by Jen Blood
“Only if they get close. Though I could have done a better job.”
“It’s all right. It’s not like I’m gonna run out and enroll in beauty school when this is all over, myself.”
“Are you kidding?” He grinned. “You shaved my head like a pro. You’ll be setting up camp in Hollywood before we know it, giving buzz cuts to the rich and famous.”
“Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes, unable to completely squelch a smile. I ran my hand along the top of his head, the bristles tickling my palm. “I love your hair. I miss it already.”
“It’ll grow back. And yours will be red again.” He took my hand in his and ran his fingers along my knuckles, looking at me thoughtfully. “We’ll get through this, Sol. Life will go back to what it always was.”
“Not soon, though.”
“Maybe not soon,” he agreed. “But it will. And in the meantime, we can deal. We’ve got each other, right?”
I didn’t answer. It got quiet. The sun was up now. Einstein got up and paced the cabin, restless. We were far enough from the road that you couldn’t hear the traffic from our little hideaway. Diggs continued to look at me, reading me in that way he does.
“You know we need to keep talking, right?” he asked. “That’s the only way this will work… You can’t shut me out here. If you’re nervous about this, we can talk about that. Go over it.” I nodded, but I wasn’t sure how to respond beyond that. “Are you nervous?” he pressed. “I mean… I’m freaked out. You must be freaked out.”
This was confession time, I knew—time for me to get vulnerable. Open up. Tell him all my darkest fears about everything we were about to face. Confess that I had my doubts about us. About him.
I wet my lips. “Nah,” I lied. “I’m fine. I mean, we’ve got a plan, right?” I hopped up before he could call me on it, avoiding his eye. “I’ll get dressed, and we can head out. We’ve got some miles to cover.”
I could feel him watching me as I walked away, too unnerved to look back or ask questions or talk about the fact that it felt at the moment like we were about to make a catastrophic mistake. I was walking off a cliff, and I was dragging him with me.
He called after me as I slipped through the bathroom door.
I didn’t answer.
Chapter Ten - Kat
The trick to being a decoy, Cameron said, was to stay just far enough ahead of Jenny that she was sure she was on the right track, without letting her get so close that they got caught.
“It’s a balancing act,” he told Kat as they drove west, toward New Hampshire. “But I think we can pull it off. Right now, they’re still following Adam, thinking they have Erin and Diggs on the run.”
Kat nodded, but remained silent.
“You’re quiet,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“It’s been a rough few days,” she said.
At the reminder, his face turned grim. Cameron had always been thin, but now he looked gaunt. His eyes were shadowed, a tension in his spine that she’d never seen before. Most of the time, it was easy to forget that he was human. Cameron didn’t seem to need food, sleep, human companionship… At least, that was the story Adam had always told. Even later, when Kat was well-acquainted with the man behind the legend, she had a hard time remembering that Cam had the same basic human needs the rest of them did.
“I thought I could get there in time—to save them,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, thinking of the Melquist family: the little girl with the baby in her arms, all of them huddled together in that goddamn pit; of Jenny’s shouts, close behind her; of lying with the bodies, heart pounding, while she waited to be found.
Sure she would be found.
“We’ll get you away from them,” Cameron said. He ran a long, cool fingertip over the back of her hand, his brow creased with worry. “I know it’s been a long road, but we’re almost to the end now.”
Kat didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t ask, though, sure she didn’t want the answer. It was better not to know, whenever Cameron and Adam were involved.
Cam drove a Mercedes Benz, a ride so smooth and so quiet that sleep was easy to come by. They listened to classical music, his choice—one that Kat was grateful for. Anything else would have been an intrusion, but this struck a good counterpoint to the scenes that had been running through her head for weeks now.
On their first trip to Payson Isle, Kat and Maddie reached the island at eight o’clock that night. There was a church service going on, held in an old barn in the middle of the woods It was December, cold as hell, and Kat knew full well that her father would murder her if they didn’t get back soon. But Maddie wanted to check out the church. To be honest, Kat had been curious herself. The mass suicide at Jonestown had happened a month before… Ever since, Maddie had been obsessed with the religious community out on Payson Isle.
“I bet they have orgies,” she told Kat, her eyes wide. Maddie was gorgeous, but not all that bright. Kat doubted she even knew what an orgy was. “And do loads of drugs. There’s probably a pot farm right out there. Who knows what could be going on.”
And so, they went to find out for themselves.
In the barn, the smell of hay and farm animals was thick in the air. The preacher was surprisingly good looking—tall and broad shouldered, with silver hair and piercing blue eyes. He didn’t look like any preacher Kat had ever seen, that was for damn sure.
“We have created a world for our children, safe from temptation,” the preacher was saying when they came in. “Safe from violence and prejudice. Safe from the vanity and temptation inherent in mainstream life. We serve a purpose. Our children serve a purpose.”
Maddie went in before Kat could stop her. The preacher saw them, but he didn’t look surprised. Didn’t look worried. He gestured for them both to come inside. His smile got wider.
“Welcome. What can we do for you ladies tonight?” He didn’t tell them to sit; didn’t start preaching at them. Everything came to a halt, every person in the congregation focused on the newcomers.
“We were just… uh, curious,” Maddie said. Maddie was tall and slender, with dark feathered hair and big dark eyes. Kat was shorter, with more curves, Irish, fish-belly white skin, and charcoal black hair. Every man who ever set eyes on Maddie fell for her. Kat could all but see it happening to the preacher, then and there.
“Well, why don’t you two come in and sit? Brother Jonah, move down a bit so these ladies can join us.”
A short, curly-haired man in jeans and a lumberjack flannel scooted his chair over. Maddie sat in one folding metal chair, Kat in another.
The preacher kept up his sermon for another two hours.
The difference from any other church service Kat had been at, though, was that this preacher talked to everyone in the congregation, instead of at them. He made jokes. Asked questions. When he read from the Bible, he did it in a way that made it sound real, instead of like something made up hundreds of years ago for a society that had lost its relevance eons ago.
By the end of the night, Kat still had her reservations, but Maddie had fallen for the whole act hook, line, and sinker.
Afterward, Isaac asked them both to stay a little longer. Kat hedged. Her father wouldn’t be home until the next night, but if he ever found out she was there…
“I won’t keep you long,” Isaac Payson promised. “I’ll make sure you get back to the mainland safely.”
“We have to leave by midnight,” Kat said.
“It won’t be a problem.”
He led them through the woods. There was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground, coating the trees, lighting the night. Isaac pointed out the different trails. He talked about when his family first bought the land, back in the early 1900s. He talked about the places he’d traveled, and how every one of them just made him more homesick for this place. This island.
By the time they reached a little greenhouse overlooking the ocean, Kat had almost forgotten her life on
the mainland. It was like Isaac had keyed into everything she had ever considered wrong with her life: seventeen years sheltered by a domineering father, every minute of her day accounted for; every year of her future already planned.
“Here, we believe young people must be given the space to grow on their own. To develop their own interests. In the past, women your age would already be raising families,” Isaac told them. “And yet, we’ve chosen to shelter our children today, as though they are little idiots set on the planet only to be molded into our vision of what, and whom, they should be.”
Kat had graduated high school a year early, and then had taken a year off to work with her father. He already had her medical school (Johns Hopkins, the same college her father and her grandfather and her great grandfather had graduated from) picked out and a spot for her practically guaranteed.
“You want to be a doctor?” Isaac said when Kat told him about her plans for the future. He looked impressed.
“I’ve been working with my father since I was eight,” she said.
“She’s already better than half the doctors I’ve ever met,” Maddie said. “Go ahead—ask her anything.”
Isaac looked thoughtful. For a second, Kat thought she might have said too much. Maddie said she bragged sometimes, and guys didn’t like that. Kat’s father always told her she should never apologize for being smarter than everyone else in the room.
“We have a young man who’s been injured,” Isaac said. For a second, she thought this might be like the hypothetical game her father always played with her: A man comes in with hives and diarrhea, his left pupil blown. Diagnosis?
Isaac wasn’t playing a game, though.
“Injured how?” Kat asked.
He didn’t answer right away. “We’ve been praying for him. Trying to keep the wounds clean, but honestly no one here has known what to do. You may be the answer to Adam’s prayers.”
That was how she met Adam Solomon for the first time.
◊◊◊◊◊
She and Cameron stopped at a rest area in Orleans, New York, that morning. The sun was up, the day surprisingly warm considering what they’d left behind in Maine. Still, Kat couldn’t stop shaking.
“Can I get you something?” Cam asked when they’d stopped. “They have food here. Or I could maybe get you a drink, if you like…” He looked down, too embarrassed to finish the thought.
“I don’t want anything,” she said. It took real effort to get the words out.
“You’re sick, though.” This time, he managed to look her in the eye. “A drink may take the edge off…”
“It will go away,” she said shortly. “I just have to wait it out, until then.”
Rather than argue, he nodded toward the brick building that served as the Orleans rest station. “All right, then—suit yourself. I’m just going to use the facilities. If you change your mind, though…”
“I won’t.”
He smiled at her thoughtfully, his head tipped to the right. “No. I know you won’t.” Their gaze locked for a moment. Cameron was an odd one to figure. He was far from traditionally handsome, his face too angular, his body too lean. But there was something magnetic about the way he carried himself, the intensity of his pale blue eyes.
He looked away first, and Kat was relieved to have even that small measure of control over the situation.
“I don’t want to stay long,” he said. “Fifteen, twenty minutes is all we should take.”
“You’ve been driving for hours. Why don’t you let me take the wheel for a while?”
“No need—I’m fine,” he said briskly. “We don’t have much farther, then we can stop for a few hours. Get our bearings.”
She didn’t bother to argue, already knowing it would be pointless. There wasn’t one among them willing to listen to reason—not Cameron, not Adam, certainly not Erin. It sure as hell wasn’t Kat, but she’d at least learned to pick her battles. This wasn’t one she particularly cared to fight.
Instead, she told him to go ahead. She took a second to pull herself together before she opened the door and ventured into the fresh air.
A woman walked two chocolate Labs in the exercise area—one dog grayed at the muzzle, the other barely more than a pup. The sight brought to mind Einstein as a puppy, back when Erin had first gotten him. Kat had been traveling through Boston, which usually meant she’d try to grab lunch with Erin, if she could. This time, though, there was a conference in town; every hotel room in the city booked.
Michael—Erin’s husband at the time—was the one who volunteered to let Kat stay. She could tell Erin was horrified. Those sporadic lunches were painful enough. The last thing her daughter wanted, she knew, was to have her camped out overnight there.
Erin had gotten the puppy the week before. Einstein was the only survivor in his litter; the others died of Parvo virus. The mother was hit by a car. The dog was tiny, malnourished, his eyes runny.
Why would you get a dog no one thinks will even survive? Can’t you do anything the normal way? You should just have him put down—end the misery for both of you.
Erin didn’t even dignify the comment with a response.
She’d always been the same, though: forever bringing home half-dead strays no one else would have. Diggs was the equivalent, as far as Kat was concerned. He might clean up well, but the man screamed mutt.
That night, Kat was awakened by a commotion in the kitchen—the clattering of pans, a glass breaking. She got up and went to the kitchen door, half-expecting to hear a fight between Erin and Michael. Despite what her daughter might say to the contrary, Kat knew the marriage wasn’t going well, for obvious reasons. For one thing, Michael was twenty years older than Erin. And an idiot. The fact that Erin was in love with another man didn’t help matters.
Instead of a fight, however, Kat opened the door a crack to find Erin on the floor surrounded by broken glass. The puppy was in her lap—not moving. Erin wept quietly, head bowed, the phone clutched in her left hand. Kat hovered on the threshold, caught in the same dilemma she had always had where her daughter was concerned: was it better to stay, or go?
It took some effort to pull herself back to the present, but eventually Kat managed. The woman with the Labs nodded at her with a smile. Kat nodded back. She turned and walked away, trying to quell her nausea.
In the restroom, a chubby, dark-skinned little girl came in with her mother while Kat reapplied her makeup, trying in vain to look at least half-human again.
“I like your hair,” the little girl said, watching Kat with her hands in her pockets. “It’s nice. I like black hair. My hair’s black, too.”
The girl’s mother smiled awkwardly. “Sorry. I’ve been trying to teach her about talking to strangers…”
“It’s all right,” Kat said. Maya would say something back to the girl: tell her she thought her hair was pretty, too. Talk to the mother about their trip; ask where they were going. Sometimes, Kat watched the way Maya interacted with the world and felt complete awe. Honest to god, actual wizardry wouldn’t have been as mystifying as Maya’s ability to relate; to communicate... To care.
That bone-deep ache returned. She wouldn’t see Maya again—she knew that. However this ended up, Maya was out of her life for good.
The little girl went into one of the stalls, while her mother stood outside the door. She was a stout, unattractive woman with crooked teeth and acne scars on her dark face. Twice, she looked at Kat as if she wanted to say something, then quickly looked down at the tiled floor again.
Finally, Kat gave one last look at herself in the mirror, sighed, and turned her back on the hollow-eyed ghost who stared back at her.
She was barely out the door when someone grabbed her arm. She started to struggle, then stopped at sight of Cameron’s wide eyes and raised eyebrows.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was worried—you were in there for a while.”
“Jesus, Cam. You don’t want to scare me, don’t sneak up
behind me when there’s a whole band of lunatics out to kill us all.”
“Could you say that a little louder?” he whispered, ushering her toward the exit. “A few people may have missed it.”
Outside, the woman with the dogs was gone. There were more cars in the parking lot than there had been. It was just past eight a.m. Cameron opened her door first, then strode to the other side to get in. One glimpse at his profile was all it took for her to know something was wrong.
“Something happened,” she said as soon as he slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He turned to face her. “Did you talk to the FBI agent?” he demanded.
“What? You mean Juarez? No. I didn’t talk to anyone—”
“Well, someone talked to him. Which means our problems just multiplied, because now the Feds are on high alert.”
“What does that mean for us?”
He started the car and jammed it into reverse. “It means J. is about to panic. You think we had problems before? You haven’t seen anything yet.”
She fell silent, thinking suddenly of Erin at ten years old, confused and abandoned and broken… Then, her face yesterday—a mix of shock and fear and pure loathing, when Kat fought her for another bottle of whiskey. Erin, sitting on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night surrounded by broken glass, trying to bring a dying puppy back to life.
Kat leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.
She could almost feel them getting closer. The end was coming; J. was coming.
And Kat had never been more afraid in her life.
Chapter Eleven - Solomon
Listening to WCLZ a few hours into our drive from Bar Harbor, we heard the first news report come in about Raven’s Ledge:
Details are sketchy at this time, but police have confirmed a multiple homicide on Raven’s Ledge, a private island ten miles from Mount Desert. According to sources close to the investigation, multiple victims were found in what is a suspected murder suicide on the remote island. Two college students manning the Jensen Research Station have also been found dead. Authorities have not released the names of the victims at this time.
