“Is that so?”
“We have a deal or not?”
“If you were in my position,” the Reverend said, “you wouldn’t do it. And I’ll tell you why.”
“Why?”
“Leverage, my good boy. I cut her loose, what keeps you in line?”
Devin shook his head and said nothing. The Reverend made a compelling point, although not a very welcome one. There wouldn’t be much to stop him from making a break for it once Sarah and Tommy were out of harm’s way.
“Then he can stay,” Devin said. “My brother.” The word brother tasted like battery acid in his mouth, stung every bit of his insides.
“I can’t do that,” the Reverend said. “You care about the girl more. But I don’t know why.”
“She’s innocent.”
“Perhaps, but she also seems…entitled.” The Reverend searched long for the correct word, settling on something close to the truth. Devin nodded, but still wanted to protect her.
“Fine. Tommy goes, she stays. But not in there. She works the fields.”
“Are you sure she’d agree to that?” The Reverend again flashed a wry smile.
“I’ll talk to her and find out,” Devin said. He opened the door to the inventory shed and slammed it shut.
Tommy and Sarah rustled in the darkness, jumping at the sudden burst of light and noise.
“Tom,” Devin said. “You still in the corner?”
“Yeah.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re done. Get the hell out of here.”
“But Dev—”
“Whenever I see you next,” Devin said, “and that could be a long damn time, we’ll talk all about it. But you leave right now, you don’t come back for me, just go home and forget about it.”
“I won’t—”
“This isn’t a fucking negotiation.” Devin stepped back and kicked the flimsy door open, spraying the shadowy room with light. Tommy threw his hands up, but then got to his feet and walked out, stopping in the doorway like he wanted to say something.
And then he was gone without a word, leaving the door open.
Devin listened for his footsteps, noted the sound of the barn door closing.
Then he focused on Sarah.
“They won’t let you go.”
“I just want to go home.”
“I know.” Devin crouched down behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “Believe me, I know.”
“Are they going to kill me?”
“Not while I’m here,” Devin said. “They want me. And they need you for that, so you’re all right.”
“Do I have to stay in here?” Sarah’s eyes shifted like a caged animal’s across the dim, musty surroundings. “I don’t wanna fucking stay in here.”
“They have a proposition for you.”
“Anything,” Sarah said. “Wait, it’s not like, I do stuff to them, right? I’m not a hooker.”
“I don’t think the good Reverend condones that on his watch,” Devin said. “No, you get to sleep in the bunks.” He rubbed his forehead before getting to the catch-22. “Just one thing.”
“I’ll do it.”
“You have to work in the fields.”
“That’s fine.” Sarah almost leapt over him in her excitement. For a second, Devin thought she was going to kiss him, but she caught herself and started pacing back and forth. “You know I love pot, right?”
“I guess I do now.”
Her eyes glinted in the low light as she looked at him.
“I’m sorry about, you know.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. This isn’t your fault.”
“I was kind of a bitch to you before,” Sarah said. “At the warehouse.”
“That was a long time ago,” Devin said, and turned to leave.
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Might as well be,” he said.
“Wait.”
“Yeah?”
“What the hell do they want from you, anyway,” Sarah said. “You don’t seem special. I mean—sorry, you just seem like a normal guy.”
“They want my dreams,” Devin said, and walked back into the light, towards the barn door. As he passed the Reverend, he nodded. “We have a deal.”
“Excellent,” the Reverend said. “Let’s rest up. Tomorrow is a new day.”
37 | Unlikely Allies
After being evicted from the penthouse suite following a few days of mopey binging, Anya had found herself with a backpack, no friends and nowhere to go.
Miss Ena’s old house—her old house, too—wasn’t far from the Export Hotel, but neither was Chimera’s Headquarters. Anya, none too keen on staying in or around the Jamestown area, placed her last fifty bucks on the bus station counter and took a deep breath.
“Rever’s Point,” she said, unsure why she was returning to Texas. It wasn’t like there was anything for her there, either. But something about the town called her name, and a news story that had popped up on her computer during the past week had caught her eye.
A warehouse had burned down. Parsons Shipping & Processing.
And Anya had remembered seeing a paystub with that name on it in Devin’s house. A quick web search indicated their website was no longer active—but that wasn’t enough to stop her. Nothing’s ever really gone on the internet, and a cursory trawl of the web’s archives provided her with an employee list at the warehouse.
Devin Travis.
Tommy Travis.
And, at the top, a little banner that exclaimed celebrating twenty years of service in Rever’s Point.
The numbers had whirred in Anya’s head, and when hotel security had thrown her on her ass out of the Export, she knew where she needed to go. Too much coincidence, too much timing for it all to be random. Anya knew numbers, knew probabilities. Knew random.
These details, they were anything but.
So here she was, the bus station attendant sliding a ticket to Rever’s Point through the little hole in the bulletproof glass, telling her to sign it at the bottom, Anya nodding and doing just that, then going to terminal five to wait.
With her last change, Anya went up to the lone, grungy pay phone and made a call.
“Hello?” Miss Ena’s familiar voice crackled across the line.
“Why did you lie?”
“Child? Oh, thank goodness you’re not hurt.”
“Why did you lie?” Anya said again.
Silence hung. No one spoke, they just breathed. Waited.
“It’s a difficult story, child,” Miss Ena said. “A long one.”
“Does it start twenty years ago?”
“Yes.” The word was affirmative, sure, but the voice that uttered it was anything but.
“I need your help.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Devin’s in trouble.”
“The boy,” Miss Ena said. “The Dreamer. He’s dangerous, child. You must let him—”
“Help me or don’t,” Anya said. “I’ll be in Rever’s Point tonight. His house. You know where that is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you or I won’t.” Anya hung up the phone before she got an answer. The station’s intercom announced that the bus for Rever’s Point was boarding, would leave in ten minutes. Anya shifted her backpack and rubbed her shoulder, and waited in the dry heat for the bus to board.
The bus driver smiled as Anya disembarked.
“You have a good trip?”
“No.”
This didn’t dampen his smile. “An honest one. You’re one of the few.”
“Guess so.”
“Truth be told,” he said, “I don’t like the trip much myself. But this town’s all right enough. Got one of those qualities, you know?”
“I don’t.”
“Like you’re in a dream.” He stopped and chuckled. “I’m rambling. You got someone here to pick you up, young lady? Shouldn’t be walking on
these roads alone at night, even in a place as nice as this.”
“I’m walking,” Anya said, and went up the road, not looking back, fingers touching the corkscrew from the hotel’s mini-bar in her pocket. It was no switchblade, but it would do.
She walked and walked, past that green sign that said Rever’s Point was six miles, past that general store where Tommy Travis and Boyd had attacked her, tried to stop her from finding the Dreamer.
It was all her fault. Miss Ena had lied to her about the Dreamer.
And then she had led the Lionhearted right to Devin. They’d followed her. She’d been sloppy, and they’d found her. And now they had him.
Everything was her fault.
A beat-up truck pulled up alongside her, and Anya’s hand shot into her pocket. The driver’s side window rolled down real slow, and someone’s head popped out.
“You need a ride there?”
“No.” Anya picked up the pace into a brisk jog, but the car kept up with her, rolling along beside her.
“You sure? You’re covered in sweat. Come on, get in. It’s midnight.”
“No.” Now Anya was running. The town’s lights were but a distant vision on the horizon, far away, ethereal, a dream. She couldn’t outrun the car, whoever was in it. But maybe he’d just leave her alone.
“Come on,” the man said. “I need to do something good for once.” His voice sounded lost, a thousand miles away, in a different plane of life. Anya heard the truck accelerate to keep up with her. She tried to push to her own top speed, even though her lungs were screaming for her to stop, and the laptop was bruising her back with its jarring bounces.
“Leave me alone,” she said in between jagged breaths, and turned to cut into the dusty expanse of empty desert that sat beside the road.
The vehicle cut too, sudden, sharp, and the driver put a little too much force into the gas. The truck jumped in front of the running girl and Anya slammed into its hood, rolling over and hitting the ground with a thud and an oof.
The car halted with a screech of the brakes, sending a plume of dust into the starry night.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” the driver said, door creaking as he pushed it open, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to.” He dashed around to the other side, where the girl lay.
“Get away from me. Stay away.” Anya was brandishing the corkscrew, jabbing it into the air. Although covered in enough dust to choke a small horse, she was otherwise uninjured and no worse for wear. Her sides heaved in and out as she tried to catch her breath and figure out what to do.
She flailed with the corkscrew, and the man jumped back.
“Holy shit, just calm down.” He took a step into the moonlight, and that’s when Anya’s blood ran cold. Before, she’d just been pissed. Now she was terrified.
“Tommy Travis.”
“How do you?” Then he took another small step, and came to the same realization. The general store. Anya clawed at the ground, kicking up dust in a frantic crawl. Tommy stood, frozen, watching the girl make little progress, despite all her efforts.
“Just wait,” he said, and then ran alongside her, cutting her off. “I’m sorry.”
She slashed at his leg with the corkscrew, tearing open his jeans as an answer. He hopped out of the way and threw up his hands.
“I’m just trying to help you, I swear.”
“Like in the store?” Anya said through gritted teeth, keeping an eye on Tommy as she wobbled to her feet. She took a few steps back, placing a few yards of desert between the two of them. The corkscrew, bent at an angle from the accident, remained outstretched in front of her.
In the moonlight, she could see a faint wisp of blood on the tip, from where she’d slashed Tommy’s leg.
Good. She’d aim higher next time, jam it right into his thigh if he came closer.
“I’m sorry about that.” He didn’t try to get any closer. “Shit, this is something.”
“You’re with him,” Anya said. “The Reverend.”
“Not no more.”
“I don’t believe you.” Anya wagged the corkscrew at his face, as if to emphasize the point. She backed up a few more feet. “Let me go.”
“I just wanted to help.” Tommy slumped down into the dust, on his knees, eyes focused on the ground. “It’s been a shit day, and I figured, you know, I could just help someone, that would make up a little bit for all the wrong I done.” He looked up at her, then higher, at the crescent moon. “I sure am fucked, ain’t I?”
“I don’t know you that well,” she said.
He laughed, like this was funny.
“What are the chances?”
“Low.”
“Here.” Tommy beckoned for her to come over to the car. “Get cleaned up back at the house.”
“No.”
“Where you gonna go? There’s nothing out here.” All around them, desert stretched out in an endless dusty panorama, the lights of Rever’s Point and the cracked road the only indication that civilization had reached this part of the world.
“I’m better off alone.”
“Suit yourself.” Tommy kicked at the dry ground and headed back to his truck. “Why the hell’d you come back here, anyway? After, you know.” The last words trailed off into the ground, like he was ashamed of what had happened in the general store. Of the wrong turns his life had taken.
“I’m going to Devin’s house.”
Tommy’s fingers drifted away from the truck’s door, and he stood still. “Devin’s house, huh? No shit.”
“Yes.”
“That’s my house, too.”
“I know.”
“And you’re still going there?”
“Yes.”
“But you won’t ride along with me.”
“I’d prefer to walk.”
“You’re a weird one,” Tommy said. “Anyone tell you that?”
“No.”
“Must not get out much.”
Anya’s mind spun with the options. She didn’t trust Tommy, but it was going to be hard to avoid him, back at the house. And she had no money, no place to stay. That had been her plan, all along—stay at Devin’s. There was no fallback. She could try to hack her way into a hotel room, but everything around Rever’s Point was of the old school weekly rental motel variety. No electronic systems to access and alter.
She toed the ground and kept her eyes fixed on Tommy while she thought. Miss Ena hadn’t prepared her for this. For people. They were confusing, mysterious, changing their whims and allegiances like shirts.
“He’s been taken,” Anya said.
“I know. Trust me, I know.”
“How?” Her tone was suspicious, accusatory, her eyelids thinning into razor-like slits as she tried to figure out Tommy’s angle with little success.
“Fifteen, sixteen hours ago I was sitting with him.” Tommy wiped the dirt and dust from his long brown hair and sighed.
“Do you want to see him again?”
“He’s my brother.”
“But do you want to see him again?”
Tommy took a step away from the truck and cocked his head. “You know that was your answer, right? That was a yes.”
“You should just say that next time.”
“Most people ain’t that stupid.”
“I guess I’m not most people.” The whole time talking, Anya had held the corkscrew out stiff, life a barrier between her and Tommy. She dropped it to her side and walked over to the truck’s rusted hood. Patted it with a skeptical hand. “Does this thing work?”
“Last I checked,” Tommy said, watching as she hopped into the cab with a graceful, lithe jump. “Why you care about my little brother so much?”
Anya went red and stared out the window as the engine revved up and the truck bumped and rocked back onto the road.
“Oh,” Tommy said. “Nice going, little brother. What a dog.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Guess I should properly introduce myself seeing you’re his girlfriend. I’m Tommy.”
&n
bsp; “Dog?”
“Forget it,” Tommy said. “You got a plan? We can’t just charge the pearly gates. The Lionhearted may believe in God, but they damn well believe in guns and money, too.”
“We start at the warehouse,” Anya said, and that’s where the truck headed, guided by the light of the desert moon. And then, after a few miles, soft enough so that she wasn’t sure he could even hear, she said, “And I’m Anya.”
38 | Unscheduled Inspection
Anya brushed her pale fingers through the sticky black wreckage on the outskirts of the ruined Parsons Shipping & Processing warehouse. The place smelled like stale, ashen charcoal briquettes and burnt plywood. The building had burned down to its foundation, leaving nothing but a blackened, empty expanse next to the employee parking lot.
“Come on,” Tommy said. “You’re gonna get it in the truck—Jesus, what the hell are you doing?” He watched as she brought her dirty hands up to her nose and then licked a finger without hesitation.
She wiped her hand against her jeans and walked over.
“Gasoline,” she said.
“What?” Tommy stared at her like she was insane.
“The fire started at that end of the warehouse,” she said. “And the propellant was gasoline.”
“Great job Sherlock Holmes,” Tommy said, and followed her across the sea of ash, tip-toeing in a fruitless effort to keep his boots unsullied by the nasty remnants of the fire.
“If they wanted to burn the place down, they should’ve started the fire here.” She pointed to the spidery husk of a backup generator sitting on the opposite end of the former warehouse. “Ignite the few hundred gallons of propane and the whole thing comes down faster. It did anyway, but it took a long time.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“It’s simple physics,” she said, like it was obvious.
“Must have missed that class in middle school.” Tommy looked at the ruined generator, recalling all the times he’d passed it during a day’s work. And now everything sat in a blackened heap. He whirled around, and Anya was nowhere to be found. “Hello?”
“At the truck.” Anya’s voice carried out across the dark. She’d slipped off like a panther in the night.
Tommy worked his way back to the parking lot and sighed.
“You liked it here,” Anya said.
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