Blackbird (21 page)

You urge her down the narrow flight, out a side foyer. You’re in the back of the house now, the garden providing some cover. You move toward the back gate, which leads to the hill below.

You hear a door open somewhere behind you. He is up again; he is following you. You pick Izzy up, all one hundred pounds of her, and run as fast as you can, feeling the papers fall out of your back pocket. But there’s no time. You push through the metal gate and down the back of the hill.

You can hear Goss running around the side of the house, trying to figure out where you’ve gone. “Just leave me here, we’ll never make it,” Izzy says.

She pulls up her shirt, studying the wound, pressing her fingers into it as if she’s not sure it’s real. You shake your head and keep moving, wishing it were you. It should have been you.

The house is on a hill and you find your way to a dirt path leading down. It’s so steep you keep slipping. Along the back of his property there are eucalyptus trees, their trunks twisting up toward the sky. You can’t hear him behind you. Has he gone the other way?

As soon as you’re around the side of the fence, out of sight, you ease Izzy down. She leans back against the tree, her hand still pressing down on the wound.

Her hair sticks to her skin. Her face is tense and twisted with worry, her breaths raspy. Watching her, you know that she could die here. She
will
die here if you don’t do something.

“You’ll be all right. He wants me,” you say, “not you. I’m going to get help. Keep pressing down on it. Don’t move; stay awake.”

You hold your hand over her hand, pushing onto the wound. A red stain spreads out beneath your fingers. The fabric is so wet.

“I’m going to get help,” you repeat. “I promise, Izzy.”

She offers a weak nod before her eyes close.

You run, cutting up the steep hill as fast as you can. Every muscle in your legs burns, but you keep going, snaking out until you’re on the road. You don’t stop. You crane your head and he appears behind you, a hundred yards off. He is at the end of the driveway, waiting for you.

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HE IS ABOUT
to shoot when you take a hard left, cutting through a neighbor’s yard. You hop a low stone fence, your sneakers sliding against the dirt path. You grab on to brush and vines, trying to stay up, but it’s useless. You fall, slipping, skidding, your legs
scraping against rock. As you slide farther down you catch the roots of a dead tree. You hold yourself there, looking back. Above you, the wall is empty. He hasn’t followed you down.

You climb the rest of the way. Your hands grab branches and vines, clinging to dead roots, feet fitting into the dips and ledges in the rock. When you get to the street below it’s empty. There’s not a single car parked. Every house is behind a huge gate, so far back you can’t even see them.

You pull the phone Celia gave you from your pocket, grateful for it—for this gift, for her help. As soon as the operator answers you speak, the words coming together in a breathless stream. “My friend has been shot. She’s at 2187 Glendower Avenue. She’s behind the house, near the back of the yard. She’s bleeding—she needs help now.”

You can’t wait for much of a response. When you’re certain they’ve got the information you hang up and keep moving. Ben’s house is several miles east, and you know you can outrun Goss once you’re somewhere with more people, where he can’t shoot without being seen. You just have to get to the boulevard below, two streets down.

You run, keeping along the edge of the street. You’ve gone for a few minutes, maybe more, when you hear him behind you. Glancing back, he’s running up the edge of the road. He has a hat on now, sunglasses. You’re cutting across, trying to avoid him, when he aims.

You sprint up the side of the pavement, unsure when a few seconds pass and he hasn’t fired. Then you hear the engine behind you. You turn back. A red van has stopped at the edge of a driveway.

The side reads
STARGAZER TOURS
in loopy script. A man walks up and down an aisle of people with a microphone, pointing to a house over the gate. He mentions some action-movie star, then says something else that makes the people laugh. Behind him, Goss has stopped by another mailbox. His gun is now hidden. He walks slowly, methodically, toward you. The van doesn’t move.

You know it’s your chance. While the people are turned, studying the house, you run. You don’t look back. You just keep going, until the street winds down to the boulevard below, a rush of traffic beside you.

When you return to Ben’s house he’s not there. You want to wait for him, to explain, but there’s no time.

You sift through Ben’s drawers, looking for checks, money—anything you can use. There are two credit cards that you pocket, enough to get you a cab ride or a ticket out
of Los Angeles. You think of the photo, of the label
Los Angeles Target
. There are other targets in other cities, hunts going on around the country, maybe around the world. Where are those other targets now? Do any of them remember what happened to them, do any of them know what they’re caught up in?

The game is elaborate, the network huge—you understand that now. Goss is just one hunter among many. You need to get out of here, you need to stay alive long enough to figure out your next move. But you also need help. You have to find the others.

There are a few stray dollars in the bottom of the drawer. You take those, along with a glass jar of silver coins sitting next to the couch. As you tuck it under your arm you feel sick. You imagine Ben there, realizing they’re gone, realizing that you took them.

You’re nearly to the back door when you see his computer on the kitchen table. The idea of not saying anything, of not saying good-bye . . . it’s too much. You flip it open to write him a note.

You’re search the screen for a document to write in when you catch sight of it. A folder in the corner of his desktop labeled
AAE
.

Your hands are unsteady.
AAE.
A&A Enterprises.

You open it and there are hundreds of documents inside. You click through to an image of you—the same one from Goss’s house. You’re staring into the camera. You already look half dead.

The room feels smaller, the walls rushing to meet you. It’s so hard to breathe. You think of the file.
The Watcher.
Ben’s known all along. He works for the people who are after you. The people trying to kill you. He is your Watcher.

You’re not sure how long you’ve been sitting there when the lock turns. The door opens. Then Ben steps inside, all smiles.

“Hey, beautiful.”

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“
IT WAS GOOD
that I went,” Ben says, dropping his keys on the entryway table. “She was upset I hadn’t picked up the phone, upset about all the school stuff. I promised I was doing okay. I’m going to go back in three weeks when she’s released. Until then . . . I’m yours.”

He sets his hands down on your shoulders and his fingers work into your skin, kneading the muscles. But you are frozen beneath his touch. You’re only aware of how close his hands are to your neck, the distance between the kitchen table and the door.

“What’s wrong?” He leans down, staring into your face. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. We can go now, I just need another minute or two.”

You stand, slipping out from underneath him. “It’s just a lot to process,” you say. “That’s all. Let me just get my bag from the pool house.”

You don’t look at him as you go. You can’t. Instead you go for the door, almost out of the kitchen, almost into the hall.

“What’s this about?” he asks, picking up the glass jar of coins from underneath the table. “Were you taking this? What’s going on?”

You pause, hand on the doorknob, debating whether you should try to explain. He’s studying your face. Then, as if it has just registered, he looks down at the computer on the table, then back at you. He flips it open. Your picture is still there, still open on the desktop. It stares up at him.

You go for the back door but he is already coming after you. “It’s not what you think,” he says. “Please, you just have to listen.”

You get out the door but he jams his hand against the frame, stopping it from shutting. You push back, crushing his fingers. You hit the door again, wincing each time it lands, each time you hear his skin and bone catch beneath the frame. But then, finally, he lets go. You hop the fence into another yard. You keep running, weaving through a wooden area, not stopping until you are back on the street.

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AS SOON AS
she steps through the gate, she begins her routine. She scans the front gardens, checking to see how much the plumeria have grown in her absence. She’ll have to cut the branches back from the window. They replaced the grass in the front with gravel the year before so she no
longer has to worry about the overgrowth when they’re not there. Leaves are gathered around the front entrance, but otherwise it looks fine. No one has tried to break in.

She has begged her husband to get someone to watch over the property while they’re in the states, but Michael always refuses.
It’s impossible to get here by boat. It’s a private island; what’s the point?
He won’t listen to her when she argues about what happened three years before, how they found the lock on the front gate broken, a knife lying just outside the door. He’d been game hunting on the south of the island with friends. He hadn’t noticed anything suspicious, had pointed out it was near impossible for someone to approach the house from the north shore. The property was gated, sitting atop a rock cliff. But she hasn’t forgotten about it. She still wonders if it could have been one of the men he was with.

There were other things, too. . . .

That tree she’d seen on a walk one morning last year, the trunk smeared with blood. The forest smelled different to her, a strange, sickening stench drifting in when the wind changed directions. She used to spend all her time in the woods beyond the fence, hiking the stone paths the previous owners had carved out, cutting the black orchids that grew along it. She hardly goes out there at all anymore.

She turns the key in the lock, knowing it’ll be another two days before Michael returns from his hunting trip on the south side of the island. She left a message on the machine at the house but there’s no way to reach him when he’s in the woods, no real way to tell him she’d arrived early.

When she pushes the door open, the alarm sounds. She goes to the keypad, punching in the code to silence it, then turns to the wall of windows that overlooks the ocean. The view always surprises her, even more when she’s been gone for several months. It’s nothing but water in every direction. She always arranges for the plane to drop her in the field an hour before sunset, so that by the time she gets to the house the sky is a bright pink, the sun a yellow disk slipping behind the western cliff face.

The house is completely silent. She goes to the glass wall in the living room, looking out. Far below, the tide is coming in, the waves rushing over the sand, colliding into the rocks. She stares over the horizon, turning back toward the western sky, and that’s when she sees it.

There’s writing on the side of one of the rocks. It’s ten feet up from where the water hits. Someone would’ve had to scale the cliff face to get to it, balancing on one of the narrow ledges in the stone. The writing is brownish-red, though she can’t quite make out the letters from so high up.

She goes to the desk in the corner of the living room, pulling her husband’s binoculars from the top drawer, and looks out through the lenses. She turns the dial at the top to bring the writing into focus.

Her hands shake as she reads it, processing the messy scrawl. Out on the cliff below is a dark red stain. Just four letters.

HELP.

Michael. It has to be. She scans the house, looking for something, anything, to bring with her. The
nearest hospital is an hour’s flight away. Is he still alive? How long ago did he write that? He must’ve slipped on the trail; he must be trapped there, on the cliff ledge.

She runs out of the front gate, hurrying down the path, the thin branches scraping at her legs. It’s not more than ten minutes to the cliffs. She weaves through the trees, blocking her face with her hand. She had told him to bring the flares with him when he hunts, had suggested radios or something for him to communicate with the others. Why hadn’t he agreed to it? Why was he so stubborn, so determined for the hunts to be authentic, real?

There’s a noise behind her. Something moves in the forest, darting through the trees. She turns, watching. With the sun going down they are only shadows at first, two of them cutting out on either side, circling her. Then she sees one man start over a log, approaching her from the front. He has the hunting rifle out. He looks directly at her, meeting her gaze, as he fires once into the center of her chest.