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David took a last puff on his, then flicked it, smoldering, into the dusty millers. “I suppose Im out of a job, sir? Is that what Ann said?”
“Dont do that. ”
He knitted his eyebrows. “You mean smoke?”
“Dont call me ‘sir. Kindra, would you start the car, please?”
“Whoa, Chad. Somebody piss on your Roosevelt biography?”
He looked at her.
“Ill start the car,” she decided. “Man, you got to lighten up. ”
Chadwick reached into the dusty millers and retrieved the cigarette butt. He pinched it dead and tossed it into Davids lap.
David looked a little worse for wear than when Chadwick saw him three weeks ago—like hed been stuffed in an overhead compartment on an international flight. Still, he gave Chadwick the same reverent look, the sad eyes of an unrequited admirer. “Sir, did I do something to offend you?”
Chadwick mentally counted to five before answering. “David, did you have access to the Laurel Heights accounts?”
“No, sir. I just made alumni phone calls. I coordinated the auction—of course theyll cancel it now, but I coordinated the donations. I didnt have access to the money. ”
Chadwick remembered David at the auction nine years ago—a gawky teenager with a raging case of zits, waving his red flag to mark the high bidders.
“You still live in the East Bay?”
“Yes, sir. Ive got a place in Berkeley. My parents, really, but they make me pay rent. ”
“Your name came up in 93, when the police were looking into Katherines death,” Chadwick told him. “I suppose you know that. ”
Davids ears and neck turned bright red. “Like I told you—I wanted to write—”
“You introduced Katherine to Samuel Montrose. You took her there to buy drugs from him. After she broke up with you, you knew she was seeing him, getting hooked on heroin, talking about running away. And you said nothing. ”
David rubbed his finger in the ashes on his shirttail.
“I took her there once,” he said, his voice tighter now. “Thats all. I never went back. You cant make me feel guiltier than I already do. ”
“Seen Samuel recently?”
That got his attention. Chadwick couldnt quite read the look in his eyes—apprehension? Fear?
“No,” he said. “Of course not. Not for years. If I had—”
“You wouldve told someone. Youre awfully anxious to be helpful, David. You called Sergeant Damarodas and told him all about my daughter—gave him the connection between my family and the Montroses. You called the media about the embezzlement. ”
“What? I didnt—”
“Mustve called the papers yesterday afternoon,” Chadwick said, “before Norma even notified the board, just to make sure it made this mornings paper. ”
Davids face became darker, harder, as if invisible hands had decided to remold it. Chadwick had seen this often with kids he picked up for escort—a sudden chemical change for battle mode, the moment they realized Chadwick couldnt be convinced or conned into letting them go.
“You know what?” David said. “I shouldve left this place years ago, but I kept fucking coming back. This school failed Katherine. You failed her. When I talked about writing you a letter? Thats what I wanted to put in it. I hope the banks foreclose on Laurel Heights. I hope they bulldoze this place to the fucking ground. ”
And David Kraft, his old pupil—whod blushed his way through the Declaration of Independence in eighth grade, whod dated his daughter and had the adjective poor put in front of his name in high school more than any other descriptor—brushed the dead cigarette off his lap and headed upstairs, with all the determination of a fireman heading into a burning building.
13
A week after shed talked to Chadwick, Mallory couldnt believe how much had changed. Once shed allowed herself to go with the program, it had been like turning a boat downstream. Suddenly, she was racing.
Her team had finished the obstacle course. Theyd built an entire new barracks for the next group of rookies—the first thing Mallory had ever constructed with her own hands. Then, yesterday, theyd graduated to the job of demolition. Theyd been given sledgehammers and told to destroy the barracks theyd been sleeping in.
Like a snake shedding its skin, Leyland told them. Time to grow.
Mallory hated to admit it, but she loved knocking down the walls. She got in a few good smashes with the sledgehammer, and pretty soon she could loosen the cinder blocks enough to kick them down with her feet.
She didnt even mind sleeping in the open. The outdoors wasnt much colder than the barracks, and theyd earned new sleeping bags—good down ones, no more cheap cotton.
Tomorrow, they would start training for Survival Week. None of them knew what that meant, exactly, but the white levels talked about Survival Week like it was sacred. Their anticipation was contagious.
She still missed Race. She was scared for him, and angry with him, and worried that he might have lied to her. She was worried about her dad, too. But mostly, she was relieved shed handed the problem over to Chadwick, the way Olsen had advised her to. Chadwick would take care of things. Hed make sure Race was safe. Hed check on her dad. Chadwick could even handle Pérez, if he had to, she was sure of that. The thought of Chadwick was like touching metal—it discharged the static energy for a while, let Mallory go about her day.
The nights were worse. She would wake up in the dark, the hills groaning, the raccoons fighting over scraps in the trash bin by the river, crying like mutant babies. Shed shiver in her sleeping bag, feeling every pebble under her shoulder blades, watching the black mesh of cypress branches cats-cradle the moon, and she would feel absolutely certain somebody had been watching her while she slept.
She knew that was crazy. Her fears were as dumb as the ghost stories they used to tell at summer camp, back in the redwoods when she was little. There were no camp ghosts at Cold Springs. If there had been, the drill instructors would have put them to work busting cinder blocks. And yet she lay awake, thinking about Talia Montroses torn body.
Chadwicks questions had dislodged something in her mind—something about Races brother. She wasnt sure what. But it was there in the back of her skull, growing like a salt crystal.
When she fell asleep again, she would be back in the old Toyota, watching Katherine come down the steps of the Montrose house.
She would force herself to look at the figure on the porch—the one whod said goodbye to Katherine before slipping back through the dark doorway.
Today, she had exhausted herself, throwing herself into the work, hoping that at night, she wouldnt dream, wouldnt wake up until the instructors rousted her out of her bag.
She spent the afternoon knocking down the last walls, pretending every brick was her mothers face—transferring all the anger shed thrown at the program back to her mother, where it belonged.
She worked shoulder to shoulder with Morrison, but neither of them talked. That was okay with her, since the few times they got to talk they always got in a fight. When they were silent, they worked together pretty well.
She was getting stronger. The heroin shakes were gone now—the razors in her gut turned into an empty hunger that she could usually ignore. Her hands were like leather gloves, the blisters peeled away. She sweated a lot and probably smelled like crap, but thered be the river tomorrow—the coldest bath in the world, and a chance to wash her clothes.
She was working so well she didnt realize it was time to fall in for evening sessions until Leyland started yelling at them.
Even Leylands voice had changed over the last week. He sounded more like a PE coach, less like a demon. Not that Leyland wouldnt slap her down to size in a second if she didnt toe the line, but that didnt bother Mallory anymore. Leylands voice had become an involuntary reflex inside her body.
The jog back to base camp was half a mile—from the destroyed barracks through a stretch of flat
scrubland, wooded with soapberry trees and whitebrush and nopalitas, things Mallory wouldnt have known how to name a month ago. Now, from Leylands survivalist lectures, she knew she could wash her clothes with those fat yellow soapberries. She knew the thorns on a whitebrush were all show—they didnt hurt a bit. And the white powder that collected in the joints of the nopalitas cactus turned red on contact with human skin—Apache war paint.
Another cold front was blowing in. Their stretch of mild sunny days was about to come to an end.
It still amazed Mallory that she could look up and see the weather changing—a curve of blue clouds like a seining net pulling south, blotting out the sunset. The sky in San Francisco was never so dramatic. The weather back home was more like her mother—mild and sweet and spineless.
“Rain tonight,” Leyland announced, jogging beside her. “Get to try your pup tent. ”
“Yes, sir. ”
“Were spoiling you, Zedman. ”
“Yes, sir. ”
They passed the stables and the pasture, and Mallory stole a glance at the horses—a bay filly, a sorrel mare, a black and white paint . . . she couldnt remember the name for that ones coloration.
They kept jogging, past the solitary confinement shed, then the damn gravel clearing where shed been initiated into Black Level a zillion years ago. Each time she passed the place she felt ashamed and angry about that first day. She was pretty sure thats why the instructors took this route.
Another hundred yards, and she could see the counselors gathered at the base camp, on a ridge overlooking the river. The wind was swirling spear grass and dust across the granite, and the temperature had dropped.
Mallory tried to prepare herself for seeing Olsen.
With her short blond hair and her pale complexion, Olsen didnt look anything like Katherine Chadwick. Didnt even act like Katherine. But when she talked to Mallory about turning her life around, she got the same hungry look in her eyes that Katherine had had, the moment she unhooked the clasp of her necklace.
That scared the hell out of Mallory.
She was afraid of liking Olsen—starting to trust her, then waking up one morning to find Olsen gone, replaced by some other counselor who didnt give a damn.
But so far, Olsen had stayed with her, even after Mallory attacked her with the knife. Once or twice in group therapy, Mallory had been tempted to tell Olsen about her dream, to see what shed say.
No, Mallory told herself. You open up your head, theyll see how crazy you are. Theyll keep you back.
She listened hard to the other kids stories. Shed learned about Morrison getting beat up by her stepfather. Shed learned from Smart about the drug scene in Des Moines—unbelievable that they had meth labs there, not just farmers and corn. Smart had been busted when his bedroom exploded while he was at school. Mallory had learned about Bridges, whod been to two other boot camp schools before this one—“A kid died at one of them, so I had to leave. ”
Then, last night, Mallory had shared for the first time.
It was a stupid thing to do, telling her life story to kids who didnt even know her. But it was hard to explain—like she was on the light end of a scale, getting higher and higher the more the others put out, so the whole camp felt uneven, and Mallory felt like she stuck out, like she was rising above everybody.