by Anna Durand
The flash drive would be safe for a few days. By the time it arrived at her home in Texas, she'd either have dealt with her enemies or she'd be dead. The notion of her own demise no longer frightened her, which seemed bizarre and wrong and yet somehow necessary. She had no time to waste on pondering the implications of her newfound equanimity.
Back in the car, she found the highway again and headed out into the desert. When she spotted the sign for Dry Lake Road, she swung left onto the two-lane strip of blacktop. The paving soon transitioned into gravel. Twenty minutes passed before she saw the black, unmarked mailbox and veered left onto the nameless road. After a few more miles, the gravel segued into a two-track dirt path. The car jounced over potholes and rocks. Dust plumed up behind the car, obscuring her backward view. A tumbleweed rolled across the track in front of the car. In the fading daylight, she spotted Joshua trees dotting the barren landscape, and a humpbacked butte rose up in the distance, seeming farther away than the moon.
A person could get lost and die out here. Nobody would find the body for weeks or months, if ever. She pushed the thought out of her mind. No use dwelling on worst-case scenarios.
The car's headlights powered on automatically, detecting the waning daylight. Night seemed to fall swiftly as she drove at what felt like a snail's pace, hindered by the bumpy road and her fear of driving straight off the edge of the arroyo David had mentioned. Up ahead, a tall and narrow shape jutted up from the ground.
She stomped on the brake just as the headlights swept across the object. It was a sign. Mounted on a metal pole, the dusty white sign offered a warning in thick black letters.
"PRIVATE PROPERTY. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Deadly force authorized."
Oh yeah. This was the right road.
She hit the gas pedal and the car sprang forward, jolting over a series of potholes. The headlights revealed nothing except the narrow two-track ahead of the car and the vast, empty desert surrounding the road. Small eyes in the brush reflected the headlights. The darkness was complete now, oppressive and deep as outer space. To the right, far in the distance, a bluish-white light glimmered.
Despite the warm air flowing from the vents, goose bumps cropped up on her arms and neck.
Get a grip, she told herself. It's just wildlife. Christ, she'd gotten paranoid living in the city. She hadn't seen wildlife in so long she freaked out over it.
But that flash off to the right …
She gripped the steering wheel tighter. She'd sailed right past the point of no return a long time ago.
Ahead, the road fell away into blackness. A stream, she might have thought, if she weren't in the center of hell. In the desert, thunderstorms unleashed rivers in the form of flash floods, carving out channels that stood dry otherwise.
The dark patch loomed nearer.
Shadows.
She jammed her foot on the brake. The tires slid, fishtailed, and gripped the road once more. The car lurched to a stop, thrusting her hard against the seat belt. Dust erupted around the car. Unhooking the seat belt, she flung the door open and hopped out. Leaving the door ajar, she tiptoed toward the front bumper. The headlights illuminated the obstacle.
Inches from the front tires, the earth dropped away. An arroyo cleaved the desert, its walls steep and tall, its basin wide and littered with small cactuses. In the darkness, she could barely make out the other side of the arroyo. It stretched farther across than the headlight beams could penetrate.
Back in the car, she slammed the door shut. Had thirty seconds elapsed yet? Nothing had happened while she examined the arroyo. David's captors might've changed the protocol to stop her from getting into the facility this way.
She rolled down the window to peer down at the ground. Nothing. Retracting her head, she drummed her fingers on the window frame.
A noise erupted nearby, a cross between rustling leaves and mechanical humming.
She poked her head out the window, squinting down at the ground.
A patch of dirt shifted. Sand poured away as a pole emerged from the ground. The pole, metal and four inches wide, rose to a height that placed its top at her eye level. A panel slid open, revealing a cavity inside the pole. The opening housed a numbered keypad, just as David had told her. Above the keypad, an LCD screen stared at her.
A phrase blinked on the screen: "Enter access code."
Retrieving from her purse the receipt on which she had scribbled the numbers David dictated, she leaned out the window and punched in the code. Then she counted off the seconds — one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand. At the precise instant she got to five, she punched in the last three digits.
The pole retreated into the sand. The earth ahead of the car groaned. Metal clanged. The ground trembled. Two halves of a bridge rose up from the walls of the arroyo, joining at the center. Struts, unfolding beneath the bridge, braced the structure.
It must be a mirage. Any second the wind would blow away the illusion.
A gust buffeted the car. Clouds of dust curled up from the depths of the arroyo. The dust swirled around and over the bridge.
She glanced away. When she looked back, the bridge still spanned the arroyo.
All right then.
Easing her foot down on the gas pedal, she steered the car toward the arroyo. The rear tires cleared the bridge's lip with a thunk. She pressed the gas pedal harder and the car sprang forward, clearing the opposite side of the bridge with a smaller thunk.
She decelerated. Taking the bridge in one rush had robbed her of the time for fretting over its construction and the fact that it arose from the sand and God only knew how long it had lain there, unused, rusting, rotting.
A groaning sound drew her attention to the rearview mirror. She watched the reflected image of the bridge duck below the level of the road. Dust puffed up from the arroyo.
If she turned around, would the bridge rise up again to grant her passage out?
Didn't matter now. She was not turning back.
The road stretched out into the vast desert. Overhead, the first stars twinkled in the ever-deepening gloom of the night. Mountains hid behind a veil of haze, maybe fog or a far-away dust storm. If she followed this road until it ended, would her journey end in some magical kingdom of fairies and trolls and knights on white steeds?
She pictured David perched atop a white horse, clad in armor, wielding a gleaming sword.
The car hit a pothole. Her teeth snapped together and the vision left her.
Pow!
The car shimmied. The steering wheel trembled faintly. She gripped it tighter, glancing in all the mirrors to find the source of the explosive noise. It was too dark, though, and the headlights' glow couldn't illuminate the car's rear, where the sound had originated.
The steering wheel trembled harder. The vibrations bled into her hands, triggering pain in her wrist and forearm. She braked and eased the car to a stop.
A sick feeling settled over her as she swung the door open and stepped outside. Even in the gloom, she spotted the problem right away. The left rear tire had blown out. Oh great.
A chill washed through her. Blown out — or shot out?
Turning in a circle, she squinted into the night. The bluish-white light she'd seen before had divided into two parallel lights that bobbled in the distance, from the direction of the arroyo, coming closer with each second she stood there gaping at the shredded tire. A purring, faint and intermittent, escalated into grumbling.
She leaped back into the car, twisted the key in the ignition, and barely waited for the engine to catch before slamming her foot down on the accelerator. Damn the blown tire. She had bigger problems than the damage she might do to the wheel.
The car heaved forward. The steering wheel vibrated hard beneath her hands. She gripped it as tight as she could, fighting to keep the car aimed down the two-track.
Pow!
The right rear tire.
Christ, she couldn't hold the steering wheel. The car angled off the road, bounced over a small cactus, and bogged down in a conglomeration of brush. The engine sputtered and died.
Oh shit.
The vehicle jouncing down the road toward her enlarged until she recognized the shape as a Jeep Cherokee, black with tinted windows. She couldn't tell how many people hid inside the Jeep.
Or how many guns they carried.
If she ran, they'd catch her. If she crouched in the dirt, they would see her. They had spotted her already, or they wouldn't have raced straight for her.
The Jeep bounced over the pothole she'd hit a few minutes ago.
She grabbed her purse and leaped out of the car, fleeing down the two-track. Behind her, the Jeep swerved around the rear end of her car, which stuck out into the road. The Jeep's tires slipped in the sand. The vehicle shimmied. The tires gripped, and the Jeep rocketed after her.
Her legs cramped. The soles of her feet burned as if she ran barefoot across hot coals. She needed a hideaway. She needed a machine gun.
The Jeep, swerving off the track, sped across the rough desert to circle around in front of her. A cloud of dust enveloped her. She choked, coughed, blinked. Tears blurred her vision. Somewhere within the cloud, tires spun in the sand, whirring and kicking up bits of earth. A pebble smacked her in the cheek.
She froze. The dust cleared.
The Jeep had stopped twenty feet ahead, cross-wise on the track. The doors were flung open. Half a dozen men in black commando outfits, their faces covered by helmets, poured out of the Jeep. They toted guns of varying sizes. Their boots clomped on the dirt.
She thought about going for her gun, but every one of theirs dwarfed hers, and she suspected their weapons were automatics too. They could perforate her with a volley of bullets before she even got off one shot.
Her thoughts came fast and jumbled. She had no bright ideas, no plans, no goddamn talent for subterfuge. When the commandos stomped past the Jeep's fender, she bolted. A snake hissed, its head snapping up from the dirt. She leaped over the snake, tripped on brush, stumbled forward, and hit the sand face-first.
Footfalls pounded behind her. Men shouted.
Her cheek stung. She pushed up onto her hands. Her face had sideswiped a cactus. A few needles had embedded themselves in her cheek.
The snake rattled nearby. One of the men shouted a curse.
Tearing the needles from her cheek, she sprang to her feet and ran. Boots clomped in the sand behind her. Men shouted to each other. The voices issued from everywhere as they closed in on her from all sides.
She pulled the gun out of her purse.
A commando jumped from behind a Joshua tree. As his feet landed squarely in the sand, he leveled his gun at her. She swung the gun up and pulled the trigger. He ducked behind the tree. A branch exploded. She swerved left.
A shot exploded.
An object hit her from behind, too large for a bullet, knocking her legs out from under her. The commando wrenched her onto her feet. Twisting her arms behind her back, he clamped one hand around her wrists to pull her close against him. His helmet pressed against her face.
"Gotcha," he growled. Then to his buddies, he shouted, "Over here."
She could claw him, kick him, bite him, get away somehow. Then what? He had five well-armed buddies. They could call in reinforcements. She might run until her muscles gave out on her, thirst overcame her, or she passed out in the sand. They could wait inside their air-conditioned Jeep, sipping Perrier and playing bridge, until then. She would have no energy leftover for escape. Better to give up now.
Hell no, her instincts screamed. She must fight the bastards with every watt of energy inside her.
The commando twisted to face his buddies, dragging her with him. The others were still thirty yards away. Her gun had landed a few feet away, its muzzle buried in the sand.
She wriggled in his grip.
The commando's hand tightened into a steel clamp around her wrists. She bit her tongue and grunted. The tang of blood dispersed through her mouth. He tugged her wrists. Pain ricocheted between her shoulder blades. She'd had enough of strangers trying to kill her, chasing her across the country, demanding she give them things she didn't have and tell them things she didn't know, murdering anyone who helped her. They showed no remorse, no hesitation. Their cruelty knew no limits.
Enough.
She kicked at his legs. When her heel connected with his shin, he bellowed, his grip loosening. She wrenched her wrists from his grasp. Clenching her teeth against the pain in her shoulders, she whirled toward him and rammed her knee into his groin. His back arched as a grunt burst out of him, but he snatched at her anyway. She kneed him again, then slugged him in the gut.
Doubling over, he dropped onto his knees.
She grabbed her gun and bolted.
"Get her!" the commando roared.
More shouts erupted behind her. Gunfire detonated. Sand plumed upward like tiny volcanoes. Small cactuses exploded. Something buzzed past her head. Her legs pumped as fast as they could, but she knew she couldn't go much farther. Ducking into a stand of Joshua trees, she paused long enough to deduce she had no options, as usual. No houses nearby, no cars she could conveniently steal, as if she had a clue how to steal anything. Should've apprenticed with a master criminal instead of attending college.
The shots discharged closer, louder. Leaving the shelter of the Joshua trees, she sprinted across the wasteland, from nowhere to nowhere. No one to save her now. Nothing to do to save herself.
She kept running. Her leg muscles burned. Her chest ached. Her breaths came fast and hard.
The Jeep's engine revved.
Risking a glance backward, she saw the Jeep rocketing after her.
Then the ground dropped away beneath her, and she sailed into the void.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Her feet hit the bottom. Her legs crumpled, and she tumbled backward. Her head struck a hard surface — the arroyo wall, she realized, as phantom lights danced in her vision. She'd fallen into another arroyo, or maybe an offshoot of the one that blocked the road.
A figure leaped into the arroyo from above her head. The commando landed directly in front of her, spun around, and thrust his gun in her face. She lurched sideways to squeeze around him. A starburst of pain behind her eyes stopped her mid step. She fought back a retch.
The commando seized both her wrists in one massive hand. Threads of pain shot up her arms into her shoulders.
Not like this, they could not take her like this, so easily, so quickly. Fight, dammit, give them hell. She couldn't. Her body felt as limp as towels linked together with string. Her tongue was parched and bloody. She breathed hard, fast, unable to swallow enough oxygen. The first sharp pain of a migraine blossomed behind her eyes. A twinge in her neck stiffened into the sensation of a steel rod jammed up her neck and straight into her brain.
She needed help. God, she hated admitting it, but she could no longer deny the truth. She needed somebody somewhere to somehow help her. No one was around. Just a battalion of commandos operating on orders to capture her — dead or alive, she suspected.
Anybody. Anywhere. Somehow.
A bright light popped on, aimed straight at her face. A flashlight.
The pain behind her eyes burst into a full-fledged migraine. The light hit her with a physical force, driving the pain deep into her brain. The sound of her own breathing hurt. Her stomach heaved, and she gulped back her gorge.
The commando spoke. His words pierced her brain, sharp as needles, though she couldn't comprehend the meaning. She squeezed her eyes shut. Please, anybody, help me. No, not just anybody. His name wisped through her as a fleeting thought and she grabbed it, holding onto it like a mental life preserver.
David, help me. I need y
ou.
The migraine bulldozed all thoughts from her mind. She pressed her hands against her temples. The commando yelled. Calling his friends, she realized between waves of dizziness.
David, please.
He came. She sensed his presence, though she couldn't open her eyes. The flashlight beam was too bright, the pain too intense. Despite bouncing on the waves of nausea and dizziness, struggling to stay afloat, she felt better. Safer.
The commando grunted. Feet scuffled. Sand sprayed her face.
Silence.
Voices shouted above and behind her. The other commandos.
Arms cradled her body and lifted her. She chanced opening an eyelid a sliver. David carried her down the arroyo, his face stern, his arms strong beneath her. He was holding something in his left hand, an object that bumped against her every so often. She shut her eyes as he broke into a trot. Rather than exacerbating her symptoms, the bobbing motion of his gait soothed her. The glow from the flashlight weakened and faded into blackness. A chilly breeze wafted over them, and she huddled closer against David, absorbing the warmth of his body. The pain in her head ebbed as a tide of weariness swept into her.
David halted.
Commandos shouted, their voices distant.
"Where is she?" one asked.
"I dunno," another answered. "Didn't you see?"
"She couldn't have disappeared."
"Look! Donaldson's down there."
"Check him out … we'll go this … "
The voices diminished until she could no longer distinguish the words. The grumbling of the Jeep's engine grew fainter.
The migraine was almost gone now, vanishing in record time. Yet even when she'd been engulfed in the pain, she'd felt safer than she should have, safer than logic allowed. Commandos hunted for her. They would find her and, when they did, they would kill her. If they didn't, then whoever had sent them would. It didn't bother her. The intense weariness, an aftereffect of the migraine, skewed her thoughts. She wasn't thinking clearly. She had trouble thinking at all.
