The Faithful (25 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Before they left Elkhorn, Josh took Ryanne on a tour of the area, hoping to spark her memory. He drove slowly down Main Street, pointing out the businesses that would have been around in 1988. They wove their way to Westridge Elementary School and parked in front of a “Children Crossing” sign.

Ryanne got out of the vehicle and made her way toward the school grounds, her hair aflame in the afternoon sun. He caught up with her at the chain-link fence and gently placed her new coat over her shoulders, hiding the Kevlar vest underneath.

Her fingers were curled around the chain link, and she was gazing at the playground, her expression distant and unreadable. The image struck a chord deep within him. The girl on the outside, forever looking in.

The bell rang and kids swarmed down the steps, laughing and chattering. They made their way to the bike racks, or wandered in small clusters to the sidewalk for a short walk home, or made their way to a waiting parent parked at the curb.

Had any of those parents been Ryanne’s classmates, once upon a time? Did they pick up their children out of convenience, or because they remembered the girl with the red hair? Were they haunted by her, as he was? Ryanne watched them, and Josh watched her.

Finally, he had to ask. “Do you remember anything?”

At first she didn’t answer, and he wondered if she had heard him. He followed her gaze until he saw what had transfixed her. A lone girl, sitting on a bench, knees pulled up to her chest. Her hair was blond instead of red, but even from a distance, Josh could see the knots in her hair and the dirt that smudged her sleeves.

“I remember being alone.” She pulled away from the fence, turning her back on Westridge Elementary School and the childhood she’d never had.

The house where Ryanne had spent the first seven years of her life had been torn down, leaving nothing but overgrowth in its place. He pulled to a stop, remembering the day he had bounced across the side yard in his 1978 Ford Fairmont, kicking dirt up into the hot summer air. He had been so young then, about to take that first step along a path filled with twists and turns that would eventually circle him back to this very same spot.

“Keep going,” she hissed.

He turned to look at her, pulling himself back to the present. “What?”

She wasn’t looking at the property where her childhood home had once stood, but rather across the street to Mt. Calvary Cemetery.

“Get me out of here!” Her voice caught in her throat. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps, her skin bathed in sweat.

Whatever was going on, she was terrified. A healthy dose of adrenaline thundered through his veins, and he slammed the Suburban into gear. They shot forward and spun the wheels, angling back onto Skyline Road.

“What’s going on?” he asked once he had the Suburban under control and they were barreling away from the cemetery. His heart was roaring inside his chest, a beast trying to escape.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Wheezing, she rolled herself into a ball, her face on her knees, her back trembling.

“You’re going to hyperventilate! Ryanne, calm down and tell me what’s going on!” He realized the irony of shouting at her to calm down, but he couldn’t help it.

With concentrated effort, she slowed her breathing and eventually sat back up, eyes closed and head leaning against the headrest. Her skin had a faint gray tinge to it, and was shiny with sweat.

“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I can’t believe that’s where I lived! I hate cemeteries.”

“Why?” he asked, although he could feel the back of his neck prickling.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked.

His laugh was strangled, strange to his ears. “No. I don’t.”

Their final stop was at Papillion Creek, where her bike and backpack had been found. He held her by the arm as they made their way toward the brush surrounding the creek, not because she needed the support, but because he did.

“This is where we found your bike,” he said quietly, pointing to a thicket of undergrowth. “It was half hidden in the bushes right there.”

Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes wide as she took in her surroundings. He led her into the dappled shade, explaining as they went how he and the sheriff had searched the area. He helped her down the bank toward the creek.

“Your backpack was right here.” He showed her. “It was covered in blood. Of course, we later determined it was from a lamb.”

“Lamb’s blood?” Her voice was faint, fragile.

“Are you all right?” He held her arm tighter, searching her face. Was she going to pass out? But no, she was calm, almost unfazed.

Josh could see that the place held no meaning for her. It was he who was haunted by it, and haunted by the girl within the woman. A ghost in a Kevlar vest.

He marveled at the exquisite mystery of her. The woman who stood in perhaps the very spot where the girl had been taken. She was battered, damaged in ways he didn’t yet understand, and yet still she stood. A spark among the shadows. A ghost no more.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Sumner rolled into Amarillo the day after Ryanne and Josh cleared out their bank accounts. To his misfortune, the
I Fidele
agents who were hunting Josh and Ryanne also converged on Amarillo that day. It was pure coincidence they found him instead, and the irony of the situation was lost on him until much later. He came upon them in, of all places, the same Walmart Supercenter where Josh had shopped the day before.

Sumner had purchased a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm handgun from a pawnshop in Fort Worth and had spent the last few days visiting various shooting ranges as he traveled north through Texas.

The manager of the first one had taken pity on his obvious ignorance. He patiently demonstrated how to strip the gun down, clean it, and put it back together. He gave Sumner pointers on firing it, and then taught him a sequence that began with the gun tucked up against the small of his back. He had to pull the gun out of his belt, aim it with precision, fire off all the rounds, reload, aim, and fire again. Sumner’s efforts had been sloppy at best. He secretly wondered if, under pressure, he’d be able to manage it without lodging a bullet in his butt cheek.

Although the manager had snickered at Sumner’s choice of gun (apparently anything less than a .45 was a “chick’s gun”), he recommended buying better-quality bullets, and wrote down the name of the ammo on a scrap of paper.

Sumner was paying for the ammo, along with a sandwich and lemonade, when he felt the warning buzz of a bogey approaching. He stopped short while reaching for his change, his hand frozen in midair.

He didn’t know the real names of any of his bogeys, if they even had names, but over time he had christened them according to their personalities.

Coach
hounded him any time his feet were dragging on an important task. In Sumner’s mind, he was thick necked and red faced, all booming voice and bulging veins.

Loretta
was a motherly type who appeared whenever he was upset or angry. She was soothing green light and the smell of meadow grass, a cool kiss on a fevered forehead.

Soapy
, dubbed after the famous American con man Soapy Smith, was the trickster. He liked to pop in at inopportune moments and drop knowledge-bombs that were twisted versions of the truth.
Soapy
was a smirking swindler, always trying to cause trouble, and Sumner did his best to avoid contact.

The one who approached in the Walmart was
Redlight
. Rarely seen,
Redlight
was an alarm in a nuclear plant, all bullhorns and red-hot strobe lights. To ignore
Redlight
, even for a second, was to risk death.

Sumner grabbed his change from the cashier, pulled the plastic bag off the carousel at the end of the checkout line, and beat a hasty retreat toward the automatic doors. All the while, his eyes were scanning the people around him, searching out the danger.

There were moms with toddlers tucked into shopping carts, a rangy old man in the self-serve aisle buying a six-pack, and some construction types standing in line at the Subway. But
Redlight
was still blaring.

Danger! Danger!

If anything,
Redlight
was growing more strident. Sumner’s mouth flooded with a bitter taste, like pennies. What? What was it?

The sun blinded him as he raced through the automatic doors, and he collided with the
I Fidele
agent who was on his way in.
Redlight
disappeared, leaving Sumner alone in the deafening silence.

They did the dance two strangers do when they collide, shuffling around each other with mumbled apologies. He was sure there was a joke in there somewhere: a couple of psychics collide outside a Walmart and fumble around like two of the Three Stooges.

Maybe he should have clunked him over the head with his sandwich. Bet you weren’t expecting that, my psychic friend! Nyuck nyuck nyuck!

The moment before the agent’s eyes registered recognition stretched in front of Sumner with all the hope a driver standing on his brakes must feel just before the inevitable, jarring impact of the crash.

And there was the third Stooge, approaching from the parking lot right on schedule. He was big and beefy and looked like he could snap Sumner in half with the twist of one tree-trunk-sized arm.

The agent Sumner had collided with was smaller than his beefy companion. He looked a lot like that T-1000 dude from
Terminator 2
, the one who looked like no match for Arnold Schwarzenegger until you saw him run down a car on foot.

And his focus was sharpening in recognition. Another moment and it would be too late. Beefcake would be upon them and Terminator would raise the alarm.

Hysteria bubbled up inside Sumner. With insane joviality, he clapped Terminator on the arm. “Time to split! Say hi to Skynet for me!”

He was lucky enough to get a bit of a head start, but he was pitting a thirty-year-old VW against a cherry-red V8 Camaro.

Oh yeah, he thought, this is going to end well.

He veered out of the parking lot onto Amarillo Boulevard eastbound, nudging into traffic and ignoring the irate honking of nearby drivers. The Camaro butted in about ten cars behind him, raising another ruckus.

They bobbed and weaved through traffic, jockeying for position, pausing at red lights and pushing through stale yellows. There was no way he could outdistance a Camaro under different circumstances, but the traffic put them on equal footing. Bit by bit he pulled away from them, gaining two car lengths and then losing one.

His break came when the Camaro got stuck at a red light at Western Street. Sumner pulled away, cackling madly as traffic flooded in behind him from the cross street. When he took the on-ramp for US 287 northbound, the Camaro was nowhere in sight.

Within a few miles, the traffic thinned out and the world spread out around him in a yellowed expanse of scrubland. The road was straight and flat, providing no place to hide. There wasn’t a chance of him outpacing the agents if they chose the same route.

His only hope was that they turned south, and he watched the rearview mirror with morbid fascination. He pulled open a box of bullets with his right hand and wedged the gun between his thighs to load it.

“Hey Sumner, how’d you lose your ballsack?” He cackled wildly. And sure enough, there was a flash of red behind him.

“Shit!” Braking hard, he swung right onto Gravel Pit Road. Shockingly, it was covered in gravel. The car fishtailed when he pounded the gas pedal. Almost immediately, he realized what a bad decision he’d made, but it was too late. Nothing to do but bounce along at a teeth-rattling pace, kicking up a wild trail of gray dust.

“Do you think they’ll notice me?” He couldn’t stop laughing. The horror of the situation somehow seemed to call for it. It was either laugh or start screaming.

Sure enough, that telltale streak of red appeared through the dust in his rearview mirror, and he watched it grow bigger with a gruesome eagerness he couldn’t explain.

Instead of the advertised gravel pit, Sumner caught a shimmer of blue-green through the dust. Was that a lake?

“Hey boys, care for a swim?” he said to his rearview mirror.

Veering toward the water, he tucked the gun into his armpit, wrapped the Walmart bag around his wrist, and opened the driver’s-side door.

Sumner did his best
Mission: Impossible
dive, skidding and rolling across the loose gravel and feeling nothing at all like Tom Cruise. The gravel seared his skin like a million tiny daggers, but at least the gun didn’t go off.

Dripping blood, he stumbled to the brush surrounding the lake and dove headfirst into the thickest bramble, hoping he wasn’t awakening snakes or other vile creatures.

A second later, there was a surprisingly undramatic splash. The Westfalia rolled forward, nosing its way into the water. The driver’s-side door eased shut.

By the time the Camaro pulled to a stop, spewing gravel from underneath its tires, the driver’s compartment of the Westfalia was completely immersed and the tail was sticking up, back wheels spinning.

Sumner placed the Walmart bag on the ground beside him, wiped the sweat and blood out of his eyes, and positioned his hands on the gun. He took aim and waited.

Seven rounds—that was all he had. There was no chance he’d be able to reload before one of the agents was on top of him.

Beefcake was driving, and was therefore the closest. Sumner watched him get out of the Camaro. He could see the cocky smile on his face.

Sumner’s hands were shaking violently. He took two deep breaths, sighting down the shaft of the gun, and waited for his moment.

He shouldn’t have worried about whether he would be able to shoot another human being. Cornered as he was, the instinct for survival kicked in with stark clarity, peeling away his fragile human mask. He would kill or he would die. It was that simple. And he didn’t intend to die.

“Not today,” he growled, and pulled the trigger.

Of course he missed.

Beefcake roared and flew toward him like a tornado of muscled fury. Sumner closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger again. This time he didn’t miss. Beefcake dropped with all the grace of a wild buffalo. One eye was open in shock; the other looked like raw hamburger and was spurting blood.

Terminator flew out of the passenger seat toting an enormous assault rifle that made Sumner’s gun look like a dainty teacup.

He had five bullets left.

Sumner had the advantage of being hidden in the scrub while Terminator stood brazenly out in the open, trusting in his rifle to do its job. He laid down a spray of bullets, the closest of which missed Sumner’s nose by several feet. The rifle was huge and obviously hard to control. It pulled Terminator in an arc from left to right.

The dumbass has his eyes closed, Sumner thought, conveniently ignoring the fact that he’d killed Beefcake with a lucky shot while his own eyes were closed.

It took four of the remaining five rounds before Terminator went down, and a new Sumner was born.