Cold Springs (33 page)

Mallory kept running. The gun fired again, a bullet hissing through a corn stalk inches from her ear.

Stupid,
she scolded herself.
Jones can see the corn moving.

She dove down, pressed herself into the snow.

She heard Jones picking her way across the field, slowly coming toward her.

“Mallory, I don't have a problem with you. But Chadwick is a killer. Katherine's death really messed him up. You got to see that.”

Mallory knew the words were a lie. Jones had brought her to this field to die.

But her father . . . she pictured him huddled in the cabinet at Katherine's house, in the secret space where she'd played hide-and-seek among the broken clock parts. She imagined a gunshot wound opening in her father's chest, his hand clutching at the blood, his eyes wide with dismay. She wanted to cry. She wanted someone to blame.

“Olsen was helping him.” Kindra Jones was rustling through the corn, getting closer to her. “They had the whole thing planned. You see that, don't you? Chadwick hates your parents. He hates you. You survived and his precious daughter didn't. Katherine was my friend, Mallory—she told me what her father was like. She killed herself because of
him,
because she knew what he was like and she couldn't live with the truth anymore. I'm here to stop him. I can't rely on the police to do that. I'm here to protect you and Race. That's Samuel's job, honey. That's what a big brother does.”

“No,” Mallory protested, realizing too late that she'd spoken aloud.

The rustling stopped.

Mallory heard a sound in the distance like horse's hooves, but it was only in her mind—her own heart hammering.

Survival rules. Survey. Organize. Strategize.

What was there to survey? Jones was strong. She was armed, and intended to kill her. Mallory was going to die.

No. Not without a fight.

She felt around her, found a peach-sized stone, smooth and heavy.

The rustling started again, then Mallory saw a patch of green, Jones' flannel jacket, and threw her stone as high and as far away as possible.

Somewhere off to the north, the rock splashed in the corn. Jones stopped, then her green flannel receded. She'd taken the bait. Now her back would be to Mallory.

Mallory slid her knife from its sheath, rose to a crouch.

“I'm going to leave here today, Mallory,” Jones was calling. “El Salvador, buy me a house on the beach.”

Keep talking,
Mallory thought.
Give me a target.

“No extradition, Mal. Nobody asking questions as long as you got money. You can come with me. You and Race both. New house, a new life. You ever been to the beaches in Central America, honey? I hear . . .”

Kindra's voice trailed off, and Mallory realized the clumping sound she'd heard before had become louder—a heartbeat against the earth.

The rhythm slowed to a patter, and she heard a man's voice, followed by Olsen's broken murmur.

Mallory's ears had to be deceiving her.

She glimpsed the patch of green again, directly ahead—Kindra's jacket. Mallory was considering a knife throw—remembering her four-in-ten average back in camp, Leyland telling her that was damn good for a novice. Four-in-ten, life and death, against a moving target. She was weighing those piss-poor odds when Chadwick's voice shouted her name.

There he was, rising above the corn on the back of the bay filly from Cold Springs—riding a goddamn horse, like goddamn George Washington. All her life she'd heard that's who he looked like, but she'd never seen the resemblance until now.

The bay's coat was glossy with sweat. Chadwick's clothes were torn and water-stained as if he'd ridden through a million tree branches to get here.

Their eyes met. Mallory couldn't say anything. She couldn't warn him; she couldn't even decide if she wanted to. She thought of when she was small—how she'd believed Katherine was so lucky having Chadwick as a father, a silent, gentle giant who would always protect her. And now here he was, riding to her rescue. Mallory wanted to cry. She wanted to break down and yell at him to watch out. But she couldn't do it. She resented him. He was a false hope, a hallucination—a chemical glitch of adrenaline and hormones and heroin withdrawal. Chadwick couldn't have ridden all this way in one morning. He would've had to start at dawn, before he even knew she was in trouble.

Chadwick's eyes were trying to communicate a thousand things. Then his attention turned—he must've seen Kindra Jones. He raised an old-fashioned revolver, but Jones had had plenty of time to aim. A shot thundered, the horse whinnied in pain and toppled, taking Chadwick with it. There was a sickening crunch, then the sound of the horse huffing, thrashing through the stalks.

When the commotion died down, Mallory heard Jones say, “Well, lookee here. My partner.”

“Mallory.” Chadwick's voice was tight with pain. “Run. Get out of here.”

Mallory edged closer, knowing it was crazy. She could see through the screen of corn plants—Kindra standing over Chadwick, his leg bent at an unnatural angle. Chadwick's gun was gone. The horse was nowhere in sight. Blood painted a trail of crushed corn plants where the wounded animal must've gotten back on its hooves and run away.

Kindra paced around Chadwick, keeping the gun barrel trained on his head. “Samuel says hello, Chad. He says you should've stayed with your lady friend this morning.”

“You've got the money from Laurel Heights. Twenty-seven million dollars.”

“Not bad for an Oakland girl with a teaching degree. You find teaching rewarding, Chadwick? Shit, I do.”

“You have what you want. Walk away.”

Kindra's smile seemed sleepy, her eyes half lidded behind her glasses. “Katherine tells me you're right. She says to go on—catch my plane. She was hoping you'd stay at the hotel this morning, get caught by the FBI. I could live with that, Chadwick, knowing you'd spend the rest of your life in a fucking prison. But, see, here you are.”

Mallory heard sirens in the distance.

Kindra kept pacing, ignoring the sound. “I don't know how you got here so fast. Calls for some flexibility, but I'm flexible. Hell, ten fucking years I've lived Samuel's life as well as mine—I'm damn flexible. All those years leading up to this. Right here, with you.”

“You killed your own mother, John Zedman, Pérez. The police know about you, Kindra. Race came forward with the whole story. The police are on their way.”

She laughed, but the sound was brittle. “Race, huh? Race did that.” She yelled, “You hear him, Mallory? This killer, he blames me. He talks about the police, like he really wants to meet them. Come on out, honey. I want you to see this. Be good for you—closure, what your counselor would say. A real live abuser doll about to get crushed.”

“Forget the girl,” Chadwick said. “Let her go.”

“You shouldn't have given my little brother your card, Chadwick. Not after what you've done to my family. You shouldn't have tried to protect me from those rednecks at that truck stop. There's only one protector in my family. Only one person who can do what needs to be done. Kill that bastard Ali. Take care of Race. Take care of Kindra. Katherine's talking to me now, Chadwick. She's pleading with me to spare your sorry-ass life. But I'm finally going to get her voice out of my head. I'm going to listen to Samuel on this one.”

And Mallory suddenly understood her anger. She suddenly understood Jones. She remembered the rage that had made her take a hammer to her mother's apartment, let out nine years of hate, blaming her parents for what she'd become—for the path she'd started the night Katherine died.

The sirens kept wailing, closer now.

Mallory could run—get away clean, nothing but the dry snap of a gun discharge behind her. Nothing on her conscience. Justice served.

But she imagined Olsen's voice—Olsen, whose last words had been about trusting Chadwick. Olsen saying,
Some connections, you can't break.
Olsen, who was dead in a welter of blood in the front seat of the van.

“Mallory.” Chadwick spoke her name in a tone she hadn't heard for a long time—since nine years ago, when he used to talk to Katherine. “Your father loved you. He was doing everything he could to protect you. If he were here, he would tell you he's sorry. He did the wrong things for the right reasons. Please believe me, that's what he would say.”

Kindra raised her gun.

Mallory's heart shifted like a gyroscope.

She rose to her feet and rushed Jones like she was the obstacle course wall—closing five yards, the gun turning in her direction, the snap of a bullet ripping past her ear, but nothing mattered except clearing the obstacle. Mallory's shoulder slammed into Jones' chest so hard she felt ribs crack. Jones staggered backwards, collapsing into the frozen cornstalks, and Mallory gripped the knife in her hand, putting herself between Jones and Chadwick.

“Don't protect me,” Chadwick groaned. “Run.”

But Mallory had finally outgrown Chadwick's advice.

Wincing, Jones rose to a crouch, a dozen feet away. She looked dazed, but pleasantly surprised that Mallory had shown herself. “Katherine loves you, too, honey. Believe me, that's what she's saying.”

The gun was still in Jones' hand. Her eyes were amber, just like her brother's.

She raised the gun toward Mallory, and with every ounce of strength, as if with willpower alone could drive steel through the trunk of a tree, Mallory threw the knife.

37

The next week was Christmas at Cold Springs, and a front blew up from the Rio Grande, bringing dry Mexican air that smelled of sage and brush fires. Sunshine soaked the hills until rattlesnakes came out to warm themselves on the granite and the deer became nocturnal.

Chadwick spent his days proctoring White Level study halls on the main deck, learning to walk with a boot cast, and coming to terms with the fact that he'd been yanked back from the edge of the precipice. He tried to convince himself that the danger had passed, that there was nothing else he needed to do.

On Christmas Eve, Olsen was released from the hospital in San Antonio. She arrived at the lodge to find most of the staff waiting for her, holding a welcome banner the tan levels had made in art therapy class. She insisted on getting out of her wheelchair and walking the twenty feet from the parking space to the door, Asa Hunter holding her arm. She smiled as the counselors applauded, but her face was clammy white, slick with sweat from the effort.

The doctors had told her how lucky she was. The shot to the leg had missed both artery and bone. The shot meant for her gut had instead drilled a hole through the muscles of her flank, narrowly missing her intestines. The surgeon speculated that the bulkiness of Olsen's winter jacket had saved her life, obscuring her form so that Jones' shot had been off-center.

Chadwick had a different theory. Jones wanted pain. She wanted Olsen's death to be as slow as possible, so she could return when she was done with her bloody work in the cornfields and sit next to the dying counselor, memorize Olsen's voice, add it to the chorus raging inside her head.

Chadwick skipped the staff Christmas party. He stayed in his apartment that night, listening to Nat King Cole drifting up from downstairs. He lay on his bed and held Katherine's picture in his hands—the little girl in the morning glories.

In a few weeks, Mallory Zedman would turn sixteen, Katherine's age. But her eyes, as she turned to him in the cornfield, her face speckled with blood, told him Mallory had grown older than Katherine ever was.

His sheets still smelled faintly of Ann. He thought of the afternoon he'd told her goodbye, Ann struggling for comprehension as Dr. Hunter broke the news that her daughter—who'd just killed a woman in self-defense, had also splinted Chadwick's broken leg and stopped the bleeding in Olsen's thigh, all with the numb, mechanical efficiency of a sleepwalker—couldn't face the idea of seeing her mother.

Ann could've raised hell, could've insisted. It would've been the only bright point in Sheriff Kreech's day to help her battle the school, after he'd been deprived the pleasure of arresting anyone. Even Chadwick's assault on the officer had been explained away as accidental, thanks to Damarodas, and after the media got involved, making Chadwick into a hero on horseback, Kreech arresting him over a little thing like flattening a deputy would've looked downright trivial. But Ann hadn't asked for Kreech's help. She had complied with Mallory's wishes, hiding her hurt behind resentful silence, and one of the instructors, a stranger, had driven her to the airport.

Chadwick set Katherine's picture on the nightstand, tracing the arc of blue flowers around her head. He drifted to sleep, thinking about Mallory's hard new eyes, the sound of “Adeste Fidelis” coming from the Christmas party below.

Christmas Day dawned no different than any other. White levels assembled on the deck to work on their SATs. Tan levels cleaned the lodge fireplace and swept the floors. From the cafeteria, Chadwick could hear trainers' whistles and yelling down at Clearing One—a new team of black levels being broken in, drilled into the program.

After breakfast, he met Hunter and Olsen outside, and together they walked down the long dirt road toward the stables. Chadwick's broken calf-bone ached, despite the boot cast and enough Tylenol coursing through his system to kill a warthog. He didn't complain though, because Olsen didn't complain. She would grab his shoulder every few feet to steady herself, her other hand clamped on Hunter's forearm. She wore her old escort clothes—the denim jacket concealing the bulky bandages on her side. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. She walked with the slow determination of a nursing home patient.

“Probably look like those patriot guys,” she managed. “Marching all banged up. Need a fife and drum.”

“I ain't wearing no damn sash on my head,” Hunter said.

“We can stop,” Chadwick offered. “Bring her to the lodge.”

“No,” Olsen said. “She's been pulled around enough. The least I can do is go to her.”

Hunter's mouth tightened with concern, but he winked at Chadwick, a little flare of pride in his eyes, gratification for Olsen's toughness.

Hunter seemed changed in recent days—more paternal toward the staff, especially toward Olsen. Chadwick knew Kindra's treachery had cut him deeply, made him angrier than he'd been in a long time. But rather than throw a knife into a tree, or chuck Special Agent Laramie off the top of a ropes course platform, Hunter had chosen to channel all his anger into making sure his people were okay. He spent more time at the staff parties, worked less in his darkened office, staring at the security monitors. He'd started dressing in gray fatigues, as if he were the one who had advanced a level. He even attended his first-ever county Chamber of Commerce luncheon, trying to make amends with the community.

They followed the road past the cattle workers, where the newest recruit, Mallory's old team member Bridges, was staring with apprehension at the school's training herd, ten head of Charolais. One of the ranch hands was giving him his first lesson in bovine logic—the nature of cow paths. “They always walk in a straight line, Bridges. They follow the leader. Take a lesson from that.”

The girl Morrison had chosen carpentry. She was out in the field with the veteran gray levels, raising an A-frame for a new barn.

A hundred yards farther down, Mallory Zedman stood inside the split-rail fence of the pasture. She stroked her bristle brush over the bay mare's coat the way Joey Allbritton showed her, careful to avoid the gunshot wound in the withers that had felled the animal seven days ago in the cornfield.

Hunter motioned for Joey to come over.

Hunter told Chadwick, “I'll leave you all to it. Joey and I need to talk some horse-trading.”

Hunter circled an arm around Joey's shoulders and led him out of earshot, down toward the granite cliffs overlooking the river.

Chadwick and Olsen approached Mallory, who had stopped her work and was standing at attention. She had that determined, dogged look that characterized Gray Level—the look of a small child tying a shoe, or a grown-up putting together an “easy-to-assemble” bookshelf. Gray Level was all about motion, working with one's hands. They didn't like standing at attention. Their byword was competence, and they quickly learned that everything was a skill to be remastered—not just their new ranch work, but eating, talking, thinking. Gray levels were constantly busy, sorting through the pieces of their old frustrations and failures, learning how to reassemble them, putting tab A into slot B.

“At ease,” Chadwick told her. “How's your equine friend doing?”

“The veterinarian says the muscles will mend in a few weeks, sir. She won't be saddle-ready for a while, though.”

The bay filly gave Chadwick a wide yellow eye, maybe remembering what had happened the last time he'd taken her out riding. She snorted—horse language for
Get the hell away from me.
Mallory took her reins to keep her from shying off.

Then, as if the sun were in her eyes, Mallory took a reluctant glance at Olsen. “How are you?”

“I'll live, kiddo. Thanks to you.”

Mallory blushed. She ran her bristle brush over the horse's glossy hide, which twitched as if anticipating another gunshot.

By Hunter's order, no one was allowed to talk about the incident that made Mallory a hero, no one was allowed to make her feel different than any other gray level, but they all did anyway. Even new black levels had heard about Mallory Zedman, how she had stopped a killer with her hunting knife, saved her counselor's life. Her heroism had impressed the locals, had played briefly on national news at the culmination of what the media liked to call the Laurel Heights Affair. In one of those bizarre twists of fate that had built Hunter's empire, a potential PR nightmare had turned into a huge boon for business. AM radio talk shows touted Mallory as the product of a successful program—from a drug-addicted rebel who attacked her own mother to a self-reliant young woman who defended herself and saved two lives. Admissions calls were up fifteen percent. Offers to Dr. Hunter for television appearances and how-to-parent book contracts were rolling in. Even Chadwick found it rather frightening.

“I came to tell you goodbye,” Olsen told Mallory.

Mallory picked a horse hair out of her brush. “Yeah. I figured.”

“I'm going back to escorting. It's best you have a counselor who's not . . . involved in what happened. You understand?”

“You got what you needed from me. Now you're moving on.”

“It isn't like that. You're my friend. I'll never move on. It's just . . . we're a little too close to each other, Mallory. You've got to step away from the mirror a little if you want to see anything.”

Olsen held out her hand. Mallory hesitated, then took it.

When she released her grip, Olsen looked at Chadwick, ready to go.

If he was going to say something, now was the time. He had gone over the possibilities for days, rehearsing what he might say. But now, with Mallory in front of him, the words evaporated.

“I hear you're a natural with horses,” he tried. “Star pupil.”

“I'm doing my best, sir.”

“Your father would be proud.”

A shadow crossed over her face. “You blame me for not seeing my mom?”

“No. You have time for that. Your mother does, too.”

Mallory stared at the horse, and Chadwick realized, with uncomfortable certainty, that Mallory didn't need anything else from him. She wanted him to leave. He was complicating matters, making her uncomfortable.

“I'll be going to see her next week,” Chadwick said. “Laurel Heights is having the ground-breaking ceremony. In case you want me to tell her something.”

“Yes, sir. Tell her that gun in Race's locker? It wasn't his. It was mine. He was protecting me. He didn't know a thing about it.”

She wouldn't meet his eyes.

He knew she was lying about the gun. She hadn't put it in that locker. But he also knew why she was doing it—taking the heat for her friend, giving the school someone else to blame.

“You sure you want me to tell your mother that?” he asked.

She nodded. “I'm the one she needed to expel. Not Race. Tell her that.”

“Anything else?”

“No. But, Miss Olsen?”

“Yes?”

“Apples are bad for them.”

“What?”

“Apples. For horses. They like them, but there's too much sugar, traces of cyanide in the seeds. They eat too much, they'll get poisoned. In case you wanted to know, for next time.”

Mallory went back to combing her wounded horse, as if Olsen and Chadwick were spectators who had seen the whole show, and now—surely—they must have reassembly work to get back to, like everybody else.

Chadwick wanted more—closure, closeness, that time he'd never gotten with his daughter. But Mallory was farther away from him now than she'd been a month ago, at the Rockridge café.

Teens defined themselves by separating from adults. Chadwick knew that. But he'd fought the process with Katherine, and the battle had never been resolved. Now Mallory was done with him, the same way she'd accused Olsen of being done with her. He had ridden to her rescue, but he'd failed to save her. And maybe, he realized—that was the whole point. Maybe his failure had given her exactly what she needed.

Hunter shook hands with Joey Allbritton, then came to rejoin them.

They walked back to the lodge in silence, Olsen's hand tight on Chadwick's shoulder, Hunter's bald scalp reflecting the winter sun like candlelight in chocolate.

“You get better fast,” he told them. “We got a lot of business coming in. A lot of pickups.”

“The price of notoriety,” Chadwick said.

When they got to the door, Hunter put his arm out to block Chadwick's entry. “You're gonna take care of this girl, I hope. 'Cause if you lose her again, I'm gonna start assigning you only the jobs that come from New Jersey.”

“I'll consider myself terrified.”

Olsen gave him a wan smile. “Hunter's driving me into Fredericksburg this morning for physical therapy. You want to come along?”

“On Christmas Day?”

“I have an atheist boss and a Jewish physical therapist. Come on. We can find someplace open for lunch afterward, go over the case files for next week.”

“Sure,” Hunter griped. “Make it a business lunch, so I have to pay for it.”

Chadwick felt a lump in his throat—grateful that he had friends, grateful that Olsen had given escorting—and him—a second chance. But he also knew his facade was about to crumble, the intricate patchwork of shock and adrenaline and false composure he'd relied on the last few weeks—hell, the last nine years. Now that he was out of danger, now that Mallory was safe, he felt that shell breaking up at last, and he wasn't quite sure what was underneath.

“You go ahead,” he told them. “I'd better elevate my foot, maybe catch up on my reading.”

Chadwick went inside, focusing his eyes on the cactus petal wreath that hung over the lodge fireplace, telling himself he could make it a few more steps, just to the stairs that led to his apartment.

Olsen and Hunter stood in the entry hall, watching Chadwick walk away. He moved up the stairs as if the pain he was worried about was in his chest rather than his leg.

“It's still hard for him,” Hunter told her. “All that guilt over Katherine, stirred up again. I hope to hell that'll pass now.”

“I wish I understood him,” Olsen said.

“I've been working on that thirty years. It's a good hobby, but don't quit your day job.”

Hunter held the door for her, let in a gust of Christmas morning air that smelled of wood smoke.