Nightrise (34 page)

even than all that. He had aged. He was looking at the world with different eyes.

The next day was a Saturday and Jamie woke early. The trailer had only one bedroom, which Alicia was sharing with Daniel, and Jamie had a sofa bed in the main room. They all knew that they couldn't stay here much longer. They were wasting their time in Reno. There were still things they had to do.

When Alicia came through, Jamie was sitting up. She was glad to see that a lot of his color had returned and he seemed to be moving more easily.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"Thanks." He looked around him. "Where's Danny?"

"Still asleep."

Alicia went into the kitchen area and boiled the kettle. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"I'm tired, Alicia. But I'm going to be all right. I just need to start looking for Scott." Jamie hesitated, but there was something he had to know. "When are you and Danny going back to Washington?" he asked.

'You've got your work to go back to. There must be a lot of stuff you have to do."

Alicia brought the coffee over to the bed. 'You can get one thing out of your head," she said. "I'm not going to leave until we've found Scott. I told you that from the start. We're in this together…and Danny agrees. We're going to stick with you."

Jamie nodded his thanks. "I don't have any idea where to start," he said.

"But I do." Alicia sat down next to him, on the edge of the bed. "A lot has happened in the last few days," she explained. "Starting with the fact that the Feds took over Silent Creek while you and Danny were hiding out in the mountains."

"They went in…?"

"It was John Trelawny. He's been desperately worried about you. He called the authorities."

"I thought he couldn't do that."

"Something changed. He wants to speak to you urgently.

I'd have called him yesterday, only he was traveling from the East Coast, and anyway you were out of it."

"So what happened to Silent Creek? Did they find the Block?"

Alicia nodded. "All the prisoners — the ones they called the Specials — have been released and the other kids are going to be transferred to state facilities. I spoke to Patrick. Do you remember him?"

Jamie thought back to the silver-haired man they had met at the hotel in Los Angeles. He had been the senator's California organizer.

"He told me as much as he could…which actually wasn't very much. For the moment, nobody's talking.

Of course, Nightrise is denying any knowledge of the kidnappings or anything to do with them. They're trying to claim that it was all down to Colton Banes, that he was running some sort of independent operation… and since he's dead, he's not going to argue."

"Has there been anything in the newspapers?"

"Not yet. The story is so huge and nobody quite understands what's been going on. For the time being, they're keeping it quiet."

Jamie understood. He knew there would be a cover-up. There were too many questions that were not only unanswered but unanswerable. He didn't care. He was just glad that Daniel's friend — Billy — and the other kids would be returned to their families. And it was good news for Baltimore, Green Eyes, and the other prisoners too. They'd be better off with the Nevada authorities looking after them. Maybe they'd even earn an early release.

"It's all good news," Alicia said, and Jamie Could tell that she wasn't just trying to cheer him up. "The Feds are in control. They arrested a man called Max Koring and they seized all the paperwork in the administration offices. They're going through it now. There must be some record of what happened to Scott. Someone must know where he is. They'll find something. I'm sure of it."

Jamie wanted to share her optimism. But he wasn't so sure. It seemed to him that Nightrise was bigger and more powerful than any of them suspected. But then he had seen the Old Ones. The shape-changers.

The fire riders. The mutilated humans. So much death, delivered without a second thought. Sitting here in this trailer on the edge of the Reno airport, Alicia thought the world was safe. Jamie knew how wrong she might be.

"Why does Senator Trelawny want to see me?" he asked.

"He didn't say. He just said that he had new information and there was someone you had to meet. He thought they'd find you at the prison. The people who went in…their first job was to get you out and bring you to him. We'll see him tomorrow."

"Where is he now?"

"Not all that far from here. He's just over the state line in California…in the High Sierra. Have you heard of a place called Auburn?"

Jamie shook his head.

"It's an old mining town. It got big in the gold rush days. John was born there and today it's his fiftieth birthday, so they're giving him a parade." There was a television in the room, on the kitchen counter, and a remote control next to the bed. Alicia reached out and picked it up. "There should be something on the news," she said.

She switched the television on.

It was already tuned to a twenty-four-hour news channel. The anchorman was talking about the result of a trial following some big financial scandal. Then there were commercials. Then a story about a basketball player charged with murder.

"We'll meet the senator in Los Angeles," Alicia said.

"Are the police still looking for me?" Jamie asked. It suddenly dawned on him how ridiculous his situation had become. He had committed no crime but he was still wanted for the murders of Don White and Marcie Kelsey. And as Jeremy Rabb, he was presumably wanted for various drug offenses and for escaping from Silent Creek. How had he got himself into this mess?

But Alicia never got a chance to answer the question.

"…And in Auburn, California, last-minute preparations for a very special birthday party. John Trelawny, the man most people believe will win the November election, is returning to the hometown where he was born fifty years ago. These are the streets where, in just a few hours' time, five thousand people are expected to gather to welcome the senator…"

The story they had been waiting for came onto the screen. Glancing at the picture, Jamie froze. It was as if a chasm had opened up underneath him and he had been sucked into it. He found himself grabbing hold of the bed as if to steady himself. His eyes were fixed on the TV.

He had seen a face he recognized. Not John Trelawny. It was the last face he had expected to see. It wasn't anyone he had met in the real world.

It wasn't a real person at all.

It was a statue.

A gray stone face. Skin like putty. Hollowed-out eyes. The figure was wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a crumpled hat. It was resting on one knee, holding a bowl. There was some sort of metal bridge in the background and a few pieces of old mine works around.

"What is it?" Alicia demanded. She had seen the look on Jamie's face.

The camera had lingered on it only for a moment but Jamie had heard the words of the commentary. "…

looking for gold, the town was first founded in the nineteenth century…" And suddenly he understood what this man was…the man he had first seen kneeling by the water in his dreams.

Not a cowboy. A gold prospector.

Why?

"Jamie…?" Alicia was becoming alarmed.

"Did you see? Just now…"

"What?"

"On the screen!"

It was too late. The picture had changed. Now it was showing old footage of John Trelawny waving to the crowd at another rally.

"There was a man on the screen just now. Not a man. A statue. I've seen it before and…I don't know why, but it means something. It's important."

"In Auburn?"

''Yes. I think so."

Alicia slid off the bed. She had a laptop with her and opened it, powering it up and connecting it to the Internet. Meanwhile, Jamie was thinking furiously. He knew he had been sent a sign but it was up to him, and him alone, to make sense of it.

The statue of a gold prospector in Auburn. A gray giant kneeling on a beach. They were one and the same —Jamie was sure of it. He remembered what Matt had told him. The dream world was there to help them. But sometimes it sent them messages in strange ways. What had the gray man told him?

"He's gonna kill him. And you have to stop him."

Was Scott going to be killed in Auburn? Was that what he had meant?

"His name is Claude Chana," Alicia said. She had accessed an Auburn Web site on her computer. She was looking at a picture of the statue now. "He found gold in the Auburn ravine in 1848 and that led to the establishment of a mining camp which later became the town. There's a statue of him down by the old firehouse."

"He's gonna kill him."

"You mean…Scott?"

"No, boy. You don't understand…"

But suddenly, with horrible clarity, Jamie did understand. There were two men fighting to become president: John Trelawny and Charles Baker. Nightrise supported Baker. But Trelawny was winning.

So Nightrise was going to assassinate him.

And they were going to use Scott.

"He's gonna kill him."

The "he" was Scott. The "him" was Trelawny. It was as simple as that.

'You have to call the senator," Jamie said, and it almost sounded to him as if it was someone else who was talking. 'You have to warn him."

"What?"

"They're going to try to kill him."

Alicia stared at him. "What are you saying? How can you know that?"

"Please, Alicia. Don't argue with me. I can't explain it to you, but they're going to kill Senator Trelawny in Auburn today and you have to get him on the phone and stop him from going there."

Alicia hesitated only a few seconds more. Then she grabbed her cell phone and speed-dialed a number.

Jamie waited as the number was connected. He saw her face fall.

"Senator…" she said, and he could tell she was leaving a message. "This is Alicia McGuire. I've been talking to Jamie and he says you're in danger, that you mustn't go to Auburn. Please call me back."

She snapped the phone shut.

"He wasn't there," Jamie said.

"I only have his personal cell phone number," Alicia explained. "He wanted me to be able to call him directly. But he may have left his own phone behind. He may have switched it off. I don't know how to reach him."

"How far is it to Auburn?"

"I don't know. It's the other side of Lake Tahoe."

"How long would it take us to get there?"

Alicia's face brightened. "Not that long. Three or four hours."

"And when does the parade start?"

"Midday." She looked at her watch. It was a few minutes after eight o'clock. She made a decision. "We can make it," she said. "Get dressed. I'll wake Daniel. It's going to be tight, but we can get there…"

***

The crowds had started arriving early for the birthday parade, and by eleven o'clock there must have been two thousand people lining the pavements, with more spilling out of their cars every minute. There were dozens of police officers on special duty. The Secret Service had gone in the night before and cordoned off the area where the parade would take place. While the local residents slept, they had discreetly swept the entire town, using dogs to sniff out any trace of high explosives, installing security cameras, identifying the rooftops and the second-floor windows that might provide a marksman with cover.

There were two quite separate parts of Auburn. The modern section was unremarkable, a couple of streets that met at an angle with the usual assortment of shops and offices. But the Old Town — and that was what everyone called it — had been almost perfectly preserved, a living echo of the nineteenth century and the gold rush that had created it.

It stood — or nestled, rather — at the bottom of a hill. The main street swept down and then split into two, each side, curving around like the two halves of a horseshoe with an open area, like a town square, in the middle. Shops and houses ran all the way along the edges, most of them brick or timber-framed.

But it was the buildings in the middle of the square that that were the town's pride and joy. One was an old post office, the other a firehouse which looked like an oversize toy with its pointed roof and red and white stripes.

Auburn had its own courthouse that stood high above the town, its great dome glinting in the sunlight. In the summer months, the heat could be almost too much to bear, and the town would resemble not so much a horseshoe as a frying pan. But someone, a long time ago, had planted a cedar tree behind the firehouse and its branches had spread in every direction, the dark green leaves providing at least some shelter from the sun.

The statue of Claude Chana stood next to the cedar tree. This was where the Old Town came to an abrupt end with Highway 80 carrying six lanes of traffic, roaring past, east and west. There were two filling stations facing each other and a railway bridge behind. This was what Jamie had seen on the TV.

It was going to be a hot day.

The sky was almost cloudless and the sun dazzled as it bounced off the pavement and the shop windows.

The entire town had been dressed up for the parade, with a row of bleachers, six high, constructed in front of the post office and facing back up the hill. The parade would come this way. It would turn off past the main shopping street and make a complete circle behind the cedar tree before stopping once again at the bleachers. There was a platform, a row of microphones, an area for the press. The mayor would make a speech welcoming John Trelawny. John Trelawny would make a speech thanking the mayor. Then everyone would have lunch.

There were flags everywhere. Hundreds of them. Flags on lampposts and street corners, attached to cars, bikes, and strollers, fluttering from the dome of the courthouse. A great banner had been erected above the bleachers so that everyone would see it as they came down the hill.

auburn welcomes senator trelawny. happy birthday, john

! And although the shops had been closed for the day, their windows were filled with messages of support, val's liquor supports john trelawny for president. placer county bank welcomes john trelawny, native son.

The local dignitaries were already taking their places on the bleachers. The mayor's wife was there, sitting next to Grace Trelawny and her two sons. The chief of police and the fire chief, both in uniform, had taken seats in the front row. The town's founding families and its most prominent businessmen had been invited, as had many of the people who had known John Trelawny when he was growing up: his principal, his teachers, the local minister, the football coach. By a quarter to twelve, every seat had been taken apart from two, right in the middle. They had both been marked with reserved signs.