The Last Twilight (9 page)

Eddie crouched, leaning close. He rubbed his nose, like it itched. “Cocaine?”

Amiri frowned. “The scent is different.”

Eddie reached down to touch the powder. Rikki snapped back to herself and grabbed his wrist, squeezing her fingers so hard the young man winced. She did not know jack shit about scents, but she recognized her own business when she saw it. Even if it took a moment to register.

“Back away,” she murmured, hardly able to speak. “Don’t breathe too deeply.”

Both men froze, then turned slowly to stare at her. She gave them hard looks, and tugged on Eddie’s arm. They moved. Rikki did not go with them. She stayed and stared and looked for a big stick. Held her breath. Used a long branch to push leaves and debris over the powder and canister. Hiding them.

When Rikki was done, she very carefully backed away. She counted steps. She did not need to, but it helped her focus. And not run screaming.

When they were all at least three hundred paces away, very much out of sight and down a hill, Rikki braced her hand—and gun—against her knees, and forced herself to breathe.

“I take it that substance was bad?” Amiri said mildly.

“Shit,” muttered Rikki, staring at her feet. “Fuck.”

“Probably very bad,” Eddie said, somewhere over her head. “Like…we’re going to die, bad?”

“Holy crap,” Rikki said, and fell to her knees. “Jesus Christ.”

“Well, that’s not comforting.”

“Indeed.”

“Think we should get down on
our
knees?”

“Humility and penitence?”

“No. Just tired.”

“Ah.” Amiri crouched beside Rikki. Eddie sat down on her other side. Both were dwarfing her, like trees to a sapling. She stared at them, looking into their eyes— golden, brown, both watching her with so much intensity, such fascination, she might as well have been a poodle in some tutu doing the cancan and singing showtunes.

“You two are insane,” she said.

“No,” Eddie replied, cheerfully. “We’re terrified.”

“Justifiably so,” Amiri murmured. “What is it that I found?”

Breathe. Focus. Breathe.
Rikki closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “First, did you touch anything? Before you came to get us? Did you get close?”

“No closer than we just were.”

Rikki exhaled. “Good.”

Amiri looked like he wanted to shake her. “Explain.”

She rubbed the back of her neck, hurting. “Those canisters you found are sometimes used in the transport of biological materials. Airtight, waterproof, insulated, difficult to damage.”

“They looked like thermoses,” Eddie muttered.

“Ain’t no coffee beans in that stainless steel,” Rikki shot back.

Amiri frowned. “The powder? What is it?”

“No way to tell. It could be dozens of things. Drugs, or ground bone dust—part of some black market trade in human body parts. Pulverized animal bits, for sale in traditional medicines.”

“Traditional medicines are not exactly terrifying.”

“But anthrax is,” she said, grim. “Smallpox. Biological agents. Deadly.”

Eddie paled, staring at his hand. Amiri never flinched. “The same substance that killed those people in the refugee camp?”

Rikki’s mouth clicked shut. He could have been reading her mind. But that question—that awful question— still felt like a steel-tipped boot in her gut.

And she knew what that felt like. Boy, did she.

Eddie stiffened. “I thought what happened there was natural.”

Rikki said nothing. Neither did Amiri. They stared at each other, and she could almost hear his thoughts, turning inside his head. His eyes were piercing, intelligent…beautiful, if she could admit it—and she could, even if it were a secret she’d take to the grave.

“Hey,” Eddie said. “I’m hanging here.”

“I would need to run more tests,” Rikki replied, looking at him. “But since I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of managing that, better to be safe than sorry. No poking around anything white and dusty.”

His face flushed. “Because it might kill me.”

Rikki gave him the thumbs-up sign. He blew out his breath, rubbing his wrist where she had grabbed him. “What about the people who left those canisters behind? They didn’t open by themselves.”

Amiri rumbled, turning slowly to look behind them. Methodical, deliberate, thoughtful. Rikki stared at him. So did Eddie.

“What?” she said.

“I think I might have the answer to that question,” Amiri replied.

“You hear someone?”

“No.” He hesitated. “Something is rotting.”

“Oh.” Rikki pursed her lips, and thought about the open canisters.
“Oh.
Man.”

“Exactly.” Amiri raised his brow. “Both of you, stay here.”

Rikki and Eddie looked at each other.

“You might need us,” Eddie said.

“All for one, one for all,” added Rikki.

Amiri’s mouth twitched. “We are quite alone here.”

“We’re doing this for your protection,” Rikki said, and made a shooing motion. “Go. Let’s get this over with.”

They took a circuitous route, and walked only a short distance before they came upon an area of rough damage—broken branches, undergrowth hacked, cold cigarettes littering the blanket of dead leaves and vines. Like Bambi’s mother:
Man was in the forest,
and oh, it was time to run.

Amiri found the bodies. Four of them. Riddled with bullet holes. No blood appeared to have seeped from their eyes or ears, which provided only limited comfort, given that those parts of their bodies had already been eaten away by scavengers. Rikki was very tired of seeing dead people.

“Well,” Eddie said, quite pale. “I guess that does answer my question.”

Raises some more, too.
Rikki kept a safe distance, peering at the decaying bodies. All four were men. Soldiers, from the look of things. Still wearing guns, practically bristling with weapons. Clothed in blood-stained olive-colored uniforms with good black boots.

“That’s not natural,” she said, thinking hard.

“That
is
generally the case with murder,” Amiri replied, crouched with his fingers dipping delicately into the trampled undergrowth.

Rikki frowned. “What I mean is, no one ransacked their bodies. Those are good guns. Expensive guns. And maybe the uniforms are ruined, but those boots look just-out-of-the-box, and in these conditions that’s a miracle. Trust me. No gunman in this region is rich enough to
not
steal from the dead. Especially from someone you disliked enough to kill in the first place.”

“She’s right,” Eddie said, with enough conviction—and experience—that Rikki gave him a double take. The young man blushed, and began to shove his hands deep into his jean pockets. He stopped and let one hand, the hand that had almost touched the powder, rest lightly against his leg. Almost as though he were afraid of doing too much with it.

Amiri brought his fingers to his nose and inhaled. “So, they were not killed for their belongings. Their murderers wanted for nothing except their deaths.”

“A bit single-minded,” she said, tearing her gaze from Eddie. “What
are
you doing?”

“Tracking,” Amiri said.

“Huh.” Rikki tilted her head, thinking of how he had found these bodies. Funny, how she had never doubted him. “You have a pretty good nose.”

“Every sense is valuable,” he said smoothly, and straightened to his full height. She craned her neck to look into his eyes. Wanting to say more, but unable.

Eddie stared at the dead men. “Shouldn’t we bury them? It doesn’t seem right to just…leave things the way they are.”

Rikki hesitated, sharing a long look with Amiri. “We’re drawing a lot of assumptions here. Maybe they didn’t have anything to do with those canisters.”

“Like two ships passing in the night?” He smiled tightly. “Somehow, I think not.”

“Then we have to assume the worst.”

Amiri tilted his head, tapping his fingers beneath his nose. His expression was troubled. “Agreed.”

Eddie looked between them both. “So, what? You think they might have opened those containers? That they could be contagious? Covered in that powder?”

“Anything’s a possibility at this point,” Rikki said. “We don’t have enough facts.”

“Well,” replied the young man, “I’ve already been exposed. At the refugee camp. From the two of you. Even maybe from that powder we found. So if those bodies
are
infected with something, how does it matter if I touch them?”

“It matters because it’s not worth the risk,” Rikki said sharply, thinking of how she had stayed to hide those canisters—these dead men possibly just as lethal. But bigger. Requiring hands. Proximity. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe it wouldn’t be a danger to bury them, but right now we’re breathing and they’re not. Sentiment never kept anyone alive”
And caution is better than regret,
she added silently, feeling like a coward for it. Hoping the scavengers acted fast.

Eddie gave her a hard, startled look. “Ma’am. With all due respect, just breathing isn’t enough.”

Rikki clamped her mouth shut. Amiri moved between them and placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder, bending slightly to peer into his dark eyes. An odd sight, but only because he was so gentle; effortlessly so. Everything about him was effortless. The way he moved, his strength, his determination. His mystery. Rare, rare, man. It stole her breath away, at the oddest moments.

Like now. Bodyguard and counselor. Listening to his soft rumble as he said, “There is no shame in leaving those men. It is not an act of desecration. You are not responsible for their deaths.”

Eddie’s gaze never faltered. “Too many people are getting hurt, Amiri. Doesn’t matter whether I’m responsible. I don’t want to get used to that.”

Like
you
have,
Rikki told herself. It wasn’t entirely true—the refugee camp had certainly rattled her—but it was close enough to be disconcerting. She had a cold heart, tough as rawhide, carefully nourished, watered with clinical detachment, isolation, raw science—and she had never questioned why that might be wrong, even if it was a single-mindedness confined only to her waking hours.

Rikki’s dreams at night were another matter entirely.

She looked down at the gun still gripped heavy and clumsy in her hand. Took a deep breath, and walked toward the dead men. She stopped halfway, staring. She did not know them. She did not know why they had died. Might have been for a good cause. Might have been bad. She searched herself for even an ounce of compassion, and managed to dredge up just enough to make her feel ashamed of calling herself a doctor.

“Doesn ‘t matter whether I’m responsible. I don μ want to get used to that.”

From the mouths of babes and good young men. Rikki knelt in the undergrowth, the thorny vines. Heat bore down on her shoulders. Her throat was raw with thirst. Eddie and Amiri shadowed her. She set the gun down.

Eddie knelt wordlessly and took her hand. He had hot skin, like he was burning from the inside out.

Don’t touch me,
she wanted to say.
Don’t touch me, I’m dangerous.
But she thought again of those other men, at the refugee camp, men and peacekeepers who had worn no protection at all. Acting like they owned the place. And it was too late, anyhow. All three of them had been breathing the same air, brushing up against each other. Touching.

She held up her other hand behind her head. Fingertips grazed her palm, twining slow and soft around her wrist. Amiri: warm, like holding sunlight.

Rikki smelled blood, the stink of dead bodies. Flies buzzed. She closed her eyes, and after some thought, said the Lord’s Prayer, remembered distantly as the echo of her father’s voice at the dinner table, and sitting on the edge of her bed. It was not entirely appropriate as a eulogy for the dead, for men who might not even appreciate the effort, but she had nothing else to offer. She did, however, try to find the meaning in every word that fell from her tongue, struggling to think of what her father would do— and finished, finally, with a quiet and heartfelt, “Amen.”

Her companions did not say a word. Eddie kept his eyes downcast and solemn—so much like her little brother she wanted to look away and cradle her aching heart. Neither he nor Amiri let go of her hands; the young man stood and both of them pulled, lifting Rikki up to her feet, swinging her between them.

Eddie bent and picked up her gun. He offered it to her, but she shook her head and he slipped it into the back of his jeans, alongside his other weapon. Amiri, she noted, did not carry a gun.

She gave the dead a long last look, and felt the hairs on her neck prickle. Like someone was watching. She turned and saw nothing.

Amiri said, “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” She searched the undergrowth, which was spattered with sunlight. “Nothing, I guess.”