All Souls: A Gatehouse Thriller

by Karin Kaufman

  Chapter 16

  All Saints’ Day

  Nathan had arranged the seating in the rental car as best he could. He took the driver’s seat and put Hall in the seat next to him. I sat in the backseat behind Hall, and Zack sat behind Nathan. I honestly thought Nathan worried that Zack might wrap a wire around Hall’s neck if he sat too close to her.

  We still hadn’t been told our destination, but we were traveling south on Interstate 25. The night before I’d felt safe enough in the Overstreets’ bay and been sufficiently exhausted to sleep seven hours without waking—quite an accomplishment for me. I was sore from making my bed in the back of the SUV, but more refreshed than I’d been in days. Paige brought me a cleanser to remove what was left of the Halloween makeup from my face, brought us all breakfast at seven o’clock, and never once mentioned the Festal we had brought to her place of business. It would be a long time before I could repay her and Travis’s kindness.

  Saying goodbye to Paige near the office door, I looked across the bay and saw Hall loading her pack into the SUV’s cargo area. She was avoiding everyone’s eyes, even Nathan’s, and I was almost positive I saw her wipe away a tear. I felt a bud of pity and crushed it with my next thought, before it could flower.

  It was a wonder to me that Hall wasn’t in prison. Gatehouse knew she’d killed a child. Who gave a damn that the guilt she experienced afterward caused her to be restored? In my hopes that restoration was a reality, that Sacks could rewire themselves by choosing good, I’d never taken into account the evil they had done, because for many of them, only an act of great evil, such as Hall’s, could tear them from the world of Sacks. In a strange twist, restored Sacks were more depraved than those who didn’t want to be restored.

  Nathan had said Hall would spend the rest of her life trying to do something she couldn’t do—make things right. In my book it took a certain amount of self-delusion for her to think she could even approach evening the score. She could offer herself to the boy’s parents, hand them a sword and lie prostrate on the floor before them, waiting for them to run her through with it—a not displeasing image—and it wouldn’t be enough.

  When we hit Centennial, a south Denver suburb, we drove over a field of smashed jack-o-lanterns someone had chucked from an overpass. October was over, November here. The snow I’d seen two days earlier was gone, and the last of the cottonwood leaves shone honey gold in the morning light.

  Jolted awake when our tires shimmied over the pumpkins and his head bounced on the window, Zack straightened and sniffed loudly. “Can you tell us where we’re going yet?” he asked.

  “Soon,” Nathan answered.

  Content to follow Nathan’s lead, I was fine with the secrecy. So was Zack, I think. The less we said in Hall’s presence, the better.

  Just north of Castle Rock, Nathan left the highway, made a left onto the frontage road, and pulled into a gas station. “Eyes open, everyone. Stay in pairs.” He shot me a look over his shoulder when the car came to a halt. “No exceptions.”

  Zack exited the SUV, circled around back, and motioned toward the station’s convenience store as I got out. “Come on,” he said. “I need caffeine and a leak. You can watch my back.”

  “It would be an honor.”

  We both knew he’d hurried to my side to make sure he wasn’t paired with Hall. Now she had to stand by Nathan as he filled the SUV’s tank and scanned the area for Sacks.

  As soon as the store’s door swung shut behind us, Zack wheeled about. “I can’t sit in the same car with that woman,” he said. “Can you? She killed a kid and she’s sitting there like nothing happened. Queen of Gatehouse.”

  I hushed him with a finger to my lips. We didn’t say things like that in public.

  He leaned closer, his voice quieter. “I feel like calling the cops on her.”

  “They’d only let her go. And then you’d be in a world of trouble.”

  “What are they going to do, fire me? Good.”

  “Don’t talk like that.” Hall’s roving eyes had caught us standing by the door and she was now eyeing us from the gas pumps like a hawk eyes its prey, so I tugged on Zack’s jacket and led him to the back of the store. “Don’t you dare desert me, Zack. With Connor and Kath gone, I haven’t got many friends left.”

  “Oh, come on. I bet Elizabeth wants to be friends.”

  I laughed, but as I did I felt guilt for mocking her, and I wondered what I would do if I ever became willing—however that happened—and killed an innocent. I’d thought about what it would be like to take the life of an innocent by mistake, which is why I buzzed when I hunted, but never how I would carry on if I deliberately took an innocent life. Probably because it never entered my head that I was capable of doing such a thing.

  “If she really does regret her life as a Sack, she’s in an impossible position,” I said at last.

  Zack held a hand up to one ear, as though surely he must have misheard me. “Excuse me?”

  “How could you live with yourself if you murdered a child?”

  “Since I don’t murder kids, I don’t worry about it.” He grabbed two cans of Coke from a refrigerated display case, handed one to me, and started to peruse the chips on the shelves behind him.

  “But what if you became a Sack and killed a child?”

  “What do you mean ‘became a Sack’? That’s like asking me what if I woke up and found out I was a rodeo clown. It doesn’t just happen.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Hell, yes.” Mine was no pity-the-poor-Sack question. As a hunter I’d seen far too much for that nonsense. “They make a choice and follow it through with more choices. I’m not saying they’re not evil.”

  “Then what?”

  “What if one day you realized you’d chosen evil and you wanted to repair the damage you’d done?”

  Zack scratched the stubble along his jawline. Unlike Nathan, he hadn’t shaved—or even thought about doing it, probably. “To tell you the truth, I’d off myself.”

  Clearly this wasn’t an arena Zack wanted to explore. He preferred his thoughts on Sacks to remain unchanged and unchallenged. “That doesn’t help anyone. If you’re alive, you can at least do something worthwhile. You can begin to ... I don’t know, atone.”

  “Atone?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “How do you atone for killing a ten-year-old boy?”

  “No idea. But it’s an interesting question.”

  “That’s where you and I differ. Take these.” He gave me his Coke and a bag of cheap, cheese-flavored potato chips. “Nathan and the queen just walked in and we need to move.”

  Zack shot down the hall for the restroom, and I did a quick over-the-shoulder and saw Nathan and Hall hovering by the front door, hurrying us with their restless body language. Zack and I had spent way too much time in the store.

  Then Hall walked to the restroom herself, shooting me the oddest look as she passed, part reproach, part childish plea for understanding. She had to have known Zack and I were talking about her. Every time I saw her my thinking did a flip-flop. Just seconds ago I’d been wondering how I would deal with a burden like hers, now I was asking myself why I hadn’t let Kath kill her. How was Kath worse than Hall, except that Gatehouse deemed Hall useful? My friend had never killed a child, I was sure of it. Though such a horror might have been in her future. After all, Hall hadn’t initiated her Sack life with child murder, she’d risen to it. As a Sack you committed murder after murder, each one more vile than the last as you ambitiously rose to the next level. Murder became the standard of your life, until you were so wretched you could cut the throat of a boy looking for his dog. Then didn’t restoration take enormous courage?

  Zack and I paid for our snacks and headed out to the SUV, Hall just behind us. I resolved to stop my pro-con mental gymnastics for the present and treat her with a modicum of civility, which neither I nor Zack had been doing.

  Once more we headed south on the interstate. Za
ck dug into his chips, and I gazed out the window, trying to cook up something to say to Hall, some chitchat to let her know that here in the backseat she wasn’t totally loathed. Not totally. I gave up after a while. She was a big girl and didn’t need me to soothe her bruised feelings.

  As we left Pueblo, a light snow began to fall, tiny flakes that melted as soon as they hit the pavement. I rolled the window down an inch, feeling the sweet, moist air on my face. When Zack said something about the cold, I rolled it back up. It was then I noticed a silver Kia four-door sedan speeding up an on-ramp and onto a southbound lane. My radar went up when the sedan hurtled around our car in the right lane and slid into the left lane several car lengths back. This was no casual outing, no vacation or trip to the mall. This driver had a purpose requiring speed and precision.

  “Nathan.”

  “I see him.”

  “Silver four-door to our left,” Hall said.

  On this lonely stretch of I-25, the only other vehicles anywhere near us were an eighteen-wheeler a couple hundred feet ahead and a green passenger car about a hundred feet back. Nathan, who was superb at maneuvering but avoided doing so with other cars around, would use this to his advantage if need be.

  “Eyes front,” Nathan said. “Elizabeth, roll down your window when I tell you. I’ll swing behind them. Fire the second I let up on the brake.”

  “Should I?” Zack asked.

  “Only if I tell you to. You and Jane get out of your harnesses but keep your lower seatbelts on. Duck down when I say so. We don’t know who this is yet.” Keeping his right shoulder as still as possible, he let his hand drift down the steering wheel and stuck it under his coat. Two seconds later his hand was back on the wheel. I knew he had removed his gun from his holster and laid it on his lap.

  Nathan slowed a little, allowing the green car to our rear to overtake us and move ahead. The Kia matched our speed, at first moving behind us, letting the green car pass, then again shifting to the left lane and staying just behind our SUV.

  Keeping my eyes forward, I heard rather than saw the sedan draw near, its wheels whooshing on the wet pavement, its engine racing as the driver accelerated.

  “How many?” I asked, nudging the bottom of my jacket out of the way, behind my holster.

  “Two, I think,” Nathan said. “There could be more.”

  I pictured two more Sacks rising from the floor in the back as the sedan pulled alongside us, and I wondered if any of them would hit their mark before we fired back. But if I knew Nathan, his idea was to avoid a wild highway gun battle and take the advantage using a quick stop and Hall’s marksmanship.

  The Kia slowed a little as it drew closer, its front end now even with Nathan’s door.

  Without turning my head, I stole a glance at the passenger in the front seat. He was eyeing Nathan—and trying too hard to look as though he wasn’t. “Passenger’s watching you, Nathan.”

  “Your window,” Nathan said.

  Elizabeth hit the down button on her armrest, and the cold, damp wind rolled over the window as it lowered.

  “He’s got something on his lap,” Zack said, raising his voice above the wind.

  “Everybody hold on.”

  In the space of one second I saw the passenger lift a pistol to the window, heard Nathan yell for us to drop, and threw myself sideways to the seat, knocking heads with Zack on the way down. Nathan braked hard, swerved left, then just as quickly let up on the brake.

  I heard six shots. Nathan braked again then swung hard to the right. I latched on to the base of my seatbelt with both hands, remembering that SUVs often tipped and rolled when subjected to sharp turns—the kind you had to make when outrunning killer Sacks.

  We didn’t tip. We slowed, and I heard Hall roll up her window. Nathan told us to sit up. The Kia was out the window to our left, in the median strip. Its top caved from at least one rollover, it had somehow landed right side up. Nathan looked around for other vehicles in both the southbound and northbound lanes and did a rolling stop at the wreckage, his 9mm at the ready. There were only two men in the car, and if they were alive, they were doing a good job at playing dead. Nathan sped up and continued south.

  “Hell, Jane,” Zack said, rubbing his forehead. “Next time we decide ahead of time who drops to the front and who drops to the back.”

  “Sorry. I’ll go front here on out.” I smiled mechanically. My thoughts were on the men in the Kia. Hall had hit the driver at least once—the injuries I saw to the back and right side of his head didn’t look like they were from the rollover. The passenger’s forehead rested on the dashboard, his neck bent to an unnatural degree. His hair, close-cropped, bore touches of gray. Businesslike in their manner, they had chased us down with their goal, not pleasure, in mind. They hadn’t smiled or laughed or mouthed their names.

  The pieces fell together, sharp and clear. Those men weren’t Sacks.

  I was about to say as much when Nathan unexpectedly took the next exit off the highway. He turned onto a county road, drove a short distance, then hung a right onto a dirt road and stopped. We were in the middle of nowhere—no gas stations or services in sight—but on high ground, with a commanding view of the land for miles around.

  “I’ve got to make a couple calls,” Nathan said. He got out and walked ahead fifty feet before pulling the phone from his suit. As he talked, he looked this way and that, surveying a fresh horizon with each tack and reverse. Anyone not familiar with our world would have thought he was the nervous type, incapable of keeping still.

  His first call was to Gatehouse, probably, for a clear-out on the Kia. But with his second call, the one he was on now, his body language changed and I knew he was talking to Lydia. When I opened the door and put a foot to the ground, Hall spun on me, asked me what on earth I was doing, and told me to stay inside the car. Not a chance. In all my confusion about who and what Hall was, one thing I knew for sure—she wasn’t my porter. Though she’d saved our bacon with her fine shots to the Kia, I had to admit that.

  I shut the door, walked to the front of the car, and stood there until Nathan turned my way. He held my gaze for a moment as he continued to talk, so quietly that I didn’t catch a word. When he clicked off the phone, I strode up to him.

  “How many burners do you have?” I asked.

  He looked down at the phone. “I always bring more than one.”

  “Those weren’t Sacks, were they?” I said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I nodded. “Were they porters?”

  “Possibly. Maybe porters who had never hunted.”

  “That’s what I figured too. They gave off so many tells. What the hell is going on?”

  He looked toward the car then back at me. “I was wrong about an infiltrator at Gatehouse. There is one.”

  His words hit me like a fist. Suspecting an infiltrator was one thing, but having my suspicions confirmed was another. I tried to keep fear from showing on my face as I contemplated what this information meant for all of us. As much as hunters liked to gripe about Gatehouse, we knew the organization stood between the world we knew and the chaos Sacks wanted.

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “I’ve narrowed it down.”

  “This infiltrator is sending porters to kill us?”

  “We don’t know who they were, and I think the focus is on me and Elizabeth.” He squinted as a sudden gust of wind made the air feel bitterly cold.

  “They did seem to have their eyes on you.”

  “Yes, but they had no choice but to come up on my side of the car.”

  I shrugged. “They were incompetent, so who knows what they had in mind. What do we do now?”

  “For now it’s safer to keep going. We’ll pick up a new rental in Trinidad.”

  “We’re headed to New Mexico.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’re just going to keep running?”

  “No, now we go on the offensive.”

  “What—”

 
; “And all of this stays between us.”

  “Who don’t you trust, Zack or Hall?”

  “It’s not always about trust. Sometimes it’s about the wisdom of saying something.” He twisted back and pitched his burner into a field of weeds.

  We walked back to the car, our heads down against the wind, which had picked up in earnest and was sending ripples of cold air through the fabric of my jacket, over my shoulders, and down my back. If I had known I’d be on the run for days, standing in barren fields in November, I would have brought something heavier. And more clothes too, because frankly, the few I had were beginning to ripen on me.

  To forestall questions about our conversation and his phone calls, as soon as Nathan turned his key in the ignition he announced we would be getting a new rental car in an hour. In the meantime, he said, we needed to stay vigilant. Hall knew Nathan well enough by now not to probe further, but I could tell she wasn’t satisfied with the mere sliver of light he’d cast on his plans, especially since he’d spent the past couple minutes talking to me. Zack, eyebrows arched, shot a questioning glance my way when I climbed onto the seat, but he left it at that.

  Back on the interstate, Nathan turned the car radio to a rock station, filling the silence—something I’d never known him to do. And for the next forty-five minutes we watched with apprehension every car, truck, and van within a hundred feet of our car. We even passed a horse trailer with trepidation. What did we look like to the driver, I wondered, three of us with our right hands at our hips, leaning forward ever so slightly, staring at his horses through the slats? A carful of lunatics.

  In Trinidad we grabbed some fast food then rented a new SUV and turned in the old one. Whoever was following our movements might have been able to hit on the card Nathan used to pay for the new rental because it was the same card he used in Fort Collins, but they had no way of tracking us after that, and since they already knew we were in southern Colorado, we weren’t disclosing much. Besides, I doubted it was Nathan’s card the hunting porters had used to locate our car south of Pueblo. I was betting it had to do with the meeting he’d had the day before with Gatehouse. The porters, or whoever they were, had probably sat near the on-ramp for a couple of hours. Maybe they’d had help farther north—someone on the lookout for our car who then signaled the Kia.