No Going Back (18 page)

Hunter had told her to keep the sun over her right shoulder. She had mostly done so during her flight from the desert. Occasionally the trail had disappeared under drifting sand, or had followed the contours of the land around some of the larger mesas, but she was happy that she had not deviated from her heading. Soon she should see the highway and a route south to Holbrook.

A check of Hunter’s phone showed the SOS symbol still displayed.

She was thirsty and the water was a temptation but she ignored the container. It would be unwise to try driving in this rough terrain while juggling the container to her lips. Nor did she want to stop; while she was moving she felt she was doing something positive and she wouldn’t jeopardise that sense of worth for anything.

Regularly her gaze slipped from the road to her mirrors. She expected to see that damn pick-up truck materialise from the dust haze as it had when the Logans chased her from the gas station. Had Samuel made it back to a rendezvous with Carson, and were they even now chasing her down? She didn’t think so, but it was always a possibility. One thing she knew for sure was that she wouldn’t stop this time. If a gun was pointed at her head again then she’d rather chance a bullet than let them have their way with her.

She thought about how easily she’d given in that first time when she should have fought harder to get away. Had she done so then Nicole wouldn’t have had to suffer the way she had, but what of Ellie? Jay was under no illusions; she’d have put the run-in with the Logans down to the crazy antics of some rednecks letting off steam, would have fled the desert and picked up the route west as they’d initially intended doing. She wouldn’t have reported the incident to the police, having no desire to have to attend court hearings and face those crazies a second time. No one would have known that the Logans had the teenager. God, she didn’t want to think about that. Maybe the torture she and Nicole had been put through was for a greater cause; perhaps a controlling force was ensuring that Ellie’s suffering wasn’t prolonged. No, she realised after a moment, no unseen hand was at work here, just a sequence of unfortunate events that had enmeshed her in the warped plans of a group of mad men. She’d had no power over these events, but things had changed in the shape of Joe Hunter. He was the only thing she could rely on now, not divine intervention, and by a strange quirk of fate he was now relying on her.

Power lines, strung from poles like serried ranks of soldiers, were the first indication that she was approaching the highway. The power grid led all the way from Holbrook towards Indian Wells, adjacent much of the time to Highway 77. Seeing the tall steel structures looming from the dust haze, she almost cried out in joy. It was way too soon for that, though, so she only gritted her teeth, fixed her hands on the wheel and headed directly for them. The phone’s SOS symbol had been replaced by a single white cross. Still no signal; and it would only get worse as she drove closer to the pylons. Nevertheless, she believed that there’d be booster stations at several locations along the route where she could raise the alarm.

Within minutes she was under the power lines and seconds after that the Yukon found asphalt beneath its tyres and Jay swerved wildly on to the highway. She recalled the last time she was on a similar road and how she’d longed for a freightliner to be heading in the opposite direction; she was thankful that the road was deserted now. She floored the gas, shooting south, her concentration split between the road ahead and the phone which she’d now grabbed up and held against the wheel.

With only five miles until the truck stop, she finally found a signal.

21

It made sense to leave the ranch as soon as possible, but there were considerations to be taken care of first. Primarily the girls’ nakedness: they would last no time out under the sun in such a state of undress. Not to mention that I felt self-conscious each time my gaze swept over them. To get them away safely I required their full trust, and I couldn’t gain that by averting my eyes all the time. I asked Nicole about their clothing, but they had no idea where it was. Apparently they’d been stripped naked on their arrival and had remained that way since, with the Logans deriving great joy from their embarrassment. I pulled off my shirt and handed it to Ellie. Buttoned, it covered her and reached all the way to her knees. For Nicole I snatched the denim jacket in the bunk room off its hook, and found a pair of boxer shorts that were grimy but would have to do. There was no footwear fitting for the girls, so I had to fashion makeshift shoes from the stinking bedding which I tied on to their feet with lengths of string. Standing side by side, their fingers entwined, the girls looked like waifs from the poorest ghetto.

While engaged in making them decent, I kept one ear cocked on the door, but it appeared that Carson and Samuel still hadn’t found each other. The CB radio had been quiet for some time, as had the radio I’d taken from Samuel. The silence could be a harbinger of bad luck, I decided, because my first assumption could be wrong. The cousins could have rendezvoused and Samuel would have admitted that he’d lost his radio in the fight with me. Even now, they could be approaching on foot so as not to warn me of their arrival.

Ellie was sobbing softly, while Nicole’s attention had barely strayed from my face. She had fully accepted me as a lifeline, indeed had grown dependent upon me for everything.

‘Nicole,’ I said. ‘Find something to carry water in and fill it up. While you’re at it, have a drink and make sure Ellie does too.’

She nodded, and led the girl towards the kitchen area. I checked the sawn-off liberated from Brent and found it to be an old-fashioned double-barrelled model chambered for twelve-gauge shot. There were two unused shells in it, and I discovered extra ammunition in a drawer in a rickety sideboard. I shoved a number of the shells into my pockets then went to the front window. Taking care not to offer a target, I only pulled the drapes aside by an inch and peered outside. This vantage offered me a view back across the wide plain towards the mushroom mountain, but there was no sign of the pick-up truck. That could mean anything: the Logans could be taking a different route back, or might even already be out there and beyond my line of sight.

When I turned from the window I found Nicole and Ellie staring up at me. Nicole’s gaze was rapt on my face, whereas Ellie was studying a scar next to my heart, then drifting from it to the bullet wound in my shoulder and the tattoo next to it. I couldn’t tell if she was troubled by the marks I carried as emblems of my trade, or if they gave her some kind of comfort. After weeping moments ago her face was now flat and without emotion; I worried that her mind had been irretrievably affected by the inhumanity she’d suffered these last few days. Damn it, the girl was going to bear witness to further horror before we were through, but there was nothing I could do about that.

To Nicole I said, ‘Can you shoot a gun?’

‘No,’ she replied, her voice a thin whisper.

I handed her the shotgun. Firing it without any training would be enough to knock her on her backside, but that’s not what I had in mind. ‘Carry this for me, but be ready to hand it over when I need it.’

‘OK.’ She took the shotgun tentatively.

Jay Walker, for all her resistance to shooting Samuel when she’d had the opportunity, now seemed like a much stronger person than her friend. Then again, I’d no right making that assumption, because Jay had suffered differently. She had endured physical assault, and had been confined in a box, but that would be preferable to what I suspected Nicole had put up with. Maybe if she got a bead on the Logans she would blast them to hell without a second thought; though here I was probably imposing my sense of justice on hers.

Switching my attention to the girl, I touched her gently on the side of the face. She didn’t as much as flinch. ‘How are you doing, Ellie? Are you OK?’

‘What’s that tattoo for?’

Her question surprised me, and I glanced down at the ink on my shoulder. It was a reminder of my time with Arrowsake, the secretive Special Force I’d once been a member of and now longed to put behind me. They had owned me for far too long and to this day were still trying to exert their influence upon me. Back then I’d been an idealistic soldier, and had gladly gone to war for them, in denial that I was being used. I believed that my work was just, that I was making the world safe and free from tyranny and terrorism, when in fact the men I’d served were equally as despotic as those I killed. Once I’d worn the tattoo with pride, but now it was just an ugly reminder of my past, as horrible as the knife and bullet wounds in my chest.

‘It’s a reminder,’ I said, ‘so that I never go back.’

Ellie squinted, trying to make sense of the three intersecting arrows embossing a shield. Beneath the coat of arms was a weighing scale, both arms equally balanced, one side supporting an ellipse, the other a horizontal crescent. Symbolically it signified the balancing of good and evil – a halo and devil’s horns – but I wondered about the validity of it now: perhaps, more pertinently, I’d come to understand that the balancing of right and wrong was a constant battle. Not that I suffered a moral conflict while looking down at the girl; I’d no qualms about taking the war to the Logans on her behalf.

My words were too cryptic to make sense to the girl, but she accepted them without question. Then she added her own doleful summation: ‘I never want to come back here either.’

It was a good motivator.

We moved for the back door, but I halted them with a raised hand. ‘Hold on a minute.’ I looked at Nicole. ‘Do you know where they put the keys to Jay’s car?’

She shrugged. Things like car keys wouldn’t have been important to her while she was being stripped and humiliated, but I hoped that she’d seen where they’d been hidden.

‘Think, Nicole. Did you see any of the men hide them somewhere?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘Ellie?’

The girl shook her head, then glanced back at Brent Logan. I knew what she was thinking, and guessed that it wasn’t somewhere she’d like to look, but I wasn’t as squeamish. I returned to the corpse and went through its pockets. Apart from a couple of Chupa Chups lollipops in his back pocket there was nothing. I didn’t think that Ellie would appreciate them so left the sweets where they were. I looked around the living room. No keys. The kitchen and bunk room came up bare as well. At worst Samuel or Carson was holding the keys, but then again, for all I knew they could be in the SUV. When I’d spotted it in the lean-to shed outside, I hadn’t been thinking of the car as a possible getaway vehicle. Its presence had meant something else to me then, and it did now. I wondered where Jay was and if I’d made a terrible mistake in sending her off alone.

If my suspicions were true, there was nothing I could do about it. Nicole and Ellie needed my help, and I had to prioritise.

The girls were each carrying a plastic bottle of water. Ellie held hers in her arms like a doll, while Nicole had jammed hers under her armpit so she could also carry the shotgun. I went quickly to the faucet and pumped the arm. The water tasted mildly salty, but it was better than nothing. Some of it dribbled down my chin, and I dashed it away with the wrist of my gun hand. I took another gulp, swilled it round and then spat the remainder into the sink. I was ready.

‘Let’s go, girls,’ I said, as if I was about to take them on an exciting adventure. It was important to keep them motivated, and not have them dwelling on the alternative, that I was possibly leading them to an unmarked grave. ‘Stay close to me at all times. Don’t speak and stay low, OK.’

We made a ragtag group in our mismatched and generally ill-fitting clothing but that didn’t mean a thing as long as it kept them safe. The overlarge clothing would help keep the sun off their bodies, even if I was condemning myself to a serious case of sunburn. I checked the way was clear, then guided the girls over to the lean-to and directed them to crouch in the shadows alongside its north-facing wall. ‘I’ll only be a few seconds,’ I said. ‘If you see or hear anything don’t shout, just knock on the wall. I’ll hear you.’

Checking all around, I backed up to the board covering the front of the shed and pulled it to one side. Jameson Walker’s SUV was coated with trail dust, but otherwise it seemed as good as new. Moving quickly for the driver’s door, I opened it and leaned inside. There were tiny cubes of broken window glass in the footwells. Luck wasn’t with me. There were no keys in the ignition. I checked all the likely hiding places: behind the visor, under the seats, in the glove compartment, but my search didn’t turn them up. Typical, I thought, because that would have been way too simple a get-out.

What I did find outweighed the disappointment that using the SUV for a getaway had proven a dead end. Both Jay and Nicole’s belongings were still on the back seat, holdalls containing clothing. I searched through them, grabbing something more appropriate for the girls, as well as two pairs of sneakers. Since Nicole wasn’t that much bigger than Ellie, I supposed there wouldn’t be much difference in the size of their footwear. There was no time to change now, so I stuffed them into my rucksack, and returned to the girls.

‘We can’t use the car I’m afraid. We’re going to have to walk out of here.’

They exchanged a glance, but neither looked perturbed by the prospect of having to traverse the desert. In fact they looked eager to get going, as if they wished to be anywhere but here, on foot or otherwise.

We used the trail I’d followed coming in, skirting the rubbish tip to the boulders where I held up a hand to stop them. The Logans’ no show was troubling me, and caused me to rethink our options. It was one thing taking Jay in that direction when I’d a vehicle waiting for her, quite another to expect to guide the two girls all the way back to the highway on foot. Instead, I made them head to the west towards the sweeping range of hills. Not that I planned on walking them too far that way; all I was interested in was finding some place where I could hide the girls while I returned to the ranch. The only way I was going to prevent the Logans from pursuing us was to stop them dead in their tracks.