The Children and the Blood (13 page)

Uncertainly, he reached across the table and rested a hand on top of hers.

A moment passed, and then the waitress arrived. Eyeing them both as he pulled his hand from the girl’s, the woman deposited the plates and then walked away.

Watching the woman, Cole’s mouth tightened and then he turned back, nodding to the food. Giving Lily a smile, he picked up the cheeseburger and took a bite.

Bad service or not, the food was delicious, though he realized hunger probably skewed his judgment. Forcing himself not to inhale the burger, he mentally ran through the contents of his wallet while evaluating the possibility of ordering at least two more.

Lily made a choked noise and her fork landed among her pancakes with a splat. Alarmed, he looked up, and then followed her gaze.

Surrounded by blinking headlines, a news update played across the television. The sound was muted, but the closed captioning compensated with machine-gun rapidity.

Multiple murders. Arson. Kidnapping. The words flashed beneath the images on the screen, all of which he recognized.

After all, he’d just been there.

The camera crew hovered over the farmland from the omnipotent view of their helicopter. On the ash-covered yard, emergency crews surrounded the farmhouse rubble, and near the drive, he could see coroners offloading body bags from gurneys into their vehicles.

Ashley’s picture appeared in the corner of the screen, her smiling face incongruous with the horrors displayed below. Staring at it, he missed the first words of the closed captioning, glancing down only in time to catch the phrase ‘police suspect’. More text followed, telling of information found at the scene, all pointing to a girl with a heavy drug habit and an increasingly paranoid mind bent on murder for the sake of saving her sister from the plot she perceived.

He stared, dumbstruck as Lily’s picture replaced Ashley’s. The authorities didn’t seem to know either girl’s name, but at the sight of her photograph, he heard Lily whimper.

The closed captioning scrolled on, becoming more damning with every inconceivable line. Police believed the older girl may have been in a relationship with her drug dealer, a young white male between the age of eighteen and twenty-five with a medium build and brown hair, who authorities considered armed and dangerous. Suspicion now pointed to the two splitting up and going into hiding, with the younger girl left in the possession of the dealer. Evidence indicated that although the elder sister suspected sexual abuse and exploitation of the little girl was the motivation for the dealer’s insistence upon being the one to retain the child, she was too dependent on the drugs he provided to do more than comply.

Shaking, Cole tried and failed to tear his eyes from the screen. The newscasters listed hotlines to call if anyone sighted the suspects, and then blithely segued into a discussion of the increasing crime rate. He couldn’t breathe, and he didn’t know whether to throw up or break something. His hands ached and distantly, he realized his fingers were clenched on the chair back so hard his knuckles had gone white.

“Why are they saying those things?” Lily whispered.

He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, not with the rage he felt on his face. If he’d had any doubt the police and the men who did this were siding together, it had just been summarily destroyed. The story was too sensational, too grotesque. In hours, if not sooner, it’d be all over the country, and then every soccer mom in America would be keeping an eye out for the little girl, all to save her from the bastard they’d seen on TV.

His gaze slid to the waitress, but the woman was still engrossed in her gossip magazine. No one else occupied the restaurant, and for the moment, the television was plastered with commercials for the latest miracle cure from the pharmaceutical industry.

They had to get out of here.

Fumbling his wallet from his pocket, he tossed a twenty on the table. “Come on,” he said to Lily.

Not waiting, he headed for the exit with the girl on his heels.

“Thanks,” he called to the waitress as he pushed open the door. “I left the money on the table. Keep the change.”

As she glanced over to check if the cash was actually there, he hurried out into the sunlight. Circling around the restaurant, he scanned the area and then strode toward the back of another strip mall a few hundred yards away. The burger was a lump of lead in his stomach, and the news report kept looping in his mind.

Somehow, the glowing bastards must suspect Lily was alive. And since they needed one of the girls for reasons he couldn’t begin to comprehend, they were doing everything they could to locate her. They hadn’t found any bodies, of course. That must’ve been what they were looking for in the ravine. So now they doubted if Lily was dead.

And as a result, he and the kid were screwed.

Busses were out. Trains. Taxis. Everything. They had to get underground fast, and he couldn’t think of another way to do it, besides calling Travis and then hiding till the guy could arrive. But that presented a problem, because everywhere was now filled with people who’d want his head on a platter, and who’d happily deliver Lily to the bastards who’d just murdered her sister.

Partway down the alley between two stores, he stopped.

They’d killed Ashley. They’d blown her up, and lost over half a dozen people in the process.

So why have the public chase someone who was dead?

The lump in his stomach wanted to rise as the realization hit him. They didn’t know who’d saved the girls, but they wanted to make sure that when the soccer moms turned him in, the authorities could claim he was as deeply implicated as anyone. And even if somehow he was cleared of the drug charges, even if someone proved he hadn’t wanted to hurt the little girl, the cops could hold him forever as a material witness to everything Ashley’d allegedly done. The glowing bastards could retrieve him at their leisure, and Lily would be so long gone by then, it’d be laughable.

At which point they’d realize he was the same guy they’d killed Vaughn to find.

And then things would
really
get interesting.

Running a hand over his hair, he glanced toward the end of the alley. From the logo painted on the cinder-block walls, he could tell they were next to a grocery store. Cars and minivans lined the parking lot, and people with carts were everywhere. The store faced a busy street, across which lay another shopping center.

He sighed. They should’ve kept hiding in the truck.

“Okay,” he said to Lily. “Do me a favor? Pull your hood up.”

Lily complied, tucking her dark hair inside and then eyeing him from the oversized concealment of the sweatshirt.

He nodded. It wasn’t exactly cold out, though the spring weather still had a bite. People might look at them strange because she was so bundled, but at least they wouldn’t see her face and then run screaming for the cops.

“Hey kid?”

Cole nearly jumped out of his skin. Trying to hide his startlement, he turned to the man paused at the rear entrance of the alley. A businessman by his apparel, the guy lowered his cell phone, regarding them with concern.

Lily’s grip on Cole’s hand tightened. “Bad man,” she whispered, her voice breaking in fear. “Bad, bad, bad…”

The man’s gaze snapped between them with lightning speed, and though innocent bewilderment showed on his face, something almost predatory flashed through his eyes.

“You okay there, son?” the man asked, walking toward them.

Letting out a squeak, Lily retreated.

Heart pounding, Cole waved dismissively. “Yep, just fine, thanks,” he called, starting toward the opposite end of the alley as his spiking blood pressure made his head start to ache.

“You don’t look fine,” the man said, moving a bit faster to catch up. “Just hang on a second. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Cole took off running, Lily in tow.

Fleeing the alley, he pulled her with him as he raced into the busy parking lot. Cars skidded to a stop as the two of them darted across the lanes and horns blared in their wake. At the noise, people turned and stared, but no one moved to intervene. The sidewalk came into sight, with the road beyond, and hurriedly, Cole risked a glance over his shoulder.

The man was right behind them.

Clenching Lily’s hand, Cole charged into traffic. Tires squealing, a truck swerved madly to avoid them, only to sideswipe the man coming behind. Slamming into the truck, the businessman rebounded and crashed to the ground.

Across the congested street and into a service drive, Cole ran. Garbage bins lined the wall to their right, and briefly, he considered knocking them down to block the guy’s way. But there wasn’t time. As he looked back, he saw the man staggering to his feet, rage twisting his face. Ignoring the baffled truck driver, the guy barreled after them.

Cole blanched and fought for extra speed as he and Lily bolted into a shopping center parking lot. Cars were everywhere, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of shops on three sides, and more stores speckled the lot like islands in the vehicular sea. Lily was panting for air behind him, her feet stumbling as she tried to keep up, and his stomach churned with nauseated adrenaline. Endless city stretched out before them, filled with nothing helpful.

Dodging through the lanes, he glanced over his shoulder again.

The man had left the service drive.

A red sports car flew between two parked minivans directly ahead and Cole skidded to a panicked stop, yanking Lily back before she could rush past him. The wind of the vehicle’s passage buffeted him, the side mirror flying past only inches from his leg, and the driver didn’t so much as tap the brakes as he sped by. The car whipped through the lanes and then screeched to a halt outside a café at the edge of the parking lot. Throwing the door open and leaving the engine running, the driver clambered out and then stormed into the coffee shop with a drink in hand.

Incredulously, Cole’s eyes went from the driver to the car and back.

Shoving open the café door, the man marched up to the barista and then slammed the drink down, splattering coffee all over the counter. Pointing to the drink as if its existence was an affront, the man began yelling thunderously.

Cole rushed for the car.

“What’re you doing?” Lily cried, her hood falling back and her sleeves flapping as he dragged her after him.

He propelled her toward the open door. “Get in!”

She scrambled across the black leather seats.

With a last glance to the customer in the coffee shop and the man racing after them, Cole jumped inside and slammed the door.

Two stolen cars in twenty-four hours.

He scoffed and threw the gearshift into drive.

The train lurched and Ashley opened her eyes. Beneath the platform at the back of the grain car, she felt the wheels shudder as the engineer applied the brakes, and the resultant squealing cut through the roar that had filled her world for hours.

She’d been sleeping. Dreams flitted through her memory, barely more than flashes of garish image and color, and hastily, she pushed them away. She didn’t want to remember. It was bad enough that the world around her hadn’t yet proved a dream.

Squinting into the wind whipping past the train, she wrapped her arms tighter around the ladder on the side of the small platform and looked around. Mountains dominated the eastern horizon beneath the blazing noonday sun, and beyond the train cars ahead, she could make out the beginnings of a city. The scrub-brush covered terrain nearby was flat, though, and the city skyline looked like nothing she’d seen in any of Jonathan’s travel books.

She had no idea where she was.

Fear bubbled up at the realization, with fire on its heels.

Panicking, she fought to hold the flames back, and then gasped when she felt them start to fade. Buoyed by the shred of victory over the impossible, she concentrated on bundling every scrap of them down into a tiny ball in her core, and then squished them together even harder.

The heat dissipated. The fires vanished almost entirely. Her heart pounded and trembling shook her as adrenaline drained away. She’d stopped them. A hysterical laugh threatened to emerge at the infinitesimal success, and she swallowed hard to keep herself under control. With shaking hands, she adjusted her grip on the ladder, and tried not to give into fear as the train rolled into the unknown city.

A river traced a sinuous path through the landscape, and bisected the town into lopsided halves. Bridges arched over the riverbanks and the sluggish strip of blue-brown water in between. On the eastern side, a few buildings struggled to approach skyscraper status, though most of the city petered out around five or six stories high.

Gradually, the tracks slid between older brick buildings while slowly curving to meet the river’s edge. Graffiti covered some of the walls, while others bore painted logos of businesses long since gone. Through gaps between buildings and openings for dead-end streets, she could see people going about their day, paying no attention to the train creeping by.

She pulled her knees in tighter, shivering.

The buildings fell behind as the train moved on through a stretch of abandoned lots that bordered the river. Chain-link fences surrounded the overgrown concrete spaces, and garbage rolled across the ground like tumbleweeds in the breeze. Faded For Sale signs plastered a few fences, and old boxcars rested farther on, overlooking the expanse like weary guards dutifully protecting the rail yard behind them from the encroaching decay.

With a speed that felt slower than walking, the train pulled in among the other freight cars, and then inched to a stop. Carefully, Ashley leaned around the ladder, and then jerked back as the engineer and conductor climbed from the engine.

A voice called from deeper in the yard, unintelligible over the distance. Footsteps crunched over gravel, coming closer, and she scooted back on the platform as far as she could go. A barely audible conversation rose, and then gradually faded.

She hesitated, and then leaned out again. The men were gone. Biting her lip, she looked down the length of cars, wondering if she stayed, if the train would eventually make its way back to her home. But it probably didn’t work that way.