by Mg Gardiner
The fire alarm continued to ring, relentless and loud. Did this crossroads have a fire station? Did it have a volunteer fire department? The smoke was billowing from the front of the building, infiltrating the hallway like roaming dirty fingers.
Teresa pressed her hand to the wound in Marichal’s shoulder.
Sarah heard the crackle of flames. “The building’s burning down. We need to leave.”
The nun didn’t take her eyes off the young agent. Marichal was breathing raggedly. His eyes were glazed.
“Mommy, I see the fire.” Zoe’s voice was threaded with fear.
“Teresa, now. Anybody who stays in this building is going to die,” Sarah said. “I need to get Zoe out. Pull him if you have to, but we have to find another door, or a window, we gotta move right this second.”
She turned to the water cooler and grabbed Zoe’s hand. She wanted to cry, wanted to scream, saw her daughter’s eyes and wanted to kill everybody who’d put a look like that on a five-year-old’s face. She ran down the hall, nearly dragging Zoe. Behind her she heard Teresa grunting, pulling Marichal along the floor.
She found an empty room, some kind of storage for office furniture. It had the only thing she needed: a window.
“Me first, then you,” she said to Zoe.
The smoke billowed into the room. Zoe said, “Hurry, Mom, hurry.”
The crackling sound intensified. Black smoke rolled along the ceiling, bulging and coiling. She opened the window, hopped on the sill, and dropped to the dirt outside. Raised the gun.
Nobody fired at her. She felt as if she were lit up with nerves, a fiery wraith, a huge target. She waited for the gunshot to tear through her, rip her skin and muscle and bone. When no shot came, she took the biggest risk of her life.
“Come on.” She waved to Zoe.
Zoe scrambled onto the windowsill. Sarah grabbed her under the armpits and lowered her to the ground. Inside, into the dark room, Teresa dragged Marichal. She slammed the door and hauled him toward the window.
Sarah took Zoe’s hand and prepared to run. But Zoe stared back through the window. Then she looked up at Sarah. In her eyes was a simple, blinding question.
Sarah’s breathing snagged. She scrambled back inside and helped Teresa pull Marichal to the window.
“Let’s see if we can get him out,” she said.
Lawless banged around a corner into a back hallway filled with smoke. He threw open a door. It was a break room. Incredible heat met him. The window was open, air rushing through. Flames writhed along the ceiling and walls. Outside a figure huddled, staring at him.
The ceiling tiles flared into flame and collapsed. The gush of air that followed slammed the door shut in his face.
What in hell?
Behind him Harker issued more covering fire. Lawless turned and backtracked. What in hell had he just seen? He slipped in a slick of blood on the floor. Looked up. Ahead was a fire door.
He ran to the exit, paused, and slammed through, firing two shots into the night. He ran along the side of the building in the dark, eyes on the lobby.
Inside the storeroom Agent Marichal was barely conscious. The door was shut but around the frame smoke leaked in, and behind it an orange glow cut a deathly rectangle.
Sarah said, “The two of us can get him out the window.”
When she picked him up under the arms, he swiped for the windowsill, trying to help, but couldn’t grip it. Outside, Zoe watched.
Sarah climbed on the sill. “Come on.”
Together the two of them managed to lug Marichal through the window. They dragged him away from the building and set him on the lawn.
Around them was the empty desert night, maybe the lights of a trailer home a quarter-mile away. Nothing but sand and stars and wolves. Nowhere to hide. The fire threw orange light onto the ground.
And then she heard a truck roaring toward them.
Marichal said, “Run.”
She stared at the night. Could see nothing. She crouched and placed his service weapon back in his hand. He gripped it feebly. She looked at Teresa. The nun knelt at Marichal’s side, putting pressure on both his wounds.
“Go,” Teresa said.
Sarah grabbed Zoe’s hand. Reaching into her messenger bag for the pistol Marichal had stashed there, she ran away from the building, her shadow and Zoe’s stretching ahead, wavering.
In the dark beyond the reach of the lights inside the station, Lawless took a position outside the lobby windows. All he saw were flames. At the station’s main door, the UFO Tours van was engulfed.
Inside the station Harker fired another round. How the man was holding his position in the heat and smoke Lawless couldn’t imagine. He swung the shotgun off his back and leveled it at the lobby windows.
Then he heard a vehicle coming fast. Running without lights. The engine sounded heavy, revving, headed straight at him.
From behind the front counter Reavy and Grissom Briggs stood up, weapons in their hands.
Grissom fired at Harker in the Plexiglas pen. Reavy spun toward the windows facing directly out at Lawless.
He fired the Remington through the window.
The glass was reinforced but spidered white. Reavy and Grissom leaped out of the line of fire.
Outside the station, fifty yards from him, headlights flipped on, lighting him up. An SUV roared toward him.
Reavy racked the slide on the Mossberg and aimed it at Lawless. She unleashed one shot, then racked it and fired again, directly at the window, blowing two holes in it side by side. Lawless had nowhere to run, except backward, firing. Grissom threw himself at the window, rolling to hit the fractured glass with his back. He punched through, landed, and came up unloading shots from his pistol.
Reavy climbed out after him.
Lawless yelled, “U.S. marshal. Don’t move.”
Grissom ran for the street. Reavy got to her feet, racked the slide again, held the shotgun low by her hip, and fired toward him. He threw himself to the ground.
The SUV bounced over the dirt, headlights glaring, straight at him.
53
Outside the burning sheriff’s station, the silver Navigator bumped across the dirt, heading at Lawless. He rolled, scrambled to his feet, and jumped out of its way.
Harker came running out of the fire door. The Navigator blew past him and he fired, again and again.
The Navigator jumped the curb and roared onto the street.
Harker stood, arm extended, chest heaving, aiming at taillights that had diminished to hot red pinpricks. The Navigator raced north on the crossroad into the night.
Lawless looked around. “Where’s Marichal? Where are Sarah and Zoe?”
“Who was in the SUV?” Harker said. “How many? Did you get a head count?”
Indistinctly, Lawless heard a voice calling out. A woman’s voice.
He ran toward the building. “Harker—this way.”
Sarah heard the blare of a truck engine drawing near. “Run, Zoe.”
Her daughter said nothing. She had nothing left to say. But her feet moved, little steps racing at Sarah’s side.
The truck slewed up next to her. She raised the pistol.
And heard a familiar voice. “Get in. Hurry.”
At the open driver’s window, a man stared at her. “I mean it. Come on.”
She didn’t move.
He said, “You want to keep breathing? Get in. You gotta get out of here. There’s three of them here tonight. By the morning, there’ll be more.”
The building was a boil of orange flame. She tossed Zoe into the cargo bed and leaped in after her. The truck pulled out, racing west down the highway away from the station.
The flames burst through the station’s windows. Beneath their roar the voice sounded thin. “Back here. Help!”
Lawless and Harker ran around the building, where smoke was pouring out an open window. Nearby Teresa knelt on the grass, bent over Marichal.
She coughed. “Hurry.”
La
wless ran up. “Sarah and Zoe.”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“Away.”
Harker ran over and dropped to one knee. “Backup?” Lawless said.
Harker leaned over Marichal. He nodded. “Phoned the sheriff’s office in Roswell. They’re coming. And paramedics.”
Along with the FBI team from Albuquerque, Lawless knew. The FBI team that had coordinated with Harker and thought they had plenty of time to get to Rio Sacado. The team the FBI thought would conduct an ambush. Not clean up after one.
Teresa leaned over Marichal and put pressure on his wounds, but she was hacking, shuddering, ready to fall over herself.
Lawless said, “The paramedics are coming from Roswell?”
“Closest county rescue unit.” Harker looked empty. He knew Roswell was seventy miles behind them.
“We need air evac,” Lawless said.
Harker shook his head. “Air ambulance is en route to a multivehicle accident outside Roswell.”
“Alamogordo’s thirty miles west,” Lawless said. “Give me the keys to the car.”
Harker looked baffled. “I need the car. We have to initiate pursuit.”
“Harker.” Lawless grabbed his arm. “We can’t drive any of the sheriff’s cruisers parked out front. The keys are all inside a burning building.”
“Where did they go?” Harker stared into the night, north, where the silver Navigator carrying the trio had disappeared. “Why did they leave?”
Teresa said, “Because the people they’re after are gone.”
Harker looked at her, momentarily confused. He looked like a boxer who’d taken a hard punch to the jaw and gotten his bell rung.
“Gone?”
“Sarah and Zoe are gone. And they’re the only reason those others attacked the station. Once Zoe left, the attackers had no reason to stay. They weren’t here just to burn it down and shoot at you.”
From the far side of the building, somebody called, “Hello? Is anybody in there?”
The tourists from the UFO van staggered around the corner. Lawless waved to them.
He said, “Harker. The keys.”
As though in a trance, Harker handed them over. Teresa looked at Marichal. She released the pressure on his wounds.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone.”
They stared at the young agent under the lurching light of the flames. The wind had come up, or maybe that was just the fire eating the sky, wanting them as well.
Teresa made the sign of the cross and began to pray.
Harker stumbled to his feet. He swayed and wiped soot from his face with the back of his hand.
Lawless put a hand on Teresa’s shoulder. Teresa folded Marichal’s arms over his chest, pressed her hand against his as if offering him comfort, as if telling him Sorry.
She looked up at him through the reflected orange light of the flames. “I can’t fight any more.”
He nodded. “Will you be okay?”
She gave him a sorrowful look and managed a nod. He turned to go, and she held out a hand, stopping him. Groaning to her feet, she embraced him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be back to get you.”
She touched his face, almost a blessing, and whispered, “Finish this. Find them, Michael.”
He held her gaze a second, her gentle eyes made fierce by the firelight. He nodded. Then he turned and half-staggered away.
Harker called after him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“The Worthes are gone. All they want is Sarah and Zoe, not you, Harker.” He tried to swallow. His throat was raw from smoke.
He wanted to get a thousand miles from Curtis Harker. But he turned back. “While I was looking for the fire exit I stumbled into a break room. It was fully involved but I saw somebody outside the window.”
Harker stared at Marichal’s body. He touched his jacket pocket, as though checking that a heart pacemaker was still ticking.
“Harker,” Lawless said. “What the hell is going on? Who was that?”
Harker didn’t look at him.
“I opened that door and you know who I saw,” Lawless said.
Harker shook his head. “It was Marichal.”
“No,” Lawless said. “That’s not who I’m talking about.” He approached Harker and grabbed his arm. “You arranged for him to come here? What the hell?”
Harker pulled free. “I had to.”
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s a necessary part of this operation.” He snapped out of his confusion. “Information, Lawless. How do you think we’re going to bring down the clan without gathering information?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Passcodes. Routing numbers. It’s encrypted,” Harker said. “Blood money, man. Who else do you think can help us trace the blood money?”
Under the flames he looked crazed. Lawless backed away. He felt absolutely undermined, lost, and hopeless.
He wiped soot from his face. He turned away from Harker and his crazy plan, and walked away. He didn’t care anymore. Even if it meant he would risk losing his marshal’s star.
“Where are you going?” Harker said.
“I’m done with this,” Lawless said. “You set off a chain reaction. And you can’t stop it.”
“I said, where are you going?”
“After your fugitive. The clan still wants Sarah. Her only chance is for me to get to her first.”
54
Lying in the cargo bed of the big pickup, holding Zoe tight, Sarah stared at stars that sprayed the sky like blinding ice. Rio Sacado receded. The fiery sheriff’s station shrank to a shivery glow at the crossroads. The night turned dark and vast, empty again, nothing but the desert and a flat strip of road bearing them to freedom.
At the wheel, Nolan put the pedal down.
Her breath caught in her chest. Alive. Nolan. Alive and involved and right there.
She reached up and beat on the back window of the cab. The truck kept going, one minute, three, roaring along, wind scouring the bed. Zoe didn’t move or speak or cry. Sarah thought her heart might break.
They crested a long, curving hill and coasted down the far side. Only then, when they were far gone from any sight line to Rio Sacado, did the truck brake and pull onto the shoulder, bounce across the scrub for a minute, and finally come to a halt.
When they stopped Sarah felt as if the entire sky kept racing. Zoe clung to her, balled up and tense. The driver’s door opened and Nolan climbed out.
“You got in,” he said.
He stood, waiting. For whatever it was she was going to deliver—a blow, a smile, a scream. She turned the gun in her hand so it caught the moonlight. It was an FBI standard-issue Glock 22 .40-caliber semiautomatic.
She said, “This time I won’t struggle with you for it. This time it won’t be an accident or a lucky shot. This time I won’t leave you wounded, Nolan. I’ll kill you.”
She glanced back toward Rio Sacado. The stars fell all the way to the horizon.
He said, “They went the other way. I saw their SUV beat it heading north.”
She hopped down from the cargo bed, lifted Zoe out, and led her to the cab. “Let’s go.”
A minute later they were rolling hard along the empty two-lane highway, with ghostly sagebrush sliding past. Nolan checked the mirror. Nobody was behind them. He turned on the headlights.
His breathing sounded rough. He was solid, not something hallucinated—narrow-eyed under the dashboard lights, unshaven, wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt that smelled of smoke. Sarah felt as if she were falling toward spikes. One after another, every turn simply brought her deeper toward ruin.
They raced past a sign. WELCOME TO OTERO COUNTY.
“One set of cops down,” Nolan said. “Wonder how many more are waiting to welcome us.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Wherever we can get to before the tire goes flat. I picked up a nail back at the crossroads.”<
br />
Great. Just what they needed. Sarah found a map in the glove compartment. Under the map light she saw vast tracts of land unmarked by road or civilization. Forest, desert, military installations, national parks. Just this one little line, a road like a black piece of thread, wobbling toward Alamogordo and on west.
“Find an arroyo with tree cover,” she said.
Zoe looked at him. “I heard your name. You’re Nolan Worthe.”
He nodded. “But you can call me Scott Williams.”
“Why?”
Sarah wanted to snirk. Tell her. Tell her everything. He just shrugged.
“Are you my dad?” Zoe said.
Sarah’s entire body tightened. She saw pinprick stars. “He is.”
Zoe examined him like he was a specimen in the terrarium in her kindergarten classroom—maybe one of the geckos.
“I don’t think I look like you.”
He tried to laugh. “You look like your mother.”
“Beth,” Zoe said. “Her name was Beth. That’s what it says on the microchip.”
His lips parted.
Zoe leaned against Sarah. “She was my mother. This is my mommy.”
Sarah rubbed Zoe’s arm. Don’t cry.
The road unrolled like a cable across the desert. All the way across the sand and mountains and hundreds of miles of flats, burning ground, arid, scarred, ruthless. And now everywhere was enemy territory. San Francisco lay at the end of it, twelve hundred miles away.
She’d been holding onto that image since this began. Get to San Francisco. San Francisco meant the edge of the continent, and somehow, at least in her frayed imagination, it meant jumping off. It was a place where nobody could chase her anymore, where Zoe would float free and serene under cloudless skies. It meant purging herself of this five-year nightmare.
That, she now saw, was a dream. That was the power of denial. She, who had trained herself to paranoia par excellence, had left open a gaping hole of wishes and impossibility, and she’d driven her child and friends right into it.
She choked down a sob. Turned her head and looked away.
