The Searcher (36 page)

S
OLOMON RAN.

He ran through the cooling night, the raw patch of skin throbbing on his back and stinging from the sweat running into it. The brand on his arm hurt too, aching and pulsing in time with his pounding heart and feet across the ground.

The road sloped away toward the town, which helped a little, but it was still a long way to run after already burning up so much energy getting out of the hangar.

He could see the church ahead of him, lit by low spotlights, its size making it seem closer than he knew it was. It was still there at least, though he felt anxious about that. He could feel the cross banging on his chest as he ran and he used thoughts of what it might unlock to drive him forward:

Have to get to the altar . . .

Have to find Holly . . .

Have to save James Coronado . . .

On and on with each plodding step.

The mine rose up out of the night, ugly piles of dirt and forbid
ding fences. He ran past the gate, the warning signs fixed upon them, then beyond the fence to where the track left the road and led to the corral.

He slowed as he approached it, trying to silence his loud and hungry breathing. He was about to try to steal a horse from a place where he had already stolen one, so stealth was very much in order.

He reached out with his senses, listening through his breathing for signs of anyone there. The corrals were empty and the lights in the office were off and he wondered if the horses were no longer here. He listened for any sound of them and caught the snort of an animal coming from the farthest barn.

He moved toward it, skirting the edge of the open spaces and keeping to the corral fences.

He was halfway to the barn when a security light tripped on. He froze in place, half expecting more lights to flood the yard and voices to sound as people with guns came to investigate. Nothing happened. After a minute the light switched off again and he continued on his way, crouching lower and using the fence to hide his movement from the motion detectors.

He could smell the horses in the barn, earthy and warm, and he reached the door and laid his hand upon it. There was a heavy padlock, threaded through a solid hasp holding the door shut. He looked around for something to try to force it and break the lock free. That was when he noticed the figure standing by a rainwater butt only a few feet away from him.

The suddenness of the ghost girl's appearance made Solomon's racing heart flutter a little faster. She was staring right at him, her old-fashioned clothes too large for her tiny frame. She looked down at the ground, then melted away as quickly as she had appeared.

Solomon stepped over to the spot where she had stood and stud
ied the ground. Some flat rocks had been wedged beneath the rain barrel to level it. One of them had a small indentation next to it in the same shape as the rock, showing that it had been recently moved. He crouched down and pulled it out, saw the key in the dirt beneath it, and smiled.

“Thank you,” he whispered, taking the key and fitting it in the lock.

He picked out a black palomino, the color chosen to blend in better with the night, and rode it out of the barn, his legs still trembling from his recent run. He pointed it at the road and galloped across the yard, setting off all the security lights at once.

He didn't see the girl, standing in the shadows, watching until the lights blinked off again before turning her head back down to the ground to continue her endless search for whatever it was she had lost.

M
ORGAN HAD BEEN PACING IN THE HALL, FRETTING ABOUT THE SITUATION
with the church, when he heard the shouting behind the bedroom door.

He rushed over and found it was locked. He thought about shooting the lock out but didn't want to hit anyone with a stray round so he stepped back to kick it open just as the door opened.

“She's in the bathroom,” Ramon said, pulling his jeans up and fixing his belt. “Shoot the lock out and drag her out here. I need to teach her some manners.”

Morgan hurried through the bedroom to the bathroom door. He tried the handle first then shouldered the rifle and aimed at the lock. The shot boomed and the wood around the lock splintered. Ramon stepped forward and kicked the door open.

The room was empty.

“She's outside,” Morgan said, pointing at the small square window hanging open in the corner.

“Well, all right then. The only thing I like better than fucking is hunting. Let's go catch us a deer.”

He grabbed the M6 from Morgan and hurried out of the room.

Holly slipped her way across the copper-clad roof, feeling the trapped heat of the day radiating up into her bare feet. She had taken her boots off to give her a better grip and was slipping her way to the far corner of the house, the side farthest away from the church and all the activity and people there.

She reached the corner and peered over the edge. It seemed much higher looking down than it ever had gazing up and she gripped the edge of the roof to steady herself. A drainpipe ran down the side of the house, but she hesitated to reach for it.

She heard a loud bang and splintering wood behind her, muffled by the half-closed window but still loud enough to carry. She took a breath, dropped her boots down to the ground below, and almost faltered again when she heard how long it took for them to hit.

“Move.” She told herself, and she did.

She lay flat on the roof and swung her legs over the side, feeling her way down with her feet until they found one of the brackets fixing the pipe to the wall. She gripped it with her toes then reached down with a hand to grab hold of the pipe and began slowly shimmying down, taking it as fast as she dared and willing the ground to appear beneath her.

R
AMON BURST OUT OF THE FRONT DOOR OF THE
C
ASSIDY RESIDENCE AND
jumped down the wooden steps onto the gravel drive.

Over by the church a couple of the soldiers glanced up, alerted by the noise, their hands resting on the stocks of their weapons.

“I got this,” Ramon called over, and they turned away again.

Ramon walked backward from the house, looking up at the roof. He couldn't see anything up there, though she could be hiding on the other side. He loved this feeling he got when he was hunting, the clarity of thought, the singularity of purpose. He turned and scanned the garden, studying the avenues of trees between the house and the church. She could be hiding behind one of the broad trunks, but he doubted it. The guards had been surprised by his sudden appearance, which suggested that nothing else had come this way recently.

Morgan appeared at the door, his police-issue firearm in his hand. “What's back there?” Ramon asked, nodding at the far side of the house.

“More garden and an orchard.”

Ramon set the M6 to single shot, raised it to his shoulder, and
moved forward, rounding the edge of the house and staring into the dark garden beyond. The lights that lit the square and the church did not reach this part of the garden and the jacarandas threw deep shadows over everything.

Ramon listened out, heard a rustling about a hundred or so yards away, and raised the gun to a firing position. He flicked on the night sight and a circle of garden lit up in front of him, phosphorescent green in the scope.

He saw her almost immediately, a bright smear of movement. She was holding her boots in one hand and running fast, keeping to the shadows and weaving through the trees, her other hand held in front of her to ward off the low branches she couldn't see in the dark.

Ramon could see perfectly. He followed her progress, anticipating her movements and steadying his breathing. She was running almost directly away from him, making her a much simpler target to follow. “Too easy,” Ramon murmured, sounding disappointed.

He pulled the trigger. Watched the figure drop in his sights. It did not get up again.

“Stay here,” he told Morgan and started moving into the shadows. “Won't be long.”

A
NDREWS LOOKED UP WHEN HE HEARD THE SHOT.

He was standing on the road that ran alongside the church, staring back toward the airfield and the distant glow of the burning hangar.

“What was that?” the man beside him in the truck said. “Sounded like a shot to me.”

“Nothing to worry about, sir,” Andrews said, not believing his own words. “But you should go home and stay there until further notice.”

The man had driven up a minute ago, all wide eyes and questions. He lived back up the road close to the airfield, said he'd seen smoke rising from one of the hangars and people moving around. “You know the phones are out too?” he persisted.

“Please, sir,” Andrews repeated, “go home. Everything is under control here.”

The man shook his head, put his truck in drive, then pulled away, making a slow, wide circle in the road before heading back in the direction he had come from.

Andrews watched him drive off then angled his head down to talk into his lapel mic. “This is Andrews. What's the report on that gunshot?”

“It was Ramon,” a voice came back. “He shot someone out in back of the house, I think.”

“The mayor?”

“Negative. The mayor is still at large, whereabouts unknown.”

Andrews shook his head and started walking back to the church.

Things were becoming too risky here and the longer they stayed, the worse it got. If he could see the burning hangar from his position, then plenty of others would see it too. That plus the gunshot meant it was time to leave as far as he was concerned, loose ends or no loose ends. He reached the church door, unlocked it with Morgan's key, and stepped inside.

A figure loomed out of the dark and his scalp tightened before he remembered what it was. He didn't like old churches at the best of times, let alone ones someone had put a spooky-assed dummy inside. He continued walking up the aisle toward the line of crates. Be doing everyone a favor, leveling this old tomb of a place.

He crouched down by the detonator unit and slotted his key into the arming switch. The display lit up, a line of red zeroes.

Ten minutes ought to do it. Plenty of time to clear out and be far enough away when it blew.

He punched it into the timer and twisted the key again to arm it. He watched the numbers start counting down then propped the detonator against one of the crates, pulled the key out, and walked back toward the door. The detonator unit contained four pounds of C-4 explosive, enough to crack the stone floor and blow out all the windows. The gasoline would do the rest. Tío had wanted to light up the sky. Pity he wouldn't be around to see it. Now it would be a useful diversion to occupy the town and let him and his men get away.

Ten minutes to clear out and be gone. Plenty of time.

He closed the door and locked it behind him, the sound of it echoing to nothing in the vast empty space of the church.

H
OLLY DRAGGED HERSELF FORWARD, PUSHING AT THE GROUND WITH HER
good leg and letting the other one drag behind.

She had been shot, she knew that, though it didn't hurt much, not as much as she thought it would. When the bullet hit, it had felt like someone had punched her hard on the leg above the knee, and she had fallen down and then not been able to get up again. It was only when she felt the blood that she realized what must have happened. There was a lot of blood, she could feel it though it was too dark to see. She worried that the bullet had nicked an artery on the way through and she was bleeding out. She felt if she could just make it out of the shadows and back into the light, maybe she would be okay.

A light appeared and danced in front of her on the ground, as if her thought had summoned it. It moved up and shone in her face, then the toe of a boot slid under her hip and levered her onto her back.

“Not bad for a running shot in the dark,” Ramon said from behind the flashlight.

There was a pressure on her leg, then intense pain as he pressed his boot down on the entry wound. She howled with the pain and grabbed at the boot with both hands, desperate to push it off her.

“Didn't even catch the bone, by the looks of things,” Ramon said.

He took his boot off her leg and turned the flashlight around so she could see the knife he was holding. “Now where were we?” he said, and he started to unbuckle his belt with the hand holding the knife.

Holly felt around on the ground for something, anything. Her hand closed around a small piece of branch that had broken off the tree. She held it up in front of her.

Ramon laughed. “The fuck is that?” He lashed out with his boot, kicking her hand hard and knocking the branch from it.

Tears of anger and pain burned in her eyes. She felt around on the ground again, desperate not to give in, found the stub of a stick and raised it.

Ramon swung the rifle toward her. “You think that's gonna save you?”

Holly stared up at him, refusing to close her eyes or look away. She waited for the gunshot that would end her pain and felt the earth start to tremble beneath her. Ramon glanced off to his right and she realized he must feel it too. She could hear it now, like a heartbeat drawing closer.

The rifle swung away toward whatever was bringing the thunder and Holly followed it and saw a dark shape, like a piece of night made solid, surging through the shadows. Ramon took a step backward, bringing him closer to where Holly was lying. He aimed at the shadow and Holly swung her arm around as hard as she could and jabbed the piece of branch into his leg.

Ramon flinched from the sudden pain and his finger squeezed off a round. He fired wide. He tried to readjust and ignore the pain in his leg, but he never got the chance. The shadow hit him and galloped straight through him as if he wasn't there.