Ransom River (14 page)

The puppy ran around her feet, sniffing the dirt. She picked him up and he squirmed and licked her chin.

Lee tightened a bolt. “Where’d you find that thing, Aurora?”

“By the river. He was hiding under a cardboard box. Somebody left him there.”

Lee heard the quiver in her voice and looked up. She swallowed. His eyes softened.

He shook his head. “Always collecting strays. That’s you.”

She bent and nuzzled the puppy and hid her face. After a second, she said, “His name’s Pepper.”

Her dad called from the car. “She wanted to call him Pokémon. I said no way.”

Lee leaned over the engine and frowned at it like it was a bad dog. He made a circle in the air with his hand.

“Crank it, Will.”

Rory’s dad turned on the car.

With the hood raised, the noise was loud. Angry almost. Rory pressed the puppy to her chest and put a hand over his ears. The engine shook, like it wanted to jump out of the car. The fan belt squeaked and spun and the carburetor shimmied.

Lee nodded. He straightened and wiped his hands on a grease rag. He handed the wrench back to Rory.

“Perfect. You could make a fast getaway in this, princess.”

She giggled.

Uncle Lee was a jack-of-all-trades. He said that meant he didn’t have a boss. It meant he could do any job. Her dad said not every job was worth doing—or legal.

Her dad left the engine running and got out of the El Camino. He stuck his head under the hood and clapped Lee on the back.

“Got her. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Lee said.

Lee was bigger than her dad even though he was the little brother. He tossed aside the grease rag and got behind the wheel himself and gunned the motor. Rory put her hands over Pepper’s ears again.

Her dad said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to keep this car tuned up for you.”

From the driver’s seat, Lee beckoned her with one finger,
Come here.
His smile seemed sneaky.

Rory set Pepper down and climbed into the passenger side.

“Close the door,” Lee said.

She pulled hard and it creaked and shut. He closed the driver’s door. Leaned out the window.

“Will, put down the hood. I’ll take her for a test drive.”

Will lowered the hood and pressed it carefully shut, not slamming it. Lee gave him a salute and put the car in gear. He eased it out of the shed into the sunlight. It sounded to Rory like a space fighter, rattling and powering up.

Lee held on to the gearshift and nudged the El Camino over the rough gravel drive. He pulled onto the road and stopped. Looked at her and smiled again. He was good at smiling. It made her feel like something exciting was about to turn her day into a surprise. It made her heart beat hard in her chest. Like she was in on a secret.

“Want to drive?” he said.

She inhaled so loud it sounded like a gasp, like the movies.

“It’s gonna be your car, your dad says.”

“It’s his car now.”

“Yeah. He gets all the good stuff. I just help out,” he said.

She looked up at him. He kept smiling.

“He got
you,
” he said, and tickled her. Then he said, “The car’s yours. You oughta drive it.”

She blinked. He patted his knee.

She scrambled onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around her. He was strong and always made her know she could trust him. They were a twosome, he said. Uncle Lee had kids of his own, but he always made special time for Rory. She didn’t have brothers or sisters. She was an only. And he made her feel like she was his best friend.

The steering wheel was hot when she put her hands on it.

“You just hold tight and steer straight,” he said. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

He put his arms around her and touched the bottom of the wheel with two fingers. That was all. He pointed up the road.

“Know what that is?” he said.

“The national forest.”

He laughed. It didn’t sound funny, though.

“That’s the horizon. That’s a boundary. You gotta think about what’s on the other side.”

She nodded. She didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Your dad says this’ll be your car. He means it’ll be here, and if you stick around, it’ll be available. It’s what’s called a bribe,” he said.

She shrugged. She didn’t understand.

“It’s bait,” Lee said. “Crawl into the trap to get it, the trap snaps shut behind you. Boom.”

She held on to the wheel. She waited for him to say something that made sense and didn’t leave her feeling…worried.

“Out there,” he said, “that’s the world. That’s the real deal. The Show. Ransom River, that’s the hamster wheel. You understand?”

She nodded, though she didn’t.

Lee laughed. “Lesson number one, Aurora. What people give you becomes a debt. What you take is yours. Claim it. Get your own.”

He looked in the rearview mirror. It was too high for Rory to see, so she turned and looked out the back window. Behind them, Will Mackenzie had walked out to the end of the gravel drive. He stood in the road, hands on his hips, looking at the Elco.

“There’s Dad,” she said.

What she meant was
He’ll get mad.

Behind her dad, from the shadows in the shed, her cousin Riss walked out into the sun. She stared at the car. The stuffed bear in her hand dropped to the dirt.

Lee said, “Hold tight. Don’t swerve.”

Rory gripped the wheel. He put it in gear and jammed his foot on the gas pedal.

This time Rory gasped for real. The car accelerated and it seemed like it was a real rocket, and she was steering it with the road zooming underneath the wheels.

“No holds barred, princess,” Lee shouted. “It’s a circus out there. Lights and wild animals and walking the high wire without a net. Don’t let ’em shut the cage door on you. Get out there and star in the show.”

She nodded and held on to the wheel and felt the El Camino gain speed. Lee laughed. The wind furrowed the car and blew her hair around her face.

A
n hour, Rory figured. Just pound the trails. She checked the clock. Seven forty-five. She had to be at the courthouse at nine thirty.

She dressed for a cold-weather run. She clamped her gloves between her teeth, swept her hair back into a ponytail, and stepped out into a nippy morning that smelled of gardenias and jasmine. The plum trees near the porch rustled in the breeze. A chill sped up her back. The street was empty.

She paused, but only for a moment. She couldn’t let fear cage her.
Do it.

She whistled. “Chiba, come.”

The dog rushed out the door and jumped in circles around her. With him bounding along at her side, she headed out into the early light.

Running cured almost everything. It eased pain; it exhilarated; it served as penance and validation. It turned
lone wolf
into a compliment. Running was objective—the stopwatch never lied. Races judged competitors on how long and hard they could run fast, not on a coach’s decision to play favorites with the starting lineup. Running was pure.

It could do everything but get her out of this town for good.

Her breath frosted the air. As always since the accident, in cold weather her right leg ached and her hip felt stiff. She headed slowly out of the neighborhood, fighting the urge to limp. But after a mile she warmed up. She quickened her pace. Chiba loped alongside her. When she passed the orchards, she took the river trail.

Ransom River flowed out of the national forest in the mountains north
of the city. The trail was a gravel frontage road above its banks. Below Rory, willows dragged slim limbs in the water.

In dry months, the river drizzled along the valley floor. But the autumn had been rainy, and now water rushed noisily over rocks and creek grass. After downpours the river would swell to a crazed muddy flood. To control it the city had concreted the riverbed for three miles and fenced it off. Along one stretch they’d driven the river underground into a storm drain and constructed a neighborhood over it. She could see it in the distance, overinflated beige houses with fourteen-foot cathedral ceilings and postage-stamp lawns, packed side by side. A
Poltergeist
neighborhood—cheap gaudy dream houses piled together, like in the movie. Maybe not built over ancient burial grounds, but still draining to the spirit.

She could run this trail blindfolded. She’d run it since she was fifteen. She loved it—and hated the fact that she was running it today.

For two years, she thought she’d made it out. She had grabbed a job by her fingernails and flown away without a look back. She’d healed. And Helsinki had been amazing. Lonely as hell, but beautiful. The summer sun rose at one a.m. and set at eleven p.m., and so she had run. At first, that’s all she’d wanted to do. Run, all night long, through birch forests and along the harbor past the Russian Orthodox cathedral. Running helped her forget. It proved that she had recovered. It proved she could leave the rest behind. The part that snapped in the wind, sheets like ghosts.

The trail rose. She dug in. Chiba paced her. In the distance, somewhere downtown, the sound of a siren floated on the chilly breeze.

What the hell had the courthouse attackers been after?

Maybe they hated the defendants. Hated them for being cops. Hated them for killing Brad Mirkovic.

Brad was no Cub Scout. He’d had run-ins with the police and issues with drugs and alcohol. He was a punk.
P-u-n-k,
spelled out in diamond-flecked letters. So at first, public sympathy lay solidly with Jared Smith and Lucy Elmendorf. Spoiled son of a rich crook attacks a cop and his partner, in the cop’s own home, and gets shot? Instant karma.

Then Samuel Koh walked into Ransom River police headquarters with a CCTV video that captured the killing, and things changed.

It became known that Brad Mirkovic had caught the defendants in bed. And that, on a double-dare, he decided to snap a souvenir photo of Smith and Elmendorf banging out a rhythm to beat the USC marching band. But he forgot about the automatic flash on his phone’s camera.

In the screaming aftermath, Brad fled. He clutched his phone and the incriminating photo, and he ran to the kitchen and threw open the back door and staggered into Smith’s backyard.

Which exposed Lie Number One in the defendants’ story.

Brad was outside when he was shot. Not in the kitchen. Not attacking Jared Smith head-on.

The police had not released images from the video. But based on its contents, Smith and Elmendorf were arrested and charged with murder. Soon after, the harassment campaign started against Koh. Then the dead boy’s father gave a string of interviews claiming the “city political machine” planned to rig the trial. The case became a swamp of gossip and conspiracy theory.

Into all of that, the jury summons had pitched Rory headfirst. And then the courthouse had been attacked. None of it made sense.

She got to the top of the Pinnacles in twenty-five minutes. She didn’t stop to enjoy the view of the city and the valley. She turned around and came down fast, letting the rhythm of the run drown out everything that threatened to overwhelm her.

When the road flattened she forced the pace. Chiba ran easily at her side, steady and relaxed.

She was a block from Petra’s house when a black Suburban pulled alongside her. It slowed to match her speed. Its windows were tinted dark and reflected the glare of the morning sun. Gunning the engine, it screeched ahead of her and stopped.

Oh God.
Rory pulled up sharply. She grabbed her keys and stuck them through her fingers like claws.

“Chiba,” she said.

The Suburban’s passenger door opened. Out climbed a man wearing a funereal suit over two hundred pounds of steroid-marinated muscle.

Rory backed up. “
Chiba.
”

The man shook his head. “Don’t, Rory. Grigor Mirkovic has a question for you.”

R
ory scanned the street. Aside from the black Suburban, it was deserted. Her nerves fired, an adrenaline Morse code tap-tap-tapping through her veins. Chiba darted to her side. She backed up another step.

Grigor Mirkovic knew her name and where she lived.

The stump in the black suit stood in the open door of the Suburban. “Mr. Mirkovic needs answers from you. Stop right there.”