Shock Point (17 page)

She was resting in the shadow of a large cactus when she saw a green open-sided Jeep jouncing across the flats. After three days of running, it took Cassie a minute to realize that, now that she was finally in America, a vehicle meant rescue. Water. An adult who would listen to her. Water. Food. Transportation to a flushing toilet and a bed. Water.

As the Jeep got closer, she saw that the two men inside wore uniforms, and there were white logos stenciled on the door panels. The Border Patrol. She stood up, waving her arms.

The Jeep slowed to a stop. Two men in green uniforms jumped out. One of the men pulled a squared-off gun from the holster on his belt.
“¡Manos para arriba!”
He was pointing the gun directly at her chest.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Cassie shouted. Or tried to. Her voice was a strangled whisper, her tongue so swollen, it refused to shape the words.

The man with the gun narrowed his eyes, but kept his weapon trained on Cassie. He was gray-haired, lean, and weather-beaten. The second man, who wore the waistband of his pants below his ample belly, pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Romeo, be advised, we just captured an SBI. Mexican female, age about nineteen. Alone. Over.”

The walkie-talkie crackled in return. “Copy that, Foxtrot. Should we come search the arroyo? Over.”

“Affirmative your last. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Over and out.”

Cassie tried again to moisten her mouth, not moving her eyes from the gun. “Not Mexican. American. Need water.”

The one called Foxtrot leaned into the Jeep and handed her a quart bottle of Safeway brand water. Her hands shook so much, it was hard to twist open the cap. Cassie drank until the bottle was empty, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, the man with the gun had lowered it until it was pointing at the ground.

“I’m not Mexican,” Cassie repeated, her saliva still thick. “I’m American.”

“Then prove it! Show me some ID.” Even though he looked as old as Cassie’s grandfather, the man with the gun was giddy with excitement. “You’re an illegal.”

“I am not. I’m just as American as you.” She looked past him at the logo stenciled on the Jeep’s door panel. An eagle gripping arrows, encircled by the words
National Border Watch.
That didn’t sound quite right.

“Then show us some ID.”

“I don’t have any ID.” Cassie scrambled for a cover story. She was far closer to Peaceful Cove than she was to Portland, and she suddenly remembered Father Gary saying that they had custody rights. “I was in Tijuana and some people robbed me and took me out in the desert. They stole my ID. My name’s”—she hesitated and hoped they didn’t notice—“Carrie Johnson.”

“I still say she’s a
pollo,
” the older man said.

“A chicken?” Cassie felt confused.

The two men exchanged glances. “For an American, you speak pretty good Spanish,” the skinny one said. “A pollo’s an illegal immigrant.”

“You’ve got to speak some Spanish to live in America today,” she said.

“She’s got a point there, Davis,” Foxtrot said.

“She could still be an SBI who learned her English off TV.” But Davis holstered his gun.

“What’s an SBI?” Cassie asked, remembering what Foxtrot had said.

“Suspected border intruder. We use that term because we don’t know if people are illegals or not,” Foxtrot said. “They could be very lost Mexican hikers. Not likely, but still.”

“Are you the Border Patrol?”

“The Border Patrol?” Davis snorted. “The Border Patrol is inefficient at best. We’re with National Border Watch. NBW. You might have heard of us?”

Cassie shook her head, then felt dizzy and regretted it. Her stomach was as tight as a water balloon.

“This border”—Davis waved his hand in the direction of the fence—“is no border at all. It’s like a trapdoor into America. In the last two years, the NBW has captured more than thirty-three hundred illegal immigrants.”

“If you’re not the Border Patrol, then why do you have guns?”

“They’re not guns—they’re tasers. They shoot little darts on wires, not bullets. Basically, they just give you a big electric shock,” Davis said. “Make it so you can’t run away.”

“And it’s all legal,” Foxtrot added.

Davis said, “Let’s take you back to the house, check out the bona fides. Foxtrot, you go check the arroyos and cuts, just in case there are any more where she came from.” He turned to Cassie. “Go on, get in back.”

Wire mesh separated the two seats, reminding Cassie uncomfortably of the van that had taken her to Mexico in the first place. Was she a prisoner again? It took them twenty minutes to drive to Davis’s house. It looked like any ranch house in the suburbs of Portland, at least any suburban ranch house surrounded by nothing but desert and barbed wire and with a twenty-foot-tall metal viewing tower next to it.

Inside, the house was clean and quiet. The curtains were all drawn tight, giving the house a muffled and sleepy feel, as if it had just settled down for a long siesta. There was a cream-colored carpet, a blue plaid couch and a matching recliner. There was no art on the walls and nothing out of place. She shivered in the air-conditioning, unaccustomed to feeling cool.

“Diana,” Davis called out. He unbuckled his gun belt and put it on a high shelf next to the door, along with his keys. A plump woman appeared in the kitchen doorway and walked toward them, wiping her hands on a white apron.

“This is my wife, Diana. Diana, this is Carrie,” Davis said.

She smelled like cookies. The sweet scent cramped Cassie’s stomach. She put her hand on the wall to steady herself.

“When did you last eat?” Davis rapped out.

Cassie couldn’t even remember anymore. “Two days ago?”

“Don’t just stand there, Diana, fix the girl a plate.”

Without speaking, Diana turned and hurried back into the kitchen. Davis took Cassie’s elbow and led her into the dining room, which had a long wooden table and eight ladder-back chairs. Three little girls crept into the hall and stared at her. The oldest looked about six.

It was only a minute before Diana was back with a glass of milk and a white plate with a cheese sandwich, potato chips, and a pickle.

“Thank you,” Cassie mumbled to Diana with her mouth full. “This is really good.” Her face was lined but not old. Cassie guessed she was at least thirty years younger than her husband.

Davis pulled out a chair, straddled it. “Tell me again what happened to you.”

“Some friends and I went to Tijuana to party. Somebody must have put something in my drink. The next thing I knew, I was wandering around in the desert by myself and my purse was gone.”

“Are you even legally old enough to drink, young lady?”

“Well, no, but—”

“And your parents—what did they think about it?”

“They’re divorced. And it was fine with my mom.”

Cassie nodded her head, which made her feel dizzy. She closed her eyes.

Davis laid a hand on her shoulder. His fingers felt long and spidery. “You look like you could use a nap. I’ll have Diana put you in the guest room.”

At one in the morning, Cassie was driving the Jeep down a deserted road. On the seat beside her was Davis’s taser and holster. With luck, she might have a five-hour head start. Or less. Davis looked like the kind of guy who would get up early.

When she had woken from her nap, she had gotten up and started to go down the hall. Then she heard Diana and Davis talking. Suspicious of her story, they thought she was a runaway, and hoped there was a reward. They were planning on turning her over to the cops the next day. Cassie wasn’t sure what the cops would do—but she didn’t want to take the slightest chance they would send her back to Peaceful Cove. She decided she had to cut and run while they still thought her too worn-out from her ordeal to think for herself. She didn’t have to feign exhaustion at the dinner table, and it took all her energy to stay awake until they went to bed. When she reached for the keys on the shelf Davis had left them on, her fingers touched something else. The holster for the taser. She decided to take it as well. If Davis did come hunting her, now he couldn’t come armed.

At first her hands were slick on the wheel. Cassie had never driven by herself before, but the road was just a flat place in the middle of a bigger flat place. She slowly lost her fear and grew nearly comfortable. An hour later, she merged onto another road heading north. Later, she turned onto an even bigger road, then finally to a freeway. At five in the morning, the sky just getting light, she pulled into a rest area. She parked the car next to the restroom and put the keys under the mat. Buckling the taser’s holster around her waist, she tied a huge sweatshirt of Diana’s over it, then got out and locked the door.

Over the next hour, several cars with Oregon or Washington plates drove into the rest stop. Cassie rejected the first one, a man driving alone (would-be rapist), then the second, a woman who looked about fifty (more likely to insist on phoning her mom and Rick), and finally the third car, which held a couple (twice as many questions). She felt jumpy as her head start slowly evaporated, but she didn’t want to end up with the wrong rescuer twice. Finally, she saw a young woman driving a fifteen-year-old Toyota with Oregon plates pull in to the rest stop. As the woman bought a Diet Coke from a vending machine, Cassie walked over to her. She was slender and wore jeans, Birkenstocks, and a sleeveless shirt without benefit of a bra.

“You’re from Oregon?”

“Yeah.” The woman looked at her curiously. She lifted her blond hair from her shoulders and rested the cold can on the back of her neck. Even though it was still early in the morning, the day was already hot.

“I’m from Portland.”

“Oh, really?” The woman smiled now. In Portland she might not have talked to Cassie, but now that they were far from home, it was like they were old friends. “From what part?”

“West Hills.”

“I live in Multnomah Village!” The two areas of the city were only a few miles apart.

“Are you going back to Portland now? Can you maybe give me a ride?”

The smile left her face and the other woman looked Cassie up and down. “How come you can’t just get back the way you came?”

“I met this guy, see, but it didn’t work out. He talked me into coming with him, but he wanted more than I wanted to give him. So he kicked me out of the car and took off.” Cassie was getting better at spinning alibis.

“That jerk! But what about your parents? Shouldn’t we call them? They must be worried about you.”

Cassie figured the “we” was a good sign. “If I do, I’m afraid they’ll just call the cops and try to have me picked up. My stepdad is pretty hardcore. I want to talk to them face-to-face to get this whole thing straightened out.” Cassie played her trump card, the other reason she had waited until she spotted a young-looking driver driving a beat-up old car. “Besides, I can pay you. At least the jerk left me my babysitting money.”

Thatcher’s house was dark. Cassie counted windows twice before she was sure she was standing outside his bedroom, then rapped lightly. The sound seemed as loud as a pistol shot.

She listened closely, but heard nothing. After counting to thirty, she knocked again. The curtain was pushed back, and there was Thatcher, his hair tangled from sleep, looking younger—too young, really, to help her. Why was she here? Then Cassie remembered that she didn’t have anyplace else to go.

Thatcher’s mouth fell open. Fumbling with the lock, he finally managed to slide the window up. His voice was a piercing whisper.

“Cassie? Cassie! I thought you were dead.” His face was pale, his eyes wide. Cassie realized she was used to the blank expression kids quickly assumed at Peaceful Cove. As she looked at Thatcher’s open face, tears pricked Cassie’s eyes. She found she couldn’t speak. Leaning down, he gathered her cold hands in his warm ones. “Do you think you could climb in?”

She put her hands on the sill, levered herself up, managed to get one leg over. She lost her balance and tumbled forward onto Thatcher’s bed. The nest of covers was still warm from his body.

He pulled her up to a sitting position, then yanked the covers up around his waist when he realized he was only wearing boxers. Reaching forward, he took her hands again. She noticed that he was shaking. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

“Why did you think I was dead?”

“The article said you were missing and probably dead.”

“What article?”

“An article from a newspaper that I found online. It wasn’t even in the
Oregonian.
After your mom told me that they had sent you to that school, I was searching Google every day, looking for information about Peaceful Cove. And then I saw the article about the fire.”

“Can you show me?” Cassie asked.

He tapped the space bar on his Macintosh and it came to life. “I bookmarked it,” he said as he pulled up the article. She scrolled past an explanation of how Peaceful Cove worked, slowing when she came to the description of the fire: