For a moment she hesitated; so did the dog. Nervously, Bear glanced at his departing master, then looked at Maura as if to say What are you waiting for? If I follow the boy, she thought, I could be running away from my own rescuers. Am I so thoroughly brainwashed that I’d willingly stick with my kidnapper?
What if the boy is right? What if Death is coming down that road for me?
Bear suddenly took off running after his master.
That was what made her finally choose. When even a dog had the sense to flee, she knew it was time to follow.
She chased after them, her snowshoes clacking across the frozen mud. Beyond the last burned house, the mud gave way to deep snow again. Rat was far ahead and moving into the woods. She labored to catch up, already out of breath as she frantically kicked up powder. Just as she reached the trees, she heard the sound of a dog barking. A different dog, not Bear. She ducked behind a pine and looked back at Kingdom Come.
A black SUV pulled to a stop among the ruins, and a large dog jumped out. Two men emerged, carrying rifles, and they stood scanning the burned village. Although they were too far away for Maura to make out their faces, they clearly seemed to be searching for something.
A paw suddenly landed on her back. With a gasp, she turned and came face-to-face with Bear, his pink tongue lolling out.
“Now do you believe me?” whispered Rat, who was crouched right behind her.
“They could be hunters.”
“I know dogs. That’s a bloodhound they got there.”
One of the men reached into the SUV and pulled out a satchel. Crouching beside the hound, he let it sniff the contents.
“He’s giving it the scent,” said Rat.
“Who are they tracking?”
The hound was moving now, wandering among the ruins, nose to the ground. But the smell of the fire seemed to confuse it, and it paused beside the blackened timbers where Maura and Julian had earlier lingered. As the men waited, the dog circled, trying to catch a whiff of its quarry while the two men fanned out, searching the area.
“Hey,” one man yelled, and pointed to the ground. “Snowshoe prints!”
“They’ve spotted our tracks,” said Rat. “Don’t need a dog to find us now.” He backed away. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
He was already moving deeper into the woods, not looking back to see whether she was behind him, not caring that his snowshoes were clattering through underbrush. The hound began baying, pulling in their direction.
Maura chased after the boy. He moved like a panicked deer, shoving through branches, scattering snow in his wake. She could hear the men in pursuit behind them, shouting to each other, and the bloodhound’s excited howling. But even as she scrambled through the woods, the debate still raged in her head. Am I running from my own rescuers?
The rifle shot answered her question. A chunk of wood exploded off the tree near her head, and she heard the bloodhound baying closer. Terror blasted new energy into her bloodstream. Suddenly her muscles were pumping wildly, legs thrashing ahead through the woods.
Another rifle shot exploded. Another chunk of bark splintered off a tree. Then she heard a curse, and the next shot went wild.
“Fucking snow!” one of the men yelled. Without snowshoes, they were sinking, mired in the drifts.
“Let the dog loose! He’ll bring her down!”
“Go, boy. Get her.”
Fresh panic sent Maura plunging ahead, but she could hear the bloodhound gaining on her. On snowshoes, she could outpace her human pursuers, but she could not outrun a dog. In desperation, she scanned the trees for a glimpse of Rat. How had he gotten so far ahead? She was on her own now, isolated prey, and the hound was closing in. The snowshoes made her clumsy, and the undergrowth was too thick here, clawing at the frames.
Ahead, she saw a break in the trees.
She burst through a tangle of branches, into a broad clearing. In a glance she took in the skeletal beams of three new houses, frozen in mid-construction. At the far edge of the clearing, an excavator was parked, its cab almost buried beneath snow. Beside it stood Rat, frantically waving at her.
She started toward him. But halfway across, she knew she would not outrun the bloodhound. She heard it crash through the underbrush behind her. It landed like an anvil against her shoulders and she pitched forward. She put out her hands to break her fall and her arms sank in elbow-deep snow. As she landed, she heard a strangely metallic clunk beneath her, felt something slice right through her glove and into her hand. Sputtering, her face coated in icy powder, she struggled to push herself up, but debris shifted away beneath her weight, and she floundered, as helpless as if trapped in quicksand.
The bloodhound wheeled around and leaped at her again. Weakly she raised an arm to protect her throat and waited to feel teeth sink into her flesh.
A flash of gray suddenly soared past, and Bear collided in midair with the bloodhound. The yelp was as startling as a human shriek. The two dogs thrashed and rolled, ripping at fur, their growls so savage that Maura could only huddle in terror. Red spatters stained the snow, shockingly bright. The hound tried to pull away, but Bear gave him no chance to retreat, and again dove straight at him. Both dogs tumbled, plowing a blood-smeared trench through the snow.
“Bear, stop!” commanded Rat. He came into the clearing, clutching a branch, ready to swing it. But the bloodhound had had enough, and the instant Bear released him, the hound fled back toward the truck, crashing through underbrush in his panic to escape.
“You’re bleeding,” said Rat.
She tore off her soaked glove and stared at her lacerated palm. The slice was clean and deep, made by something razor-sharp. In the churned-up snow, she saw scraps of sheet metal and a jumble of dull gray canisters, dredged up by the dogs when they’d thrashed and rolled. All around her were snow-covered hummocks, and she realized she was kneeling in a field of construction debris. She looked down at her bleeding hand. Just the place to pick up tetanus.
A rifle blast jolted her straight. The men had not yet given up the chase.
Rat pulled her to her feet and they plunged back into the cover of woods. Though their tracks would be easy to follow, the men pursuing them would not be able to keep up in deep snow. Bear led the way, his bloodstained fur like a scarlet flag waving ahead of them as he trotted deeper into the valley. Blood continued to stream from Maura’s sliced palm, and she pressed her already saturated glove against the wound as she obsessed irrationally about bacteria and gangrene.
“Once we lose them,” said Rat, “we have to get back up the ridge.”
“They’ll track us back to your shelter.”
“We can’t stay there. We’ll pack as much food as we can carry and keep moving.”
“Who were those men?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were they from The Gathering?”
“I don’t know.”
“Goddamn it, Rat. What do you know?”
He glanced back at her. “How to stay alive.”
They were climbing now, moving steadily up the ridge, and every step was a labor. She did not know how he could cover ground so quickly.
“You have to get me to a telephone,” she said. “Let me call the police.”
“He owns them. They just do what he wants.”
“Are you talking about Jeremiah?”
“No one goes against the Prophet. No one ever fights back, not even my mom. Not even when they—” He stopped talking and suddenly focused his energy on attacking the ridge.
She halted on the slope, out of breath. “What did they do to your mom?”
He just kept climbing, his anger driving him at a killing pace.
“Rat.” She scrambled to catch up. “Listen to me. I have friends, people I trust. Just get me to a telephone.”
He paused, his breath clouding the air like a steam engine. “Who are you going to call?”
Daniel was her first thought. But she remembered all the times when she cou
ld not reach him, all the awkward phone conversations when others were listening in, and he had been forced to speak in code. Now, when she needed him most, she did not know if she could count on him.
Maybe I never could.
“Who is this friend?” Rat persisted.
“Her name is Jane Rizzoli.”
SHERIFF FAHEY DID NOT LOOK HAPPY TO SEE JANE AGAIN. EVEN FROM across the room, she could read his face through the glass partition, a look of dismay, as if he expected her to issue some new demand. He rose from his desk and resignedly stood waiting in his doorway as she crossed toward him, past law enforcement personnel who were now familiar with the three visitors from Boston. Before she could ask the expected question, he headed her off with the same answer he’d given her for two days in a row.
“There are no new developments,” he said.
“I didn’t come in expecting any,” said Jane.
“Trust me, I’ll call you if anything changes. There’s really no need for you folks to keep dropping in.” He glanced past her shoulder. “So where are your two gentlemen today?”
“They’re back at the hotel, packing. I thought I’d come by to thank you before we head to the airport.”
“You’re leaving?”
“We’re flying back to Boston this afternoon.”
“I hear rumors there’s a private jet involved. Must be nice.”
“It’s not my jet.”
“His, huh? The guy in black. He’s a strange fella.”
“Sansone’s a good man.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to know. We see a lot of folks around here who are loaded with money. Hollywood types, big-shot politicians. Buy themselves a few hundred acres, call themselves ranchers, and then they think they got a right to tell us how to do our jobs.” Although he was talking about nameless others, his words were really directed at her, at the Boston outsiders who’d swooped into his county and sucked up his attention.
“She was our friend,” said Jane. “You can understand why we’d want to do everything possible to find her.”
“Quite a group of friends she collected. Cops. A priest. A rich guy. Must’ve been quite a woman.”
“She was.” She looked down as her cell phone rang and saw a Wyoming area code, but she did not recognize the number. “Excuse me,” she said to Fahey and answered the call. “Detective Rizzoli.”
“Jane?” The voice was close to a sob. “Thank God you answered!”
For a moment Jane could not utter a sound. She stood mute and paralyzed, the cell phone pressed to her ear, the noise of the sheriff’s office drowned out by the pounding of her own pulse. I am talking to a ghost.
“I thought you were dead!” Jane blurted.
“I’m alive. I’m okay!”
“Jesus, Maura, we had your memorial service!” Tears suddenly stung Jane’s eyes, and she wiped them away with an impatient swipe of her sleeve. “Where the hell are you? Do you have any idea what—”
“Listen. Listen to me.”
Jane sucked in a breath. “I’m right here.”
“I need you to come to Wyoming. Please come and get me.”
“We’re already here.”
“What?”
“We’ve been working with the police to find your body.”
“Which police?”
“The Sublette County sheriff. I’m standing in his office right now.” She turned to find that Fahey was right beside her, his eyes full of questions. “Just tell us where you are and we’ll come get you.”
There was no answer.
“Maura? Maura?”
The line had gone dead. She hung up and stared at the number on her call history. “I need an address!” she yelled, and recited the phone number. “It’s a Wyoming area code!”
“That was her?” Fahey asked.
“She’s alive!” Jane gave a joyous laugh as she dialed the number. It rang and rang unanswered. She disconnected and redialed. Again, there was no answer. She stared at her cell phone, willing it to ring again.
Fahey went back to his desk and tried calling from his phone. By now everyone in the office was riveted to the conversation, and they watched as he punched in the number. He stood drumming his fingers on the desk and finally hung up.
“I’m not getting an answer, either,” he said.
“But she just called me from that number.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked me to come get her.”
“Did she give you any idea where she is? What happened to her?”
“She never got the chance. We were cut off.” Jane looked down at her silent cell phone, as if it had betrayed her.
“Got the address!” a deputy called out. “The phone’s listed to a Norma Jacqueline Brindell, up on Doyle Mountain.”
“Where’s that?” said Jane.
Fahey said, “That’s a good five miles west of the accident scene. How the hell’d she end up out there?”
“Show me on the map.”
They crossed to the county map displayed on the wall, and he tapped a finger on a remote corner. “There’s nothing but a few seasonal cabins. I doubt anyone’s living there this time of year.”
She looked at the deputy who’d given them the address. “Are you sure about that location?”
“That’s where the call came from, ma’am.”
“Keep calling it. See if anyone answers,” said Fahey. He looked at the dispatcher. “Check and see who we’ve got in that area right now.”
Jane looked at the map again and saw wide expanses with few roads and rugged elevations. How had Maura ended up there, so far from the wrecked Suburban? She scanned the map, her gaze moving back and forth between the accident site and Doyle Mountain. Five miles due west. She pictured snowbound valleys and towering crags. Scenic country, to be sure, but no villages, no restaurants, nothing to attract an East Coast tourist.
The dispatcher called out: “Deputy Martineau just radioed in. Says he’ll handle the call. He’s heading to Doyle Mountain now.”
THE PHONE in the kitchen would not stop ringing.
“Let me answer it,” said Maura.
“We have to leave.” The boy was emptying out pantry cabinets and throwing food into his backpack. “I saw a shovel on the back porch. Get it.”
“That’s my friend trying to reach me.”
“The police will be coming.”
“It’s okay, Rat. You can trust her.”
“But you can’t trust them.”
The phone was ringing again. She turned to answer it, but the boy snatched the cord and wrenched it from the wall. “Do you want to die?” he yelled.
Maura dropped the dead receiver and backed away. In his panic, the boy looked frightening, even dangerous. She glanced at the cord dangling from his fist, a fist that was powerful enough to batter a face, to crush a trachea.
He threw down the cord and took a breath. “If you want to come with me, we need to leave now.”
“I’m sorry, Rat,” she said quietly. “But I’m not going with you. I’m going to wait here for my friend.”
What she saw in his eyes wasn’t anger, but sorrow. In silence he strapped on his backpack and took her snowshoes, which she would no longer need. Without a backward look, without even a goodbye, he turned to the door. “Let’s go, Bear,” he said.
The dog hesitated, glancing back and forth between them, as though trying to understand these crazy humans.
“Bear.”
“Wait,” said Maura. “Stay with me. We’ll go back to town together.”
“I don’t belong in town, ma’am. I never did.”
“You can’t wander alone out there.”
“I’m not wandering. I know where I’m going.” Again, he looked at his dog, and this time Bear followed him.
Maura watched the boy walk out the back door, the dog at his heels. Through the broken kitchen window, she saw them trudge across the snow toward the woods. The wild child and his companion, returning to the mountains. A m
oment later they vanished among the trees, and she wondered if they had existed at all. If, in her fear and isolation, she had conjured up imaginary saviors. But no, she could see their prints tracking through the snow. The boy was real.
Just as real as Jane’s voice had been on the phone. The outside world had not vanished after all. Beyond those mountains, there were still cities, still people going about their normal business. People who did not skulk in the woods like hunted animals. For too long, she’d been trapped in the boy’s company, had almost started to believe, as he did, that the wilderness was the only safe place.
It was time to go back to that real world. Her world.
She examined the telephone and saw that the cord was too badly damaged to reconnect, but she had no doubt that Jane would nevertheless be able to track her location. Now all I have to do is wait, she thought. Jane knows I’m alive. Someone will come for me.
She went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. The cabin was unheated, and wind blew in through the broken kitchen window, so she kept her jacket zipped. She felt guilty about that window, which Rat had smashed so they could get into the house. Then there was the ruined phone cord and the ransacked pantry, all damage that she would pay for, of course. She’d mail a check with a sincere apology. Sitting in this stranger’s house, a house in which she was trespassing, she stared at the photos on the bookshelves. She saw pictures of three young children in various settings, and a gray-haired woman, proudly holding up an impressive trout. The books in the library were summer entertainment fare. Mary Higgins Clark and Danielle Steel, the collection of a woman with traditional tastes, who liked romance novels and ceramic kittens. A woman she would probably never meet face-to-face, but to whom she’d always be grateful. Your telephone saved my life.
Someone pounded on the front door.
She jolted to her feet. She had not heard the vehicle pull up to the house, but through the living room window, she saw a Sublette County Sheriff’s Department SUV. At last my nightmare is over, she thought as she opened the front door. I’m going home.