China Lake (43 page)

He said, ‘‘Daddy, you took a long time to get here.’’

Brian pulled him to his chest, his shoulders heaving.

Legs like water, I went to Tabitha and took off the gag. She said, ‘‘I can’t believe you’re here.’’

‘‘I found your message.’’ I started untying her.

‘‘Thank God. I only had a few minutes to sketch it when they brought me to the house yesterday,’’ she said. ‘‘They told me they were going to kill you. Sacrifice you once you gave them the missile.’’

Brian said, ‘‘That plan didn’t work out.’’

Ropes off, she sat up and crawled over to Luke, who was balled against Brian’s chest. ‘‘Told you if you minded me it would work.’’

Luke nodded. She touched his cheek. She said, ‘‘I told him he couldn’t do anything without my permission. Sit down, stand up, speak—he could only do it if I said he could.’’

Luke said, ‘‘Even pee.’’

‘‘He had to eat off my plate, drink out of my glass.’’ She looked at Brian. ‘‘I thought of it after Ice took me to see you at the jail. To get Luke to do anything they had to keep him with me; they couldn’t separate us. I told him, that way if help came they’d be sure to find us both.’’

Brian gave her a look from the old days. ‘‘Very smart, Tabby. And very tough.’’

Hot patches rosed her cheeks, whether from the compliment, or because she thought he should have appreciated her long ago, I couldn’t say.

Luke said, ‘‘Can we go home now?’’

I said, ‘‘Absolutely. Let’s get out of here.’’

Brian extended a hand to Tabitha. She hesitated a moment, then took it.

She looked at me. ‘‘Did you bring the chair?’’

I tilted my head. ‘‘Chair?’’

‘‘The wheelchair.’’

Stupidly I checked out her legs, thinking she didn’t look too shaky to walk to the Jeep, before I understood what she meant. I grabbed her arm. ‘‘Jesse . . . ?’’

‘‘He’s in the garage.’’

The garage door was padlocked. Finding a jack handle in the Jeep, I jammed it under the hinges of the lock and heaved. The wood splintered and the lock broke free, rusty nails flying. I dragged the door scraping across the ground.

Inside, Jesse sat on the dirt, squinting against the sudden sunlight. He said, ‘‘Hey, Raquel. What happened to your fur bikini?’’

His attempt at a grin sank beneath beard stubble and fever. His eyes were glazed, his hands tied around the support beam behind him. I stopped short in the doorway, my skin creeping.

‘‘Welcome to the destructo-hut,’’ he said. ‘‘Don’t come in.’’

The garage was an armory. Stacked all around him, on the ground, on tilting shelves, were assault rifles, handguns, bayonets, boxes of ammunition, crates heaping with dull-green hand grenades.

‘‘Ironically, they’re trying to bore me to death. No TV, no radio, the only way to entertain myself is masturbation. ’’ He looked over his shoulder at his hands, cinched to the support post with nylon rope. ‘‘But they tied me up to keep me from going blind.’’ He exhaled. ‘‘However, Chenille covered herself, just in case the tedium didn’t kill me. She left me a companion in that crate over there. It’s a bomb.’’

‘‘Jesse . . .’’ I stepped toward him.

‘‘Careful. They buried stuff under the floor, too. It might be booby-trapped.’’

I looked at the dirt floor. I could see the faint outline of a wooden trapdoor.

I said, ‘‘Did you see them laying mines or wiring down there?’’

‘‘No. But I haven’t been totally with it. Things have been swimming in and out.’’ He swallowed drily. ‘‘I know one thing. Chenille made a point of telling me the authorities aren’t getting these weapons. The bomb’s set to detonate unless she disarms it.’’ He leaned his head back against the beam. ‘‘She’s got this place set on autohavoc.’’

I looked around. Saw no wires stretched across the doorway, no electric eyes, no motion detectors. I ran inside.

Jesse ducked his head, a reflex, then started breathing again. ‘‘Shit, Delaney. You do throw the dice.’’

I untied his hands. He flexed his shoulders, rubbed his wrists.

I said, ‘‘Yeah. Guess that means I’m going to marry you.’’

‘‘Really?’’

‘‘Really.’’ I turned and ran over to the bomb.

Goddamn, it really looked like bombs do in the movies: two sticks of dynamite, wires, blasting caps. It was an ignition switch to the hereafter, Chenille’s pilot light for the New Creation. Wired to it were a digital alarm clock and a keypad, the kind used to enter the disarm code on home burglar alarms. My own internal wiring sizzled. The alarm clock was counting down. The red LED display stood at 9:54 . . . 9:53 . . . 9:52.

I backed away from the device. In a voice sounding tinny and distant, I said, ‘‘If I get you to your feet, will your good leg hold you?’’

He shook his head. At the best of times,
good leg
was a stretch. Now it was hopeless. The fever and exhaustion were plain on his face. ‘‘Got no good leg,’’ he said. ‘‘Got no legs at all right now.’’

‘‘Hang on.’’ I got his arm over my shoulder and started pulling. He winced, dug his fingers into my arm, bit back a shout of pain. I stopped. I yelled out the door, ‘‘Brian!’’

Jesse squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth. Louder, I yelled Brian’s name again, and kept saying, ‘‘Hang on, hang on.’’

He opened his eyes. ‘‘Ev. These weapons were stolen from China Lake.’’

‘‘We’ll worry about that later.’’

‘‘Somebody delivered them. He was at the fallout shelter, somebody who knows you. I heard him talking about you—’’

‘‘Later, Jess.’’

‘‘No, think about it. Who knows you’re here?’’

‘‘The police.’’ I stood up, turned to the door, bellowed, ‘‘Brian!’’

I jumped. Standing in the doorway, side by side, were Ma and Pa Doomsday: Chenille Wyoming and Isaiah Paxton. Cradled in Paxton’s arms was Doomsday Junior, his shotgun, pointed at my face.

Paxton leveled the shotgun at my stomach and said, ‘‘On your knees.’’ His eyes were wintry, pale as sleet. I couldn’t move. I knew if I knelt down he’d shoot me. He said, ‘‘Do it,’’ and pumped the slide. The wind shook the trees.

Chenille grabbed his arm. ‘‘No. Isaiah, the cabin.’’

He said, ‘‘We got to take care of this situation. The device—you best disarm it.’’

She yanked on his arm. ‘‘Before Brian takes Luke. Bring her with you!’’

Paxton looked at Jesse. She slapped him back and forth across his shoulder. ‘‘You can’t shoot a twelve-gauge into the garage; you’ll set the whole place off. Do it later.’’

‘‘Guy’s a waste of oxygen, Chenille.’’

‘‘Look at him; he ain’t going nowhere.’’ Her olive T-shirt and camouflage pants adhered to her flesh under the force of the wind. She cried, ‘‘Quick!’’ and pushed Paxton toward the cabin. His face as hard as a shovel, he grabbed me by the hair, shoved the shotgun into my side, and followed her. We went around the corner and saw Brian stepping into the doorway. Behind him was Tabitha, with Luke at her side.

Paxton saw the pistol in Brian’s hand. ‘‘Throw it down. Out here.’’

Shock and resistance fled across Brian’s face. He put himself across the doorway, forced Tabitha back into the cabin. Chenille said, ‘‘He’ll blow a hole through your sister the size of Texas.’’ Brian held on a second, wanting to fight, then threw Marc’s Beretta onto the dirt. It landed beside the dead coydog.

Paxton pushed me onto the porch behind Chenille. She said, ‘‘Inside.’’

We went in, and Paxton herded me into a corner with the others. Brian nudged me back, putting himself in front of us. Tabitha was shaking so hard that I could hear her heels concussing the floorboards.

Chenille said, ‘‘Give Luke here.’’

Paxton widened his stance. ‘‘I got ’em covered. You go disarm the device.’’

‘‘We got plenty of time.’’

‘‘Don’t dawdle. This ain’t no manicure appointment, something you can miss.’’

Anger flashed in her dime-size eyes, quickly camouflaged, like sheet lightning in a thunderhead. ‘‘It’s under control.’’

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they were going to scratch and sniff, play top dog with a bomb ticking down six feet from Jesse’s head.

I said, ‘‘The timer’s below ten minutes.’’

Tabitha gasped and put her hands over her mouth. Brian cut his eyes at me. Paxton worked his shoulder up and down, snugging the shotgun against his side. I could hear his breathing. I realized that he didn’t know the code to disarm the bomb.

He said, ‘‘Chenille, at least get on outside and listen for helicopters.’’

‘‘I’ll let you know when it’s time to go outside, Ice.’’

‘‘Navy agents might be easing into position. These two managed to get here awful quick.’’ He eyed us suspiciously, maybe thinking we had beaten him to the cabin by taking a shortcut through a doorway to evil.

Brian was focusing on him, looking, I knew, for the out. Something to counter the threat. Retreat, block, attack. Feint. Stall.

He said, ‘‘You let us go, I can still get you the antidote.’’

Paxton said, ‘‘Liar. That wasn’t no biological warhead.’’

‘‘You want to stake your life on that?’’

‘‘My life’s in God’s hands.’’

‘‘You’re just pissed off that you didn’t get your anthrax. You killed Peter Wyoming and pinned it on me, to force me to get you a BW warhead. And just when you thought you had it, everything turned to shit.’’

Paxton jeered. ‘‘The military killed Pastor Pete.’’

‘‘The United States military didn’t give one fart about Peter Wyoming.’’

‘‘They wanted him dead. A NATO Beretta killed him. Ain’t no question about that.’’

Brian looked at Chenille. ‘‘That Beretta was found at your church retreat.’’

Paxton snorted and tipped his head at me. ‘‘She put it there.’’

Brian said, ‘‘Evan? That’s stupid and you know it.’’

Paxton shook his head. ‘‘I laid Pastor Pete in the freezer unit myself. There wasn’t no gun in there, not till she come to Angels’ Landing. Course she done it.’’

Here came that sensation again, like wire snapping and twanging as it recoiled. The freezer. I remembered climbing out the bedroom window at Angels’ Landing, hearing Shiloh ask Glory,
Did you open it?
But Glory hadn’t gone near the freezer. I told myself no, but the dots connected. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Glory.

Garrett.

No,
I thought, can’t be. But it couldn’t have been anyone else. Garrett put the gun in the freezer. He’d had it all along, from the moment of the murder, the moment he pulled the trigger. Too late, I saw him clearly: a liar, quick to threaten people who crossed him with absolute, immediate pain. And the rest of the tumblers clicked. Garrett giving me perfect directions to the fallout shelter in Copper Creek, a place not even the Fire Department could find. Jesse telling me the weapons thief had been to the shelter, that I knew him from China Lake. Oh, shit.

Garrett Holt—who always happened upon me just after I’d seen the Remnant. Who knew where and when the Remnant was meeting with Brian to exchange the Sidewinder. He had been colluding with them all along. He was the insider at China Lake. He hadn’t just been investigating the weapons theft ring; he’d been running it—and suppressing evidence, protecting himself, deflecting suspicion onto Brian. I didn’t know why he’d done it, or why he’d killed Pastor Pete, but I did know one thing, a bad thing: He had told me I should go to Tabitha’s,
definitely
. And I had listened.

He had sent Brian and me into this trap. He had pulled me aside, away from the other agents. Nobody else had heard him promise to call the Santa Barbara police. He had never phoned them. Help wasn’t coming.

Paxton said, ‘‘Enough of this. We got to lock and load. We can’t afford to lose the munitions in the garage.’’

Chenille ignored him. She was lifting her leg on the hydrant, showing her superiority by waiting till the last second.

All I could think was to set them on each other. I pointed at her. ‘‘Holt planted the gun in the freezer, and you’ve known it all along.’’

Her pebble eyes regarded me.

Paxton said, ‘‘Who?’’

Garrett Holt, I realized, probably wasn’t his real name. I said, ‘‘The NCIS agent, the one who ran the raid. The guy who’s been selling weapons to you.’’

Paxton’s head clocked around at Chenille. ‘‘He run the raid?’’

She said, ‘‘He couldn’t stop it. FBI and ATF wanted in.’’

Anger rippled in his eyes. ‘‘They shot Curt.’’

‘‘You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas, Isaiah. It’s the price we paid to arm ourselves for what’s coming.’’

My pulse raced along. I said, ‘‘He planted the murder weapon. He’s the one who shot Pastor Pete. And you knew it all along, Chenille.’’

Paxton said, ‘‘That true?’’

Her smooth indifference turned his face dark.

He said, ‘‘You knew, and didn’t tell me?’’

She hitched up her fatigues. ‘‘Wasn’t no point. Pete was prophesied to die. You accept destiny; you don’t fuss about the mechanism that brings it to pass.’’

Beside me, Tabitha started crying.

Chenille made a disgusted sound. ‘‘You feeble little girl. You don’t got the strength to deal with destiny. You’re every bit as weak as Pete was.’’

Paxton now looked at her with frank consternation. ‘‘Woman, what are you talking about?’’

‘‘Destiny. Pete’s and mine. They’re connected, but he couldn’t see it, even though it’s right there in Revelation, plain as day. The witnesses prophesy and are killed; then the woman appears, Chapter twelve, it follows straight on, ‘And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun.’ Isaiah, stop giving me that black stare; the two passages are on the same page!’’

Paxton stood shocked. ‘‘Chenille, you are not the woman with the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Judas Priest, she was expecting. ‘And she being with child cried, travailing in birth.’ ’’