Gripped by panic, she spun around without stopping. Her feet slid forward and her hands temporarily touched the ground, but somehow she stayed standing. Looking toward the tree line, she spotted Nick just disappearing behind the foliage, and as she feared Galloway right behind him.
No. No. No. No. The word repeated through her mind as she sprinted toward Nick, faster than she’d ever run in her life. Her thoughts battled in tempo with her pace. It didn’t make sense. Galloway wanted the pendant, the one slapping against her collarbone with a violent sting. Was he going to use Nick as bait to lure her in? Why bother when she was already in his sight? Would Galloway hurt Nick? Probably not. But what if he did? Fighting against every screaming instinct in her head, she sprinted into the trees.
Leaves slid across her face as she entered into the shadowy world of trees clustered so tightly together they blocked out all sunlight. The shattering crack of two gunshots echoed under the thick foliage. Stopping abruptly, she gripped a tree to steady the swaying world, and listened. Her heavy breathing muffled the buzzing of flies and hissing of wind through crisp leaves. Ahead came the unmistakable crashing of someone stumbling through thick brush. A cry of pain that sounded like Nick.
Slipping silently through the trees, trying to catch her breath, she came to the top of a steep embankment. In an area cleared by a fallen tree, she spotted a flash of blue as Nick tumbled down the hill. Frantically, she scrambled down after him, clinging to thin trees as her feet slid over partially decayed leaves and loose stone.
When he saw her coming, he tried to stand up, but staggered and collapsed again. No Galloway in sight, but he couldn’t be far behind. She gripped Nick’s hand tightly, pulled him to his feet, and slipped into the shadows of a cave-like opening eroded into the embankment they had just come down. She shrugged her backpack off, lowered it to the ground behind her, and squirmed back into the opening until she felt the earthen wall cool against her back. Nick started to mumble, but she clapped her hand over his mouth and pulled him into the dark void beside her.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” she assured, but kept her hand in place.
The darkness thinned and shapes materialized around them. Roots hung down like thick spider webs. Remnants of an old footbridge crossed right overhead to the other side of a stream that trickled past their hiding place.
Nick shivered but didn’t attempt to speak again. Raising a finger to her lips, Lareina removed the hand intended to keep him quiet. She slipped her hand into his and together they waited, frozen. Feet stomped across the intact section of the bridge above until the detective’s black boots came into view. Nick squeezed her hand, an act of comfort, camaraderie, and terror. After what felt like hours but was probably only thirty seconds, the detective backed away and the crashing disturbance of brush grew fainter. Nick took a breath, his grasp loosened, and his hand slipped back to his side.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.” He examined his arms and legs as if he expected to find a bullet hole. “I thought you said he would follow you.”
“I thought he would. I’m so sorry—”
“You came back for me,” Nick interrupted.
“Usually I’m the one being chased. I was feeling kind of left out.” She shrugged.
A half smile formed on his lips, but his eyes remained wide with terror. After waiting another ten minutes and not hearing anything, the two of them stepped into the light. Grass stains splashed across Nick’s jeans and scratches crisscrossed his face, but otherwise he seemed to be unhurt.
“Will he come back?”
Lareina looked back at the creek, the direction Galloway had run. “When he doesn’t find us, he’ll double back and try again.”
“But how did he find you? We’ve been careful.”
Touching her fingertips to the neckline of her t-shirt, feeling the thin chain hidden just out of sight, she shivered. “He’s probably been watching us for a while, and he thought you could help him. You and Aaron should go to Dallas. I’ll go in a different direction and—”
“No way,” he interrupted. “This is too dangerous for you to do alone. Aaron and I will protect you.”
“Nick . . .”
He shook his head. “No arguing. Come on, we should find Aaron.”
Nick led the way through cool shadows, and she followed in silence, not sure what else to say. She thought of Susan lying on the ground, color draining from her face, light fading from her eyes, and blood soaking the grass. Where would they ever be safe?
“He’s really after you for stealing? That’s it?” Nick stopped, turned around, and studied her as if they’d just met. A deep wrinkle formed in the space between his eyes. “He was shooting at me. What did you take?”
The pendant grew heavier around her neck. You can never tell another person about this.
“Come on, Rochelle. I’ll help you, but I deserve to know what this is all about.”
He watched her, waiting for a response. Hadn’t she wanted to know once? Didn’t she regret it? You have to tell me what’s happening so we can figure out what to do next. Her voice echoed back to her through time and she wished she’d never spoken those words out loud.
“I took a necklace.” She shrugged. “I guess it was really valuable to him.”
“A necklace?” Nick scoffed. “That’s what this is all about? That guy must be insane.”
It had been close enough to the truth that she didn’t even have to disguise her body language or facial expression. She had taken a necklace, but not from Galloway, and that was all she had done.
Footsteps rustled loudly in the grass. They turned at the same time, each poised to run, but relaxed when they realized it was only Aaron coming toward them.
“Are you guys all right?” He asked when he got closer. “I heard gunshots.”
“We’re all right.” She glanced over at Nick. “Just a few scrapes.”
“You really do have a detective after you,” Aaron said in a hushed voice. “For a while I thought you just told us that so we’d be afraid of you, but he was right there.” He smiled and watched her with a kind of respectful awe.
Nick glanced around them in every direction. “We should get out of here before he comes back.”
Together, they exited the trees back into morning sunlight. Orienting himself so the sun was on his right, Nick led them north and Lareina, lost in thought, walked alongside Aaron. Like every other day, her feet ached, but any sense of security had been wiped away with the appearance of Galloway. Every snapping twig sounded like his heavy boot, every humming insect echoed like his voice in the distance, every tree on the horizon lurked like his silhouette waiting for her to walk into a new trap.
Chapter 14
Pulling the sides of her jacket together, Lareina zipped it against the cold wind relentlessly gusting into her face. She fought her way through it as strenuously as if she swam against a powerful current. Nick and Aaron toiled along behind her, feet dragging, heads bent to keep the wind out of their eyes.
“I’m so hungry,” Nick groaned. “I wish I had a grilled cheese sandwich or a piece of chocolate cake.”
“Stop talking like that,” Aaron snapped. “You’re just making everything worse.”
A raindrop splashed against her nose and another trickled through her hair. She shoved both hands into her pockets. The week had started with heavy rain that stalled them for three days, they got lost twice in their quest to bypass submerged roads, and they had to slow down for two days after Nick sprained his ankle.
“I’ll talk about whatever I want,” Nick challenged.
Lareina pulled her hood over her head, but the wind pushed it back down. October had started with unusually cold and gloomy weather.
“Not if I can do anything about it,” Aaron threatened.
“Then do something about it.”
She spun around to Aaron’s hand clenching Nick’s collar and Nick’s fist poised in the air.
“Stop it,” she s
houted, squirming between them and pushing Nick’s fist back down to his side. “Don’t you two think we have enough problems without us fighting each other?”
Aaron backed up and folded his arms across his chest, standing perfectly still except for his chattering teeth. Nick stared down at his shoes. The constant mist charged forward with each gust of wind.
“I’m sorry, Nick.”
“I’m sorry, Aaron.”
She looked from one dirt-streaked face to the other and only saw hopelessness, hunger, and exhaustion. They’d run out of food the day before and had been going on slim rations for days before that. The cold made sleeping difficult, and they were all tired of walking. Twice that day they had passed abandoned structures, but food was their priority, so they continued walking.
“The next town we come to, we’ll stop and find a real shelter.” She put a comforting hand on Aaron’s arm, but didn’t feel encouraged by her own words as she shivered. “It’ll just be a little while longer, then we can rest. Okay?”
“Okay,” Aaron agreed. “We can make it a little further. We’re probably almost there.”
Lareina turned to Nick, standing stiff against the wind as it ripped at his jacket. “How about you, Nick?”
“Shhh, listen,” he whispered.
Raindrops pattered against their jackets and through the grass, but something louder sliced through the gloom. It started as nothing more than the undertone of a wail that grew to an echoing roll that rose and fell on the wind before becoming the familiar blaring of a train’s whistle.
The three of them smiled as its outline appeared on the horizon, hurtling toward them, then rumbling past only twenty feet away with an icy blast of air. How long had they been walking near the railroad tracks without realizing it?
“We must be closer to a town than we think,” Aaron exclaimed.
“Trains run through here,” Nick mused. “That means we can take a train to Dallas.”
“That means they have bridges.” She took off running after the vanishing train and heard Nick and Aaron wheezing behind her. It felt good to run, to feel tingling warmth return to her hands and feet, to know she was closer to civilization than she had been in months.
It only lasted minutes before she stopped, face bent toward her knees, as the wintry air burned in her heaving lungs. When Nick and Aaron caught up, she continued at their pace.
As afternoon transitioned to evening the temperatures plummeted, a steady rain began to fall, and a fierce wind howled around them.
“We have to find some shelter.” Aaron’s breathing sounded rough and labored. “We’ll die of hypothermia out here.”
“There isn’t any shelter.” Nick’s words echoed Lareina’s thoughts. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“We’ll keep walking until we find some.” She felt determined to keep moving, to find warmth, to stay alive.
“But I’m so tired.” Nick sank down into the grass and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Let’s just catch our breath for a minute.”
Stomping her feet and breathing into her cupped hands chased away a little of the encroaching numbness.
Aaron shook his head. “Not yet. Rochelle, help me.” She took one of Nick’s arms and Aaron the other.
Together they pulled him to his feet. With a nudge, Nick started walking again. Aaron stumbled forward. Lareina linked her arm through his, keeping pace alongside him.
“W-we have t-to keep m-moving or we won’t m-make it to m-morning.” Aaron seemed to be talking to himself as he fought against the wind.
Nick began to tell stories about Christmas when he was a little boy. Lareina felt dizzy and numb. She tightened her grip on Aaron’s arm and only heard some of Nick’s words.
“My friends and I built a snowman . . . The tree was too tall to fit in the living room . . . One year mom made pancakes instead of ham . . . The best ornament was red with gold trim . . .”
Sometimes she closed her eyes for a few minutes, hoping a house would appear when she opened them, but the sky only grew darker. Sometimes Aaron stumbled over his feet and she helped him keep his balance. Minute after minute, she fought the compulsion to give in and rest for a minute.
“Rochelle, I can see lights.” Nick’s booming exclamation startled her.
Every part of her shivered, including her brain. Teetering between lucidity and fuzzy confusion, she didn’t immediately comprehend what he meant. With great effort she opened her bleary eyes.
Nick grasped her arm and pointed ahead. “Right there, do you see them?”
She blinked, thinking it could be a mirage, but the little squares of yellow light remained. “I see them. Aaron, look.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“It can’t be very far. Come on,” Nick encouraged.
With agonizingly slow progress, they approached the property. The ranch-style house sat all alone with no shed, no barn, not even a doghouse.
“We can’t just knock on the door,” she told Nick as they stood just beyond the circle of light cast by the windows. “And obviously there are people in there.”
“I know, it looks warm. I’ll just talk to them. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Nick . . .” Apprehension built inside her. Anyone could be behind that door. Maybe they were nice people, maybe they would shoot anyone who stepped onto their property, or maybe Galloway waited for her, knowing she had run out of options.
Though she tried to hold back, Nick took her arm and pulled her up the front steps to the door. The three of them huddled together, hoping to absorb even the slightest draft of heat from inside. Nick raised his hand and rapped three quick knocks against the wooden door. Aaron’s head wobbled back and forth between his shoulders and Lareina clutched his arm tighter.
The door pulled back to reveal just a thin sliver of light, then swung in all the way. An older woman, curled white hair piled on top of her head and a pink dress that scraped the floor, looked out at them.
“Hi.” Nick’s voice shook with his shivering. “We g-got caught in the rain and w-wondered if we could step in and warm up for a m-minute?”
The woman looked out at them and pity spread across her face. “Of course, dear. You three come right in.” They stumbled inside and the woman helped each take off their dripping jackets to hang on a coat tree in the entryway. Then she led her guests through a cozy living room to a kitchen in the back of the house. She gestured toward a table that filled half of the tiny room.
“Go ahead and sit down. I’ll get you something warm to drink and something to dry off with. I’m Cornelia, by the way.”
Lareina pulled two chairs close together and sat down next to Aaron, keeping one arm around him. His head rested on her shoulder, so she couldn’t be sure whether she shivered or absorbed Aaron’s shaking. Nick pulled up a seat on the other side of the table, rubbing his hands over his arms. Cornelia filled a pot with milk and placed it on the stove.
“You three look half frozen. What are you doing out in this weather?”
“We’re on our way to Dallas.” Lareina’s voice shook.
“Dallas,” Cornelia exclaimed. “You still have another fifty miles to go.”
Nick tried to dry his face with his soaked sleeve. “We would have been there a long time ago if the roads weren’t all washed out.”
Cornelia eyed Aaron’s shivering form. “I’ll get a blanket for him.”
“Are you okay, Aaron?”
“I will be in a minute.”
Nick shivered from across the table. “We really could have died out there.”
“We almost d-did,” Aaron corrected. “We have t-to be m-more careful.”
Cornelia provided dry clothes—one of her own house dresses for Lareina and faded, patched shirts and pants that appeared to have been worn by a man much larger than Nick or Aaron. She noticed a hint of sadness in Cornelia’s eyes as she handled the clothing, but didn’t want to ask what had happened to its owner. Cornelia cooked them a warm meal then showed the bo
ys to their room and Lareina to a room of her own where she tucked herself into a soft bed and slept until the smell of breakfast drew her back to the kitchen.
After plates of pancakes, at least fifty thank yous, and Cornelia’s directions to a train station only a mile up the road in New Lake, Lareina, Nick, and Aaron walked through another gray morning. The rain had stopped falling, at least temporarily, and a constant bellowing of distant trains revitalized her hope. New Lake, according to Cornelia, was a community that had risen out of empty grassland three years earlier when the first report of the fever came to Texas. People who could afford it abandoned their homes in the overpopulated city where the fever spread quickly and moved to the more isolated community.
The air still held a permeating chill, but with dry clothes and her jacket zipped, she could tolerate it. Her backpack sagged, stocked with three bottles of fresh water and the lunches Cornelia had packed in brown paper bags.
“Dallas has to be full of hospitals, right?” Aaron considered as they walked. “I mean, cities need doctors, and they have to train new ones, right?”
“No doubt.” She readjusted the straps on her shoulders. “And they’ll be thrilled when you walk through the doors.”
“I’ll study my anatomy book on the train.” It had been the only item Aaron took from the house outside of Austin. He debated it for hours, putting it in his bag, then taking it out and returning it to the shelf, just to carry it back down the stairs again. Finally she had convinced him the homeowners would be happy to let him have it, since he was studying it in order to save lives. Reluctantly, he had zipped it into his bag, but he studied it every time they stopped to rest, staring at images depicting the inside of hearts and human skeletons in dim moonlight.
Nick followed behind with the blue note card clutched in his hand, reading Ava’s last known address over and over. Lareina imagined what it would be like when they saw each other again. Hugging, laughing, days of talking about old memories, and then a future, maybe a scary future, but one Nick and Ava could walk into together. What would it feel like to have someone walk hundreds of miles to find you when you hadn’t talked in two years? It seemed magical, like a fairytale. She admired Nick for taking the risks he did to find his old friend, and felt a twinge of jealousy that she didn’t have anyone to do the same for her.
Hope for the Best Page 12
