.
The blade. I stopped, looking up the hill. His flashlight was cutting through the forest like a scythe. I stepped behind a thick pine tree, the rough bark digging into my back, and squatted, searching inside my left pant leg until my fingers touched the wood-burned letters.
I pulled out the knife and pressed the small button.
The blade flicked out, a menacing sound, and for one split second my mind saw the old man at the truck stop. With my other hand, I picked up a stick. His legs moved under the flashlight beam, his boots kicking through dead wet leaves. I wanted to run. Every cell screamed for it. But his advantages were too many, mine were too few. He walked down the mountain with calm purpose, with a plan. All I had was fear.
He was twenty feet away when he stopped.
I held my breath.
He started down the hill again, slowly, heading toward me. I threw the stick. It landed on the other side of him, the flashlight whipping toward the sound.
In the ambient glow, I could see his right hand raised above the beam. The gun. But I could not see his face. It was dark, obscured.
“I know you’re here, Raleigh.” He was still whispering. “And I’m disappointed. I hoped you would play longer.”
He was stepping across the hillside. I could hear the leather of his boots creaking. But the flashlight was still pointed toward the stick.
I drew a deep breath.
Then he stopped. The beam began to turn in the other direction, moving toward me, and I watched the light become fractured by dark tree trunks, the rain falling from branch to leaf to dirt. He was eight feet away, coming closer, seven, six.
I jumped.
I hit him behind the knees. One of his boots struck my left hip, the other left the ground. I heard the heels clap against each other, the beam of light traversing a wide slow arc, ending in a hard bounce.
The beam shuddered on the forest floor as his body hit the ground, and I heard the sound of air bursting from his lungs and I sank the knife into his flesh. Felt the metal hit bone, an oddly delicate sound.
He howled.
I heard rage. No fear.
I pulled out the knife, sinking it one more time. Then I stood, and I ran.
I ran with a scream suppressed at my collar bone, my shoulders lifting to my ears, waiting for the sound of the gun, the barrel releasing the bullet into my back. I ran, my legs falling through gravity, tumbling down the steep incline, my body slamming into tree trunks, bouncing off. I ran until my boots splashed through the water. I ran the gulley, following the stream that soaked my jeans and tugged at my ankles like quicksand. I ran and the water puddled into a basin, the soil compact, flattening out. I ran, stumbling forward, and heard the earth echoing my footfalls. I ran until I saw the stroboscopic red lights flashing through the trees. I ran, a scared moth fleeing the darkest cave in the forest. I ran.
I ran.
chapter twenty-five
When I opened my eyes, the remnants of a dream hovered between sudden sight and lost sleep. I heard a familiar voice. It was coming from the figure trundling through a wide doorway, and when I realized who it was, pain twisted inside my skull, stabbing my forehead.
“I couldn’t find any organic,” Claire said. “But I got us some muffins. You don’t like it, Charlotte, you go back. I’m about to take the fetal position after all the dead people I saw in that cafeteria—hey, look!” She pointed at me. “Raleigh’s awake.”
Claire the Clairvoyant set a tray on my bed and turned to Aunt Charlotte, who was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, her head bowed, her auburn hair looking as dry as false flames in an electric fireplace.
Claire shook her shoulder. “Charlotte, wake up!”
My aunt startled and something fell from her hands to the floor. She bent to pick it up, rushing over, lifting a blue pitcher from the table beside the bed. She splashed water into a paper cup.
“Drink this,” she said. “All of it.”
“Wait, I—”
She wrapped one hand behind my head, pressing my face toward the cup. I lifted my hand, an IV pinching the skin on the back of my hand. Water dribbled down my chin, soaking the hospital gown.
She poured another cup; I drank that too.
“You’re dehydrated,” she said.
“Where’s Mom?” My throat felt raw.
“She doesn’t know a thing, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m never making that mistake again. How do you feel?”
“My head hurts.”
Claire leaned over the bed. “You want me to get a nurse? I saw one next door giving shots.”
I stared into Aunt Charlotte’s eyes, pleading.
“Yes, Claire,” she said. “Why don’t you go do that.”
Claire walked to the door. She turned left, then suddenly turned right. Seconds later, I saw her circular shape crossing in front of the door, heading left again.
“You don’t like her,” Aunt Charlotte said.
“If she’s a clairvoyant, she should know if I want a nurse.”
“She’s got a good heart.” Aunt Charlotte stroked my fore-head. “She watched your mother for me this morning.”
“What?”
“I didn’t have a choice, Raleigh. Those people from your office called; it was almost three in the morning. They asked to speak to your mother. I said, ‘Whatever it is, tell me, I’m the aunt.’ When your boss said you were in the hospital I almost had my stroke right there. First thing I thought was somebody shot you. I lost your father, now I was going to lose you. What could I do, l
eave your mother alone, with this going on? So I called Claire, told her to stay at the house, and I drove right over here.”
“Claire. You called Claire?”
“Raleigh, I didn’t want your mother waking up to some stranger in the house. And the cats, they were acting very weird. Claire knows animal CPR.”
“But Claire is here.”
“Yes, well . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“What happened?”
“Well, your mother was very polite, talking with that Southern drawl, but she didn’t mince words.”
“What did she say?”
“She told Claire to get the hell out of the house.”
I suddenly felt warm all over. My mother, my hero. “Did she wonder why Claire was there?”
“Yes. I had to lie. I said there’d been a break-in at the store, you were out of town for work again, and I needed to clean up the broken glass,” she said. “Then your mom kicked Claire out and she came down here. I was starting to worry you’d never wake up, stay in a coma the rest of your life. I even started to—well, never mind—you seem fine now. Just like your old self.”
I glanced out the window. The rolling topography of Capital Hill crossed under a sky so blue it was malachite. The autumn leaves glowed with a burnished beauty, and when I turned to Aunt Charlotte, staring into her familiar face, I suddenly remembered the dream, the dream interrupted by Claire’s flat nasal voice talking about muffins.
I had been standing at the dry river rocks again, only this time my father was beside me, lifting a stone, speaking to me. I knew he was about to offer the key to unlock this vault of secrets, when I heard: “I couldn’t find any organic.”
“I had a dream,” I told her. “Dad was in it. He was trying to tell me something.”
“Something like, wake up? I was meditating on that. I’ll bet you were touched by my thoughts.”
“Aunt Charlotte, I keep having this same dream—”
“Dream!” Claire hurried back into the room. “Dream! You are not gonna believe the dream I had.”
I closed my eyes.
“That girl, Raleigh,” she was saying, “the one you’re trying to find? She was in my dream. Know how I know?”
When I didn’t reply, my aunt said, “How, Claire?”
“Because I saw a badger. That’s right. I saw a huge badger. It was staring right at me. Foaming at the mouth. Like it had rabies. It was going to attack me, but I woke up.”
“Pity,” I mumbled.
“Claire,” my aunt said, while throwing me a scolding look, “did you find the nurse?”
“On her way. Raleigh, this badger was so real I could’ve touched it. Just like my vision about the place of fire. We are talking animal sacrifices here. Live creatures, getting thrown into the fire.”
“Would you just—” I began.
My aunt laid her hand on my arm. “Raleigh needs to rest.” She leaned down, kissing my forehead, a scent of patchouli clinging to her tunic.
The object in her left hand grazed my forearm. Perpendicular planes of pale crystals intersected to form a perfect cross. Staurolite. A mineral cross, Mother Nature’s crucifix. My aunt had been praying.
I looked up at her. “Check on Mom?”
“First thing,” she said.
After they left, I waited for the nurse. After twenty minutes, I pressed the yellow call button on the steel bed rail. Ten minutes later, I pressed it again. After that, I pressed it at every count to sixty.
Seventeen minutes later, the nurse appeared.
She wore a white apron over her white uniform, her white wedge shoes squeaking across the polished floor. Reaching up behind me, she flicked off the call button.
“You only have to ring it once,” she said, brusquely. “What’s the matter?”
“Why am I here?”
She stared at me. “What do you mean, why?”
“Is anything broken?”
She squeaked to the foot of the bed, lifting the electronic chart, tapping the LCD screen with a plastic stylus. Between stabs of the stylus, she pursed her thin lips. Her fingers carried no rings, no jewelry around her neck that said whether she belonged to somebody, anybody, and I imagined her going home at night, drained of good will. I took a deep breath, releasing it slowly.
“Multiple contusions, erratic heartbeat . . .” She looked up. “I don’t see anything else, but the doctor can tell you more.”
“When does he come in?”
“She. Dr. Michaela Smith’s on rounds today.”
“And when does Dr. Smith come in?”
“She’s a doctor. They come when they feel like it.”
The nurse walked out of the room.
I counted to ten, then pulled the IV from the back of my left hand. The quarter-inch probe dripped clear liquid onto the white bed sheet, and I pressed my right index finger against the burning vein, staunching the blood flow. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My left ankle was mottled with purple bruises. So was the right one. But they didn’t hurt, which told me I was fine or full of drugs.
I shuffled to the bathroom, feeling dizzy and nauseated, and found my clothes stuffed into two white plastic bags on a metal hook. My jeans were wet, the cuffs full of sandy soil and torn leaves, and my white socks were brown, cold, but my sweatshirt was almost dry.
I finger-combed my knotted hair, looking at myself in the mirror. Under the fluorescent light, my pupils waxed and waned. I splashed cold water on my face, then walked down the hall, feeling less dizzy but more nauseated. Nobody was at the nurse’s station. I walked back to my room, sat on the bed, and pressed the call button six times.
When the nurse appeared again, standing in the door, her large face bore an expression of peevish offense. That was followed surprise.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she said.
“I’m checking out.”
“You can’t check out. The doctor has to check you out.”
“Will you call her, please?”
“No, I won’t call her.”
My memory of last night was vague, but I recalled talking to someone who wasn’t there. I presumed it was by cell phone. “I’d like to have my cell phone back, too, before I leave.”
She placed her hands on her hips. “Who do you think you are?”
“Nobody. I just want to go home.”
“This is unacceptable, totally unacceptable. I’m calling the doctor.”
Funny how that worked, I thought, as she pivoted with a rubber squeak and left the room. I counted to fifteen, then walked down the hall in the opposite direction of the nurse’s station, deciding that McLeod would have taken my cell phone, if I’d had one.
Although my vision was blurry, I squinted and saw the green exit signs for the stairwell. Following the stairs down to the lobby, I came out next to the gift shop. A bank of pay phones waited on the wall. I asked the operator to make a collect call, then heard the operator ask Lucia Lutini if she would accept the charges.
The operator thanked me for using AT&T.
“Raleigh, are you all right?” Lucia said.
“I’m fine. Can you pick me up?”
“They’re releasing you?”
“Pretty much.”
In the background, I could hear a flurry of voices, the emphatic inflected Italian that Lucia answered almost as emphatically. I waited. She came back on the phone and said, “I’m down at Danato’s. My dad wants to know if you want a sandwich.”
The warm foil in my hands smelled of sage and caramelized onions, and I decided that if I was salivating, I must be fine. Lucia drove her Camry down Madison Avenue, the hills so steep I had to press my feet into the floorboard to keep from sliding forward on the leather seat. My left ankle throbbed.
“You left without the doctor’s permission?” she said.
“What makes you think that?”
“No wheelchair. They wheel people out, particularly in your condition.” She glanced over. “Do you remember anything from last n
ight?”
“The sound of water. Red lights. Somebody screaming.”
“That was you.”
“I was screaming?”
She nodded. “You’re lucky to be alive. After the perp tossed your transmitter, we lost you. The plane reported two images, then the figures split up. One ran down the mountain. You.”
“Did we get him?”
“We lost him. We didn’t get the money either.”
“We had eleven agents out there. How did we lose him?”
She stopped at the light on Second Avenue. “All those $10,000 bundles he told you drop along the trail? It was brilliant. It meant one agent stayed there, waiting for a pickup. He split our forces. By the time you got to the top, we had one guy left and he was neutralized.”
“Neutralized?”
“The perp didn’t kill him,” she said. “But he knocked him out, then took his gun and radio and cuffed him to a tree. The lab is running the cuffs, trying to source them, along with the duct tape.”
“Didn’t the plane’s infrared catch this?”
“The plane was following you, remember? McLeod’s orders were to save the agent, not the money.”
“But where did we lose him?”
She gave one of her Italian gestures, signifying an unknown. “Somewhere on that mountain.”
“He just disappeared?”
“It sounds better than saying we lost him, and the money. The VanAlstynes took it as you might imagine. The kidnapper got away with the money, didn’t release their daughter, and now there’s absolutely no reason to expect we’ll hear from him again.”
She pulled into the parking lot by the waterfront, stopping behind the Barney Mobile. Somebody had driven it over.
“What about the birth father, we connected him to this?” I said.
“It was a good theory,” she said. “He’s in custody, denying any involvement. And . . .”
“And what?”
“I watched tapes of his interrogation, Raleigh. He’s got some weird religious convictions, certainly. But he was in custody while you were on that mountain. And I don’t believe he’s capable of working with an accomplice.”
The Rivers Run Dry Page 22