by Meg Gardiner
I pulled out a sheaf of court papers. Squeezed my eyes shut, shook my head, let them drop to the floor.
I said, ‘‘It’s the restraining order. It was issued this morning.’’
The guard opened the door and led Brian into the visitors’ room at the jail. When he saw me his eyes brightened for just a moment, before he saw that something was terribly wrong. I felt sick again.
I’d had to wait a whole day to get up to China Lake. By the time the FBI had finished with me it was late afternoon, too late to see Brian. I had phoned his criminal lawyer with the news about the kidnapping, but had told him that Brian had to hear it from me. Already, heading to the visitors’ room, I’d had to stop at the toilet to vomit.
He sat down behind the Plexiglas barrier. Alarm was tightening his face. He said, ‘‘Luke . . .’’
‘‘They’ve got him.’’
His face drained of blood. He looked at the bruises on my arms and around my throat. ‘‘Brief me.’’
I tried to speak in a level voice, couldn’t. ‘‘They broke into Jesse’s house.’’
‘‘Jesse swore that they didn’t know where he lived.’’
‘‘They didn’t.’’
‘‘They fucking well did.’’
‘‘Brian—’’
‘‘What did he do, draw them a map?’’ His fingers pressed down on the countertop, white as bone.
‘‘No. Jesse’s missing, Bri. The police think the Remnant ran him off the road. They got his wallet; his driver’s license has his address on it, and . . .’’ My voice broke. I couldn’t manage to tell him the rest: The police had found blood in the car. They thought Jesse was dead.
He stared at me. His jaw muscles flexed. ‘‘Continue. ’’
I ran the back of my hand across my eyes. Breathed out. ‘‘You want to yell at me? Go ahead, do it. I love you, Brian, and I’ll die for Luke. So go on and give it to me with both barrels, and then let me go try to find him.’’
I could see his pulse jumping in his neck. He said, ‘‘Just tell me.’’
‘‘Tabitha’s left the church. She came to me for help.’’ I told him her story, told him she believed in his innocence, told him how the Remnant had attacked the house. Told him that we almost made it out. My voice cracked again. ‘‘Tabitha did a brave thing, Bri. She went with them, and she didn’t have to.’’
‘‘She was trying to protect Luke?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
He looked down at the frayed cuff of his orange jail coveralls. His hand, still pressed tightly against the countertop, was twitching. ‘‘Maybe she can find an opportunity to escape with him.’’
‘‘Maybe she can.’’
Quiet hung over us, a comment on long odds.
I told him about the FBI, and that the authorities had issued a statewide BOLO—Be on the Lookout. He said, ‘‘And what do you plan to do?’’
‘‘I’m going out to Angels’ Landing. The police say it’s deserted, but maybe I can spot something they’ve overlooked.’’
‘‘Don’t go alone. Take Marc Dupree with you.’’ His flying comrade.
Behind him, the door rattled open and the guard stepped in. Said, ‘‘Time’s up.’’
Brian drew his twitching hand into a fist. He stood up, but didn’t turn to leave. Slowly he leaned close to the Plexiglas, close enough that I could hear him when he whispered.
He said, ‘‘You should have taken the gun when I offered it to you.’’
The Explorer roared through the dazzling afternoon sunlight as I sped away from the jail. The road stretched ahead of me like an arrow through the heat. I was exhausted, fried, and trying to outrun the overwhelming sense of shame I felt for failing to protect Luke. But it hit me again, right in the chest: despair. I thought about Luke and my throat constricted. Where was he? What must he be feeling? Terror, abandonment?
And Jesse. In my mind I saw his blue eyes and wicked grin, felt his arms encircling me. Jesus. God. Merciful One, Immanence, Ancient of Days, Still Small Voice in the Wind. Don’t play dice. Be there. Be true. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, forgive me for the last words I spoke to Jesse, and let him be alive.
Looking down at the speedometer, I saw that I was going seventy on city streets. I pulled to the side of the road, stopped, and let my hands drop from the wheel. After a minute I turned off the engine. The wind buffeted the car, raising sand, hazing the distant mountains with a Sahara sheen. Above, an F/A-18 ripped the sky.
I got out my cell phone and called Marc Dupree, but he wasn’t home. His wife said he was at the base, and would be back around dinnertime.
I couldn’t wait that long. I had to check out Angels’ Landing, and Brian was right: I shouldn’t go alone. The memory of Ice Paxton aiming the shotgun spread through me like a stain. But the police weren’t about to accompany me. I opened the glove compartment and scrounged around for the scrap of paper that Garrett Holt, U.S. Navy, at your service, had given me with his phone number.
If he thought it was a first date, he was in for a rude awakening.
About half an hour later, the guard at the jail surprised Brian by unlocking his cell and saying, ‘‘Visitor, Delaney.’’ Brian wondered why I had come back so soon.
But it wasn’t me. Brian stepped into the visitors’ area and saw two people sitting beyond the Plexiglas, a woman and a man. He stopped in the doorway. The guard looked at him.
On the visitors’ side, her lips pinched white, sat Tabitha. Next to her, his face shaded under the brim of a cap logoed with ED’S FEED & AMMO, was Ice Paxton.
He tipped his head and said, ‘‘Afternoon, Commander. ’’
22
Garrett Holt met me at a gas station on a fringe of empty highway south of China Lake. He climbed out of his Jeep as calm as a windless day, cocksure and concerned. He wore civvies—jeans and a polo shirt— and was chewing gum, his square jaw flexing. His green eyes and terrier demeanor struck me as alert, almost apprehensive.
He said, ‘‘We have to stop meeting like this.’’
‘‘This won’t be fun, Garrett.’’
‘‘I’ll be the judge of that.’’
‘‘A few nights ago one of these people aimed a shotgun at me from three feet away.’’
He tipped his head toward the Jeep. ‘‘I have a deer rifle. A Winchester.’’
‘‘You’re sure?’’
He was evaluating me, trying, perhaps, to assess my nerve. ‘‘These people have your nephew, right? The child of a fellow officer. Let’s go.’’
My heart started pounding again. I unrolled a USGS map across the Explorer’s hood, showed him how we were going into Angels’ Landing the back way, off-road, up an arroyo. We’d walk the last part.
He examined the map, and me again, and couldn’t resist. ‘‘I don’t see a boyfriend here today, so . . . I presume that’s good news for me.’’
I rolled up the map. ‘‘The Remnant ambushed my boyfriend. The police think they killed him.’’
He took it quietly. Put on a pair of sunglasses. ‘‘Then let’s light ’em up.’’
Brian stood in the doorway to the visitors’ area, feeling coiled, senses pinging. He knew I hadn’t seen Paxton come into the jail, hadn’t been able to warn anyone. Paxton was too shrewd to let that happen. Behind him the guard coughed. Brian realized he could turn around, tell him, and bring down an immediate armed response. He could rescue Tabitha. She was staring at him, her pupils pinprick-tight with fear. He could get her back right then. He knew it might be his only chance. And he knew what would happen if he did. He told me afterward, countless times. He would never see Luke again.
Brian sat down. The guard said fifteen minutes, and the door clanged shut.
Paxton said, ‘‘Wise choice.’’
‘‘Where’s my son?’’
‘‘Time’s short, so listen up.’’
Brian turned to Tabitha. ‘‘Is Luke okay?’’
Paxton said, ‘‘Tell him to shut that mouth of his, Tabitha.’�
�
Only her lips moved. Do it.
Brian saw live-wire intensity in her eyes, but fragility on the rest of her face. Her lip was split, and a bruise colored one cheek.
He said, ‘‘Did he hurt you?’’
She started to nod but Paxton reached up and wound his fingers into her hair, holding her head still.
He said, ‘‘Discipline is for our good, that we may share God’s holiness.’’
Brian looked at him. ‘‘You’re a dead man.’’
‘‘Zip your pecker back inside that dirty orange jumpsuit. ‘Without chastisement, then are ye bastards.’ ’’ He let go of Tabitha’s hair. ‘‘Hebrews twelve.’’
Brian closed his mouth and slowed his breathing, letting Paxton take his silence for compliance. In his peripheral vision he saw the closed-circuit TV camera in the corner. The China Lake Police Department had received the BOLO. He wondered if they had given it to the jail. Did they have photos of Paxton or Tabitha? Were they even monitoring the camera?
Paxton spoke quietly. ‘‘Tabitha’s having trouble cleansing herself of the pollution called you. That’s a shame, ’cause if I can disinfect her of this . . . fungus, she’ll make me a fine wife. Look at her, strong legs and a young womb—put some meat on them bones and she could nurse up a storm. I figure she could bear me eight, nine babies.’’ He leaned forward. ‘‘There’s even hope for the one you got her with if I give him the right guidance.’’
‘‘Shove it up your ass.’’
Paxton adjusted his hat. ‘‘What an arrogant attitude. But pride does go before a fall, and you are definitely fallen. Look around. Them’s bars on the door, Top Gun.’’
Brian thought, Never let ’em see you sweat. No matter what.
‘‘Bait me all you want,’’ Brian said. ‘‘You’re a tin soldier who terrorizes women and children to make himself feel powerful. I can take it all day from a creep like you. So you can insult me, or you can tell me why you’re here.’’
Paxton sucked his teeth. He slowly twisted his head. Several vertebrae popped.
‘‘You want your boy back? Here it is,’’ he said. ‘‘You’re gonna get us a jet.’’
Twenty miles down the highway I turned onto an unpaved track and headed into the desert. I kept the pedal depressed, clattering over the terrain. Garrett asked what we were going to be looking for, and I told him, ‘‘Anything the police missed. Something I recognize that they didn’t know was important.’’ Low hills rose ahead, and I turned up the arroyo that led close to Angels’ Landing. The dry riverbed was narrow, sandy, and rock-strewn. I urged the Explorer forward until the gully steepened too precipitously to go on.
When I got out the silence was powerful. We were in the lee of the hill, and not even the wind reached our ears. I looked over at Garrett. He was standing beside the car, loading his Winchester, deadly serious. The cartridges slid into the rifle with a soft metallic click.
I said, ‘‘Over this hill.’’
He slung a backpack across his shoulders. ‘‘I’m on your six.’’
We climbed quickly. He was surefooted over the sandy ground, quiet and intent behind me, carrying the rifle at his side. After fifteen minutes we approached a saddle between two hills. The wind kicked through the gap. We crept forward until we could see down the slope. Below on the flat lay the dusty cabin and trailers of Angels’ Landing.
We crouched behind a large rock. Garrett scanned the compound.
He said, ‘‘Nothing. No vehicles, no activity, no movement inside the cabin.’’
Still, we watched for five more minutes before leaving cover and starting downhill toward the camp. The wind twisted and teased, and the sun hit us from all angles. If anyone was watching us, we were easy targets.
The first structure we came to was the ramshackle barn. It was empty except for a guano-spattered red pickup that looked as if it hadn’t been driven in years. Anxiously I peered up into the rafters. There hung the bats, sound asleep. I touched Garrett’s arm, urging him back quietly.
Outside, he said, ‘‘They were out of here before the kidnapping.’’
‘‘They have another bolt-hole. Maybe we can find a clue to where it is.’’
We checked the trailers, looking for a message, a footprint, any sign that Luke had been here, anything that might indicate where he had been taken, but found nothing. Finally we came to the cabin. Its grimy windows were covered from the inside with aluminum foil. The front door was locked. Tacked to it was a notice that the police had searched inside under authority of warrant.
I said, ‘‘Let’s try the window.’’
The rusty screen squeaked loose, and to my surprise the window slid open. Pushing aside the venetian blinds, I climbed in.
Immediately I bumped into a cold metal object. The blinds clanged out of my way and I saw that it was a large freezer, the kind with a glass lid to display the contents. Inside it, mottled with freezer burn, were packages of Lean Cuisine, haunches of meat, Reddi-Wip canisters, and the body of Peter Wyoming.
He lay pale beneath a blanket of frozen lilies. His lips were blue, his brush-cut hair white with frost. Shock zipped through my gut and I jumped backward into the blinds, just as Garrett came through the window.
He said, ‘‘Holy shit.’’
I clung to his arm, steadying myself.
He said, ‘‘Didn’t you say the Remnant expects him to be resurrected?’’
‘‘Yeah. This is what I call hedging your bets.’’
‘‘How the hell did the cops miss this?’’
I kept staring at Pastor Pete. ‘‘They didn’t. They would have taken this away.’’
He tightened his grip on the rifle. ‘‘The Remnant’s been here since the search. Recently.’’
My pulse crackled. I edged around the freezer. The rest of the room, crazily, looked exactly as it had the first time I had been here—black Naugahyde furniture, dust motes riding the stale air. The heat was oppressive. The wooden floor creaked under my feet.
I went into the kitchen. Dishes were drying in a rack, and the sink was wet. A side door had a key in the latch, and it was unlocked. Outside, a tumbleweed scratched at the window, emaciated gray branches raking the screen. I opened the refrigerator: boxes of Entenmann’s low-fat brownies and more canisters of Reddi-Wip.
From the living room Garrett called, ‘‘Evan, take a look.’’
He was bending over the freezer, pointing to a note card taped in a corner.
WHAT TO DO IF PASTOR PETE ARISES 1. Let him out.
2. Get blankets, put on coffeepot.
3. Open doors and windows to get ready for ascension.
He said, ‘‘Check the bedrooms and let’s get the hell out of here. This is too freakin’ weird.’’
I had gone ten feet when I heard a scraping noise. I froze. Slowly I turned. So help me, I stared at Pastor Pete, and the pounding of my heart made it look as if he were shivering in the freezer.
‘‘Garrett.’’
He looked around. Then we both heard it: the sound of something scraping against wood.
‘‘It’s under the floor,’’ I said.
He backed away from the freezer, rifle now pointed at the floorboards, finger on the trigger. The heat squeezed me.
Scrape.
I pointed at the center of the room. He swung the Winchester. All I could think of was the scene in Aliens where they burst through the floor and grab Bill Paxton from below. I backed against the wall and gestured for him to do the same.
‘‘Angle of fire, Garrett.’’
If somebody under the floor had a gun, they’d probably fire straight up. He stepped back. Jinked the rifle up snug against his shoulder. Looked at me, eyes questioning. Then he shouted, ‘‘Come out. You’re surrounded.’’
The blinds clanged against the windowsill in the wind.
He said, ‘‘We’re armed. Come out with your hands up.’’
Nothing.
‘‘I am not a patient man.’’ Raising the rifle
toward the ceiling, he fired.
The noise jolted me. Plaster showered on the floor. He brought the weapon down again. The scraping started, consistently now.
‘‘It’s moving,’’ I said. ‘‘Toward the window.’’
He shouted at the floor. ‘‘We’re tracking you. Come out or I’ll shoot.’’
In front of the freezer the floor rose up.
I said, ‘‘Jesus God.’’
A figure emerged from beneath the floor. Garrett rushed forward, rifle aimed.
He was pumped, juiced. ‘‘Down on your knees! Do it! Do it!’’
‘‘Don’t shoot!’’ It was Glory, climbing out from a crawl space beneath the cabin’s floor, hands in the air.
Brian squinted at Paxton. He said afterward that he could barely find his voice, not believing what the man had just said. ‘‘A jet?’’
‘‘You’re gonna get us one F/A-eighteen, fully loaded,’’ Paxton said. ‘‘We want Sidewinders, Shrikes, CBW warheads, fuel-air bombs.’’
‘‘This is a joke.’’
‘‘I don’t joke.’’
Brian sat back, incredulous. ‘‘This is your ransom demand?’’
Tabitha said, ‘‘He’s serious, Bri. The Remnant wants to kick ass for Jesus.’’
Seeing how scared she was, he thought that she had guts saying that.
‘‘Woman, watch your mouth,’’ said Paxton, still looking at Brian. ‘‘You’re gonna get me a jet armed with every weapon the navy tests at China Lake. I’m talking biological warheads, nukes if you got ’em.’’
Brian said, ‘‘You’re crazy.’’
‘‘You’re gonna get me a jet, and you’re gonna fly into the Sierras and drop it down low, under the radar. Disappear off the screen, and it’s gonna look like you crashed into a mountain, way that air force pilot done a couple years back.’’
Brian was dumbstruck. The Craig Button incident: Every pilot remembered it. The air force captain had broken away from his formation on a training mission and vanished. For weeks his A-10 ground attack jet remained missing, and speculation ran wild that he had stolen the jet and landed at a secret airstrip, with plans to commit a terrorist bombing. In the end the truth proved equally bizarre. Wreckage was found high up a peak in the Colorado Rockies—the plane and Button’s remains, but not the bombs he’d been carrying. The air force concluded that he had committed suicide.
