The female computer voice gave Carney a name. Paul Gentry.
“It’s one of Mason’s men. They don’t have to answer to local enforcement. Now we know who was out after curfew.”
“Mason helped your girl and the deputy escape?”
“Don’t think so.” Carney pointed at the computer screen. “Mason’s vidpod shows he went to a nearby factory, then to his cabin in the hills. He’s probably up there poaching deer.”
“You’re not curious about the side trip to the factory he took before that?”
“Nope,” Carney said, but Pierce watched him nod while he pointed at his vidpod. Carney was curious. But didn’t want that on record.
“I am,” Pierce said. “So take me there.”
“Well, it’s your call. Let me take care of sending a message.”
The sheriff held his vidpod at arm’s length and spoke into it. “Steve, I need some help here. I’ve been tracking the vidpod movements of Paul Gentry, one of Mason Lee’s men. Looks like he’s at home now. But his horse went somewhere without him. Stop by, will you? Get him to tell you what happened last night, then send the interview to my vidpod. Sooner is better than later; you know I’m good for returning the favor.”
Carney stopped speaking. He ran his fingers across the vidpod screen. “Done and sent. I guess we can go.”
Pierce stood and rolled the chair back away from Carney’s desk. “Let’s go by car this time. I didn’t like the horse much.”
In truth, he could take or leave the horse. But he, unlike Carney, knew that Mason Lee wasn’t really poaching in the woods, and having efficient transportation if quick pursuit became necessary wasn’t a choice.
THIRTY-ONE
When Caitlyn limped back to Billy and Theo, she was carrying an armful of long, cone-headed purple flowers. They’d found the canoe, as instructed, waiting under the bridge, then traveled a mile downstream and pulled ashore to hide the canoe.
“I wanted to do this sooner for Theo, but there was never time for me to collect the flowers. I’d hoped things wouldn’t get this bad so quickly.”
Theo lay on the grass unconscious, his head propped by a pillow made from his coat, his face flushed with fever. His arm and shoulder were exposed, and the purple swelling was ominous, with pus oozing from where he’d cut himself open to remove the chip. Caitlyn set the flowers down beside Theo, whose eyes were closed, fluttering behind the eyelids.
Billy sat cross-legged beside the flowers, and with quick, dexterous movements—unnaturally so, considering his massive hands—he began to strip the flowers and stems.
“You’ve done this before.” Caitlyn kept her hands hidden. If he was going to do this, she wouldn’t have to let him see her fingers.
“My grandmother showed me, before she passed on and I was adopted. I didn’t know what you meant when you said needed to find etcha…echo…echy—”
“Echinacea,” she said. Her cloak was hot and she knew it was growing damp with sweat, but she needed to keep it loosely around her to hide her deformed back from Billy.
“Grams called it purple coneflower.” He kept his head down, focused on stripping the flowers.
“I hope it works. He needs a doctor.”
“You don’t need to look farther than his arm to know a doctor’s not an option. He cut the chip out himself—that tells you how bad he hates the factory. He was starving to death in the woods, and yet he still wouldn’t turn back. If you brought him to a doctor, you wouldn’t be saving him at all. I think he would rather be dead.”
“Thanks.” Caitlyn’s voice was hardly a whisper. It surprised her how much she wanted Theo to survive and how much of a comfort the big, quiet man in front of her was turning out to be during each new hour of stress.
Billy focused on the f lowers. “We need to cut farther into Theo’s arm to clean it. I can do that if you don’t want to. I helped the vet with horses. I’ve seen this before. On horses, I mean.”
Again she found comfort in his steadiness. “Do you need me to hold him for you?”
Billy shook his head. “He’s tiny.”
She watched as he gently doctored the wound. Theo turned and groaned but did not come to full consciousness. Billy took the poultice and pressed it against Theo’s arm. Then he removed his outer shirt, cut strips for bandages, and tied the poultice in place.
“We’re ready,” he said. “I’ll lift him back into the canoe.”
His trust at her leadership amazed her. He hadn’t asked what was ahead. Theo would have rattled through a hundred rapid-fire questions already.
They’d known each other only a few hours, but she felt comfortable around him. She had never experienced that comfort with anyone before, except Papa. Yet whenever Billy gave her a shy, sideways glance, something in her heart surged.
“Billy…”
There it was again. The shy look. It eased her loneliness.
“I’m afraid,” she said. “Not too afraid to do what needs to be done, but still afraid. It’s good to have you here.”
“You make me feel strong. I don’t know why they are chasing you, but I don’t care.”
“Do you know that Mason Lee had been hunting me with the hounds?”
He nodded, but as he spoke, he looked at the ground. “You disappeared from a mountaintop, is what I heard.”
“Yes, I scaled down the rock face.” She had escaped the hounds and the hunters, but she knew her father paid the price. The question was, how much of a price? No matter how numb she’d tried to make herself, that question haunted her still.
“I’m afraid for my father too.” She half hoped Billy would put his arms around her and let her lean her head against his chest. Just a couple of moments of comfort.
Billy didn’t look up. Something about his shoulders changed, and it wasn’t shyness that kept him from looking at her. Before he answered, she knew—but his words broke her anyway.
“I’m sorry.” Billy lifted his head and looked at her without flinching. “He’s dead.”
THIRTY-TWO
Dr. Ross’s patient was set on a table, deep within the forest. He had found a clearing wide enough to support the table but small enough to keep himself and his supposedly dead patient hidden. He noted that Jordan’s wounds were clotting well, and it appeared that all the stitches were holding in the jagged lines where dogs’ jaws had ripped through skin.
“Sensation has returned to your fingers and toes?” Dr. Ross asked. He wore a surgeon’s mask to protect his identity. Better safe than sorry. Always.
Jordan slightly nodded. Dr. Ross laid a pillow beneath Jordan’s head. His face was extensively bruised; the black splotches would begin to turn yellow in a few days. While the doctor had removed the man’s gag, his wrists and ankles were still bound. The gagging and binding had to be done to keep Jordan from making noise in the coffin.
“It’s a side effect,” Dr. Ross said. “While you were in custody, I injected you with a slight paralyzing agent. To anyone but a medical doctor, you appeared dead. It was necessary to facilitate your escape.”
“I don’t remember the injection.” Jordan spoke as if his throat were constricted. Dr. Ross had given him water, but it would be days before the man’s body was fully hydrated.
“You were unconscious.”
“I remember the dogs. I remember being taken down the mountain. Mason Lee—”
“It’s no longer a concern,” Dr. Ross said. “To Appalachia, you’re dead and buried. The wagon carrying you continued to the graveyard once the casket was switched. You don’t have to worry about the hunters anymore.”
“Thank you, Doctor. But I don’t care about myself anymore. There’s a girl. I need to know that she’s safe. I made arrangements. She—”
“No more. I don’t want to hear anything about arrangements.”
Every six or eight months, it would happen. Dr. Ross would be riding down a trail to make a house call, and he’d be stopped by masked men. They’d tell him who he was required to sedat
e and pronounce dead. The payment was more than fair, but Ross didn’t do it for the money. He had his suspicions where the patients would go after the caskets were filled with sandbags and placed into the ground and buried. He never saw the undead again, but those suspicions were enough to give him satisfaction. Someday he’d do the same for his daughter and his son, spacing their deaths far enough apart to keep Bar Elohim from guessing. It broke his heart to think he’d never see them again; it broke his heart more to imagine them spending their lives in Appalachia.
On this occasion, however, he’d been required to make sure the patient was healthy enough to survive what was ahead. But the exam, of course, could not take place in a hospital. He had to make his best judgment here.
“Listen,” Dr. Ross said, “you have some broken ribs. A mild concussion. And stitches all over your body. You need to take these antibiotics—one pill three times a day until all the pills are gone. Understand? And make sure to have the bandages replaced frequently. As long as the pus remains clear, you will be all right.”
“Yes, but—”
“The yellow pills are painkillers. You’ll know when to take those.”
“The girl. Please. What happened?”
“I don’t have an answer.” Dr. Ross showed a syringe to his patient. “I need to sedate you. It’s for your protection. The journey might be rough, and you’re better off not feeling it. More importantly, you won’t know where you are and how you got there. That’s what will save your life. If they wanted you dead, they wouldn’t go to the effort of ensuring this.”
“They?”
Dr. Ross merely shook his head to the negative. “You’re getting a drug called flunitrazepam. It’s going to mess with your short-term memory. To protect them.”
He jabbed the syringe into the man’s shoulder and pressed the plunger. Moments later, Jordan’s eyes closed.
It would be a dreamless sleep. But at least it was sleep, Dr. Ross thought, not death. Or worse. Back in the hands of Mason Lee.
THIRTY-THREE
It was a standard transportation truck, parked at the side of the road, with its driver changing a flat tire at the front passenger side. The trailer was standard white, giving no indication of what it contained. To anyone riding by on a horse, it might have held crates of potatoes or stacks of milk cartons. To that same person on horseback, there was no way of seeing the roof of the trailer—smoked glass that allowed ample sunlight to the interior.
The inside of the trailer was partitioned. The front half was command central, filled with computers and electronics that allowed Bar Elohim the same access to Appalachia’s network as if he were in the center of his compound. The back half was a luxury compartment for the ease of his travel.
A limousine with escorts traveled Appalachia’s highways on a daily basis. While it gave the appearance that Bar Elohim was constantly moving among the people, he rarely rode in the limousine. It was literally a smoke-and-mirrors trick to fool Appalachians—smoke from the exhaust, mirrored windows that made it impossible for anyone to see inside and know Bar Elohim was not there.
This transportation truck worked much better for him. He could travel where he wanted, anonymously.
The flat tire was not an accident but a diversion to wait in a prearranged spot.
Mason Lee had an appointment with Bar Elohim.
Carney drove at a sedate pace along the curving road through the valley, a set of earbuds hooked into his vidpod.
“We’ve got one mystery solved.” Carney pulled the earbuds loose. “The second horse. Gentry’s. They used it to get away. Tells me the girl must be smart, because my deputy wouldn’t be able to think that way. I’ll beam you the interview.”
Pierce glanced at Carney. Traveling in the town’s official car, Pierce was acutely aware that the entire journey was audio and video recorded.
Pierce fiddled with the touch controls on his vidpod screen, taking longer than he wanted to put it into reception mode. A beep signaled his success.
Carney grunted acknowledgment and pushed the screen of his device. Another beep told Pierce the download was complete. Pierce focused on the transmission, allowing the bounty hunter’s voice to fill the silence of their ride.
“That deputy came out of the dark like a train,” the face on the screen said. The bounty hunter was squinting and slightly cross-eyed. Drunk, Pierce guessed. He’d been speaking into a vidpod, and the shot was wide angle. “I didn’t have a chance against the big one.”
“You had the girl in custody?” The off-screen voice belonged to the sheriff doing Carney’s work.
“The girl and some boy. Mason put us all around the edges of town and told us to watch for them. Then the deputy, that was him, right? A big guy? The deputy charged in and knocked me out, I’m guessing. For a few minutes, I wasn’t seeing or hearing anything. When I woke, I was on the girl’s horse, almost on top of the girl in the saddle. My feet and ankles were tied with my own laces. That deputy and the boy rode my horse. I guess to keep the hounds from tracking them.”
Pierce followed the rest of the story easily. It matched the evidence that he and Carney had found near the livery horse.
When the deputy and the girl had reached the next intersection, a few miles down from Cumberland Gap, the girl had transferred to the bounty hunter’s horse without touching the ground. The boy—the hunter described him as scrawny—had led the livery horse and the bounty hunter south, then off the road and down a trail. The boy walked away, leaving the bounty hunter on the livery horse, tied to a branch. Pierce presumed the boy had rejoined the girl and the deputy on the horse stolen from the bounty hunter.
“Smart,” Pierce agreed. “They knew it would be a few hours before we realized they’d switched horses. Still, if all horses have radio chips, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the second horse.”
“Wasn’t hard at all,” Carney said. “It’s already showed up in the next town. No saddle.”
“That reduces the search area. Somewhere between where we found the livery horse and that town where they let the horse loose and started traveling on foot.”
“Ten miles of road, with ten miles on each side of the road. That’s a ten-by-twenty-mile area. Two hundred square miles of rugged valley and hills. Won’t be easy.”
Carney had a point, but Pierce stared out the window of the car, distracted, thinking it wouldn’t do much good to discuss Mason Lee in a government car.
THIRTY-FOUR
Mason felt claustrophobic in the rear half of the trailer. Almost helpless. The door had no handle on the inside, and when he’d entered, he’d heard the click of the lock, activated by remote control.
The drill was familiar. Enter the booth in the trailer when the rear compartment was empty; Bar Elohim was secure in the front half, protected by solid walls and a bulletproof door. It didn’t matter whether Mason was armed. Once the door shut and the lock was activated, he couldn’t harm Bar Elohim. The booth’s walls and doors were armament-and light-proof. Mason sat in total darkness. If Bar Elohim decided not to open the door, Mason was trapped until he died of thirst. Not a comforting thought. Mason hoped he wouldn’t have too long to wait, but soon enough, Bar Elohim’s voice came from speakers above him.
“This better be worth my while.”
The high-pitched voice was familiar to Mason, identifiable to everyone in Appalachia over the age of ten. His transmissions always showed Bar Elohim looking straight out of the vidpod, a head-and-shoulders shot of a middle-aged bland face, with a full head of middle-aged, graying hair. There was nothing threatening about his persona, only his position.
“What I have to tell you is not something I could trust anyone else to pass on to you,” Mason said.
“You meet with Elders from the inner circle. That’s how information reaches me.”
“I’ve discovered a way to help you trap the Clan. I figure I should only trust one person with that knowledge.”
Silence in the darkness. Mason knew that there’d been
at least a half dozen full-scale attempts to wipe out the Clan and that they were all unsuccessful. The Clan had anticipated each attack.
“What do you have?”
This would be delicate. Mason needed to show enough to put himself in a good bargaining position, but not so much he’d no longer be necessary in the hunt.
“The girl’s father had an unregistered vidpod.” Mason explained how he matched the GPS location in the Valley of the Clan with the message the factory woman, Tasha, had read to him. But he held back information about the strange symbols. “If Jordan Brown had those instructions, so did his daughter. A time and place to meet the Clan. I can get there before her.”
“You captured him two nights ago. Why wait this long to pass it on?”
A chill laced that question. The truth was that he’d hoped to capture the girl and run with the canister, never having a meeting in this tiny booth. But the truth, like any other wrong kind of answer, would get him sent to a factory.
“I don’t trust anyone else but you with something so important. And yesterday, I was trying to catch the girl.”
“If what you’re saying is correct, you could have dropped the chase and gone straight to the point where she was going to meet the Clan.”
“Thought she was holed earlier, in Cumberland Gap. I wanted to play it safe. Fill the canister for you, get what we need, then send in another girl, like a decoy.”
Again, Bar Elohim was silent. In the hushed darkness, Mason felt unnerved. He hated lots of things and really hated the dark. He always made sure there was some kind of light burning when he slept inside or a small fire going through the night when he was outside. In the dark, he saw too many faces.
Mason started speaking again. Too fast and too soon, but with the dark squeezing on him, he was doing all he could not to bang on the walls.
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