by Mg Gardiner
Grissom paused. “They may not be here. May not even be awake yet.”
Fell said, “They’re awake.”
“You contradicting me?”
“I’m speaking from experience.” Damn, he was wound up. She hated having to watch every freaking word. “The girl’s five. She’s been awake for two hours.”
On the long drive through the night they’d called all the motels in town. Sarah Keller had not checked in anywhere. The clan had outriders in this county—cousins who had been called and told to watch for Keller, for the girl, and for a truck with Oklahoma plates. Nobody had reported anything.
Reavy scanned the scene. “They’re here. I know it.”
Grissom nodded and ran the back of his hand down her arm. “Then they’re here.” He pointed at a booth a hundred yards away. INFORMATION. MEETING POINT. “Come on.”
Sarah hung the IV bag while Teresa checked the young woman’s vitals. It looked like dehydration, probably from a combination of sunshine, nonstop dancing, and vodka shots.
Teresa said, “Rest. Call if you need me.”
She and Sarah walked to the check-in desk. From her perch behind the table, Zoe held up a picture she’d drawn. “Look.”
It was Teresa, dressed in a nun’s habit, her crucifix the size of a crossbow. She was riding a unicorn.
“Cool,” Sarah said.
“Are my feet really that round?” Teresa said.
Outside, the P.A. amplifier whined to life. “Sarah Keller to the Information booth. Sarah Keller.”
Zoe looked toward the tent flap. “Mommy, they’re calling you.”
Sarah stood frozen.
The volunteer at the desk was staring at her peculiarly. When she’d come in, Teresa had introduced her as Carson.
“Sarah Keller to the information booth.”
Teresa put a hand on her arm. The volunteer looked back and forth between them, perplexed but peeling back the obfuscation. Her eyes widened.
That was their game, Sarah realized. “I should—”
Teresa held onto her arm. “You don’t need to do a thing.”
She felt the shakes begin, at her knees. “Right.”
The aide seemed overcome with shock. Her cheeks were glowing pink.
Zoe said, “Mommy, aren’t you going to the information booth?”
It was no use. Sarah said, “Yeah. Come on.”
She took Zoe’s hand and had her climb over the table. “Backpack. On.” She looked at Teresa, feeling the beginnings of panic.
The volunteer stood up, clutching a clipboard to her chest. “You’re the …”
“Teresa didn’t know,” Sarah said. Holding Zoe’s hand, she ran toward the tent flap.
Zoe said, “Mommy, my colored pencils.”
“We’ll get more later.” She looked over her shoulder. The volunteer had a walkie-talkie to her mouth.
Teresa was bustling after her, looking frustrated and determined. “This way.” She grabbed Sarah’s arm and pulled her toward the back of the tent.
“You don’t have to do anything. This is on me,” Sarah said.
“Faster.”
At a corner of the tent the dirt peeked through. Teresa pulled up a tent peg and lifted the heavy plastic a foot off the ground.
“Hurry,” she said.
“I can’t ask you to—”
“Let me deal with my own decisions. Move.”
Zoe stood by the impromptu exit, working her fingers together. “Where are we going?”
Sarah held back for only a millisecond. “Follow me.”
She dropped to the ground and crawled underneath the plastic into the sunshine, then waved to Zoe. “Come on.”
Zoe got on her belly and skinnied out, backpack scraping the tent.
Sarah jumped to her feet. In the Snugli, the reborn looked dusty. She hurriedly brushed its head. “To the truck.”
“Sarah Keller to the information booth. Sarah Keller.”
Inside the tent, voices rose. The volunteer said, “She went out the back.”
“Mommy?” Zoe said.
She took her daughter’s hand and ran.
As the highway neared Roswell, the land flattened out. Miles of sand and sagebrush rolled out ahead of Lawless, a view that looked like it would never end. He checked the clock. He figured he’d be at the music festival in fifteen minutes. He felt tired but wired. He phoned Teresa Gavilan.
Her number rang, and she didn’t answer.
“Sarah. This way.”
Running, Sarah looked back. Teresa had crawled beneath the tent flap and climbed awkwardly to her feet. She caught up. “The volunteer—she called Security. They’ll call the police. I’m sorry.”
Sarah’s stomach cramped. Zoe said, “Mommy, what’s wrong?”
Teresa led them down an alley between the medical tent and the food court. Vendors were piling crates out of vans and trucks, loading food in refrigerators.
“We have to get to my truck,” Sarah said.
“My car’s closer,” Teresa said. “In the staff lot.”
“And you have an official badge for that? They have your license number?”
Teresa grimaced. “Your truck. How far?”
In the center of the festival grounds, near the sound board, two stanchions were set up—girders for emergency lighting and the megaphones of the P.A. system. Fell climbed the stanchion as if it were the ladder for a high dive. Twelve feet up, she stared around the grounds.
Reavy was below, ready. Grissom said, “Well?”
Fell leaned out, one hand tented over her eyes. Hippies, druggies, children of darkness all around. And …
Two women, moving quickly, toward the parking lot. Pulling a child along.
She pointed.
Reavy moved.
31
Sarah held Zoe’s hand and led Teresa through the crowd. People pressed in.
“Mommy, I can’t go so fast,” Zoe said.
Her backpack was bouncing up and down, her face confused and worried. Sarah picked her up and kept going. The parking lot was a quarter of a mile away. Sweating, she broke into a jog. Teresa put a hand on her arm to hold her back.
“Stay calm. Don’t draw undue attention.”
Lesson one, and Sarah had forgotten it. She slowed down.
Zoe said, “Where’s Mousie?”
Sarah did not want to hear that. “In your backpack.”
“No, he isn’t.” Zoe looked around. She looked at her hands. “I had him. I was holding him.”
“We can’t worry about Mousie right now.”
Zoe’s shoulders rose. “Mommy, I dropped him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I dropped him. I want Mousie. Mommy, stop. Stop.”
She burst into tears and tried to squirm out of Sarah’s arms. “I want Mousie. Go back. Go back.”
“I can’t,” Sarah said.
Zoe’s crying increased. “I want Mousie. Where is he? Go back, Mommy. Go back.”
It was too much: Zoe had made it this far and hit her limit. She was having a meltdown.
Teresa peered back through the crowd. “What does Mousie look like?”
Sarah felt like her skin was covered in nettles. “He’s about six inches long, white stuffed mouse wearing a red clown outfit, and …”
“Mousie,” Zoe sobbed.
This was stupid. She couldn’t have Zoe freaking out in public. She pulled the keys from her pocket and stuck them in Teresa’s palm. “Get her to the truck. I’ll find Mousie and catch up with you.”
Instantly Zoe’s sobs abated. Sarah set her down. Her shoulders shuddered and she wound her fingers together frantically, but the crying stopped.
“Go with Teresa. I’ll be right there.”
She rushed back toward the medical tent, searching the ground through the ever-thickening crowd. Then miraculously, she saw Mousie. She rushed across a crowded patch of ground where he was being trampled underfoot.
He looked like a broken skydiver, flopping on the
dirt. She bent and picked him up. People flowed around her.
Somebody stopped right in front of her. Hiking boots. She looked up.
A blond woman with glossy eyes stood directly above her. She had a tattoo on the inside of her right forearm. Fiery Branch.
She grabbed Sarah’s hair.
Before Sarah could move, the woman dug strong fingers into her hair and twisted. Sarah tumbled to the dirt.
A man in the crowd raised his hands in a calming gesture. “Hey, not cool.”
The blonde said, “Fuck off.”
Sarah punched her in the groin.
She cringed and let go. Sarah scrambled away from her on all fours and stumbled to her feet.
She recognized her. She’d seen her once before in person, and many times in the newspaper and on wanted posters. Her name was Reavy Worthe.
Sarah plowed through the crowd, off balance. Ahead she saw nonstop people, a wall six feet high and six hundred yards deep. She looked back. Reavy was twenty feet behind her. And she was coming after her with a knife in her hand.
Sarah veered into a tent. People in black T-shirts wearing badges on lanyards, drinking orange juice and eating croissants. Somebody cried, “Hey—where’s your credentials?”
“Help me,” Sarah said. “A woman’s chasing me—shit.”
Reavy bulled into the tent. Sarah ran past a table laid with muffins and a kettle of oatmeal. She spun and upended the table in Reavy’s path. A woman shrieked.
Reavy raised the blade over her head like a knife thrower in the circus, and flung it across the tent. It flicked end over end, flashing in the light. Sarah dropped low behind the upended table.
Somebody screamed. People dropped drinks and food and scattered.
A man cried: “I’ve been stabbed.”
Sarah saw a young man on the ground, the knife sticking out of his calf. He looked astonished at the blood running down his leg from beneath his jeans. Sarah fled for the exit at the far end of the tent.
Behind her the young man screamed again. “You fuckin’ kidding me? Are you insane?”
Sarah ran out the exit into the sunshine. When she looked back, Reavy was coming. She had the knife in her hand again. She must have yanked it from the young man’s leg.
Sarah jumped over tent pegs and raced into the crowd. Looked back. Saw only Goths and Emo kids and a few Rastafarians. Maybe. Maybe she’d lost her.
Then from the corner of her eye she saw movement. Her skin prickled. Another woman was running at her from an angle. Dark hair, dark clothing, pale skin.
Fell was here. Sarah pumped her arms and ran for the gate.
The angel’s wings. If they were here, they weren’t alone. They never attacked on their own. They were in the service of the Shattering Angel.
She sprinted toward the distant gate to the parking lot. Where was Grissom Briggs? He was the one she feared most. She could sense him—he was like a dark weight in the air. She pushed past concertgoers. Behind her, she heard shouts. She looked. Fell and Reavy were closing in.
She neared the chain-link fence that surrounded the festival grounds. The gate was straight ahead. All at once, she thought: No. She couldn’t lead them straight to the pickup truck. She had to lose them again and get to the next gate down.
She veered left and raced along the fence. On the far side, a sea of parked cars shone in the morning sun. Her feet kicked up dust. Her breath came in long gasps. She chanced another look back. Fell and Reavy were closer.
They were going to catch her.
And the fence continued straight for what seemed forever. She was penned in.
Then she heard a horn honk, loud and long and hard. On the far side of the fence, beyond the first rank of parked cars, the black pickup appeared. At the wheel Teresa had one hand pressed on the horn.
Sarah ran for the fence, jumped, and climbed.
At the Roswell airport, Curtis Harker got behind the wheel of his rental car. The dry desert air was motionless, clear and warm. The sky seemed to gleam. It was a good day for hunting. He sensed it: The clan was here.
He opened his briefcase, took out the police radio scanner, and turned it on. On the flight he had studied a map of Roswell and surrounding Chaves County. He rolled out of the airport onto the blacktop, headed toward town.
Sarah scrambled over the chain-link fence. The cut ends of the steel mesh tore her blouse and scratched her stomach when she rolled across the top. She kicked out, dropped to the dirt on the far side, and kept running.
Ahead, the pickup jammed to a stop, engine gargling. Sarah careened toward it between parked cars. At the wheel, Teresa’s face was severe. Zoe sat behind her, hand pressed to the window, looking stricken.
The fence rang as Fell and Reavy started to climb.
Teresa shouted, “In the bed. Hurry.”
Sarah heard the others hit the ground. She grabbed the tailgate and climbed on the back bumper. Teresa stomped on the gas. Sarah pitched into the cargo bed, facedown. The truck raced, jolting along the dirt lot.
Zoe shouted, “Mommy, look out.”
Sarah heard the clatter of metal. She rolled over.
Fell crouched on the bumper, hanging onto the tailgate, staring at her.
32
Halfway into Roswell, the first reports scratched over Harker’s police radio scanner.
“Request a unit at the festival. We’ve had a report of a stabbing.”
Harker turned up the volume. Maybe one stoned hippie sticking a meth head. Maybe a feud over boy bands. Maybe not.
“Assailant is a white female, blond hair, early twenties. Witnesses report she recovered the knife and fled the scene in pursuit of another woman.”
“Repeat that?”
“The assailant fled the scene of the assault to chase a woman with a baby.”
Harker punched the accelerator. He pulled out and passed a line of cars on the two-lane blacktop, pressing on the horn. Opposing traffic swerved to avoid him.
Fell crouched on the bumper, knuckles white. Her eyes were strange and mismatched. They seemed to burn, one hotter than the other. Around her neck hung a sheathed hunting knife.
Teresa bounced onto the blacktop and accelerated. Sarah looked around for something to throw at Fell. The bed of Danisha’s truck was pristine. She didn’t even have a piece of litter that could be used as a weapon.
From inside the cab Zoe cried, “Stop!”
For a moment, the truck stopped accelerating.
Sarah yelled, “No—go.”
Teresa punched it. Sarah let herself slide toward the tailgate. Fell perched on the far side like the Twilight Zone gremlin on the airplane wing. Her face was young and flawless. It would have been lovely, except for the murderous look in her mismatched eyes. She was staring straight through Sarah at Zoe.
With a surge of adrenaline, Sarah raised a boot and kicked at her face. Fell bobbed.
Distantly she saw a police car. The engine revved. They swerved across the yellow line as Teresa gunned it, passing traffic. Sarah glimpsed other drivers as they sped by. People were staring with open wonder. One woman had a phone out. Maybe the couple in the Toyota were taking a video. The word cooked popped into her mind.
Then she realized Teresa wasn’t fleeing from the distant police car. She was trying to outrun a silver SUV that was barreling up the wrong side of the road at them.
“Oh my God,” she said.
It could only be Reavy, with Grissom Briggs.
Sarah kicked again and hit Fell’s shoulder. Fell’s face contorted with pain but she held on. She swung and grabbed Sarah’s leg.
Shit.
The drivers in the other cars stared openmouthed as the truck raced by. They passed the ROSWELL UFO TOURS van, full of tourists with cameras, an insectile alien bolted to the roof. A sky-blue Pontiac Bonneville accelerated to pace them. The driver, a Latino in his forties, put down his window.
“Jesus, the baby,” he shouted.
The baby.
The other drivers w
ere staring at the Snugli and the reborn doll. They thought a mother with a newborn was kickboxing in the back of a pickup. Great job staying under the radar.
Fell gripped Sarah’s leg, struggling for purchase. Sarah fumbled wildly at the Snugli and yanked the reborn out.
The thing weighed almost ten pounds. Its head was tough vinyl, filled with dense plastic beads to give it babylike heft. Sarah held its feet and swung it at Fell like a mace.
She hit Fell solidly in the face. Fell flinched and cried out.
A woman shouted, “Oh my God.”
The blue Bonneville honked and bounded up on their tail. The passengers stuck their arms out of the windows, waving to Fell. They wanted to rescue her.
Ignoring them, Fell drew her knife from the sheath. Its stubby blade glinted in the morning sun.
From the truck’s cab, Teresa shouted something. Sarah couldn’t make it out.
Teresa shouted again. Zoe said, “Latches, Mommy.”
God—of course. Drop the tailgate.
Fell crouched like Gollum, black hair flying in the wind, looking ready to gut Sarah like a deer. The Bonneville rode their ass like the big American sedan it was, people now shouting to Fell: “Jump.”
The latches were on the outside corners of the cargo bed. Sarah reached over the top of the tailgate, worked the first latch open and cringed back. Fell lunged, the blade flashing. Sarah swung the reborn like a sledgehammer at her head.
The driver of the Bonneville pressed on the horn. Behind him the headlights of the silver SUV grew bright. It was coming.
Sarah dived for the remaining latch, got her fingers under it, and flipped it open. Fell’s eyes went round.
The tailgate dropped open and Fell keeled off the bumper.
She landed on the hood of the Bonneville.
Fell hit the hood with a crunch and bounced into the windshield. It cracked. Everybody in the Bonneville screamed and the driver slammed on the brakes. Fell slid up the windshield and onto the roof and straight over, disappearing. Sarah sat in the bed of the pickup, staring out the open tailgate, watching the asphalt and white lines slew away beneath them.
