It made him angry to think it. What wrong turns might they have made? What other decisions might have been reached, if he hadn’t accepted her intuitive flashes and gut feelings as truth?
Corvus had warned him about this. Corvus had warned him she’d retained some “permanent psychological damage.” What delusions, what rituals of comfort, had she picked up along the way? Or. . . what if this was the way she had always worked?
He tried to partition out his feelings about how she made decisions in her personal and private lives, but failed. Harry had wanted her to feel something for him and come to him on her own. . . not because she had been compelled to, by him, or by anyone—or anything—else. That stung.
He clicked on the stereo, allowing the bass rhythm of death metal to wash over him, to pound the dash and jangle the change in the console. It was a good day for death metal. He stomped the gas pedal, and his unzipped duffel bag rolled from the passenger seat to the floor. The Ambience of Sensual Massage slid out onto the floor mat.
Harry had to smile in spite of himself. Pops and his sense of humor.
If it had been any other time, he would have taken some time to cool off, to talk with Tara about it. But that was now impossible. . . The case demanded his full attention. He knew the likelihood was high that someone other than DiRosa would be there to meet him at the park, that he would be detained, questioned. . . Under military jurisdiction, he had no idea what would happen. But there was a small possibility the information she offered was real, that it might lead to Magnusson, and he had to take that chance.
He glanced at the rearview mirror, saw a helicopter on the horizon. All of them—Harry, Tara, Cassie, and Martin—would be lucky to get out of this mess at all, much less have heart-to-heart chats over hot chocolate.
Still, he wished he hadn’t left it like that with Tara. It felt sharp and unfinished, and it might have to remain that way. Forever.
MARTIN HAD BEEN EXPECTING A KNOCK. MAYBE SOME SIRENS, or even a phone call from the local sheriff checking to make sure he hadn’t been taken hostage.
He had not been expecting a dozen men with submachine guns to surround him when he was taking his trash out to the burn barrel.
Martin walked out to the rubbish barrel in his fishing boots and Carhartt coveralls, holding his trash in one hand and his shotgun in the other. He’d been thinking about Harry. The boy hadn’t given him details on what he was planning, but it sounded as if he was drowning in some pretty serious business. Whatever it was, he hoped Harry had the sense to rely on Tara’s judgment. Harry could be bullheaded, obstinate, and unbelievably obtuse. . .
He heard the unmistakable click-click-clicks of a dozen gun safeties being released, was told, “Freeze! Get down on the ground!” by one of the men dressed in camo fatigues and ski masks. Martin found himself looking down the barrel of an MP-5 and wishing he’d dressed for the occasion.
Martin laid down the shotgun, then the rubbish, and stretched out on the cold ground. Immediately, men swarmed over him, patting him down for more weapons. He heard their boots clomping on the porch, inside his home. His cap slid over his ear, and he could hear the men above him grumbling about all his pockets. . . They found two fishing lures from last spring in his jacket, a can opener in his shirt, and nail clippers in his pants.
When they sat him up, a stocky man squatted over him. “What’s your name?”
Martin smiled broadly up at him. “I’m Martin Davis. Who’re you?”
The man ignored him. “We’re looking for Harry Li, Tara Sheridan, and Cassie Magnusson.”
Martin put on his best senile act and looked to the side. “Oh, I’m afraid you’ve given me a dreadful fright. Let’s see. . .” He tapped his hands on his chin, making sure to allow them to shake. “Visitors.”
“Have you seen any of these people?” the man demanded, shoving a faxed page of photographs in the man’s face.
Martin leaned forward, squinting. “I’m afraid I don’t have my glasses.” Inwardly, he rolled his eyes. Despite his black suit and serious expression, Harry’s outdated file photo made him look barely old enough to drive. Tara was a smokin’ hot fox, smiling enigmatically at the camera. Older picture, but very, very nice. She reminded him of Mrs. Cloverfeld. A picture of Cassie, apparently taken from the masthead of her school newspaper, showed her with pink hair and the glitter of a nose ring.
A tall woman in motorcycle leathers paced around the perimeter of the conversation, watching them with eyes narrowed. She wasn’t military; Martin couldn’t figure out what she was. Except that she was trouble. “They’ve been here,” she insisted. “Beat it out of him.”
“Find the man’s glasses,” the questioner snapped to one of the soldiers beside him. “Glasses first, then beating.”
“I think they’re on the coffee table,” Martin replied helpfully. He knew damn well they were in the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, next to the scissors.
It took the men nearly a half hour to toss the place and find his glasses. The woman threw up her hands and walked away. A breathless soldier ran back and handed the worn velour case to the officer in charge. By this time, Martin’s ass was frozen numb. He wiped his glasses carefully, perched them on his nose, and looked again at the photos.
“They were just here.” He knew they knew that. “I think. I don’t know about the flamingo-haired girl. It might have been her.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh. . .” Martin felt for his watch. He wasn’t wearing one. “After breakfast.” He smiled brightly. “We had toast.”
The officer in charge rolled his eyes under his ski mask. “Get up.” He reached down to grab the old man’s arm. “Obstructing justice is a serious charge, old man. These people are fugitives.”
Martin’s eyes fluttered. He flopped limp as a rag doll, clutched his chest. He gasped, spittle flecking the officer’s camo-shoulder. “Oh! My chest. . . I need to sit down.”
He grabbed his heart as the officer lowered him to the ground, and rocked back and forth. “Ohhhhhhh. . .” He moaned in apparent agony.
“Medic!” the officer snapped.
Another soldier knelt before him, tried to pry his arms from his chest. “Where does it hurt, sir?”
“Ohhh. . . my chest! My arm!” Martin’s face twitched, and he screwed his eyes shut enough to prevent the medic from prying them open. His pulse raced and the medic looked up, alarmed.
“We need an ambulance, sir.”
“Shit. Sergeant, are you telling me that we just gave that old man a heart attack?”
“Possibly, sir.”
“Call it. . .”
While Martin writhed on the ground, he smiled inwardly to himself. He was a better actor than Harry gave him credit for. Now, just to keep his pulse racing, he’d have to think more on The Ambience of Sensual Massage, at least until he got to the hospital. He doubted many interrogations went down in hospitals, and he had enough ailments to keep the hospital staff busy for days. . .
THE OLD MAN WAS A WASTE OF TIME.
Adrienne pawed through the clutter in the trailer. The place reeked of her quarry. She smelled Tara on the flannels in the hamper, a towel in the bathroom, on the bedspread in the bedroom, in the fading musk on the bed in the back room.
Adrienne rooted around in the kitchen sink. She cast aside a worn sponge, a clutch of spoons, and cracked coffee cups. At last she plucked a dirty fork from the pile of dishes. She grinned. The bright sunlight gleamed down on the cheap metal, stuck with desiccated crumbs. Adrienne clutched it in her fist like a treasure and shouldered past Gabriel’s men to exit the trailer.
She could see Tara’s footprints in the snow outside the trailer, the same size as the clunky boots in the cabin. She followed the footsteps, pressing her own larger feet over the tracks. It gave her a sting of satisfaction to see them obliterated by her own steps.
If only it was that easy to wipe out their owner. . .
The footprints led to a mash up of vehicle tracks. . . a large truck,
she guessed. It would be a small task to determine which vehicles were registered to the old man. The larger task would be determining where Tara was going. Whether or not she had the girl with her was inconsequential to Adrienne, but an additional kill would be a bonus for her employer.
Twirling the fork in her fingertips, Adrienne strode out to the tree line, past the pines laden with snow. She walked until she was out of sight of the cabin, until the tracks of deer were the only ones that intersected hers. The shadows of birds flickered overhead, interrupting the shafts of sunshine streaming through the trees.
She crouched down to the ground, brushing away snow until the bare, frozen earth was visible. Her fingers were red and ached with cold, but she paid them no mind. From her jacket pocket, she withdrew a creased map of the region and smoothed it over the ground, orienting the compass rose to true north. Adrienne didn’t need to look to find it; she sensed the cardinal directions as easily as the others around her sensed the demarcation between day and night.
From her jacket, she pulled the bottle of earth she’d collected from Tara’s cabin. Nestled close to her body for days, the glass felt warm in her hands. Adrienne unscrewed the cap and dumped half the contents of the dirt in her left hand. She breathed her intention on it, to find its owner.
She closed her eyes and scattered it on the map.
The dirt settled in a sinuous line, curling and drawing in upon itself. It slithered like a snake across the paper, as if it were composed of metal filings drawn by a magnet. The soil spiraled, unsettled, trying to draw itself in two directions at once.
Adrienne placed the fork on the map, twirled it like a child turning the spinner of a board game. The earth congealed, wrapping around the fork. When it stopped spinning, the earth coiled around the tines of the fork, gathered around one location, in the middle of nowhere. The legend on the map pointed out a village beside the interstate, listed in the smallest typeface on the map legend.
Adrienne sat back on her heels. A place like that was close to the interstate, allowing quick withdrawal after the kill. There would be few witnesses.
It was the perfect place for an ambush.
• • • •
THERE HAD TO HAVE BEEN A BETTER WAY TO SAY GOOD-BYE.
Tara stared fixedly ahead at the road. A fine sleet filtered from the sky, and the windshield wipers flipped over the glass with the regular rhythm of a metronome, in counterpoint to the loud purr of the engine and the occasional jingle of Martin’s hood ornament key chain striking the dash. She cranked the defroster as high as it would go. . . Warmth issued from that, but not from the floor vents of the old truck. She’d found an old blanket behind the seat, and Cassie had spread it over the front seat, her father’s laptop open and plugged into the cigarette lighter. Her eyes flickered right and left across the page, absorbing her father’s work. The truck smelled of sour coffee and sweet antifreeze.
Maggie had fallen asleep in the middle of the seat, her butt on Cassie’s lap and her head on Tara’s. Tara was sure the dog could sense her despondency, and was doing her best to help her feel better.
She gripped the steering wheel, making her wounded arm ache. She’d allowed herself to hope, made the mistake of thinking that Harry would be able to accept and understand her. Why couldn’t she have left well enough alone? Why couldn’t she have accepted the gift of last night without sabotaging it? She honestly didn’t remember where she’d left the card, but it wasn’t like her years of conditioning to leave such a thing available for prying eyes.
And now she was paying for it. Her vision blurred. How could she have expected Harry to understand? He lived in an entirely different world, a linear one with well-drawn boundaries and clear causes and effects. She didn’t belong in it. She was a fool to think she might have found some common ground, that her fluid world of intuition could coexist and intersect with his.
But she’d had hope, last night. She wiped her dripping nose with the back of her glove. It had blossomed pure and brilliant in her chest, and she had allowed herself to follow her feelings. This time, her instincts had been wrong. How could she have expected that that sense of security, of contentment, could ever become hers?
It was done. One glorious moment, over. And for what? The use of a power that always seemed to lead to ruin. The cards had led her to ruin before, had led her to the Gardener and his tender mercies. How could she expect this would be any different? This gift her mother had given her, this talent for reading the cards, was nothing more than a curse. Perhaps her mother was well free of it.
Cassie painted on the inside fog of the window with her finger, shapes of waves and stars. Tara squelched the image of the Star card that welled up in her mind.
“Where are we going?” Cassie asked.
“We’re meeting Sophia at a diner off the interstate. I don’t know where she’ll be taking you from there, but it will be to a safe house.”
Cassie looked doubtful. “You said she was an old friend of your mother’s. Is she a government agent, too?”
Tara laughed. “No. Sophia is most definitely not with the government. She’s not exactly what you’d call a conformist. Think Birkenstocks, not gun stocks.”
“Nonconformity is good.” Cassie twirled a streak of blue hair around her finger. “I’m envisioning a survivalist? Maybe an eccentric artist? An ex-hippie?”
“A bit of all three.” Tara smiled. “I think you’ll like her. You two will have some interesting debates.”
Cassie frowned. “You’re not staying with us.” Tara could hear the thread of fear, the fear of abandonment, in her voice. Her fingers clutched Maggie’s fur.
Tara shook her head. “I can’t. I have to get back to help Harry.” She paused, thinking about this. Harry may not want her help. Harry would probably refuse to let her do anything more than take notes on the case.
That was, if he wasn’t driving into a trap with DiRosa. Fear bristled through her at the thought. Her intuition tingled, and she forced it down with a bubble of anger.
“We’ll see,” she amended. “I may have some of Sophia’s strudel, after all.”
In truth, she’d like nothing better than to keep going, to keep driving until she found her little cabin in the woods once more. She could lock the real door and keep all the other doors that were opened in the middle of the night firmly shut: Magnusson’s riddles; Sophia; and especially, Harry.
A DIM SENSE OF UNEASE SETTLED OVER HARRY, STRENGTHENING the closer he sped to his destination. It was like driving into a cloudy day, the gray folding around him so subtly he didn’t notice when condensation began to stream from the car windows. Above, the sleeting skies had cast a thin spittle of ice on the roads, making the drive slower and more treacherous than he liked. He would be late for his meeting with DiRosa. He tried to call twice, got no answer. He hoped she would wait for him.
Darkness was falling by the time he drove into Bandelier, and he barely got in the park gate before closing time, at sunset. The mountains seemed very close to the sky, as if they scraped ice from those heavy gray clouds. The ruddy rock of the canyons was dulled by frost. In the distance, he could see the myriad holes in the red cliffs made by the Anasazi, centuries ago. No visitors, today. It was too cold for the archaeology students and the hikers to prop their ladders against the cliff face and explore the labyrinths of that lost civilization.
Harry had to admire the ingenuity of living on the face of a cliff, with this glorious panorama spread out below. No one could sneak up on you. One was intimately aware of one’s environment, in complete control.
Unlike this meeting, which Harry felt was quickly slipping out of control. He tried DiRosa’s cell phone again. No answer. He pulled his car to a scenic overlook, offering an incredible view of the blue mountains, rust-colored cliffs, and orange sunset pouring through the few holes in the gray sky in great columns of molten light. This was the designated meeting spot. One other car was parked in the overlook lane, a late-model Beemer with a meticulous sheen of wax.
It had been there awhile; frost had accumulated over the windows, and the engine wasn’t running. Perhaps it was an abandoned breakdown.
Still.
Harry parked far enough from the rear of the car that he couldn’t be boxed in by another car parking behind him. He scanned the vicinity, registering no signs of life. Bitter wind stirred blonde grasses growing at the edge of the road. A guide sign beside the overlook described in basic detail the Anasazi homes carved out of the rock below the overlook and across the chasm.
He stepped out of his car, his gun drawn. He left the engine running, the lights on, framing the frost-covered car before him. He advanced on the driver’s side door, knocked on the window. No movement inside. Even after scraping away frost, he couldn’t make out the interior through the tinted windows.
Heart hammering, he tried the door. He expected it to be locked, but it swung open. Harry stepped back away from the door in a crouch, aiming his gun into the cold interior.
Barbara DiRosa slipped partially out of her seat belt, her left hand brushing the gravel. Her camel-colored glove and coat were stained in rust, her highlighted blonde hair streaked with the corroded bloodstain sticking her collar to the seat. She’d been shot and left for him. Harry had walked right into the trap.
“Shit.” He backed away, turning to sprint back to his car.
The bright blue-white of halogen headlights bounced over the road, the engine propelling them revving. A black SUV slammed into the back of Harry’s car, forcing it forward, trying to crush Harry between the front bumper of his car and the back bumper of the Beemer.
Harry jumped out of the way, over the guardrail of the scenic overlook. His shoes skidded in gravel, and he clawed forward with his hands, trying to correct his pitch before he went sliding down the sharp slope. Gravel chewed into his hands and face, weeds slapped him, and he managed to rip out a sage bush before tumbling over the edge.
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