by Sharon Shinn
“So you want us to go skulk around this farmhouse for the next day or two, waiting for Ryan to show up. And you don’t think anyone will notice us. And you think we’ll be able to catch Ryan before he sneaks in some back window and puts a bullet in Terry Foucault.”
“I didn’t say it was a good plan,” she retorts. “But yeah. That’s what I think we should do.”
“And why do you think we’ll be able to convince him just to walk away?”
“We’ll bring him clothes and money. We’ll tell him that we’ll only help him if he leaves—otherwise, we’ll call the cops. We’ll tell him that he’s only making life worse for us. That we’ve been repeatedly questioned by the cops, even threatened. That Sheriff Wilkerson said he’d hold me as an accessory to murder.”
“He might buy that last one,” I admit.
“I think he will,” she says. “I think he had no clue how badly this could go and he knows he’s not thinking clearly and he might be willing to listen to us. Just this once.”
I let out a long sigh of surrender. I’m not happy about it but I simply don’t know what else to do. The world has gotten very murky since I started accumulating moral dilemmas.
“All right. When do you want me to be there? Is noon soon enough?”
“Can you make it ten? If he shifts sooner—”
“All right, all right,” I grumble. “I’ll pack snacks and water bottles and—I guess I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Joe leans over to make sure the phone picks up his voice. “We’ll see you later,” he says.
She’s silent for a moment. “You’re not invited,” she says.
“Too bad.”
“Kara—!” she whines.
“He wants to come, he can come,” I say. “This is a nightmare no matter what.”
Now she’s the one to sigh in capitulation and frustration. “Fine. But don’t tell Bonnie and Aurelia.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. See you later.”
* * *
We take Joe’s truck but leave the dogs behind. On the one hand, I think Jinx would probably alert us to Ryan’s presence before we noticed him on our own. On the other hand, if bullets are going to be flying, Jinx and Jezebel are much safer back at my place.
We arrive at Celeste’s right at the appointed time, and she has indeed put together a duffel bag for Ryan filled with food, water, clothes, a burner phone, and about five hundred dollars in cash. I’m assuming she went to Walmart this morning to buy most of the items. I never would have thought of the phone, but I approve. We’ll be able to keep in touch with Ryan, at least till the charge runs down or the prepaid account runs out.
She climbs into the back of the extended cab, where I’ve loaded a couple of coolers and tons of other supplies to make the day pass more comfortably—a few blankets, some pillows, a roll of paper towels, two rolls of toilet paper, and hand sanitizer.
“What the hell, Kara, we’re not on a camping trip,” she complains as she situates herself among the bags and bundles.
“I didn’t bring a tent,” I retort. “And I thought about it.”
“Someone in the house would probably see a tent,” she says.
“Someone in the house will probably see the truck!”
“I don’t think so. If I remember the layout, there’s a good lookout spot on top of a hill behind some trees. We can hide there.”
Joe exits her parking lot and turns onto the main street. “So where are we heading?”
Celeste gives him directions and we follow 159 past the Strip before we turn off on a series of back roads. The last one’s so isolated I’m not even sure it’s got a name or designation, and though it’s paved, the asphalt has degraded so much that you’d be forgiven for thinking the surface is gravel. On both sides of us, the countryside is mile after mile of cornfields, the dry stalks stiff and pale as old lace. Here and there the plowed fields are interrupted by stands of scraggly trees clustering around a shallow pond or a halfhearted stream. Now and then, an architectural feature will rise above the level landscape—a red barn, a white house, a silver silo.
I spend about five miles thinking there will be no place to hide either a truck or a raiding party, but then Celeste directs Joe to turn onto a dirt road that I would have missed completely if I’d been the one driving. About a half mile in, it splits. To the right, it comes almost immediately to an abandoned barn, its front doors hanging loose from the hinges, its paint so weathered you can see the blistering wood beneath it. To the left, the road snakes past a rise in the ground that’s dotted with a stand of skinny poplars, probably planted as a windbreak about a million years ago. Beyond the trees we can see that the road leads to a cluster of buildings—house, sheds, another barn—and then the inevitable patchwork of crop fields. Corn and maybe soybeans. Hard to tell, since the harvest is long over.
“See?” says Celeste. “We can leave the truck behind this old place, and creep up the hill to watch the farmhouse. No one will see us from the house or the road.”
“It does look like the perfect spot for surveillance,” Joe agrees, guiding the truck to the right. The dirt road is bumpy with rocks and clumps of dried mud, but it feels smoother than the broken asphalt. “So if no one spots us as we’re making our campsite, we’re probably good for hours.”
The doors to the barn aren’t quite decrepit enough for Joe to drive the truck straight in, so he pulls off the dirt track and parks behind it. We load ourselves up with comforts and necessities, then hike over to the trees, up the gentle bump in the ground that barely qualifies as a hill. No one comes driving up to catch us in our not-very-stealthy enterprise, and we don’t spot anyone crossing the open space between the porch and the outbuildings as we settle ourselves in for a long wait.
Given that it’s November, we’ve got great weather for a stakeout. It’s probably close to fifty degrees, and the sun is blasting down on us from a cloudless sky. There isn’t even a breeze to whip up a wind chill. I’m wearing enough layers to see me through an Alaskan winter, so I’m pretty toasty, though that might change after a few hours of sitting on the cold ground.
If we were here for any other purpose on God’s earth, I might say this was a pleasant outing.
“So where do you think Ryan is hiding?” I ask Celeste once we’ve taken our spots. She and I are on one of the blankets, lying on our stomachs, watching the compound below. She’s actually brought a pair of binoculars, although, after one quick sweep of the property, she lays them aside. “Or do you think he’s not here yet?”
“I think he’s here, somewhere close to the house. Probably behind one of the buildings.”
“Do you think he’s seen us?”
“Hard to say.”
“Will he come over to us if he has?”
She debates. “I don’t think so. Because he’ll realize we’re here to stop him—and it’s going to take some convincing to make him stop.”
Joe is stretched out on another blanket, his head resting on a backpack, an open book propped on his stomach. I can’t believe anyone could have the concentration to read in such a setting, but maybe he’s just pretending, because he looks up at Celeste’s comment.
“You’re the one who can always figure out what Ryan’s thinking,” he says. “Where’d he stash the gun? If we can find that, this thing could be over before it started.”
I point back toward the truck. “In the old barn? That would make sense.”
“Maybe,” Celeste says. “But I’m thinking closer to the house. Like, right under the porch or something. Or back behind the air conditioner. Really close.”
Joe’s eyes narrow. “Why do you think that?”
She doesn’t look at him, but I’m close enough to see her troubled expression. “Because I think he probably came here straight from the junkyard after he killed Bobby. Hoping to get Terry the same night. But Terry didn’t
show, or there were too many people around when Terry did drive up, or he couldn’t get a clear shot. Whatever. I think he was right there close enough to touch the house, and so that’s where he left the gun.”
“Makes sense,” Joe says, and drops his attention back to his book.
The next two hours creep by more slowly than I thought time could actually pass.
Celeste and I are both on high alert, which makes us edgy, but it’s hard to maintain a constant focus on a landscape that shows little movement or change. Now and then we see shadows shuffling behind the windows of the house, and we nudge each other, but whoever is inside doesn’t come out. Probably Terry’s mother-in-law, I think. Maybe his wife as well. A rooster comes strutting around the side of the barn but disappears again after a few moments. A hawk circles overhead and we both watch it, wondering if it’s Ryan and his shifting cycle has been somehow disrupted. But if it is Ryan, he doesn’t settle on any of the nearby trees before winging away in silence.
We don’t try very hard to make conversation, because there’s not much to talk about. We’ve said everything we can think of about Ryan, and we can’t talk about Joe because he’s sitting right here. Neither of us brought anything to read, and I don’t want to run down the batteries on my phone by playing games on it. Besides, I don’t want to be distracted—I don’t want to miss seeing Ryan as he slips from the barn to the house, or from the fields to the front lawn.
If Celeste is right. If he actually comes here. The longer the hours stretch out, the more doubtful I am. If he has any sense, he’s already a hundred miles away, and we’re idiots for spying on some poor old woman and her family out in the middle of an Illinois cornfield.
But Celeste has always been right about Ryan, always been in sync with his moods and his motivations. I was always the one who was just a little out of step.
Around three, Joe makes a cautious trip to the truck to fetch more water and food. Just as he’s dropped back to the ground, we hear the low grumble of a car motor drawing nearer. Since we’ve arrived, we’ve caught the intermittent sounds of vehicles rattling past on the nearest paved road but none of them have made the turn onto the dirt track—until now. We flatten ourselves on our blankets and try to stop breathing entirely. There’s simply nothing else out here. Whoever’s arriving has to be headed to this house.
In a moment we spot a rusty blue pickup jouncing down the dirt road; it barely slows as it takes the left turn toward the farmhouse. We can make out two people sitting in the front seat, but we can’t tell who they are until the truck stops and they step out.
Terry Foucault and his wife. She heads straight up the steps, a brown paper grocery bag in her arms.
Terry leans against the front fender and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
“Shit,” Celeste breathes.
Shit, indeed. Terry has made himself into the perfect target.
Only if Ryan is here, of course, bent on murder.
* * *
But he is.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There’s the faintest movement along the side of the house, hardly more than the shadow of trees brushing along the exterior wall with a shift in the wind. I strain, trying to see more clearly. Is it a black cat—Ryan’s typical incarnation? I think so. But it might just be a house pet, or a stray, by happenstance out hunting at this location this very afternoon. But Celeste grabs my arm with a grip tight enough to snap a bone, and I nod. I see him.
While we watch, the stalking cat loses its color, loses its shape, turns pale, turns tan, puffs up, stretches out, and resolves itself into a man. He’s naked and barefoot and a little battered looking, but none of that makes him seem helpless or vulnerable. Staying down in a low crouch, he inches closer to the front of the house, his left hand trailing along the join between the poured foundation and the weathered siding. Somewhere in that small seam he’s found a storage spot, because suddenly he steps away from the house, and he’s got a gun in his hand. A sniper might be able to take Terry out from where Ryan’s standing right now, but he’s not that accurate of a marksman; he’s going to have to step away from the protection of the house to get a clear shot.
Celeste jumps up and screams, “Terry! Look out!”
I’m also on my feet and I hear Joe clamber up behind me. Terry’s head whips around, but he drops to the ground and rolls under his truck like he’s been practicing for duck-and-cover his whole life. I see Ryan’s face pull into a scowl. He gestures wildly at Celeste, waving her back, and abandons all caution. He runs forward, still in that half-crouch, now bent over to try to aim low enough to shoot under the truck.
Celeste starts down the hill, waving frantically. “Ryan, no! Wait! Listen to me!”
He actually lifts the pistol as if he’s going to shoot her, which surprises her so much she comes to a dead halt. I crash into her, and Joe almost knocks both of us off balance. “Stay back!” Ryan calls. “I’m going to kill him!”
Then another voice says, “I wouldn’t do that, son, if I were you.”
Everybody freezes.
The world stands so still for so long that I get a perfectly clear, perfectly framed glimpse of everybody gathered at the scene. Terry, rolled into a ball under his truck, hands wrapped protectively over his head.
Two women at the front windows of the house, one my age, one twenty years older, their faces wearing identical looks of fear and horror.
Celeste, a delicate, gorgeous statue of love, pain, and betrayal. Joe, a big, solid sentinel of sanity.
Ryan, poised like an Olympic athlete right before a competition begins. One arm is outstretched and level, pointing the gun toward the truck, one is flung up before him, as if to fend off rivals. He stands on the balls of his feet, ready to leap or run, and every muscle on his naked body stands out in perfect relief.
Sheriff Wilkerson, not twenty yards from Ryan, his own arm outstretched, his own hand holding a gun.
“Put down your weapon, son,” the sheriff says now. His sleepy Southern drawl sounds just as warm, just as soothing, as it always does, but on his face is an unyielding look of absolute conviction. “You don’t want to be doing any more killing.”
Ryan hesitates for a second, then swings around and points his gun at the sheriff. Celeste screams and starts down the hill again, but Joe grabs her and hauls her back. We don’t need anybody else in the line of fire.
“I got nothing to lose by shooting you,” Ryan says, his voice so low and guttural I almost don’t recognize it.
“Right back at you,” the sheriff replies.
For a moment, the tableau holds, no one moving, no one breathing, unless you count Celeste whimpering and squirming against Joe’s iron hold. Ryan and Wilkerson are so engrossed in each other they don’t seem to notice that Terry has cautiously unfolded himself and is now crawling forward on his belly, trying to make it to the safety of the house. The geometry of the gunfight is in his favor, because the truck is between Ryan and the porch. Once Terry’s clear of the chassis, he pushes himself to a crouch and starts a quick, crabbed run for the porch.
But Ryan sees him, or hears him, because he whips around. “Fuck!” he cries, and shoots three times. Terry yelps and claps a hand to his shoulder, but he doesn’t seem fatally wounded. Within seconds he’s dashed inside the front door, which has been flung open by one of the women inside. Ryan fires again in clear frustration.
There’s a report from a different gun, and Ryan howls and drops the pistol, cradling his bleeding hand against his chest and staring at Wilkerson.
“I guess you want to do this the hard way,” the sheriff says. He lifts his arm and sights down the barrel.
And then finally, finally, Ryan shows some sense. He whirls around and he runs. He runs. He stays on level ground but he heads away from the house, along the dirt road, straight toward the broken-down barn and the open land that will take him to fre
edom.
“Son of a bitch,” the sheriff curses, and takes off after him, holstering his gun.
Ryan’s probably ten years younger than Wilkerson, but the sheriff’s in good shape and he’s not barefoot. There can’t be more than fifty feet between them and it’s not hard to picture that distance closing fast.
“He’s got to change,” Celeste mutters as the three of us pivot to watch the chase unfold. We’re still on high enough ground that we can see the whole thing with absolute clarity, although within ten seconds, both the runner and the pursuer are out of sight of the house. “He can’t outrun Wilkerson on human feet.”
“Can he change that quickly again after he just transformed?” Joe asks.
“Yes,” we say in unison.
“But it’s hard to do in motion,” Celeste adds.
“And he’s wounded,” I remind her.
“It’s his only chance.”
Do I want him to escape? My longtime friend, my ex-lover, a member of the select secret society that I have belonged to my whole life. I watch him fleeing past the old barn, across the open field, the picture of untamed wild beauty being pursued by implacable civilization. I find my hands clenched and my chest too tight to breathe. Go, Ryan! I want to shout. Go!
So I guess I do. I want him to escape. I want him to live.
He takes three swift strides, then seems to stumble, seems to trip to his knees, and Celeste can’t hold back a cry. She wrenches free from Joe and goes tearing down the hill after them. There is nothing we can do but trail behind.
But Ryan hasn’t fallen. He’s collapsed in on himself, tucked himself in; he seems to somersault across an old furrow of cropland. When he rights himself, he’s a fox, red and slender, built for speed. He stretches out in a graceful sprint almost too quick to follow.
“Yes,” Celeste sobs, coming to a halt and burying her face in her hands. “Oh God, we didn’t even get to say good-bye to him.” She lifts her head and whispers, “Run, Ryan, run.”
