“Yes. Who are you?” No mistaking that hostility. This Zone guy had issues, or maybe he didn’t like gunshots so close to his lookout.
Max told him what he wanted to know. “I’m the man carrying the ugly marble head in my bag.”
“Then let’s go.” Zone turned and stalked up the path.
26
Kellen woke when the stranger said, “She needs stitches.”
She felt a tug on the skin on her arm. Consciousness flood her mind. She opened her eyes and sat up. “Rae!”
“Stupid woman!” the unknown man’s voice said. “You don’t move when I’m sticking a needle in your arm.”
“Relax, Kellen. Rae is here.” Max’s voice was soothing.
A flash of impressions: a tall black-bearded guy sat on the bed with her, holding a needle and thread and scowling. Max, his hand on her elbow, held it steady. Rae sat on the floor, eating a bowl of popcorn and staring wide-eyed as the stranger put stitches in Kellen’s arm.
Rae was warm, dry, safe.
Kellen was warm, dry, safe.
Max was here. He had found them.
She looked at the man with the needle. Only one person it could be. Must be Zone.
“Rae is fine,” Max said. “She saved you.”
In a scramble of memory, Kellen recalled sending Rae away. Rae had insisted she would save Kellen and—the kid had done it!
Kellen smiled at her daughter. “Good job. Thank you, LightningBug.”
Rae grinned, all big teeth and well-fed cheer.
Kellen fell back on the bed.
Zone cursed her again. “If you’re done trying to rip these stitches through your skin, I’ll finish sewing you up.”
“Go ahead.” She waved her other hand and closed her eyes, then opened them again to look at Rae, then closed them again. The thread tugged at her skin, but she felt no pain. Zone must have numbed the whole area.
He stitched with competence, he bandaged the wound, he informed her when he gave her an antibiotic injection, and he told her to take in fluids. Lots and lots of fluids. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” The mattress creaked as he stood.
It creaked again as Max sat. “Because of her, Zone, you have your marble head.”
“Yeah!” Rae said.
“Yeah.” Zone sounded disgusted.
Kellen grinned and opened her eyes.
Rae had abandoned the bowl of popcorn on the floor and leaned against the bed.
“I’ve got water mixed with orange juice.” Max helped Kellen sit up and handed her a bottle.
She drank with all the pleasure of someone who thought she would never drink again. She reached up and cupped Max’s cheek. “Thank you.” Thank you for coming for us, thank you for finding us, thank you for bringing us to safety.
He cupped his hand over hers and nodded. She could feel his emotion, see the way his eyes glistened. He hadn’t wasted time worrying; he had come for them at once—and because of him, she was safe.
The mattress jiggled. “Mommy!”
Kellen leaned back on the pillow, smiled at Rae and held out her arms.
Rae hopped up enthusiastically. She and Rae rested on a twin-size bed tucked into one corner. A large, thick, luxurious and oddly out-of-place antique rug rested in front of it.
Kellen winced as every joint in her body flinched. Didn’t matter. She wrapped her arms around her daughter. Her daughter.
“Be careful of those stitches!” Zone snapped.
“I will,” Rae snapped back and cuddled against Kellen’s good side.
Kellen relaxed. All was right with the world.
From the vantage point of the bed, Horizon Lookout appeared to be constructed as one big square building. Somewhere above, on the roof, she could hear a generator running, creating their electricity, and water gurgled as the clarifier made it suitable for use. This room appeared to be half of the building, as well as the all-purpose room. The bathroom door was in one corner. Dark shutters covered all the windows; from the look of them they let out no light.
That not only gave her a sense of safety, but also the knowledge that Zone understood the dangers that could lurk out in a forest where the most savage beasts weren’t bears and wolves, but men.
Wedged against the far wall was a bookcase stuffed with worn paperbacks and a battered plaid easy chair and ottoman. When she craned her neck, she could see an open folding door that led into an entirely different room; the Restorer’s workshop, by the looks of the high table and scattered tools. A bare-bones kitchenette was in the opposite corner from the bed, with a two-person drop-leaf table.
Max gave Kellen and their little girl a moment of cuddling, then reached for Rae. “Rae, Mommy needs to go to sleep.”
“Can’t go to sleep. Need the bathroom.” Kellen sat up slowly. “And a shower.”
“No one can argue with that,” Zone spoke from the kitchen in the other corner of the room. “Your sweet feminine odor could attract flies—if we had any at this elevation.”
Kellen eyed him evilly. “You’re a charmer.”
“Bathroom, yes,” Max said firmly. “A shower can wait. You can’t get that bandage wet anyway.”
Kellen smelled like three days of sweat, terror and effort. She needed a shower more than food, more than fluids, more than good sense. “I said I want a shower.”
When Max protested again, Zone came over with a garbage bag and duct tape. “Why waste your breath?” he said to Max. “She’s going to do what she wants.” And he went to work protecting Kellen’s arm from water. When he was satisfied she would keep the wound dry, he gave her the go-ahead.
“I’ll need help,” Kellen said.
Hands up, Zone backed away. “Don’t look at me. I’m retired from sex, but I’m not dead.” He turned to Max. “You two had the kid. You’ve seen her naked.”
Max made the slight pained sound of a man under torture.
If Kellen had any strength left, she would have slugged them both.
“I’ll help Mommy!” Rae hopped to her feet.
“Perfect,” Kellen said. “Thank you, Rae.”
“Mommy, it’s the neatest bathroom ever. The toilet is like an airplane, and the faucet shuts off by itself, and the shower has a chain to pull when you want the water on. I’ll pull your chain!”
Zone snorted.
“Sweetheart, I know you will.” Kellen slid an arm around Rae’s shoulders. “You keep me steady, okay?”
“Okay! Mommy, Zone has canned Spam. Grandma won’t let me have Spam because it’s fatty and disgusting, but Daddy fried slices in the skillet and I ate a Spam sandwich with mustard and kale.”
Kellen’s stomach growled.
“And yogurt with canned peaches and a Twinkie!”
Kellen shut the narrow bathroom door behind them.
The two men stared at it, hearing Rae’s cheerful, chatting voice and Kellen’s occasional quiet reply.
Zone turned to Max. “Start frying the Spam. I’ll open the peaches. Fuck, women are a pain in the ass.”
27
Kellen wore a clean pair of her own leggings and one of Max’s oversize T-shirts, sat at the table and ate the Spam and kale sandwich and the peaches and yogurt, and to keep her company, Rae ate, too.
“Growth spurt on the way,” Zone muttered, his gaze on Rae. When he saw Kellen watching him, he turned away.
Who was he? Kellen had had enough stitches to know these looked like a professional had done them. So he was a doctor? Medic? Nursing professional?
It sounded like he knew about children. So he was a father?
And he was the Restorer, a man whose reputation for verification was so stellar that Nils Brooks sent a valuable artifact on a dangerous countrywide trek to be authenticated by him. According to the bicyclists, he was a jerk. And of course, a recluse
, hiding on top of a mountain apart from everyone, despising the world, its people and its frivolities.
Interesting. “I’m sorry about the goddess, Zone. I had to leave her out there.”
“No problem,” Zone said. “Di Luca brought it in.”
“What?” Kellen whipped her head around and stared at Max. “How?”
“It was sitting on a rock and watching. I hadn’t seen it before, but no mistaking what it was.” Max shuddered slightly.
“The Triple Goddess,” Rae announced with a grand gesture that made Kellen look through the double doors into Zone’s workshop.
The marble head stared regally at her from a tall table covered with tools and papers.
Kellen put her hand to her chest. Her heartbeat stuttered and hurried.
Max continued, “No one else was around, so I picked up that thing and came here.”
Kellen tried to make sense of this turn of events. “I yelled at them. Told them the head was theirs. Put it on the top of the rock where they could see it. I used that thing as a diversion to get us away. Why didn’t they take it and run?”
“Three bodies, Max said. It sounds as if they killed each other over it,” Zone said.
Max interrupted, “Rae, do you want something else to eat?”
“Can I have peanut butter and banana?” Rae asked.
Max plucked the last banana, overripe and bruised, off Zone’s counter.
“Hey!” Zone said.
Max opened Zone’s jar of peanut butter, smeared it on the banana and handed it to Rae.
“Peanut butter? Really?” Kellen felt almost ill. “If I never have another bite of peanut butter, it will be too soon.”
Rae stopped, the food halfway to her mouth. “Why, Mommy? Why?”
“Because I said so.” Because I said so? Really? As a kid, Kellen had heard that phrase from her mother and father, her aunt and uncle. She had hated hearing that, and she told herself she would never say that to a child. Now it slipped out without a thought. Had everything she said to Rae been passed down through countless generations of her family?
Abruptly, Kellen knew her arm hurt, her head hurt, and mystery of the head or no mystery of the head, she couldn’t stay up any longer. She had no more reserves. She stood, her hips and back creaking, her thighs protesting. “I’m going to lie back down.”
“Good idea.” Max had a funny tone to his voice. “Maybe you should have listened to me and stayed down in the first place.”
Rae said, “Uh-oh,” and scrunched down in her chair.
Kellen turned back to snap at him and realized—a flush climbed Max’s face from chin to forehead, and a red flame kindled deep in his brown eyes.
And Rae looked like someone who recognized the danger signs. She met Kellen’s gaze and used her sticky banana-and-peanut-butter hand to indicate a mouth opening and closing.
Kellen’s gaze flew back to Max’s.
“Very funny, Rae.” His voice rose. “What did you think you were doing stowing away in that van?”
“I wrote you a note!” But Rae looked guilty and concerned.
Max went to the sink, wet a paper towel and cleaned Rae’s sticky fingers and face. “You wrote me a note. What did you think I was going to do when I found out you’d run away?”
“I didn’t run away. I was with Mommy!”
Max turned to Kellen. “What were you thinking letting her come with you?”
Zone turned a kitchen chair backward, sat down and cradled his chin in his hands. He watched the action and grinned.
“I didn’t let her come with me. I didn’t find her until—”
“You couldn’t have called me?”
“Horst stole my phone!”
Max mocked, “The big bad Army captain let some half-wit thieving security man steal her phone?”
Before Kellen could answer hotly, Rae asked, “Daddy, what does thieving mean?”
“It means he was a thief!”
“Then why are you surprised he stole her phone?”
That was when Max lost his precarious grip on his simmering temper and roared at Rae, “Child! You stay out of this!”
Rae looked serious but not afraid, and Kellen realized this was the daddy Rae had warned her about—he had been scared, and so he yelled.
Rae started to slide out of her chair and sneak toward the workshop.
Kellen caught her arm. “No, you don’t. We’re in this together.” Also, if she had to be yelled at, she was going to do it while horizontal.
Rae dragged her feet as she followed Kellen toward the bed.
Kellen sat sideways on the mattress, a slow controlled movement until she reached a critical point and collapsed. She leaned her back against the wall. Rae hopped up and leaned against her. They watched as Max followed and paced the floor and raged.
“Of all the careless, thoughtless immature acts—”
“Daddy, I’m sorry.”
Kellen nodded. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Do you know how worried her grandmother has been? Her nerves! When I called her tonight—”
“That poor woman,” Kellen said, and she was being sincere. “Max, I hope she can sleep well tonight knowing Rae is safe.”
“Don’t think because neither one of you was killed, you can do this again!”
“No, Daddy.” Rae’s voice slurred.
Kellen looked at her. Her eyes had closed and her jaw hung open. She had fallen asleep without talking about her princess dolls or her blankie or whether she had eaten enough peanut butter and Spam to fill her empty belly. Rae trusted Kellen to keep her safe. Kellen let her slide limply down onto the bed and flung the plaid wool throw over her.
Max kept pacing and raging.
She watched him affectionately.
She was exhausted, so maybe that was what opened her subconscious, but it seemed to her she could remember her first time with him more clearly. In that faraway time in Pennsylvania, he had been unendingly gentle, with never an unkind word. He must have had fears and frustrations he wished to share, but he never did, and she had felt like a cherished crystal he feared would break under any rough handling.
This yelling—this felt real. Like they had a relationship, with fights and misunderstandings and making up and... Like a cat around her kitten, she wrapped herself around Rae and listened to him rage without really hearing the words.
* * *
In midsentence, Max stopped shouting, stopped pacing and stared at the two females asleep on the bed.
Zone came to stand beside him. “You have those women terrorized.”
“I know. What’s a man to do?”
“Seems like you’re doing okay. Tuck ’em in!”
“Right.” Max dragged Kellen and Rae to the top of the bed, slid pillows under their heads, covered them and smoothed the hair over their foreheads.
He went back to the kitchen table where Zone had his weird spy mechanics spread out. “Can you see anything alive out there in those woods?”
“Nothing human. Only critters.” His green eyes gleamed through the thick lens of his glasses. “That’s a good thing. No one’s going to attack tonight.”
“Yeah. A good thing.” Max allowed all his cynicism to leak into his voice. “Let’s call the national park rangers and put them on the case. This is a crime scene!”
“Great idea. Which of us do you think they’ll arrest first?”
Max remembered his encounter with the rangers, and his unease must have shown, for Zone said, “Exactly. They don’t love me, either, and I have no desire to spend a month in custody trying to explain how some murdering sons-a-bitches climbed up my mountain and shot up the place and got offed by Kellen Adams, who is going to spend more than a month in custody, and God only knows what truthful thing your daughter would say that would send us all to prison.”
“Never mind. We’ll, um, handle it somehow.” Max had never in his life been afraid of the officials and their calls, but he was afraid now.
“I handle everything alone. Learned that the hard way.” Zone didn’t look satisfied at Max’s capitulation; he looked angry. “I can get right to work on figuring out whether that head is the real thing or a great forgery.”
“You should do that.”
“You can go sleep in the recliner. It’s lumpy, but comfortable if you’re tired enough.”
“I’ll do that.”
Zone started to walk toward the double doors that led to his workshop. Halfway there, he stopped, turned and looked at Max. “You think something stinks about this whole operation.”
Max hadn’t moved. “Don’t you?”
Zone asked the question that was haunting Max. “Why did they leave that potentially priceless piece of history sitting on a rock for you to pick up?”
“Exactly. Why?”
28
A punch to the ribs made Kellen grunt and wake. Her first thought was not an attack! Her first thought was Rae.
How times had changed.
She opened her eyes and found Rae asleep on the bed with her, one foot extended in kick position, the other twitching as if she was winding up for a kidney shot.
Everything was well. They were both alive.
Gently, she turned Rae so she faced into the room and looked across at Max and Zone. They stood in the kitchen and talked, their low voices a rumble as they leaned over a...a what? Something electronic. Kellen listened to them, picked out a few words, enough to rouse her interest and explain what they were doing—and seeing.
Raising herself on one elbow, she stroked Rae’s head, swaddled her little girl in a blanket, pulled on the terry cloth robe that was at the foot of the bed and headed for the bathroom.
Both men stopped talking and watched her, maybe because they were concerned about her ability to stand. Maybe because they didn’t want the little woman to hear what they were saying.
What Doesn't Kill Her Page 16