Blind Faith (35 page)

Thick curtains pulled tight over the only window. There were dark smudges on the wall forming drawings and some sort of words in a strange language. She turned on the light and stepped closer. The words had been drawn in blood.

The only furniture in the room was a card table covered with maps, a bureau, and an old brass frame twin bed. On top of the bureau lay an antique gilded hand mirror. Odd for a man to have, she thought as she traced a finger across its surface. A fine, white powder coated her fingertip.

Shit. That explained a lot. Like why she'd been jittery, irritable all day, the way she'd jumped him last night, her inability to concentrate or stay still. She brushed the finger onto her jeans. Not heroin, probably not cocaine—the effects had lasted too long. Meth. He'd dumped methamphetamine into her drink last night.

No, it had been in
his
drink. The powder he used for his coffee instead of sugar.

She turned to the maps on the makeshift desk. They were topographic maps of Snakehead Mountain with detailed areas of the area around the dam and the water falls. Four places were circled in red.

"I see you found my project."

Caitlyn jumped at the sound of Hal's voice. How the hell had he managed to sneak up on her like that? Then she saw the open closet door behind him. In his hand was his Glock. Aimed at her.

"Drop your gun and step away from it, Caitlyn," he ordered as he locked the door behind him.

She hesitated, debating on a course of action. But there really was no choice. Obey or take a bullet in the face. She bent down, lowered the gun to the floor.

She didn't move away, hoping for a chance to regain her weapon. The only other potential weapon in the room was the mirror.

"How long have you been using?" she asked, nodding at the mirror.

"Since before Lily died. I used to have to lock her in here when things got too bad." He grabbed her arm, pushed her toward the bed. "We had hospice workers for a while, but once the insurance ran out, so did they. I had to keep working, had already taken too much time off. And Lily—sometimes the pain would be so bad it'd drive her to hurt herself." He shoved Caitlyn onto the bed. Too late she spotted the handcuffs fastened to the railing at the edge of the mattress.

Now she fought. She rammed a knee into his groin. He grunted and gave her the few inches she needed. She broke free and raced to the window, her only escape. She jerked away the heavy velvet curtains. And came face to face with a wall of plywood.

"Lily tried to jump through it," Hal explained in a gentle voice as he fastened his hand around her wrist, crushing her bones together. He held the gun to her head. "Lie down on the bed, Caitlyn. We've a while before it's time."

"Time for what?" she asked, stalling, doing anything to prevent being chained helpless to the bed.

He pushed her down and in one swift motion handcuffed one wrist above her head to the metal bar. Then he knelt on top of her, holstered his gun and reached for her other hand. Caitlyn struck out, aiming at his eyes. His laughter mocked her as he dodged her with a practiced move and grabbed her arm. The handcuffs ratcheted shut, clamping around her wrist.

"Lily used to fight too. Some nights she'd howl and scream like a banshee," he whispered as he stretched his body out over top of Caitlyn's, his face angled away from her mouth so she couldn't bite him. "All I could do was lie here like this, let her know I was still here, that I loved her no matter what. Course, I wasn't getting much sleep and I still had to work, so I took some meth I'd confiscated from a trucker. It did the trick. I saved it for the really bad nights, but it got to the point where I was actually hoping Lily would have one of her spells. That way I'd have an excuse to use some more."

He paused. Caitlyn squirmed beneath his weight, trying her best to throw him off of her. His breath was hot against her neck. "Those nights after I had her restrained, we'd make love. Over and over again. It helped get rid of some of her bad energy, like an exorcism of sorts. After, she'd talk, tell me the same story every time. Did you know that Ahweyoh means 'Lily' in Iroquois? Lily loved that story, dreamed of it. Used to say I was her Thundergod."

Caitlyn felt his erection prod her stomach. She recoiled in disgust and held very still, hoping not to provoke him.

"Last night," she swallowed hard, wishing she could block out the memory of last night, "you said you cared about me. That you wanted to help me."

He raised up on his elbows, looking down at her with that Huckleberry Finn look of earnest innocence. Except his eyes now gleamed like a mad man's. How could she have missed the signs? His rapid mood changes, disjointed thoughts, dilated pupils, constant fidgeting? She'd been so vain—thought it was sexual attraction that had him so distracted.

"I do care about you. I am going to help you. That's why Lily sent you to me. Why she gave us last night."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Lily and the Thundergod. She went over the falls for his love. This time he'll be there to catch her. And just like before, he'll move heaven and earth, send the mountain toppling down on the serpent and the unbelievers."

She didn't like the sound of that. Not at all. "How? How will he move heaven and earth?"

His smile widened to a ghastly grin. He leapt off of her, rummaged under the bed for a large box. "With this. And more like it."

He opened the box and tilted it so that she could see inside. Neatly duct-taped together were half a dozen bricks of C-4 complete with a detonator cap.

Enough to blow a good-sized chunk out of a mountain.

Sam allowed Sarah to lead the way. Instead of following the winding trail, she set off on a trajectory that seemed to lead straight up the side of the mountain. As they climbed, alternating between traveling through dense forest, shrouded in darkness, and scrambling over exposed ledges, the sun beating down on them, Sam decided Sarah had taken this route so he'd be so out of breath that they couldn't speak with each other.

Pain speared his side with each breath and his legs had gone past pain to a rubbery numbness as he forced them to keep moving. Finally he simply stopped, sank down onto a wind-scoured ledge, gasping for breath. Sarah didn't even notice until she was half way around the next bend in the trail, then she returned, standing over him her hands on her hips.

"Thought you said you were a lumber jack or something."

"I work in a lumber yard," he corrected her. He pulled out his Camelbak and took a deep drink then handed it to her. "But Superman couldn't keep up with you when you're in a mood like this."

Her eyes grew dark and stormy as she glowered at him. "Superman wouldn't have left me fighting for the life of my son."

Not a whole helluva lot he could say to that. He kicked life back into his legs, letting them dangle over the cliff edge. Dimly in the distance he could see Hopewell and the bright expanse of the reservoir above it. For the first time, his fear of heights didn't bother him. There were so many other fears overwhelming it right now that it was crowded out.

"I have something for you," he said. She was silent for a moment before joining him on the ledge. He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and slipped Josh's photo from it. Wordlessly, he handed it to her.

She took it, her fingers trembling. Her entire body began to shake. He circled an arm around her shoulders and was surprised when she tolerated his touch, allowed him to pull her close.

"We'll make it." The words were meaningless and they both knew it, but he felt better for having said them aloud.

Before she could respond, Julia's cell phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He grabbed it. "Hello?"

"Sam the man, how the hell are you? Where the hell are you?" Alan's chipper tones smacked him like a sucker punch.

"How'd you get this number?" Sam asked cautiously.

"From the fair maiden, Miss Julia. She's currently enjoying our hospitality up at the Colonel's cabin. Logan says hello, by the way."

"Don't you dare hurt her—"

Sarah yanked at his hand, pulling the phone away from his ear so she could listen as well.

"That's up to you, now isn't it? I'm figuring Sarah is with you, so don't try anything stupid. I want to see both of you here by nightfall. Leave everything except the clothes on your backs behind. Then you and Logan will take a ride down the mountain while I entertain the ladies."

"No. I'm not going anywhere until you let Julia and Sarah go."

Alan's laughter was his only answer.

"How in the hell did you get so much C4?" Caitlyn asked Hal.

"It's not too hard when you've got one of these." He fished in his back pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. He flipped it open. A US Marshal's badge and identification. Richland's. Only it was Hal's face now on the photo.

"You killed Richland. Why?" Keep him talking, establish rapport, make him see her as a person. All the lessons in hostage negotiation that she drilled into her new agents in training ran through her mind now.

He dropped the box onto the maps and walked over to the wall smeared in blood. His finger traced over several of the drawings and she realized now that the strange figures represented the story of Lily and her god.

"She got real quiet toward the end," he said, his voice a low sing-song. The voice of a man who no longer knew what reality was. "Stopped eating, would only drink when I forced her to. Lay there, wide awake for days but not moving. We both knew the end was coming."

He spun around, his eyes blazing in the lamplight. "You know they did this to her, you know that don't you? They poisoned her and when she tried to fix the problem they ridiculed her, ignored her. They gave her the tumor." He was pacing now, voice raising. He swept the maps from the table. The box of explosives skidded across the floor. "They killed my Lily. They deserve to die."

"Of course they do," she said in a calm voice. He was more than high. He was in a full-blown meth-fueled psychotic break. "But not like this. It's too fast, too quick and easy. Why don't you let them keep drinking the water? Then they'll die of the same poison Lily died from."

His gaze darted around the room and locked on hers. "That's exactly what I told Lily. I knew you and I were kindred spirits, meant to finish this together."

He stopped pacing, perched on the edge of her bed, his body twitching so hard the bed frame bounced with his movement. He reached a hand out to stroke her jaw and she had to force herself not to flinch at his touch. "But Lily said we need to end it once and for all. Kill the serpent and destroy the poisoned well. She said a god must show more compassion than a man."

"What did Richland have to do with it?" she tried a different tack.

He laughed. His mouth opened wide enough for her to see his stained teeth, another symptom she had missed. She knew the statistics. Over a third of meth addicts held down steady jobs, quite a few of them in law enforcement. Hell, how could she have been so blind?

"Lily sent Richland to give me the means to deliver us all!" He leapt up again, began pacing once more. His speech revved up until it was almost incomprehensible. "That last day, I got a call. Bunch of kids partying up by the reservoir. I almost didn't go—hell, they'd abandoned us, I was about ready to lose the house, I knew Lily wasn't going to last long. But she spoke, for the first time in days, she looked at me and she spoke. Told me to go, do my duty." He hung his head low. "And I did."

Silence filled the room for several long moments. "I left her in here but she was so calm, so quiet that I didn't restrain her. That's when she used her own blood to leave me her final message. She jumped through the window, took the truck up to the upper falls. It was a full moon that night. A blue moon, just like tonight. She folded her clothes, set them on the hood of the truck, climbed out over the edge, and flew.

"But I wasn't there to catch her." A ragged sob choked through him. "This time I need to do it right."

Caitlyn lay there, uncertain if she should try to steer him back on topic or just let him keep rambling on. Best thing was to let him keep talking, forget she was there.

"The bank gave me a ninety day extension, but I was still drowning in unpaid medical bills, so come the end of August I knew I was going to lose the house—and with it all that was left of Lily. Then Sam came, told me about some pervert following his kid around. I called the FBI, reported it. Before I knew it, some asshole named Logan is calling me back, telling me to sit tight, make no move on Wright, that he was sending a US Marshal to assess the situation. He ordered me to give full cooperation. Said no Mayberry hick was going to screw up his operation."

Sounded like Logan and his winning ways. Hal slumped down on the bed once more, his foot tapping a staccato rhythm on the floor.

"Richland showed up, I took him to Sam's place. He said Sam was in witness protection and it was his job to get him out of Hopewell before any reporters caught on, leaked his name and face to the wrong people. He told me to start surveillance on Wright, do nothing until he told me the coast was clear.