Red

by Ted Dekker

  She’d yelled at him!

  She gripped her head and cried long, silent wails that washed away her sense of time. Then slowly she began to come back to herself.

  The boy had come back to them. She sniffed and struggled to her feet. Dawn had lightened the sky.

  Their Creator had come back to them, and he was going to make peace with the Horde. It was the day of deliverance!

  Find Thomas, Justin had said.

  She spun and faced the sand dunes. She’d seen the camp to the east. Thomas was being held in the camp. It couldn’t be more than a few hours away, even by foot.

  She grabbed her tunic and ran into the desert, only briefly thinking about his other words. Your death will save him, Justin had said. But it meant nothing.

  She was alive. Elyon had healed her.

  23

  THOMAS GAZED at the eastern horizon, where the sun was just now rising over the dunes. The lieutenant of the perimeter guard, Stephen, stood beside Thomas, holding the reins of his horse. Behind them, three hundred Forest Guard waited along the tree line. Ahead of them, the contingent from the Horde waited on their horses to make the exchange as agreed. Johan, Qurong, Justin. And behind them, a thousand Scab warriors.

  They were about to make history in the desert. Odd to think that at this very moment he was doing nothing more spectacular in the other reality than sleeping next to Monique under a boulder in France, dreaming.

  “I don’t like it, sir,” the lieutenant said. “You’re just going to let them take you in shackles?”

  “Not ‘just,’ Stephen. As long as you have Qurong and Martyn, I’m safe.”

  Thomas and Mikil had spent three hours covering every possible contingency before Mikil headed off to prepare the Guard and the Council for Qurong and Martyn’s arrival as agreed. Only Mikil, Thomas, the Council, and Johan knew the truth of what was to happen.

  Thomas had spent a fitful night waiting for daybreak. Not a wink of sleep. Despite his tone of confidence with Stephen, he was nervous.

  “They have a thousand warriors; you have no one,” the man said.

  “Are you telling me you and your men can’t deal with a thousand warriors in the forest, where they will be lost?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. It just strikes me as disproportionate.”

  “I’m willing to take that chance. Remember, this is a mission of peace. Unless you hear differently from myself or Mikil, no harm to them.”

  “So Justin has done what he promised,” the man said. “He’s brokering peace and you’re in agreement.”

  “Justin is brokering peace. For the moment I am in agreement.”

  “The Council will never accept.”

  “They will. You will see; they will.”

  Thomas left his lieutenant’s side and walked toward the waiting contingent. The truth, of course, was that instead of brokering their peace in front of the Council, Johan would accuse Qurong of plotting betrayal with Justin. He would tell the congregation that Qurong and Justin were planning to ransack the forest as soon as the Guard had accepted peace. Mikil would step forward and tell the people that on her word, Thomas of Hunter concurred. Qurong would then be convicted and executed, and Justin’s fate would be left up to the new leader of the Horde, Johan.

  That was the plan. Thomas and Mikil had considered it a dozen times and agreed it would work. It would spare the forest a terrible battle. Just as importantly, they weren’t conspiring with the Horde, which would be treason. No, they were conspiring against the Horde leader, Qurong, by using Johan—a Scab, yes, but also Johan. Enough of a technicality to assure the Council’s approval, surely.

  Gravel crunched under Thomas’s feet as he walked. He was the only one not on a horse and armed. For all practical purposes, he was naked.

  He reached the midpoint between the two small armies when Justin suddenly dismounted and walked out to meet him. There had been no mention of this, but Johan and Qurong didn’t object, and so neither did Thomas.

  Justin met him halfway. “Good morning, my brother.” The warrior dipped his head.

  “Good morning.” Thomas returned his gesture.

  For a moment they just looked at each other.

  “So,” Justin said, “it’s come down to this after all.”

  “I guess it has. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Peace?”

  “I told them that you would come.”

  The revelation caught Thomas off guard. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I knew it when I looked in your eyes at the challenge. You don’t understand what’s happening, but you want peace. You’ve always wanted peace. And this is the only way for peace, Thomas.”

  “How did you know that I would come?”

  “You taught me to judge my enemy well. Call it a lucky guess.” His eyes twinkled. “Johan refused to believe that you would offer yourself as a guarantee for Qurong’s safety, but when I saw you ride in yesterday with Mikil, I knew we had won.”

  Justin had told Johan that he was going to offer an exchange? Johan had known? The general had smiled at the suggestion—perhaps because of Justin’s accuracy in predicting it.

  But Justin couldn’t know the whole truth.

  Thomas felt a pang of remorse for his offering up the man in exchange for Qurong’s death. But it was the only way.

  “Then you’re a better tactician than I am,” Thomas said, glancing at the Scabs. “If you know so much, tell me this: Will I be safe in their shackles?”

  Justin hesitated. “Let’s just say that I think you’ll be safer in their shackles than I will be in the hands of my own Council.”

  He stretched out his hand. Thomas took it, and Justin bent to kiss his fingers. “Take courage, Thomas. We are almost home. I’ll see you in the lake.”

  Then Justin turned and walked back to his line.

  Thomas hesitated, wondering at this latest exchange. But the die had been cast. He walked to the boulder they’d agreed on and stood tall. Justin remounted and led the Horde contingent forward. As soon as Qurong was within slaying reach of the Forest Guard, a dozen Scabs rushed Thomas and fixed shackles on his wrists.

  The Horde army vanished into the trees and Thomas was led away on a horse, hopelessly shackled.

  24

  MONIQUE BOLTED up, wide awake. Twigs hung in her face. She was in the forest? She’d been wounded by the Desert Dwellers and then Justin had healed her!

  No. She was in France. Sleeping beside Thomas. It had been a dream.

  A dream! She closed her mouth and swallowed, but her throat was parched and tacky. Beside her, Thomas slept soundly, chest rising and falling. Her hand was in his. She pulled it free and wiped the sweat from her face.

  She’d dreamed that she was Rachelle, and yet she knew that it was more than a dream, because she knew that as Rachelle she’d dreamed of being Monique.

  Monique stared past the leaves that made up the lean-to, stunned by this change in her perception of reality. She had shared Rachelle’s life.

  Her bladder was burning. Was it this that had awakened her or the trauma of her dream? Either way, she had to relieve herself. And when she returned, she would wake Thomas and tell him what had happened.

  Monique slipped out of the lean-to as quietly as possible and stood. It was only then that she felt the damp spots on her leg. She looked down and saw that her clothes were wet.

  Blood! She gasped involuntarily.

  The arrows! She touched then pushed on the spots. No pain, no wounds. The dark splotches spread out from where the arrows had struck her. The bleeding hadn’t been terrible because the arrows had stopped up the wounds.

  Monique felt tremors overtake her body. It had really happened. This was beyond her. She swallowed and headed, weak-kneed, for the trees just beyond the quarry.

  THE MOON had fallen into the horizon when Carlos stopped near the edge of the clearing and took stock of his situation. Through the trees, maybe three hundred meters down the valley, a farmhouse stood in darknes
s. He was approximately halfway between Melun and Paris, headed west toward the capital. It was midnight.

  Thomas and Monique were somewhere within a hundred meters of him, to the southeast, according to the small screen in his palm. He studied the clearing ahead, careful not to expose himself beyond the tree line.

  The quarry. Yes, of course, it would be a natural place to stop. Seventy paces ahead and to his left. They were in the quarry. Unless the woman had discovered the tracking device and discarded the transmitter.

  Carlos slipped the receiver into his pocket and worked around the perimeter of the clearing, toward the quarry.

  He heard a rustle and froze by a large pine. A rabbit?

  The quarry lay just ahead, a depression in the ground that was partially overgrown with stubborn tufts of grass.

  Carlos withdrew his pistol and chambered a round. He now wished he’d thought to bring the silencer—a gunshot might disturb whoever lived in the farmhouse, although the lay of the quarry would absorb much of the sound.

  He stepped around the tree, crouched down, and walked toward the edge of the depression. Gravel scattered, knocked by his boot, and he stopped. He let the sound clear and then eased slowly forward.

  The moment he saw the branches set against the boulder, he knew that he had found them. It would be different this time. He would either kill or be killed, and he was certain it would be the former.

  MONIQUE WAS standing by a log, ten meters into the forest, but her mind was still in another forest, in another world altogether.

  Monique closed her eyes and clenched her jaw to clear her thoughts. Reality, Monique. Back to reality.

  But that was the problem—the other was reality. The smells, the memories, the sights, the feelings in her heart. All of it!

  She pulled the pale blue slacks completely off and hung them from a dead branch that jutted up from the fallen trunk. She could barely see by the starlight, and she didn’t want her only clothes to end up with leaves or, worse, bugs in them.

  She stood by the log dressed only in her muddied tennis shoes and a cotton blouse, which hung loosely past her underwear. She wouldn’t remove her shoes, not with critters under the leaves.

  The sound of skittering gravel reached her ears. She froze.

  But it was nothing.

  HE COULD hear their breathing. Carlos crouched by the edge of the quarry and peered at the dark shadow beneath the branches they’d leaned against the boulder. On the left end, Hunter’s boots. He would slip around to the right and put the first two bullets into Hunter’s head before turning the gun on the woman. It would have to be quick. Best for both to die in their sleep.

  They had what they needed from Monique. Fortier and Svensson might question the events, but they wouldn’t second-guess his decision to kill them, despite their desire to keep her alive. They had chosen him for his ability to make such determinations, and they knew enough to leave security in his hands. If Carlos decided that Hunter had to die, then Hunter would die. End of issue. There was too much at stake to quibble over his judgment now. Killing them would ensure that what they knew would never leave France.

  Carlos moved slowly, crouching to minimize his profile against the forest behind. Tumbling rocks were his primary concern. Stones clicked softly under his feet, but not enough to wake the average man.

  Then again, Hunter wasn’t the average man. But he was unarmed, and he was with a woman he would undoubtedly want to protect.

  The moment the ground leveled, Carlos rushed in on the balls of his feet. Four long steps, quick pivot. The wedge of darkness beneath the branches opened up to him. He dropped to one knee, extended the nine millimeter’s barrel to the head of the man he recognized as Thomas Hunter, and pulled the trigger.

  Thunder crashed in his ears.

  The body jerked.

  There was no second body.

  The revelation that the woman wasn’t here stopped him short of pulling the trigger a second time. If not here, then where?

  He quickly felt Hunter’s neck for a pulse, found none, and ran around the boulder, gun still extended. Nothing. He rounded another boulder, but with each step his hope of finding her faded. She wasn’t here.

  He ran back to where Hunter lay and noted the ground beside his body. Small indentations in the earth confirmed that another body had rested here. No sign of the slacks with the tracking device. He felt for Hunter’s pulse one last time, and satisfied that the man was very much dead, he stood and scanned the forest.

  She had been here less than five minutes ago. He pulled out the receiver and turned it on. It took only a few seconds to acquire the signal. Directly ahead in the forest. Close. Very close.

  Carlos began to run.

  THE ODOR of sulfur hung low and thick over the Scab camp. It had taken them an hour to reach the huge army, and the sun was already hot on their backs. Twenty warriors rode on either side of Thomas as they approached the same spot where he’d negotiated his treachery with Johan less than twenty-four hours ago.

  He’d bathed from a canteen last night, and he was now allowed one additional canteen, which now hung from his belt. He wouldn’t drink it, but he would bathe if the meeting at the Council kept him more than a day. Justin would arrive in the evening. The Council would hear the matter, and the reversal would end in Qurong’s death. By morning, Johan would be exchanged for Thomas at the forest perimeter. But if there was any delay, he might need the water.

  In the meantime, he was consigned to spend the rest of the day and the night in this cursed—

  Something hit his head.

  He jerked upright and twisted in his saddle. Nothing. But his head was ringing as if a mallet had struck it. Pain spread down his spine. He began to lose focus.

  He knew then that something had happened in the other reality. Carlos had found them. He’d been shot. In the head!

  Thomas’s world suddenly began to spin and darken. He felt himself falling from the horse. Heard his body thud into the ground.

  His last thought was that his assumption had been right. If he died in one reality, he also died in the other.

  Then everything went black.

  MONIQUE HAD her thumbs hooked in her underwear when the still night exploded with a terrible boom.

  She instinctively jerked. Behind her! A gunshot in the quarry! She spun, thumbs still hooked, heart pounding.

  The trees blocked most of her view, but she peered under a branch by her head and saw in one horrifying moment what had happened. A dark figure stood up by the lean-to, then ran around the boulder, gun in hand.

  Carlos! It had to be Carlos! He’d followed them. And he’d just shot . . .

  Monique lifted her hand to her mouth and stifled a cry. Thomas!

  She nearly ran for him, but she immediately knew that she couldn’t—not with Carlos so close. He’d fired point-blank! No one could have survived that.

  Monique stood frozen by horror. How could his life end like this? Would he come back? No, he’d told her that his dreams could no longer heal him! Or was that something she’d learned from her own dream? They were terrified that Thomas might be killed here, because they were sure it would mean that he would also die there.

  Carlos ran back around the boulder, dropped to his knees, and was checking Thomas’s pulse. This confirmed it. Thomas was dead.

  Monique fought a nauseating wave of panic. She had to get away! Carlos had already searched the quarry for her . . . he’d assume she’d gone into the trees . . .

  She ran then, on her toes, through the forest toward the distant farmhouse. The leaves crinkled under her feet. Too loud! She slid to a stop, turned to the quarry, saw that Carlos was still leaning into the shelter. He hadn’t heard her.

  She moved quickly, but as quietly as possible now.

  Her slacks! No, no time to go back.

  Monique was halfway around the quarry when she glimpsed Carlos through the limbs, running toward the section of forest she had occupied only a minute earlier. Had he seen h
er?

  Run! Run, Monique, straight across the quarry, across the meadow to the farmhouse!

  No, she shouldn’t. In fact, she should do the opposite. She should stop. Monique slid behind a tree and breathed deep and slow to catch her breath. The night was quiet. No rustling of leaves or snapping of twigs from where she’d run. What was Carlos doing? Waiting?

  She stood still for what seemed like an hour, though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Tears blurred her vision. The thought of Thomas lying there, bleeding on the ground, was enough to make her scream, and it took all of her strength to bury the emotion. She had to survive. Thomas had risked his life to bring her out. She had information the outside world desperately needed.

  Monique tiptoed forward, picking her way over the leaves as carefully as possible. She remembered seeing that this strip of woods ended in a meadow to her left. The meadow ran directly to the farmhouse.

  It took her only a minute of high-stepping to reach the grass. She stopped for a few seconds, heard no sound of pursuit, and entered the field. Maybe Carlos was waiting by the quarry, watching for her return. Ten steps out she felt the horror of her exposure. If Carlos was anywhere near this side of the forest, he would surely see her! But she’d committed herself.

  She began to run. If the man behind had noticed her, there was nothing she could do now except run.

  With every step she was terribly aware of the fact that she was leaving Thomas dead behind her. She tried to think of a way to get to him, bring him with her. Wasn’t it possible that he was alive?

  No, she had to reach safety. She had to survive, and then she had to reach England.

  She hadn’t noticed the Peugeot in the driveway until now; it was parked near the front of the farmhouse, out of sight of the quarry.

  Could she?

  Yes, she could. Assuming the keys were in it, she could take the car and explain to the owner later.