River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy) (37 page)

Perhaps worst of all, this one and several others bore words. In all the old man’s years in this room, Brewer had never known him to write words on his drawings. Now he had, and they shook Brewer to his core.

“Too late,” the man had written. The letters were shaky, but distinct.

“Too late.”

Suppressing a shiver, Brewer tried to figure out what came next.

FORTY

Molly drove through the streets of El Paso. She knew it was El Paso, because a part of her recognized the streets: Montana, Radford, Hardaway, Raynold.

But only a part.

The rest of her—
most
of her—saw an entirely different landscape.

She saw buildings flattened, piles of brick and stone spilling into the streets, smashed glass glinting among the rubble. Cars and trucks were abandoned everywhere, the promise of escape they offered illusory in the end. Floodwaters were receding, leaving rings of muck behind, coating everything with a film of dark goo. Power-line poles had fallen. Uprooted trees and limbs and leaves were scattered amid the wreckage. Everywhere—
everywhere
—bodies lay: corpses bloated in the streets, bodies hanging from windows, as if trying to get out or get in, one dangling from a flagpole, rope tied around a leg that threatened to give way at any moment, another cut nearly in half, looking like it was crawling underneath a stalled delivery truck.

Among the corpses, vultures feasted, their bare gray heads slick with blood.

This was El Paso as it
could
be. The
world
as it could be. Not Molly McCall’s vision of it, because she was no longer simply Molly McCall.

She was
Kethili-cha
, and devastation was her due.

She was
Kethili-cha
, and power belonged to her.

She was
Kethili-cha
, and at long last, she was
free
.

Early in her awakening, she had forced Wade to kill for her, drinking in his terror and confusion as he looked into the mirror and saw his father’s face looking back. His overwhelming guilt had been delectable. Thinking of that morning in the coffee shop, while Molly tried to draw information from him and
Kethili-cha
tried to pretend she didn’t know what was really troubling him, she had to laugh out loud.

That sort of pleasure-by-proxy, while she relished it, was too inefficient in the long term. She saw the killings through his eyes—tasted blood and sweat, smelled the tang of horror in his victims’ sweat and piss—but finally, she yearned to kill with her own hands, letting the deaths of others fill her own senses.

Her time had come. The reign of
Kethili-cha
had begun again.

Molly’s phone rang.
Kethili-cha
wanted to ignore it, but Molly took over, yanking it from the purse she had tossed on the passenger seat of her brother’s SUV.
Probably Frank,
she thought,
calling to fire me.
“Hello?”

“Molly, it’s Wade.” His tone was somber. Something was wrong. The mood of triumph she’d exulted in moments ago vanished.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“It’s Byrd, Molly. I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“I was in the hospital. I told the nurses I was going to the cafeteria for a while, and they found me after it happened.”

She was having a hard time tracking. “After what?”

“Byrd died, Molly. He was in his room sleeping, and then he was gone.”

She scanned the street ahead, saw an open space, and shot into it. Still holding the phone at her ear, she shut off the engine with a trembling hand. The other gripped the steering wheel. “He died?”

“Peacefully, they say.”

“Who was with him?”

“Nobody. He was alone.”

“Oh my God, Wade, alone? Byrd died alone?” She didn’t understand why, of everything, this fact seemed so important.

“That’s what they told me, Molly.”

“Okay, okay. I… are you still at the hospital?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m on my way, then. I’m in the car. I’ll be there in a few.”

“Drive carefully, Molly. If you need me to come and get you—”

“No!” She screamed it into the phone. “Sorry, Wade. I’m okay. I’ll drive over. Just don’t leave him alone anymore.”

“I’ll be here, Molly. Don’t worry.”

She folded the phone and dashed it to the floor on the passenger side, as if it alone had been responsible for the news.

How could there be a world without Byrd in it?

Nothing makes sense anymore,
she thought.
Nothing at all…

FORTY-ONE

Truly needed to find out what was going on inside Victorio Peak, but he wasn’t likely to gain access to it.

Unlike most of his fellow CIA drones, however, he had another option, one they couldn’t imagine, and wouldn’t believe in even if they could.

Hell, he wasn’t sure how much
he
actually believed. Having run out of other choices, however, he was willing to give it a try. So he had called Bernard Frontenac in Paris. The CIA had sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into trying to develop the application of remote viewing to intelligence purposes. Their success had been limited at best.

Bur Bernard was supposed to be one of the best they had. If anyone could “see” inside the mountain, it was him. A gamble, to be sure…but maybe Truly’s best chance.

“Have you found it?” Truly asked. “Almost in the middle of the state, east to west, but not far up from the border. Above Las Cruces.”

“Yes, yes, I have located it on the map,” Bernard said. Truly could hear the rustle of paper over the phone. “Now, please, Mr. Truly, a moment of silence.”

Truly shut up. Bernard cleared his throat. The map rustled again. Bernard hummed a little, tuneless. Mouth noises.

Truly waited as patiently as he could. These things couldn’t be rushed, and he wasn’t the one trying to…well, whatever it was Bernard was doing. Reaching across the miles, across the Atlantic and most of North America, mentally homing in on a spot that was, for him, just one of those triangles on a map indicating a mountain. He had asked for days to prepare, and Truly had given him ten minutes, then called back after seven.

He was glad the Frenchman wasn’t a mind reader, because he might have known that Truly wouldn’t be able to pay him from the agency account. If he got anything useful out of the man, he would write him a personal check.

“A big man, you say. Gray and black hair?”

“That’s right. He has a prominent nose, heavy, dark eyebrows, a jaw he could break down a door with.” He hadn’t known how many rooms, or whatever there were inside the mountain, or how to narrow Bernard’s search, except to have him try to locate Vance Brewer within it.

“Yes, yes, I see him. His shoulders are as wide as two of me, side by side.”

“Sounds like him,” Truly agreed. He didn’t know if he believed what he was hearing. Bernard sounded convinced, though, so he’d play along unless it got too outlandish.

“He is alone in a small room. No…no, not alone, forgive me. The room is very small. It has one door and no windows. The walls are rock, like a cavern. There is a table. The other person, a man, an old man, he sits at that table. Something is on the floor. Paper, many pieces of paper. This man, your man, he looks at some of them, crushes them in his fist. He is angry, perhaps, or frightened, or both.”

“What’s he afraid of? The other man?”

“No, I think not. This other man, he is very old. He holds a pencil and writes—no, he draws. Pictures. This is what your man holds, some of these pictures. They are the things on the floor, the papers, as well.”

“Can you see what they’re pictures of?”

“No…no, they are too faint. They are drawings, pencil drawings, but of what I cannot say.”

“Anything else, Bernard? I need more to go on.” Impatiently, he clicked the TV remote, pressed mute even as the image flickered into life. On the screen, fishermen in the North Atlantic battled giant waves. The waves looked as real as what Bernard described. Illusions, in other words, tricks of light and photons or whatever made TV images work these days.

“One thing more, I think. The old man, the one making the drawings? He is very old. From him I get no sense of vitality, of life. He only draws, like an automaton. And I believe he is blind.”

“He’s
blind
? He’s drawing all these pictures without seeing them?”

“So it would appear, Mr. Truly.”

“And you’re seeing what’s happening
now
? Right now, as we speak?”

“That’s correct. The man—your man, the military officer, although he wears no uniform, he has thrown his papers down, the drawings he held. Now he goes to the old man. He is angry, I think. He knocks the pencil from the blind man’s hand, takes the blind man by the elbow, pulls him from the chair. The old man’s legs are weak. I think he does not walk much. His legs tremble. The stronger man leads him toward the door. The old man is very weak, very pale. His hair is thin, like hair you see on a dead man. I sense he has not left this room in a long time, but your officer is taking him out of it now. A very, very long time, it is, since he has been out in the sun. He goes willingly, though, following your soldier out the door.”

“What else, Bernard? Keep going.”

“A strange word. I don’t see it, but it is there in the room with them just the same, I can sense it, almost taste it.”

“What is it? What’s the word?”

“Kethili
.
”

“What does that mean, Bernard? Can you tell anything else?”

Bernard swore.
“Rien de tout,”
he said. “It is gone, all of it. I have lost the image. Forgive me, Mr. Truly. These things happen.”

“No problem, Bernard,” Truly said more graciously than he felt. His dad’s influence, he was sure. All those lessons in diplomacy. “Thanks for all you’ve done.”

Bernard tried to chat further, but Truly felt a sudden urge to get out of the hotel and up to White Sands. He cut off the Frenchman with another quick thank-you, and hung up the phone.

FORTY-TWO

Wade paced the hospital hallways. Byrd’s body had been covered with a sheet, just like in the movies. By now it might well have been taken away. Surely every hospital had a morgue. When Molly got here, he supposed they would have to go down there. He checked his watch again, on his wrist along with the yellow rubber bracelet that hadn’t halted Byrd’s cancer after all. Thirty-three minutes and counting and where the hell was she. Assuming it was “down.” Would she have to identify the body? That made no sense. Byrd had been in their hospital for weeks, months. Surely they knew him as well as anyone by this time.

She’d have to arrive soon, he decided, and he went to the small lobby area inside the back doors to wait. If she managed to park out front, which was unlikely, she could page him. He waited with a mother and two small children, one still in a baby carrier, staying inside out of the drizzle that had started falling from leaden skies while the father brought their pickup truck around. His stomach and chest itched like mad, and the overhead lights kept jabbering at him.

Finally, he saw Byrd’s Xterra roar into the parking lot, going much too fast for the confined space. He only caught a glimpse of Molly at the wheel, but she looked distracted. She spotted a parking place and zoomed in, miraculously missing the Mercedes next to it by inches.

He started out into the lot, wondering where the light rain had come from. The sky had been cloudless earlier. She stalked briskly toward the hospital, hadn’t seen him yet. “Molly!” he called.

Her head snapped up at the sound of Wade’s voice. He didn’t like the look in her eyes, angry and bitter. They were ringed with red, and he guessed she had been crying. They both went between the same two cars and met in a crushing embrace. “Oh, Molly, I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” she said. She drew away from him, met his gaze. The angry look had passed, replaced by one of sadness. So very, very sad. “Is he…?”

She didn’t finish. He didn’t know what she meant to ask. Certainly she didn’t think there had been a mistake, or Byrd had come back to life. He shouldn’t have left Byrd alone—that had been the one thing she had asked for, after all—but he just couldn’t stay in the room with him. “He’s in there,” he said, having to stop himself from adding, “he’s okay.” But he was. Byrd’s pain was gone, his sorrows finished. He was, in fact, more okay than Wade and Molly were or ever would be.