China Lake (20 page)

Her gaze cut away from me, toward the kitchen. Tabitha stood by the stove dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, speaking quietly to Paxton. Chenille called to her. Sniffling, squeezing the hankie, Tabitha came into the room.

Chenille looked down at her hands resting on the frosted expanse of her lap. ‘‘You know I don’t hold it against you, bringing Brian Delaney into our midst. You didn’t know what he planned to do. You didn’t intend to cause this catastrophe.’’

Tabitha’s head dropped.

‘‘But we’re entering a time when we can’t afford fatal errors anymore. Even though you’re forgiven, we got to maintain discipline.’’ She smoothed her buck-skin skirt. ‘‘Half rations. One week.’’

Incredibly, Tabitha nodded. Her jaw tightened, and hot red patches rose on her cheeks, but she said nothing. Chenille twitched her Stetson and Tabitha fled to the kitchen, dismissed. Then the snowy hat clocked toward me.

‘‘Now. I want you to hear what I got to say. Even though it soils me to be in the same room with you, I want you to witness, then go back and tell them they ain’t winning.’’

I didn’t dare interrupt to ask her who
they
were.

‘‘They think this clears the way. They think with Peter gone, the beast has clear sailing to power. They’re mistaken.’’ Her eyes had a dark, hot-coal heat. ‘‘We ain’t even started to fight. Ain’t even cocked a fist yet.’’

She stood up. Slowly she reached down into her right boot and drew out a hunting knife. Looking straight at me, she said, ‘‘Shiloh.’’

The girl scurried forward.

Chenille said, ‘‘My hat.’’

Shiloh lifted it from Chenille’s head delicately, as though removing a bride’s veil, or carrying a bomb away for disposal. My pulse jumped in my neck. Chenille slid a hand across the length of her long clay-toned braid.

‘‘Scripture tells us hair is a woman’s pride. She wears it long to glorify her husband and his authority over her.’’

She looked at my short ’do. The purity of her loathing pierced me.

‘‘But my man is gone. So today I’m telling you we forsake our bodily glory. We go forth shorn, ready for battle.’’

Smoothly, she swung the knife and sliced off the braid.

‘‘Go tell Satan’s lackeys we are combat-ready. Here, show ’em I ain’t messing around.’’

Rattlesnake-quick, she threw the amputated braid at me. Reflexively I caught it. Its warmth and hefty smoothness took me by surprise, and I dropped it with a shudder.

Chenille pointed the knife at my midsection. ‘‘Get going.’’

No problem there. I forced myself not to run, just to maintain my self-respect.

Outside, Curt Smollek was lounging against the front fender of my Explorer. He gave me a slow yellow smile and pointed to the graffiti that said,
blow job
. ‘‘You advertising, or what?’’

He had put the inflatable doll on my bed, I felt certain. I said, ‘‘Move.’’

Then I saw that he’d set his rifle down against the car, and had my vehicle registration in his hands, along with things I’d had in the glove compartment—a Mavericks CD and Michael Crichton’s
Timeline
.

‘‘Give me those, you pissant Gestapo wannabe.’’

He jerked back, playing keep-away, and knocked his rifle over onto the sand.

Behind me I heard Paxton coming, his voice glacial. ‘‘Pick that up.’’

Smollek quickly grabbed the weapon. ‘‘Sorry, Ice. But she’s carrying contraband. Ungodly music and satanistic books.’’

I reached for the CD but Paxton stopped me. ‘‘This land is the sovereign property of the Remnant, and you made yourself subject to our jurisdiction when you come on it.’’ He nodded to Smollek. ‘‘Confiscate the banned items.’’

Nothing raises the blood pressure like realizing you’re in a losing battle. I grabbed the registration and got in the car. As I fired up the ignition, Paxton tapped on the window. I didn’t roll it down.

He leaned close to the glass. ‘‘You know them signs the government hangs on the fences out in the back ranges at the base?’’

I knew. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED BEYOND THIS POINT.

‘‘From now on,’’ he said, ‘‘them’s the rules of engagement. ’’ His breath frosted the glass. ‘‘You been warned.’’

I spun the wheels accelerating away.

The Explorer flung up a rooster tail of dust as I sped back toward town. My hands gripped the wheel, chalk white. Pulling back onto the paved road I bounced hard onto the asphalt and kept going, ignoring the crunching, banging noises in the back end of the car. Pointless exercise, that was what I had just engaged in. Pointless and stupid. All I had done was fan the flames of antipathy, and maybe inflate the Remnant’s lust for dominance. Sovereign land, my ass.

A question poked through the anger. Who owned Angels’ Landing? The Remnant? Or did the church have followers in China Lake? I could check public records and find out. It seemed a small point, but I was grabbing at singularities. I blew past the city-limits sign.

Again I heard a strange sound. Buzzing. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a brown and unruly swarm. The car was full of wasps.

Then they were all around me, frenetic, humming like a severed power line, battering against the windows, the dashboard, my hair. A sudden hot sensation stunned my arm, and I jerked it off the wheel, hit the brakes, felt a second sizzle and jab on the back of my neck. They were everywhere. I felt a tickle down my shirt and then a sting on my chest. The car slewed to a stop, jumping the curb into a vacant lot, smashing into a yucca plant. I flung open the door and leaped out.

I batted at my shirt, at my hair. I waved my arms, spun, and finally dropped to the ground and rolled over and over, feeling something crawl down the waistband of my shorts toward my crotch. I yanked down the zipper, pulled off the shorts, and lay there slapping at my panties.

One of my eyes was beginning to close. All over, I felt as if I were alight. The wasps had stopped stinging, but still I shook my head and spit and flailed my arms. I felt hot exhaust on my shoulder, realized that the car’s engine was running and I had rolled near the tailpipe. I looked up and saw
Doggy sty——

I heard a car door slam. Vaguely I thought about my graying panties, recalled my mother warning me to throw away ratty underwear before I got caught in an accident with my skirt around my knees. I hate it when I ignore her and she ends up being right.

A man appeared above me, silhouetted in the wicked midday glare, and dropped to my side. ‘‘Don’t move.’’

I stopped fighting, but my limbs kept shivering despite the sun and the heat of the sand. The man carefully picked dead wasps from the front of my blouse. His face was indiscernible, backlit into silhouette.

‘‘You must have been stung a dozen times. Dammit. You allergic? Let’s get you to the emergency room.’’

I squinted up at him. ‘‘Are you a doctor?’’

‘‘No, ma’am.’’ He moved out of the sun, and I saw his face. Mr. Square-jawed Fighter Jock. ‘‘Garrett Holt, U.S. Navy, at your service.’’

Holt was waiting when I finished up at the urgent-care medical clinic, standing in the waiting area with his hands planted on his hips, concern on his face. I snugged the pink beach towel around my waist like a sarong. He had found it in my car and flung it around me before putting me into his black Jeep for the ride to the clinic.

He said, ‘‘What’s the verdict?’’

He was in uniform, khakis with lieutenant’s bars on the collar, his shirt and trousers pressed as smooth as sheet metal. He wasn’t a big man—about my height. He had a terrier’s frame, with compact muscularity. He had wiry brown hair cut close to the scalp, and dark brows that balanced his big jawbone.

I waved the Benadryl tablets and ointment the doctor had given me to keep down the swelling and the itching. ‘‘I’m not in anaphylactic shock, or I’d already be dead. They didn’t consider this so much an emergency as an annoyance.’’

I felt hot and crampy. Walking out into the sunlight, I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut for a moment.

He said, ‘‘Can I drop you somewhere? Home?’’

‘‘Just back to my car, Lieutenant.’’

‘‘It’s Garrett.’’ He opened the door to his Jeep and held it for me. ‘‘You look shaky. Can I get you a cup of coffee first? Maybe a sandwich or a piece of pie?’’

Single-malt scotch sounded about right. ‘‘Thanks, no. You’re very kind, but I need to get home.’’

He painted my face with his eyes. ‘‘Do you have to pick up your little boy?’’

‘‘He’s my nephew.’’

His shoulders relaxed, and eagerness ignited behind his eyes like afterburners. The kid wasn’t mine. His gaze flicked to my left hand. No ring. I could practically hear him thinking that this sortie would be easier than he’d thought. No opposition was going to rise up over the horizon to challenge him. No husband, no kid, nothing.

I felt miserable. Why had I flirted with him at the gas station in Mojave? I might as well have tossed him a raw steak. Or lace panties. I felt embarrassed and chagrined. Just what I didn’t need—a horny sailor with a king-sized ego, who’d gotten a good glimpse of my undies.

He put on his Oakley sunglasses and pulled out onto the road. ‘‘I have a confession. I spotted your car and was following you, hoping to maybe ask you out for a drink.’’

I leaned gingerly against the seat back. ‘‘I wondered about the coincidence.’’

‘‘Guess this isn’t a good time.’’

‘‘The middle of a Russian missile attack would be better.’’

The Jeep had a raw ride, with a stiff tranny and rudimentary suspension. When we hit a dip in the road I bumped the seat, and my back started itching insanely. I scratched but my hand couldn’t reach the epicenter, and I started squirming against the seat like a bear scraping against a tree. It didn’t work.

He said, ‘‘Need some help? I can reach that spot.’’

Considering that I wanted to give him the brush-off, letting him touch me wasn’t first on my list of solutions. I stretched my arm over my head. ‘‘I can get it.’’

‘‘You sure about that?’’

I couldn’t reach it, not without a rake. My skin felt deranged. ‘‘God, yes. Please.’’

I leaned forward and he started scratching, hard. Tears of pure, base joy welled in my eyes, and I stifled a moan, not wanting him to know that this was better than sex. It was deliverance.

‘‘I have to ask you,’’ he said. ‘‘Why were you driving around with a bag of wasps in your car? Do you collect insects or something?’’

I sat up straight. ‘‘What bag of wasps?’’

A brief, quizzical look. ‘‘In the back of your Explorer. When I got the beach towel to wrap around you I found a Ziploc baggie open underneath it. Some dead wasps were stuck to the inside of the plastic, so I figured—’’

‘‘Son of a bitch.’’

No wonder Curt Smollek had been wearing that nasty smile when I left Angels’ Landing. He had sabotaged me. We pulled up next to the Explorer at the vacant lot. I opened the tailgate and saw the Ziploc bag. Smollek must have put it there, loosely covered with the towel, rigged to let me drive awhile before the wasps escaped. Garrett stood close, almost close enough to set me itching again, and reached for it. I nudged his hand aside.

‘‘Don’t touch it. There might be fingerprints on it,’’ I said. ‘‘Somebody put that baggie in here to mess me up, and I think I know who.’’

He squinted at me. ‘‘Just how bad a bad day are you having, exactly?’’

I summed it up for him. ‘‘Things are FUBAR.’’

He laughed humorlessly and said, ‘‘I know where you’re coming from.’’ He knew the World War II expression, Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. He decided he’d better go with me to the police station.

‘‘You don’t have to, really.’’ I slid into the Explorer, trying to sit without actually touching anything, including the air.

‘‘If you walk in by yourself they’ll laugh in your face. But they might listen if you bring along a witness, especially one in uniform.’’

But the police laughed in my face anyway. I spoke to the white-haired plainclothes officer, the man who had found the spray-paint can in my car. He ran a thumb back and forth over his lips, amusement playing in his eyes.

‘‘Were these wasps infesting the neighborhood, or just your backseat?’’

I handed him the baggie, which was resting on a piece of cardboard I’d found in the vacant lot. He tried to hide his smile. ‘‘Fingerprints. Whose, exactly? ’’

‘‘The wasps’. Who else?’’ I bit off the
stupid
, but sarcasm crackled in my voice. ‘‘The people who put this in my car.’’

He took the baggie, but I knew he wasn’t going to do anything. He said, ‘‘Now, had you had a run-in with these particular wasps before? Was there bad blood between you?’’

Garrett pulled me away before I could retort. But he went back to talk to the detective, getting close to him—not challenging the man, but projecting his presence. He said, ‘‘You might have the courtesy to treat a citizen with respect.’’ The detective’s eyes flattened with resentment.

Outside the station, Garrett stared at the livid sawtooth mountains on the horizon. He said, ‘‘He’s a smug bastard.’’

‘‘He thinks the police have won themselves a big victory, arresting my brother.’’

He looked over his shoulder. ‘‘Ridicule—what a crap investigative technique. Is that how they gathered evidence against your brother? That’s how they brought in an F/A-eighteen driver, a veteran?’’ He made a disgusted sound. ‘‘Anything I can do to help, let me know.’’

‘‘I appreciate it.’’ But I didn’t need a sidekick. I needed to get Luke the hell out of town.

He said, ‘‘Rain check on that drink?’’

I shrugged noncommittally, and he gave me a dry smile. He said, ‘‘I’ll call you when the missiles launch.’’

Public Records was around the corner from the police station at the China Lake Civic Center. After Garrett left, I went and dug up information on the ownership of Angels’ Landing. I didn’t have a parcel number or street address for the property, but found a map covering that section of desert and pieced it together by tracing the dirt road I’d driven. The land belonged to a woman named Mildred Hopp Antley. The name meant nothing to me. I found a phone book, but no Antley was listed.