“Keep your hands off me,” Gregor seethed. “I’m a respected researcher. A scientist. I’m not like you, you fucking hillbilly.”
“You stupid shit!” Lyons cried. He hesitated, then chopped his baton down between Gregor’s neck and shoulder. The convict buckled to his knees. Lyons raised the baton again.
“Don’t do it, Lyons!” Kelly shouted.
The lieutenant glanced at Kelly, then back at Gregor, who was making as if to rise again. There was a split-second’s pause on the guard’s part, followed by resolve, and he struck Gregor twice more between the shoulder blades. The inmate sprawled next to Peterson.
“Get the doctor!” Lyons roared. “And the strait-jacket!”
Wilcox sprinted for the cage even as Jarrett was picking up the phone. On the floor at Lyons’s feet, Gregor was moaning, “I’m a scientist. A respected scientist.”
6:45 A.M.
NEAR CENTRAL CITY, KENTUCKY
An hour and a half later and fifty-five miles east of Eddyville, the transfer van sped along the Western Kentucky State Parkway, which was flanked by thick stands of hardwood trees. The moon hung low on the western horizon behind them. Ahead, the sun tried hard to burn off the ground fog that shrouded the hilly landscape. At that hour the parkway was almost empty, and overall the guards and inmates were making good time.
The transfer van itself was a rolling cell block. Keith Wilcox drove. Lieutenant Billy Lyons rode shotgun. Heavy metal screens separated them from the inmates, seated and ankle-chained to bars welded horizontally along the floor.
Wilcox had the radio tuned to US 101, which was featuring a Dwight Yokum retrospective. The guard tapped his boot in time with Yokum’s sulky twang. Next to him Lyons put on a pair of thin brown driving gloves, then shifted restlessly in his seat, clearing his throat several times, telling himself he could do this.
Then he turned and stared through the screen at the inmates. On the bench seat directly behind Lyons, Robert Gregor was wrapped in a straitjacket and propped up against the passenger-side window. There was a livid welt along the back of his neck where Lyons’s baton had struck him. Gregor’s eyes were slightly unfocused. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. Leonard Pate occupied the middle bench seat next to Quentin Mann. Edward Kelly sat in the rearmost seat. He was cracking his knuckles and staring bullets at Lyons.
“You thinking on how hard you hit him?” Kelly asked. “You thinking on what you may have done to us back there?”
The tendons in Lyons’s neck stood out like stretched rope. “My thoughts are my own, Kelly,” he snarled. “You got that?”
“You done checked his pulse?” Kelly demanded. “How ’bout his blood pressure?”
“He’ll be fine,” Lyons insisted, twisting around to face the windshield.
Puzzled, Wilcox glanced over at Lyons. “What’s with you?” he asked.
“Nothing. Fuckin’ Kelly knows just how to get under my skin.”
“Lieutenant, you should have developed calluses against guys like Kelly by now. You ain’t been—?”
“No,” Lyons said, shaking his head. “I’m solid, Keith. Haven’t put a bet down in more than a year now.”
“You’re sure?” Wilcox asked.
“Said I’m cool,” Lyons insisted, then he pointed to an empty Styrofoam coffee cup on the dashboard. “Too much of this swill just gets me on edge.”
“Try this, then,” Wilcox said, tugging a pint of Maker’s Mark bourbon from a black gym bag on the seat “Sure to calm the jangled nerves.”
Lyons raised his hand against the offer. “Didn’t see that, Keith.”
“Don’t care if you did, Lieutenant, wouldn’t care if the warden himself did,” Wilcox chuckled. “I’m twenty-five days from retirement. What’re you all gonna do, fire me for taking a snort?”
“Look at the moon!” Gregor whispered suddenly. Lyons turned and saw that the pale physicist had pressed his face against the window so he might watch the moon sinking from sight. “It calls to us with its mystery.”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up with that fantasy again,” Pate groaned.
The mobile radio suddenly crackled in the front of the van. “Eddyville transfer, do you copy? This is Kentucky State Police dispatch five.”
Lyons felt sweat trickle from his armpit down his rib cage as he snatched up the microphone. “Eddyville transfer.”
“Your position?”
Lyons looked at Wilcox, who said, “Coming on to Central City.”
The black guard repeated their location and the dispatcher came back: “We’ve got a gas tanker turned over and on fire parkway eastbound near the Peabody WMA. A mess. You can wait it out or take sixty-two as a detour.”
The lieutenant closed his eyes for a second. This was it, the chance he had been waiting for, the chance to be bold. “Roger that,” he said. “But you’re saying sixty-two’s clear?”
“ ’Cept for fog, that’s a ten-four.”
“You copy, Andrews?” Lyons said into the microphone.
The chase vehicle’s headlights on the highway behind them flipped on and off. Once again, Lyons found himself turning to look back through the screen at the inmates.
Gregor smiled dreamily at him. “The Descartes Highlands,” he whispered. “See them, Lyons? That light gray ridge above the dark plain in the orb’s upper hemisphere? That’s where they found it.”
“Uh-huh,” Pate snorted. “One day, Cap’n Kirk and Mr. Spock beamed down to Kentucky from the starship Enterprise and found a moon rock, that—”
Kelly crushed one manacled hand against the other. “Leave him alone, Pate, hear?” he said. “Guy’s a genius.”
“Nutcase, more like it,” Pate replied.
Wilcox steered the van onto the Central City exit ramp. In the front seat, Lyons felt his breath go shallow and quick, then he reached into his right pants pocket, feeling for the two steel-wool pads he had placed there before coming to work. Tiny beads of sweat appeared on his dark brow and he yelled back at the inmates, “Not another word! I want silence back there now.”
The van soon cleared the fast-food joints and twenty-four-hour stores of Central City’s south side and disappeared onto the lonely back road that was state highway 62. As the road climbed they encountered dense fog. A doe and her spotted fawn bounded out from behind a sign that read ENTERING PEABODY WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREA Lyons removed his hand from his pocket to gesture out the window to the south where a bright glow showed through the mist.
“Must be that tanker on fire,” Lyons said.
Wilcox took another swig of bourbon. “Must be.”
A minute passed and now they were traveling through deep forest. The trees were all slick black from fog. They had not seen another car since leaving Central City.
Lyons shifted in his seat. “Hate these damn holsters,” he announced. “Pistol butt gets you right on the hipbone every time.”
Wilcox’s grunt was noncommittal. His eyes never left the road.
Lyons unbuckled the strap that held his .38 caliber pistol in its holster and made a show of sighing with relief. Then he glanced over his shoulder. Gregor was sitting upright, lucid now, staring at him intently. Do it, the inmate mouthed silently.
Lyons’s eyebrows tightened, then he nodded and turned away. The guard held his breath, looking down at his own hand lying on his thigh. As if by force of will, the hand traveled to his pocket and eased out the two steel-wool pads.
“Gotta take a piss,” Lyons said. “Pull over up ahead there.”
“Got a full balloon, too,” Wilcox said, plying the brakes. “Alert Andrews.”
Lyons leaned forward as if going for the radio, but instead he drew his pistol and stuck the muzzle into the steel-wool pads. His face carried a sickened expression of inevitability and doom. “Sorry, Keith,” Lyons said. “Nothing personal.”
Wilcox frowned at the unexpected statement and looked over just in time to see that Lyons had jammed the barrel of the .38 up against the side of his ch
est. Silenced by the steel wool and the point-blank target, the gun’s report was no more than the rim shot of a snare drum. Wilcox slammed sideways against the driver’s door, where he slumped, glazed-eyed. Blood and whiskey drooled from his mouth. The van lurched into the other lane, tires squealing.
Gregor flung back his head and crowed, “Yes!”
Shaking with adrenaline, Lyons grabbed the wheel and steered the vehicle back to the right side of the road. He kicked Wilcox’s limp leg out of the way and got his foot on the brake. An alarmed voice came over the prison radio frequency: “Lyons! What’s going on up there?”
Lyons dropped the pistol on the seat and grabbed the radio microphone as he wheeled the slowing van onto the shoulder of the road. “Blew … blew a front tire,” he said, his voice quivering. He steered the van past the faint beginnings of a logging trail that led off into the forest. He braked to a halt and shoved the transmission into Park. Before any of the inmates could say a word, Lyons was out the door, holding the pistol and stumbling toward the white cruiser that had pulled up behind the van. Jarrett and Andrews climbed out of their vehicle.
“Want some help?” Andrews asked, looking beyond Lyons toward the van.
“Won’t be necessary,” Lyons said. He put his left hand on the hood of the cruiser for support, then raised his pistol and aimed it shakily at the middle of Jarrett’s chest
“Hey!” Jarrett said, taking a step backward, raising his palms.
Lyons pulled the trigger. The beefy guard was punched straight backward and landed on the wet tarmac.
“What the—!” Andrews roared. The second corrections officer had twisted at the shot and was trying to run, get his body down, and unholster his gun all at the same time. Lyons’s two shots struck Andrews high in the spine. The guard arched, then dropped and rolled off the road into a ditch. For a long moment, Lyons just stood there, his ears ringing from the pistol reports, staring at the bodies sprawled on the damp ground.
“I’m cut off,” he whispered to himself. “There’s no turning back now.”
“Lyons! We’ve got to get out of here!” Gregor screamed from the van. That ripped him from the shock of what he’d just done. His consciousness seemed to narrow and he went forward with the plan because it was the only thing he could do now. He hobbled toward Jarrett’s body and grabbed the man’s pistol. Then he took Jarrett under the armpits and dragged him around the rear of the cruiser, where he rolled him into the ditch next to Andrews. He climbed down into the ditch and got hold of Andrews’s weapon.
Lyons was feeling more confident now. He scrambled back to the van and yanked open the driver’s door. Wilcox’s body sprawled onto the pavement. He steeled himself, then tugged off Wilcox’s gun belt and tossed it onto the front seat
“Let me out of these irons,” Pate cried from behind the metal screen.
Lyons ignored him and dragged Wilcox back and dumped him into the ditch. The chase vehicle’s engine still idled. Lyons slid into the front seat, working the mechanism to release the riot shotgun from its post even as he peeled rubber back up the road fifty feet before jamming the car into Drive and spinning onto the logging two-track. Mud spat through the air. Pebbles ricocheted off the under-carriage. Out of sight, he killed the engine, jumped out, and sprinted back toward the highway, holding the shotgun at port arms.
As he reached the near side of the van, the headlights of a pickup truck appeared out of the fog from back toward Central City. Lyons froze in the shadows, his heart pounding in his throat. The road was supposed to be empty. That was the plan. The rig slowed and for an instant he thought the driver, a middle-aged woman with a beehive hairdo, had seen the blood in the road. Then she noticed the men sitting inside the van and just went on by.
Lyons waited until he could no longer see the pickup’s taillights, then went to the van and opened the side door. “Let me out!” Pate demanded.
“We’re going for Gregor’s stone,” the guard replied. “Everybody agreed that if I could fake the tests, we’d all have to go.”
“I didn’t agree to jack shit, remember?” Pate said. “I told you before. I don’t fucking believe there is a stone. Never was. Never will be. I just want out!”
“What about the rest of you?” Lyons demanded.
“I’m with Gregor,” Kelly said. “All the way.”
Mann hesitated, then nodded. “Me too. I want that fortune.”
Lyons hesitated. Letting Pate run wasn’t part of the grand design. But he didn’t dare bring him along if he was not a believer, and he didn’t want to kill anyone else. He jumped inside the van and unlocked the handcuffs and ankle irons that held Pate to the bench seat. Freed of the shackles, Pate said, “Gimme a gun.”
The guard hesitated, then looked down at his pistol three shots spent, and tossed it to the arsonist. Pate stuck it in his waistband, turned, and sprinted for the forest in his orange jumpsuit and flip-flop sandals. Lyons threw the van in gear and spun back out onto the highway. For several moments, all he could do was drive.
“It went perfect,” Gregor called from behind him. “Now get us lost, fast.”
Lyons shook with sudden fury then looked over his shoulder. “One thing I’m making clear, Gregor—I don’t take your orders. You squeezed me into this play. I upheld my end of the bargain. But I don’t take your orders. This is a business now and I’m your partner. So shut the fuck up while I take care of business, partner.”
Lyons grabbed the radio. “This is Eddyville Transfer.”
“Copy you, Eddyville.”
“We’ll be back on the parkway in a minute here. Had a flat tire and it’s kind of foggy, so the going’s slow. I’ll check in when we get to the hospital. Figure on at least two more hours until we make contact.”
“Roger that.”
Lyons slid the microphone back onto its holder, then glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Gregor glowering at him.
“Which way to this stone of yours?” Lyons demanded.
Gregor held the glare for a moment. “Head due east, Lieutenant. Back roads. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
9:12 A.M.
JENKINS RIDGE LABYRINTH CAVE
CRICKET BURKE THREW HER duffel bag onto the cot in the canvas tent behind the big Mission Control Pavilion her father had disappeared into moments before with his assistant, Andy Swearingen. She stood there looking all around, feeling very alone.
She felt like that a lot these days—severed from the ties that bound her to childhood. It was unfair, she decided. All of it was unfair. She was only fourteen and everyone seemed to have forgotten her needs, her hopes, her fears. Everything was always about her mother and the accident. Or her dad and the Artemis Project. There had been days in the past few weeks when she swore neither of them knew she was even on the same planet.
And almost every night there was either her mother’s recurring nightmare or her parents arguing over the time her dad spent away from the house, working for NASA. This morning had been the worst yet. When she and her father had gotten up early to leave, her mother had refused to come down and see them off. Cricket missed her mom, missed all the time they used to spend together just talking. She felt a hollowness open up in her stomach and wanted to throw herself on the cot and cry herself to sleep. Or grab her things and hitchhike home. But in her mind, home seemed a dark hole in the ground where you might get lost and never find yourself again.
When had that happened? she asked herself. Home had always been such a happy place. Jenkins farm had always been such a happy place. Now it seemed to be just a setting for her dad’s next big career move.
A bug fluttered in the air and she caught it. She was surprised. A firefly. During the day?
She smiled sadly at the bug moving across her palm, its antennae waving. She flashed on a memory of herself at seven years old. She had been pestering her parents all week about catching fireflies when they got to Jenkins farm to explore more of Labyrinth Cave. But there were no glowing bugs in the air when they got to the
farm around dusk, and Cricket had fallen asleep disappointed.
Several hours later, however, her mom and dad had gently shaken her shoulders. “You’ve got friends here to see you, sweetheart,” Whitney had said.
Yawning, Cricket had gone out into the wet meadow grass in her nightgown. Hundreds of fireflies danced in the night air. She caught dozens in a jar and placed the jar near her pillow. The last thing she remembered that night was her mom and dad smiling down at her, both their faces lit by the glow of fireflies.
“Cricket?” Tom said.
Cricket turned and wiped away the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Yeah?”
“You okay, honey?” Her father came into the tent with his duffel bag of gear.
She hesitated, wanting to tell him what she’d been thinking about, then decided against it. Her dad could be absentminded and self-absorbed, but he was essentially a good person. She knew that. And he was under a tremendous amount of pressure these days. How many men were asked to lead one of the most important experiments in the history of NASA? He did not need to hear the pining of a young girl. Not now.
“I’m fine, Dad,” she said, rubbing at her red eyes. “My allergies are just bothering me again.”
9:40 A.M.
14 VALLEY LANE
TARRINGTON, KENTUCKY
TWO HUNDRED SIXTY-FIVE miles to the southeast, Whitney paced from the kitchen to the den and back again inside the restored post-and-beam farmhouse where she, Tom, and Cricket lived.
Her bowed head swung to and fro. She plucked strands of terry fabric from the sleeve of her faded turquoise bathrobe and flicked them into space. Dozens of the threads already lay on the pine-plank floor like blaze marks on a well-worn trail between the TV, the computer, and the staircase. The television showed in split screen, one side tuned to the Weather Channel, the other to NBC.
For the eighty-seventh time since her husband and daughter had departed for Labyrinth Cave, Whitney found herself at the bottom of the stairs. She gazed upward, then glanced at a mirror on the wall. Her tangled hair hung in her eyes.
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