Strange Country (32 page)

Boyd could hear that the person had stopped moving. Then they started again, walked slowly all the way around the vehicle, opened doors and closed them. Moving quickly, looking for something. The stones? Boyd wondered. Well, they weren’t going to find them. He heard the soft rush as the back door on his SUV opened, heard the rip of Velcro as the person unfastened and refastened the things Boyd had stored back there.

“Maybe we could get the drop on them,” Gerson whispered so low, it almost wasn’t sound at all.

Boyd shook his head. “The grass. It would make too much noise.”

Gerson breathed out a long sigh.

Boyd lay as close to the ground as he could, tried to see through the twenty feet of grass that separated them from the shooter. If he lifted his head slightly, he’d be able to see the dark shape of his electric blue SUV and maybe a shadowed figure, but he couldn’t see anything from where he was lying.

The back door of the SUV closed. No footsteps. Boyd imagined the shooter scanning the landscape, looking for some sign of them. A rustle of grass, a pause. He could see something that looked like a shadow, slightly darker than the surrounding grass.

He wanted to tell Gerson to crawl farther into the grass, to get away now while there was a chance, but there wasn’t a chance. The only choice they had was to hold and hope the shooter didn’t spot them. Gerson presumably had her gun. He had his, but in the uncertain light and with only a pistol, it would be a tough shot. The shadow moved forward one step, paused. There was movement back and forth, as if he or she were searching. Eventually they’d pick a direction or start a sweep slowly outward from the SUV. If they were lucky, a patrol car would get here before then, but it would depend on who was available, on how fast they moved.

The shadow took another step forward. Something so cold, it felt like a piece of the Arctic blown straight down from the north rocketed past Boyd’s head so clear and real, he’d have sworn it ruffled his hair on the way past. There was a choked-off exclamation followed by the sound of something smacking into the side of the SUV as if the shooter had stumbled sharply backwards.

Boyd heard the faint echo of sirens, like something blown in on the wind from a hundred miles away, but distinct and real. A quick rustle of grass, and the shadow in front of him was gone, the sound of someone moving rapidly back to the road. In a low crouch, Boyd moved forward. If he couldn’t see the shooter, he hoped he’d at least be able to see their car. He reached his own SUV, heard an engine start out by the road, was rounding the rear bumper when he heard the car pull out, scattering gravel though not going particularly fast. He rose then and ran, reaching for his phone, trying to redial dispatch. He couldn’t make out the model, though it was a sedan. If he could get hold of the deputy who was heading out of West PC right now to where he and Gerson had been shot at, he could ask him or her to be on the lookout for cars headed to town, but even as he watched, the car made a left turn and its lights winked out.

He still ran. Just in case he wasn’t too late to see something.

Dispatch, not Ole, answered and he said, still running, “Tell them to turn onto the old Stuart Road. Car traveling without lights. Damnit.” This last uttered as a car with red and blue lights flashing came screaming up the road, passed the turnoff for the old Stuart Road, kept right on past the spot where Boyd’s SUV had left the road, going another full quarter mile before slamming on the brakes and reversing.

Boyd and Gerson had both reached the side of the road when the patrol car returned and stopped. Teedt and Ole climbed out.

“What the hell?” Ole said. “Was it the shooter?”

“As far as I know,” Boyd said.

“Goddamn,” said Ole.

They drove back over to the turn-in where Boyd was sure the shooter had waited for them.

“You can’t identify them?” Ole asked on the brief drive.

“Not enough light,” Boyd said and Gerson agreed. Boyd could feel an intense cold against the back of his neck. He put his hand back there, but there was nothing. It had to be a ghost, must have been a ghost that had warned them just before the shot was fired, a ghost that had shot past him in the field. But why could he feel it? He’d never felt ghosts before. Had the shooter felt it too? And if so, if he and the shooter had both felt it, why did no one else in the car right now appear to be affected?

The turn-in was lit by a single dusk-to-dawn light. There wasn’t much to see, though there were tire tracks in the dirt at the entrance. “Who knows if it’s worth anything, but let’s get pictures,” Ole said.

They spent a few minutes photographing a large portion of the bare dirt of the turn-in. Ole visited briefly with Gerson and they agreed to send a technician out in the morning and also agreed that they weren’t likely to find much.

*   *   *

When Hallie finally reached her truck, it was only a few minutes after seven, but already the sky overhead was dark and clear, the quarter moon low, nearly on the horizon. The driver’s seat was stiff with cold, hard and unyielding, and her fingers felt thick and useless as she fumbled with her keys. As the truck warmed up, she leaned her head against the steering wheel and did the thing she almost never did—wondered if she’d done the right thing.

She’d just sent Beth Hannah into the underworld. Sent her to hell, really. Beth had wanted it. She’d gone after it. But she had no idea.

Hallie knew she had no idea, and she’d helped her anyway. But she hadn’t sacrificed her. It had been Beth’s own decision. She hoped that counted for something, but she wasn’t entirely sure that it did.

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe that people lived their own lives, that there wasn’t much you could or should do to change that. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen soldiers, younger and more naïve than Beth, grow up because they had to, because they owned the choices they’d made. It wasn’t even that she didn’t think Beth could handle it—she didn’t really know whether Beth could handle it or not, just like every other person she’d ever met. It was partly that she couldn’t make things okay for anyone and partly that she was thinking about Laddie and how he didn’t deserve to die, and thinking of him in the under, waiting. It made his death sadder and more immediate, even, than seeing his ghost did. Finally, it was because Beth’s going made things easier for her, Hallie, and that seemed like exactly what Beth herself had called it—a cheat.

She pulled out her phone, remembered the battery was dead, and shoved it back in her jacket pocket again. She hoped Boyd wasn’t worried about where she was and why things had taken so long, though she was pretty sure he would be. Nothing to do about it, though, except head back to the ranch. There were horses to feed and dogs to take care of—dogs she needed to find homes for because although Laddie’s dogs were fine with Laddie’s ghost, she didn’t think they’d be so happy with the random ghosts of strangers or with harbingers, for that matter.

She put the truck in gear, pulled out of the lot, and was surprised when a vehicle passed her on the first curve going at least twenty miles an hour faster than Hallie was herself. Flakes of snow still fell, though not quickly and not accumulating. In the taillights of the car as it accelerated away from her, she could see snow swirling up like fairy dust. The snow glowed red when the driver hit his brakes, then disappeared as the lights slipped around the next curve.

The fan in the truck was still roaring when she exited the Badlands. She was alone and it felt odd—no Maker, no ghosts. She knew the ghosts weren’t really people; that had been obvious the first time she saw one. They didn’t talk. And although they knew things, it was as if they were really on another plane, not quite in the world and not quite out of it. Still, having Laddie in the truck or drifting near her had held the moment at bay—just a little—the moment when she had to admit that he was gone. It wasn’t the same as losing her sister, but he was someone she’d liked and he’d been killed.

When she pulled up the long drive to the ranch, it was just after seven thirty. The main yard light hadn’t lit at dusk, which was odd. The house was dark, most of the yard was in shadow, the only illumination came from the clear sky and the shorter light out by the corral. The place looked cold and dark and empty.

When she opened the back door into the house, something thumped hard against her legs. She reached for the light switch and realized that it was Laddie’s pit bull. The three dogs circled her, like they thought she’d forgotten them, which she had, a little. She let them out, dug the charger for her phone out of a drawer, and plugged it in. She didn’t have a landline. Calling Boyd would have to wait until the phone had enough charge to turn back on. She went in the living room to find that one of the dogs had pulled all the cushions off the couch, though they didn’t appear to be damaged. She made a quick run through the rest of the house, then went outside to feed the horses and check the watering troughs.

Twenty minutes later, as she was heading back to the house, figuring her phone had probably charged enough to finally make a call, she saw a set of lights turn up the driveway.

31

Halfway up the drive, the headlights seemed to pause; then they reversed all the way back down. Hallie watched as the vehicle, whatever it was, backed out onto the road and drove away in the direction of West Prairie City.

“Still stinks.”

Hallie wasn’t really startled anymore, hearing Maker in her head. It came and went and there wasn’t a pattern or a reason, but she was learning to accept that, to miss Maker a bit when the dog was gone. She was particularly relieved this time because she hadn’t been sure it would come back. If Beth offered to become Death in Hallie’s place, if Death accepted, would that close the crack? And if it did, would she see Maker anymore?

It took her a moment to spot it, sitting just at the edge of the hex ring, sniffing the air.

“What happened?” she asked.

Maker cocked its head like it didn’t know what she meant.

“With Beth,” Hallie said. “Is she okay? Did she find her father?”

“He wants to talk to you,” Maker said, then poked at the ground above the ring. “He can’t get in.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Hallie said. Because of the ring.

“Did she find him? Is she okay?” Or as “okay” as one could be, going into the under. It wasn’t a casual thing. It wasn’t something Hallie ever wanted to do again, though she’d been willing to, to rid the world of unmakers. It wasn’t that she felt guilty about Beth’s going, though admittedly she did. But there was an obligation, and Hallie’d known it when she opened the door. If Beth wanted to get out, Hallie would find a way. That was the promise. And Hallie kept her promises.

“She forgets,” Maker said.

“Forgets why she’s in there? Can’t you help her? Can’t Laddie?” Because that was the whole idea, that Beth wouldn’t be alone.

“Found Death,” Maker said, unperturbed, like it knew what Hallie was going to ask and already had its responses. “Sent him to her. She’ll remember.” It paused, cocked its head again. One of the dogs in the house barked. Hallie heard something, wasn’t even sure what she heard, not so much a sound as the sense of a sound, and it was almost—that sound she didn’t hear—a sound from her past. She didn’t think, dived for the ground at the same time that Maker said, “Down!”

She heard the bullet hit something behind her, was crawling and glad she was wearing dark clothes, but whoever was firing at her had a nightscope; there was no way they could fire at her otherwise. A long crawl in the dark, waiting for the next bullet and hoping the knee-high grass in the field directly past the yard blocked her from the shooter. Not much in the way of cover, hardly anything, and the shooter could already be moving, knowing she was defenseless, because why would she carry a gun here on her own property in the middle of the night?

She could hear something now, the rustle of dried grass, someone moving quickly. She sucked in her breath, got to her feet, and ran to the house. She didn’t stop to figure who it was or what they wanted or why they were shooting at her. In this moment, none of that mattered.

She threw open the front door, locked it behind her, ignored Laddie’s dogs, who moved back against the walls—except the pit bull, which followed her into the office while she grabbed her shotgun and a box of shells, loading it on the way back through the kitchen. She paused half a second, said, “Stay,” to the pit bull, which, miraculously, it did. She stopped then with her back against the wall, trying to see through the window just to the left of the door. She could see very little, deep dark shadows only slightly different from the night itself. The merest glow from the light by the barn, enough to get her killed, but only if the killer were expecting her and only if he were set up and ready. You couldn’t just point and shoot a high-powered rifle, you had to be calm, you had to be able to aim. Opening the door, even if there were no lights on in the house, might be an invitation to a bullet. She couldn’t just wait, though. It wasn’t what she did.

She had her hand on the door when she had a thought, turned abruptly, locked the door with the key in the lock, and went back through the house. This wasn’t her house, wasn’t second nature to her yet, but she was used to that, to not knowing the place or its tricks. In Afghanistan, every place she’d ever been had been a strange place, a set of walls and roads and vegetation she’d never seen before and didn’t understand. It was what she associated with combat, the unfamiliarity, the sense that you could never know where the enemy was or what was just around the next corner.

In the office, she moved a wastebasket and a small wooden stool that someone had painted red and white a thousand years or so ago. The office window was loose, had a tendency to pop up when it was unlocked, and Pabby had lost the screen—and possibly the storm—for it years ago. Hallie unlocked it, popped it open, grateful that it was nearly soundless, and slipped outside, drawing the shotgun out after her.

She crept slowly around the side of the house. The moon was still low on the horizon, but it was such a clear, still night that it felt to Hallie as if someone patient and smart and with a freaking nightscope would see everything clear as day, like she had a glowing neon target painted on her back. She paused, listened. The good news, if there was any good news about all this—and why was someone shooting at her, anyway? The good news was that there was almost no wind, no rustling dry grass, no whistle around the corners of buildings, no wind itself blocking other sounds.