The Remnant (9 page)

When the breeze stirred up into a gust of
wind that whipped the swarm like a sheet on a line the patterns
dispersed into a writhing mass of bees again with no discernible
pattern. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the swarm
vanished into the night. Ashley stood there a moment longer,
catching her breath, wondering what the hell had just happened.

"It’s time to head in," she said to Maxie, at
last.

The dog looked at her as though that should
have been evident hours ago, but he followed her inside without
doing anything out of the ordinary. At that moment it wouldn’t have
surprised her if he’d stood on his hind legs and spouted
Shakespeare.

Turning to the porch she saw Marie standing
there, regarding her curiously.

"My mind wandered," said Ashley, resting an
arm on the girl’s shoulders and leading her into the house.

But something in Marie’s eyes told her that
Marie understood far more about her curious fugue state than Ashley
did.

"Did you understand them?" asked the girl,
staring past Ashley toward the emptiness where the bees had
been.

Ashley shook her head.

"It was just some crazy bugs, I guess."

Marie nodded, but there was no agreement in
her solemn expression, and Ashley wondered if the girl was trying
to communicate with her on some level as esoteric and unfathomable
as the bees.

Trace stared at the address Bernie had give
him, considering his options as he rode in the back of the taxi en
route to the midtown hotel.

He could return to his own hotel and let the
police sort things out. But this was New York, and the cops weren’t
likely to care overly much that an investigative reporter’s hotel
room had been rifled or to listen to his claims that a group
calling itself the Avenging Angels was trying to kill him for a
book he was writing, especially as he had no evidence other than
the burglary of his laptop.

He could simply run, hide out somewhere until
it all blew over. But with his publisher crying for Trace’s head
and screaming for the advance back the law would be as likely to
look him up as the Angels.

Or, he could do exactly what he’d known he
was going to do as soon as he made it out of the tunnels. He could
take the fight to the enemy. He could stake out the men who had
tried to kill him and maybe get enough evidence to convince the law
to do something. Or, barring that, get enough information to write
a story that some publisher would
have
to print regardless
of who put pressure on them.

Even for all Frederick Rendt’s wealth and
power Trace found it hard to believe that the man had the pull to
get one of the biggest houses in New York to quash his book. But
there were other highly placed Mormons throughout the US, and for
that matter the world. The church’s members were indoctrinated to
strive for worldly wealth and to aid other LDS members in attaining
that wealth as well. And while Trace had steered just clear of
indicting the mainstream church in his story on the Mexachuli
murders, the LDS had not come out smelling like a rose under his
pen. He had written too freely of rituals considered sacred and
secret, and the chapters detailing the early history of the church
and its founders had sounded very much like one of his old
exposes’.

He wondered just who had gotten their hands
on the manuscript, how many offices copies had passed through. What
weird cabals of men in thousand dollar suits had whispered vile
epithets and murmured curses over the text?

He knew he was letting his mind run away with
him again, but the Angels were real enough that two of them had
come after him last night with guns. Real enough that they had
murdered almost a hundred and twenty men, women, and children in a
peaceful enclave in the mountains of Mexico. Real enough that they
had cost Trace the life and love he had wanted more than anything
else in the world. Now Frederick Rendt, was here, in New York. If
he had come for the sole purpose of disposing of Trace and killing
the book he wouldn’t remain here long, and Trace meant to follow
the rat back to whatever lair he was headed for now.

He sighed, his mind made up. The Angels might
drive him underground or murder him in his sleep, but he wasn’t
going to be gagged.

In front of Rendt’s hotel he paid the cabbie
and asked him to wait. Then he walked up to the desk, thinking as
he did that the jeans and denim shirt he’d salvaged from his
trashed room were better suited here than in his own hotel. A bored
looking young man in a pinstripe suit asked if he could help
Trace.

"I have a three friends staying here, booked
in under Rendt," said Trace, spelling the name. "I was wondering if
they were in?"

"Would you like me to call?" the clerk asked
Trace.

Trace thought for a moment. "Sure."

The clerk punched the numbers, cradling the
phone on his shoulder. "This is the front desk. There’s a gentleman
here to see you."

He held the phone out to Trace. "Would you
like to speak to Mister Rendt?"

Trace nodded, taking the phone. "How are you
Fred, old buddy?"

The voice on the other end of the line would
have cut through plate steel. "Who is this?"

"Don’t you recognize my voice?" said Trace,
grinning and playing it up for the clerk who looked at him
uncertainly. "Are Leadie and Softie with you? I missed them last
night. Sorry."

There was an audible sigh. "Mister Wentworth.
What a pleasure. I’ll be right down."

Trace had entered the lobby with only a
half-baked plan to stir things up, to put the men after him on the
defensive for a change. With one misstep everything had
escalated.

Should he risk a showdown here, now? They
weren’t likely to murder him in the lobby even if it wasn’t exactly
broad daylight. But as he glanced around he noticed just how
deserted the small hotel was. If the desk clerk wandered into a
back office it would be far too simple to point another gun at
Trace and force him somewhere they
could
murder him with
impunity. For all he knew Rendt had friends with access to even
weirder yet more desolate places than the tunnels. Even if his body
surfaced later, the cops would at the very most be able to
ascertain that he had come here to contact the Mister Rendt in room
512, and Trace knew that Rendt’s men would swear on a stack of
Mormon Bibles that Rendt was as innocent as a newborn babe.

When the line went dead Trace handed the
phone back to the clerk and smiled. Then he hurried across the
lobby ignoring the man’s curious look. Luckily the cabbie was still
waiting outside. Trace hopped into the back seat and instructed the
man to drive around the block.

When they passed by the hotel again Trace
slunk low in the seat, but he caught a glimpse of three men
standing at the front counter.

"Do you understand
rental car?
" he
asked the Pakistani driver.

The man nodded, giving Trace a nasty
look.

"Take me to the nearest car rental
agency."

There was only one open parking space when
Trace drove back past Rendt’s hotel, but at least it offered a
clear view of the front doors. Over the next two hours he
moved once, shifting to a closer spot when its occupant drove off.
He should be able to see any of the three men by the light of the
hotel’s awning, and he would most certainly recognize Rendt

Well after the dinner hour there were few
pedestrians on the walks, and Trace found himself glancing at the
lighted windows of the surrounding highrises. This section of
Manhattan was a hive of older hotels, some remodeled to three or
even four-star status, most moldering away but still able to stay
in business because of the city’s constant room shortage. If a man
owned a shoebox-sized space in the city he could rent it for enough
to retire on. Now and then Trace caught a glimpse of a figure in
one of the windows, and he couldn’t help but imagine stories behind
them.

The woman on the third floor lighting a
cigarette was running from a bad marriage. Her husband had no idea
she had left him yet, certainly none that she had cleaned out his
bank accounts and his restored Jaguar was parked in the hotel
garage.

The little girl leaning against the sill five
stories up was waiting for her parents to get dressed. They were
tourists from Des Moines who had tickets to Lion King.

The girl’s imaginary family reminded him for
the millionth time of his own monastic life. He had no wife, no
children, and the closest he had to a friend was either his private
detective or his agent, Rory. But as amiable as Rory was, Trace
knew that their relationship was business. As long as Rory smelled
contracts he would take Trace’s calls. Let one notion enter the
agent’s head that Trace was publishing anathema, and Rory would
drop him like a burning book. Ruminating on his solitary,
friendless existence threatened to send Trace spiraling into a full
blown riot of self-pity, and he forced himself to look away from
the window.

He was watching a couple across the street
who were having one hell of an animated conversation when two men
in dark suits came hurrying out of the hotel. As the taller of the
two turned to wave for a cab Trace recognized him as Leadie. Now
the problem became whether to follow these two or wait for Rendt,
but there was the possibility that Rendt had already left while
Trace was renting the car, and at the moment two birds in the hand
seemed better than one in the bush. As the cab slipped into traffic
Trace followed.

A few minutes of hair raising driving through
the New York traffic-running several lights to keep from being left
behind-convinced him the cab was headed for Kennedy. When the pair
exited at the US Air terminal Trace pulled to the curb, tossed the
keys onto the seat, and hurried inside, ignoring the shouts of a
nearby traffic cop. If he got a chance he’d call the rental agency
and tell them the car had died on him there.

He mingled in the back of the line while the
pair checked in. Then he pissed off everyone by shouldering up to
the same counter person the men had spoken to.

"That couple of guys that was just here," he
said. "I’m supposed to have tickets with them. You’re holding ‘em
for me, right?"

"Sir," said the fat balding airline clerk. "I
have no idea what you’re talking about."

"Those two guys," said Trace, intentionally
sounding breathless, "you just checked them in. But the company was
supposed to leave tickets for me, too. We’re flying to Atlanta
together."

Baldie frowned, spreading his jowls. "You’re
mistaken. Those two men have tickets for Portland, Maine."

"Really?" said Trace.

"Really."

"Thanks," he said, acting sheepish.

He stopped long enough in front of a take-off
and landing display to find out when the US Air flight reached
Portland. Then he found an earlier flight on Delta.

Hurtling from a city that never slept, to
another that dozed in peaceful innocence, Trace imagined that he
was somehow responsible for shepherding evil there, that the two
Angels about to descend upon Portland followed him the way the
plagues had followed Moses.

There were few redeye passengers in this less
populated and more laid back part of the country. The airport was
so empty it rattled with Trace’s footsteps as he hurried to the
rental desk to claim the car he had reserved during his flight. He
picked up the car then moved it to short-term parking, finding a
spot facing the terminal exits. Then he trotted back inside the
airport, bought a paper and found an inconspicuous spot to watch
the US Air arrivals. Ten minutes later his birds landed.

He turned in his seat to face the windows
overlooking the runway, watching the pair’s reflection as they
passed by headed for baggage check. Once they were out of sight he
hurried to his car and waited. It took longer for them to show than
he’d suspected, but when they did they went right to a dark
windowed sedan that pulled to the curb. Trace backed out of his
spot and was easing out of the parking garage just as the sedan
passed by.

In the middle of the night the neighborhood
around the airport was dead, and Trace waited until the taillights
of the sedan had almost disappeared before following. He watched as
they passed through the toll onto 95 and cursed as he realized he
had no change. While he was fumbling through his wallet for small
bills he lost sight of the car and had no idea whether they’d gone
north or south. He snatched the change from the tollkeeper’s hand
and roared around the curve, but there were taillights in both
directions.

No sense flying north only to drive south
again.

But of course that was a bogus theory. If
they were heading anywhere in the Portland area it might be in
either direction, but the hunch was all he had to go on. He punched
the pedal and turned north. Within a mile and a half he had the
sedan in view again, and he breathed a sigh of relief, hanging
back. No sense getting the rats
too
stirred up.

Unfortunately the image of rodents took him
back-not to the tunnels-but to his childhood.

When he was only ten a faint brushing
sensation across Trace’s lips had awakened him from a sound sleep
in the middle of the night to find one of the rodents hunched on
his bare chest, the animal’s tiny front paws resting on Trace’s
lower lip, the beady red eyes gleaming so close to his own that
Trace went momentarily cross-eyed. Recalling the incident he always
wondered if he and the animal had stared at each other half as long
as it seemed. It was hard to believe the little beast would just
sit there on its haunches atop a predator a hundred times its size.
But he could still see those glistening crimson eyes as though it
were only yesterday, and the odd sense of something more than feral
intelligence behind them was paralyzing. A child’s mind was no
place to leave a memory like that. Trace’s mind was littered with
them.