A Girl Undone

by Catherine Linka

  “Make yourself at home, Luke.”

  I waited for my invite, but Streicker kept me standing. He stripped off his jacket, revealing his cut arm muscles and a stomach that was military flat under his gray tee.

  The tattoo on his neck was now completely exposed, and I saw that these weren’t random words, but a long passage in the shape of a gun with a barrel, handle, and trigger. I made out a phrase before Streicker turned away.

  “For I Will Strike With Great Vengeance.”

  Who is this guy?

  Luke was caught up in the headlines scrolling across the Sportswall screens. I glanced at the road, knowing Selena was long gone.

  Streicker looked me in the eyes, a slightly amused smile on his face. “How about you go get us a couple beers?”

  My mouth dropped open, and I was about to say something, but Luke shot me a look: Just do it, okay?

  “Beer?” Streicker repeated.

  Go to hell. “Sure.”

  I headed down the hall toward the sound of cooking and saw a glistening tile floor that had to be in the kitchen. The next room was almost empty, too, except for a table and chairs and a steel gun case fixed to the wall.

  I took a quick count. Six semiautomatics in the center of the house, only a few steps from any room, secured by a grille and a coded lock.

  A shiver ran through me as if the temperature had dropped to freezing. This wasn’t like Salvation, where hunting rifles were kept handy but weapons like these were double-locked in the church basement.

  Luke’s and Streicker’s voices were hushed, and for the first time since Luke and I’d started out on this journey, I wondered if I could trust him.

  I stepped into the brightly lit kitchen. Everything looked new: countertops, appliances, cabinets, but none of it was expensive.

  A girl who seemed to be a few years older than I stood at the stove browning onions. When she saw me, her black eyes widened, and she glanced toward the front of the house.

  “Hi, I’m Tracy.”

  She looked like she had no idea why I was talking to her. “Lola.” She said it with an accent like she was Eastern European or maybe Russian.

  “I’m supposed to bring the guys some beer?”

  Lola kept stirring like she hadn’t heard me. She was tall and model skinny in perfectly cut jeans, but her dark hair was badly styled with thick bangs and a pageboy that curled below her ears.

  “Um, beer?” I said.

  Lola called out to Streicker in a language I swear I’d never heard before. I don’t know what he said back, but Lola opened the fridge and shoved two beers into my hands. Her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows, giving me a clear view of the scars that circled both her wrists.

  She’d been tied up or chained.

  “What the hell—” I stared at her wrists, my brain spinning,

  She forced the beers into my hands and jerked the spatula at me, telling me to get going.

  I mumbled thanks and headed back to Luke in the front room, fighting the urge to break into a run. A foreign girl with scars on her wrists? There was no way Streicker was a “friend” of Barnabas.

  Streicker raised his hand for a beer without looking up. I slapped it into his palm. “Have a seat, Avie.”

  Once I heard him say my name, I knew Luke and I were trapped. Luke must have spilled his guts, thinking Streicker would take up our cause. I sat down beside him on the couch, terrified and pissed at myself for leaving them alone.

  “Luke’s been telling me about the attack on Salvation.”

  I held perfectly still. Always wait for the question, my teacher, Ms. Alexandra, taught us. Answer exactly what is asked.

  Streicker’s eyes almost sparkled. “Why’d the feds attack, Avie? Why’d they kill Barnabas, and what do they want so badly they’ve got people looking for you in five states?”

  So Luke hadn’t told him everything. “Why should I tell you?”

  Streicker snorted, and Luke turned and glared at me.

  I held my ground.

  “You’re sitting in my house, little fugitive,” Streicker said. “Now I would like to honor my friendship with Luke’s father, but I’m not going to risk my ass unless I know exactly what I’m dealing with. You come clean or you’re out on the road.”

  “And if I do—then what?”

  “Then you’ve got options.”

  “Like what?”

  Streicker shrugged. “Depends on what you want. I could smuggle you out of the country, for one.”

  “You could get us over the border?”

  Luke shook his head, disgusted.

  “Like I told your lady friend with the dogs,” Streicker said. “Easy as one-two-three.”

  Canada. No roadblocks to worry about. No U.S. Marshals or FBI on our trail. It could be a detour; it didn’t have to be the end—but only if Streicker wasn’t lying.

  “Or,” Streicker said, “I get you a new life. New identities. Help take out the bastard who’s coming after you.”

  “That’s not the help we’re looking for,” Luke said.

  Walk out the door and end up dead or in prison. Or put my life in Streicker’s hands? “Luke, can I talk to you?”

  Streicker hauled himself out of the chair. “Take all the time you need.”

  “I don’t trust him,” I told Luke when we were alone. “He’s got six semiautomatics in the next room. Six! And there’s a girl in the kitchen with scars around her wrists like she was chained up. Not to mention that tattoo. You can’t tell me that he and Barnabas were friends.”

  “They weren’t.”

  “Then what were they?”

  “They worked together.”

  By not saying more, Luke said it all. Streicker’s and Barnabas’ pasts in the CIA were covert, classified, and erased from public record. I blew out a breath. “Did Barnabas trust him?”

  “He said Streicker owed him. Said Streicker’s code of honor would protect me.”

  “So Barnabas didn’t trust him.”

  “You got a better idea? You know any good, decent people who can smuggle evidence and evade capture, because I don’t.”

  He had me there. “No.”

  Luke fixed his gaze on the Sportswall. An aerial camera over Salvation zoomed in on state police carrying two children out of the church. The kids struggled to get free, but the men ignored their thrashing arms and legs.

  I laid my hand on Luke’s arm, half expecting him to shake me off. “Can you tell who they are?”

  “Not sure.”

  Luke sat transfixed as a gray and black dog leaped down from a porch and bounded through the snow to get to them. It circled the officers, barking and carrying on. Luke cupped his hands over his mouth. “It’s Jonas and Sarah.”

  “Oh thank God.” But where were Luke’s parents? I gripped his arm, praying they’d come out of the church next. It took far too long before two more figures came down the snow-covered steps. “Luke, look, is that Nellie and Rogan?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Dammit, it’s not them.”

  The men carrying Jonas and Sarah passed through the gate of the house closest to the church, and my voice dissolved in my throat. “Beattie will take good care of Sarah and Jonas. They’ll be okay.”

  “Not if Nellie and Rogan don’t make it.” Luke’s voice was flat.

  “The feds won’t kill your parents with the cameras watching.” Streicker had slipped back in the room without us hearing him. “But the media’s attention span is dangerously short. And once they leave—” Streicker looked at me. “You ready to talk now, Avie?”

  Streicker had me cornered. Luke would hate me if I didn’t cooperate. Either he’d go ahead and tell Streicker everything himself or he’d blame me if anything happened to Nellie and Rogan.

  “Fine, you win,” I said, not feeling fine at all.

  14

  Streicker took in everything we said about Jouvert and the tapes, and didn’t doubt a word of it. But when Luke told h
im we needed to get the evidence we had to Congressman Paul, Streicker told us that wasn’t happening.

  “You must not have heard. He got jumped about a week ago leaving a bar on Capitol Hill. The guy beat him pretty bad, and the docs don’t know if he’ll live.”

  “Damn,” Luke muttered.

  “Maggie talked about a friend at the Department of Justice,” I offered.

  Streicker looked like he wanted to spit. “You want to bring DOJ in on this? You do realize they’re probably orchestrating the hunt for you.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals—they’re all DOJ.”

  “Stop badgering her,” Luke said. “Maggie told us to contact this guy.” He gave Streicker a name and title.

  “So, he’s in the inspector general’s office.”

  “That’s what Maggie said.”

  “Then his job is to find out who’s dirty in the government. There’s a chance he’s clean and knows who else can be trusted.”

  “How do we find him?” I said.

  “I’ll find him,” Streicker said.

  “You will?”

  Streicker cocked his head, giving me a clear view of his tattoo. The path of the righteous man is beset by the tyranny of evil.

  “Nothing would please me more than taking out Jouvert,” he said.

  I shrank from Streicker, not wanting even his breath to touch me, but Luke leaned forward. If Satan had a recruiter, Streicker was it.

  “Interesting,” Streicker mused. “The Saudi king demands that Jouvert restrict women in the U.S. But we know that isn’t what he’s really after.”

  “No? Why not?” I said.

  “Because he’s a calculating political strategist who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you and your girlfriends. Right now, he’s testing Jouvert.”

  “Testing him? Why?”

  “To see how much he can control him.”

  “So the king’s got something bigger in mind,” Luke said.

  “Absolutely, and Jouvert’s playing right into his hands.”

  I remembered Father Gabriel saying that girls were the pawns in a big game that powerful people were playing. “So what do you think the king wants?”

  “Don’t know,” Streicker said, “but if I had to bet, it involves cutting the legs out from under his archenemy, Iran. Jouvert’s meeting with the Saudis in two weeks, so a deal’s probably already on the table. And if the king gets what he wants, he’ll make damned sure Jouvert gets the money he needs to take the White House in the next election.”

  “Jouvert can’t be the next president! He has to be stopped.”

  I cringed, hearing the tone in Luke’s voice. It was the same one I heard in Sparrow’s when she’d talk about Paternalists.

  Streicker’s phone hummed and he checked the screen then tapped out a message. “How about you do me a favor?”

  “What kind?” I muttered right as Luke said, “Sure.”

  Streicker snapped a set of keys off his belt and tossed them to Luke. “I’ve got something that needs to be picked up.”

  Luke was already on his feet before I could protest. “You’re sending us back out on the road?” I said to Streicker. “We barely made it through the roadblock.”

  “Well, I’d have gone myself, but unexpected visitors showed up.” Streicker let that sink in for a second. “Relax. There aren’t any roadblocks on this stretch. It’s back roads, about ten miles each way. Besides, I think this will appeal to your sense of righteousness.”

  Luke ignored my raised eyebrows as I followed him and Streicker out. Streicker let us into the fenced-in yard around the back building. A white, windowless van was parked outside, and he slapped two magnetic signs to its sides. RED ROCK PLUMBERS.

  Luke climbed into the driver’s seat and I buckled into a jump seat right behind him. The van was empty except for the nine other seats folded against the stripped-down walls. Streicker waved as we drove off.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so ready to trust Streicker,” I said. “You see what kind of person he is, right?”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “What kind of bullshit answer is that? You trust him because you both hate Jouvert?”

  “I don’t trust him, but yeah, we both hate Jouvert.”

  I watched the road over Luke’s shoulder. The sun had set and the moon hadn’t come up. The sky was washed with stars over the solid black hills.

  Luke didn’t say a word for a couple of miles, and I couldn’t stand the tension. “I’m not trying to be difficult,” I said.

  He drove another minute or so. “Well, you’re mighty talented to be able to do it without trying.” His eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror and I smiled back.

  “Yeah? Well, what about you? Were you always this stubborn?”

  “No, I was worse. Pa used to make me chop wood when I got that way. I think I chopped wood for half of Salvation one summer.”

  I laughed. “What was going on that summer?”

  “That summer? Barnabas.”

  “What about Barnabas?”

  “I was twelve when he moved to Salvation. Nobody’d told me he was my father, but everybody knew.”

  “That must have sucked.”

  “I wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t answer him, and the harder Pa pushed me, the worse I got.”

  “But you and Barnabas seemed so close.”

  “Yeah. He was even more stubborn than I was.”

  “So how did he conquer you?”

  “He didn’t. He wasn’t about conquering people.” Luke’s voice caught. “He’d take me off fishing or hunting. He’d talk and show me little tricks with traps or tying flies. But he didn’t ask me to talk.”

  “And Barnabas never got mad?”

  “Not that summer. But the next summer Maggie showed up? Nobody would have blamed him if he’d decked me.”

  I wasn’t surprised to hear that Maggie’s return had set Luke off. He was a newborn when she gave him to her brother to raise. “What did you do?”

  “I smashed a custom guitar he’d been working on all winter. The wood was imported from Honduras. It cost hundreds of dollars.”

  “You must have chopped a lot of wood that summer.”

  “Nope, not a single cord. Barnabas told me to pack up, because we were going into the woods. Then he took most everything out of my pack. For three weeks, we survived using a knife, fishing line, and a plastic sheet for a tent.”

  I could see them disappearing into the mountains. Barnabas might have told himself he was teaching Luke a lesson, but after hearing the song he wrote for Maggie, I knew she’d broken both his heart and Luke’s.

  I felt Luke sinking into the past, so I tried to lighten things up. “So if you had a knife, a fishing line, and a plastic sheet, you could keep us alive?” I joked.

  “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  The way he said it, he wasn’t joking. “What do you mean?”

  “Once we hand off the evidence in D.C., I could take us up the Appalachian Trail into Maine. No one would be looking for us there. We could cross over the border into New Brunswick or Quebec.”

  Luke was ignoring all the obstacles we faced getting to D.C., but the fact that he had a plan for what we’d do after the handoff made me feel slightly better. “How far is it from D.C. to Maine?”

  “Five or six hundred miles.”

  Hiking in the mountains in the dead of winter? It would take weeks. “Well, we probably wouldn’t run into a lot of people.”

  Luke turned his attention back to the road because we were coming up on our destination. In ten miles, we’d seen only two other cars. Now we strained to read names on mailboxes at the edge of the road using our headlights.

  Finally, we found the name on the mailbox that matched the one Streicker had given us. The kitchen light was on in the ranch house and a security light beamed over the garage. As we drove in the gate, a large brown-and-black dog leaped up. It ran until it re
ached the end of its chain by the garage, and then stood on its hind legs, barking and straining to get free.

  An older woman came out and snapped, “Lie down,” at the dog. It silenced, and she called out, “Mikhaela! He’s here.”

  The woman motioned to us to stay in the van as she came around to Luke’s window. “Here’s her birth certificate. An official copy just like you asked. And here’s the money.” She shoved the envelope into Luke’s hands. “It’s all there. Seven thousand in cash. Nothing bigger than a fifty.”

  She turned back to the house. “Mikhaela, hurry!”

  Damn!

  “Did Streicker tell you we’re picking up a girl?” I whispered.

  “Nope. But he said if I saw a maroon pickup out front to drive on.” Luke reached up and felt for a length of copper pipe snapped to the ceiling above his head.

  Great, I thought. Streicker sent us out to do his dirty work because he expected trouble.

  A girl came out of the house, a backpack slung over her shoulder. Her head was down, and she swiped her cheek with the back of her hand. She stood on the porch, the yellow light from the kitchen tinting her face and red ponytail. Even from twenty feet away I could tell she’d been crying.

  The older woman marched over and wrapped her arms around her, and my eyes began to fill, remembering the night a couple weeks before in the darkened airplane hangar when I said good-bye to Yates, my heart fighting to believe we would be together again.

  The woman raised her voice and I heard her say, “I cannot let your stepfather get his hands on you.”

  “But, Gran, Canada’s so far away. I might never see you again!”

  “If that man gets custody, he’ll auction you off before you turn fifteen. And if that happens, I don’t know where you’ll end up. This way, I know you’ll be safe.”

  I watched her stroke her granddaughter’s hair. Streicker had demanded seven thousand to get this girl to Canada. He wasn’t like Father Gabriel, who risked his neck for the cause but would have never taken money for himself.

  “Do you believe Streicker’s really going to smuggle her out?” I said to Luke.

  “You think he’s lying?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t it bother you that there’s a girl in his house with scars around her wrists? What if Streicker takes this woman’s money and does something bad to this girl?”