Ashes (36 page)

There was no desert heat on the drive from Wisconsin to British Columbia. He was driving, not walking, and there was food, water, and shelter in abundance. No enemy in pursuit. And yet it was worse than the lonely trek across the Afghan desert or any other journey of the old days. Back then he’d known where he was going, and why, and that it was for some purpose. Back then he didn’t have innocent blood on his hands.

That time in Afghanistan, he’d lost consciousness in the desert, and woke up in the medical tent of the ops base. Opened his eyes and saw Robert sitting in a chair nearby. Robert put down the book he was reading, smiled, and said, “Welcome back to the land of the living. How’s the weather in Hell? Hot, I gather.”

“Yeah, but at least it was a dry heat,” he’d replied and they both laughed.

Sean had no anticipation of such a pleasant end to this journey.

Behind him, Richard Blaine was bound hand-and-foot. Lying on the van's floor, still unconscious. As far as he could tell Richard’s vital signs were strong. From time to time Sean glanced back as he drove, to see if Richard was awake yet. Hoping he was, so he could be sure Richard was physically fine. Praying he was still out, so he did not have to see the look that would be in Richard’s eyes or hear what he would have to say.

He drove, and first it was all right. While he negotiated surface streets and smaller highways, had to keep an eye out for turnoffs, he could stop thinking about Anna, dead by his hand and lying under a blanket, could stop hearing that awful crack as her head hit the stone fireplace. But once he hit the interstate and had nothing but those hundreds of miles west, a straight shot through Wisconsin and Minnesota and on to the coast, it all started coming at him in quick little flashes, making his hands white-knuckle tight on the wheel so it was hard to uncurl his fingers, sent adrenaline through his system until his muscles trembled with it.

A little past nightfall, he parked at a highway rest stop just over the Minnesota border. He could go no further tonight. Sean got up and made his way to the back of the van. Richard was awake. He did not struggle against his bonds nor did he speak, only stared at his captor with a look that was familiar.

Sean knelt in front of Richard. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. It hurt to talk, but he thought it would hurt in a worse way if he didn’t speak. “I’m so sorry about—”

“Why Anna?” Richard snarled. “I was the one you came for, why not just me?”

“It was an—”

“Why her and...she didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

Sean felt something then, thank God. Anger, like a flame, warm and comforting. “Ask
me
why. Ask yourself. You killed three hundred people and they were just as innocent as Anna. At least I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
No, but then why can’t I stop hearing her head hit the fireplace, stop seeing her lying there so small under that afghan?
“You’re getting what their families got. I hope you enjoy it.”

Sean turned and went to the front of the van, sat down in the driver’s seat. It was a small flame, the anger inside him; there was too much cold and emptiness for the flame to last long, but he cherished the warmth it gave him for a little while.

He moved the seat back as far as it would go, closed his eyes. Listened to the sound of crickets, the drone of the highway. Felt the weight of his limbs, heavy with exhaustion and spent adrenaline, longed to let the weight pull him down into sleep. He would feel better, and the escape would be more than welcome. But sleep did not claim him until the moon had risen and made its way along the sky, out of his field of vision. Escape lasted for a few hours, until a nightmare woke him and he sat, breathing hard, looking out at the dark Minnesota countryside. Not a sign of dawn yet, but he knew that there would be no more sleep for him tonight. He was just thankful that his protective instincts kept him from remembering the details of the nightmare — all he was left with was a sensation of cold and the distant echo of a scream, he was not sure whose. Sean could have stayed, and rested, but instead he started up the van and started west again, spurred by a sense of urgency.
Go on,
the voice of instinct that had helped keep him alive all these years said,
Go on, keep going. Get Richard to Jennifer before it’s too late.

Too late for what? he wondered, but the voice had nothing to add on that subject.

* * *

H
e hoped to see the sun rise over the woods and farms of Minnesota, see it sparkling on the lakes he saw occasionally. But before dawn a storm rolled in, and he drove through the rain all that day. The rain slowed his progress, the straightness of the highway gave him the sensation that he was on some kind of treadmill; time was passing but distance was not. He breathed a sigh of relief when he crossed the border into North Dakota. He was getting somewhere, after all.

Richard had been silent all day. He was not catatonic; he took the food and water that were provided for him, often seemed to be lost in some reverie. Sometimes his lips moved silently, as if in prayer. But Richard did not speak until that night. “You killed Doug MacReady, didn’t you? Along with the Wickershams.”

Sean nodded.

“Anyone else?”

“Henry Connolly. He told me about you.”

“You made him tell you.”

“Yes.”

“This is personal, isn’t it?” Richard asked.

“What makes you say that?” Sean's voice was a little stronger now, it did not hurt so much to speak.

“Whoever you used to work for, you’re not working for them now. You’ve got no backup. If you wanted an arrest you’d never get it through court. And if you wanted to just take me out, you could have done that months ago.” Richard shook his head. “No, this is revenge. I can practically smell it.”

Sean said nothing.

“Look, Sam, or whatever your real name is. Might as well tell me. What’s the point in lying to each other any more?”

None that Sean could see.

“So who did you lose in Los Angeles?” Richard asked. “A child? Your wife?”

“No one,” Sean said. “I don’t have anyone to lose.”

"Why, then?"

“I’m doing this for one of the survivors. Jennifer Thomson.”

“Which one was she?”

“The last one to get out. The one who was in all the pictures.”

“Ah,” Richard said. “How much did she pay you? Or was this just a favor?”

“She didn’t pay me. She doesn’t even know.” Might as well say the rest. “I saw her on TV. I felt sorry for her, wanted to help her. And so I’m bringing you to her. So you’re right, this is revenge. But not mine.”

Richard stared at him. For the first time there was fear in his eyes. “You mean...she doesn’t know?”

Sean nodded.

“So you’re just going to show up on her doorstep and say ‘Hi there, look what I brought you’? My God, it’s been over a year, and you’re going to barge into whatever her life is now and then what?”

“Justice. I’ll let her do the honors, and give you what you deserve.”

“You’re insane.”

“You’re a traitor and a murderer. And she’s going to give you what’s coming to you.”

“Oh, I’ve always known that’s the price I might pay. I made my peace with that long ago. But to go through all this for someone you don’t even know? And how do you even know she wants this?”

The same question Robert had asked, so long ago back in Maine. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Anna wouldn’t.”

Sean said nothing, for he knew Richard was right.

“Maybe this Jennifer girl will, maybe she won’t. But go on, drop into her life. Tell her how many people you killed to catch me. Tell her how you killed my wife and my...”

Sean lashed out and hit Richard in the jaw, cutting off his words. He watched as Richard spat out blood and a tooth, then he turned and went back to the front of the van to try and rest. Behind him, Richard was silent now, sinking back into that state that might have been meditation or lethargy. Sean stared out at the night, his throat burning and throbbing. He had painkillers in his kit but did not take one. In a way, he craved the pain. It was part of the pound of flesh he had to pay for Anna.

* * *

H
e got as far as Montana before he had to go to ground.

Sean told himself it was mostly exhaustion. Too much driving with too little sleep, what slumber he did have troubled by dreams. But mostly it was the road that did it, that straight shot west, the sky huge and uniform gray above him. No rain to liven things up, just a lowering gray wall of cloud above him and an endless succession of farms and small towns and fast food restaurants and highway rest areas, never the same and never changing. So locked into this straight-arrow journey west that he wondered if he’d recognize the end when he reached it, or simply drive through a guardrail on the Washington coast and take the van, Richard, and himself down to the water and rocks below.

Sleep, that was what he needed. In a bed, not slumped in the seat of his van. Sean found a motel on the outskirts of some small town. Modest but clean, not unlike the Lakeview Terrace apartments back in Du Lac. He got a room on the ground floor, easy to get in and out of, at the back, out of sight. It was a chance, but not much of one. He’d be out of here by dawn, and he had some stuff in his bag that would make Richard sleep tight the entire night. Something for himself as well, a bottle of Johnnie Walker he’d picked up back in North Dakota.

Once they were in the room he poured two inches of Scotch into a motel glass. “Want some?” he asked Richard.

Richard, tied up and sitting in a chair, replied, “No thanks. Never got a taste for it.”

Sean drank in silence, waited for the alcohol to help him relax. He had the feeling it was going to take more than one glass.

After a while Richard asked, “Where exactly are we going?”

“Canada. British Columbia. A little ways north of Vancouver.” Through some judicious research and a phone call to Jennifer Thomson’s agent in Los Angeles he’d found that Jennifer lived in a small town called Haven Cove. He’d looked it up on the map and was relieved. Haven Cove was only ten miles north of an old safe house on the coast. It was more of a vacation house than a safe house in the strictest sense of the word. Missions seldom took them to the geopolitical hot spot that was British Columbia. That safe house was where he’d gone once for R&R. After that time in Europe, the mission where Beatty saved his life.

He poured another drink. The safe house, that’s where all this would end.

“You know, Richard, I wish we’d met under other circumstances. I mean, earlier on. I would have liked to have had you on our side. You would have been good,” he found himself saying. Perhaps the alcohol was working already.

Richard didn’t smile. A resigned, reproachful look was in his eyes. It was very familiar. “Do you think that’s a compliment?”

“Yes.”

“It’s almost funny. Look at you. You’re on a crazy mission for this woman you don’t even know, thinking you’re going to charge into her life like some Dudley Do-Right and hand over the bad man. Your side? You don’t have a side. You just have yourself.”

You’re wrong. Once I had a side. Once I believed I was doing right. But now I think Robert was right, we were used, all of us.
“I could say the same for you.”

“Say what you want. I had a cause I believed in. I wanted to make a difference in this country. You’re just out for blood.”

“Don’t talk to me about blood,” Sean said, anger twisting inside him. “You’ve got three hundred innocent lives on your hands. I have one.”

“Two,” Richard said. “Anna was pregnant.”

Once again he felt frozen and couldn't breathe, as if he was back on Deer’s Head Lake and it was he, not Beatty, who had fallen through the ice and was drowning.
Don’t believe him. He’s lying.
But Richard wasn’t lying, and Sean knew it.

“No,” he whispered.

“She was.” No taunting, no rancor in Richard’s voice. Just the truth. “Almost four months along.”

Now Sean knew where he’d seen that reproachful look before. It had been in Beatty’s eyes as his breath gave out and he sank.

He got to his feet, almost falling, his knees were shaking so. Went into the bathroom, ran water in the sink, ran water over his left hand. The hand that had pushed Anna, that had not stopped itching and burning since then. Red and chafed now from rubbing it to quell the burn. Sean stared down at his hand to keep from looking at himself in the mirror, and over the sound of water running in the sink listened as Richard spoke.

“We’d been trying to have a baby for years now. This was our fourth try. We lost all the others before three months had gone. I told her, maybe we shouldn’t try any more, but she said...she wanted so much to...She wanted to wait another month before telling anyone, until she was far enough along that...”

The water wasn’t helping. Sean turned off the faucet and dried his hands with a motel towel, white and rough.

“I didn’t know,” he said. The signs had been there. But he hadn't seen.

“Would it have changed anything if you’d known?”

“I never meant to hurt Anna or the baby. It was an accident.”

“I know. But would it have changed anything?”

He could lie. But didn’t. “No.” Then: “But no matter what, three hundred is still a lot more than two.”

“You think that makes you better than me?”

Sean walked over, grabbed Richard by the shirt and hauled him up so he could speak into his face, look into his eyes. “I know it does.”

But Richard only smiled. It was a smile made frightening by the bitterness in it. Sean thought of a poem Robert had quoted to him long ago, about a desert creature eating its own heart, because it was bitter, and because it was his heart.

Richard wore the smile of a man eating his own heart and said, “No, you’re not better. You’re just not as bad.”

* * *

R
ichard was safely doped up for the night. Wouldn’t wake, wouldn’t yell, probably wouldn’t notice if the Four Riders of the Apocalypse flew through the room.

Sean shut the door behind him, locked it. Pocketed the key and took a long pull from the bottle, no point in bothering with a glass any more. Stood looking up at the sky. It was overcast, no moon, no stars. Just a black pool overhead. Sean would have liked to see stars. There had been stars wheeling overhead, more than he could ever count, that time in Afghanistan. Even through the pain and fever and thirst and the sure knowledge that he would die and his bones would be picked clean by the desert scavengers, he’d taken comfort in the beauty of the stars.