The Crimson Brand (27 page)

Penny put a finger to her lips and whispered.  “Fine, we’ll stay just in case, but don’t let him see us.”

“
Who’s there
?”  Michael shouted from his end of the tunnel, swinging the beam of his flashlight toward them.  Penny dragged Katie back behind the last bend in the tunnel before it fell over the spot where they had been standing.  A moment later the light vanished, and they heard him grunting with exertion.  A high-pitched squeal, the grinding of metal on metal, sounded, and they crept around the corner again to see what he was doing.

Michael had set his flashlight down, angled so that it shone on him and the large handwheel he struggled to turn. 

Someone
had
shut off the water to the burning building.  The same someone who had sabotaged the fire truck.  The same someone who had set the fire.

They watched him struggle with the massive valve-wheel, turning it a little at a time.  The pipe next to them rattled briefly as water rushed through it.

Then Michael stopped, leaning against the wheel to catch his breath.

Something rose up from the darkness behind him, one arm held up high.

“
Michael, look out
!”  Katie shrieked and started toward him, Penny at her heels. 

Michael turned in their direction, reaching for his flashlight, then cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground, silent and still. 

“No!”  Katie shrieked and stopped. 

The thing behind Michael cast aside its weapon, picked up the dropped flashlight and reached for Michael’s holstered pistol. 

Not a thing, but a man.

A flash of blue light pulsed in the dark corridor, momentarily lighting the startled face sheathed by lank and greasy hair.

Katie’s spell missed him, soaring past his shoulder and blasting a chunk of concrete from the tunnel wall behind him.

The man flinched, dropped the flashlight, and turned to run.

There was a second flash of brightest blue and a thin arc of lightning spanned the length of the tunnel, hitting the man between his shoulders.  Blue energy played around his body, sparked and sizzled in his hair, and he fell face down in the muck.

Seconds later, they were at Michael’s side.

“Is he …?”  Penny couldn’t bring herself to finish the question. 

Michael lay collapsed on the valve-wheel, his arms dangling, blood running down his scalp and cheek.

Katie placed her head gently against his back, her ear pressed to the cloth of his filthy uniform shirt, and listened.  A moment later she sighed in relief. 

“He’s okay.  He’s breathing.”  She stood, then advanced slowly on the spot where Michael’s attacker lay.  “Try to wake Michael … I’ll cover
him
.”

Penny prodded and shook Michael, careful not to dislodge him from his precarious perch, and at last he began to stir.

Katie rushed to him, but Penny shook her head and motioned her away.  Katie nodded and stepped behind Penny and out of sight.

Penny tugged her hood down over her face and stepped back, ready to retreat, but she was too slow.

Michael came to full awareness with a shout of alarm, stumbling to his feet, and saw Penny.

“Who …?”  Michael started to ask, but Penny interrupted him.

Disguising her voice as well as she could, Penny said, “You got him.  He’s behind you.”

Michael turned and found Joseph Duke sprawled out on the mud, groaning as he struggled his way back to consciousness. 

“We were never here,” Penny said to Michael’s turned back. The girls fled down the tunnel, Katie in the lead.

Water now spilled from the grates above them; the sprinklers inside the building and the firemen outside with their one salvaged hose were working.  The flickering firelight falling through the grates was weaker now.

They were running blind again.  Suddenly, Katie stopped.

“Kat, hurry …,” Penny pleaded.

“
Shhh
.”

Penny hushed, and heard what Katie already had.  The clanking of boots treading the metal rungs of the manhole ladder.  Someone new was in the tunnels with them, cutting off their escape. 

“Michael, where are you?”  A man’s voice.

Katie cursed and a dim white light glowed at the tip of her wand. 

At least we can see now
, Penny thought.

“Follow the water,” Katie whispered in her ear, pointing to the floor.

The water spilling through the grates had risen to their ankles, flowing in the direction they had been running.  “It has to come out somewhere.”

“Drain pipe,” Penny said and nodded, feeling that they just might get away after all.

They sprinted now, passing the intersecting tunnel before the new person could cut them off, following the water as it rose higher and flowed faster; and sooner than Penny could have hoped, she saw starlight illuminating a wall in front of them and heard the lazy rush of the Chehalis River.  They turned a last corner and saw their way out, a narrow drainpipe that led to the stony river shore.

Penny led the way through it, crawling on her hands and knees as the water rushed around her, and finally fell from the other end.  She lay, panting, wet and filthy on the stony shore of the river, and was never more grateful to see the sky.

A moment later Katie was lying beside her, wand still in hand and her eyes closed.  They lay there for a few minutes, not speaking, only enjoying the clear air and the wide-open sky.

“Thanks,” Katie said at last, and sat up, trembling.  She looked exhausted but relieved.

“Anytime,” Penny said.

*   *   *

They rinsed off the muck from the service tunnel in the river, then soaked and shivering raced down the shore toward Katie’s house.

“Almost there,” Katie said. 

“What if your dad sees us?”

“He won’t.  He’s probably downtown helping out.”  Katie said this with an obvious pride that seemed to surprise her. 

A few minutes later, Katie changed direction, climbing slowly up a well-traveled dirt path through the stones and weeds, then onto her neatly cropped yard. 

“This way,” Katie whispered, and Penny crept nervously behind her.

They didn’t go to the front, but around back, to the side of the house facing the church and the park beyond it.  They stopped for a moment to watch.

Most of the town seemed to have turned out for the spectacle, gathered in the park behind a barricade of cars, trucks, and the town’s two sheriff’s cruisers.

The firemen had hooked their hose to a hydrant at the corner of the park and school grounds, dousing the nearly demolished east end of the building from Main Street’s center line.  The flames had mostly died down, but steam and smoke still poured from the shattered windows and collapsed roof.  The bakery at the far end was gone, Homefries was gone, the seldom-used accountant’s office was intact, but black smoke gushed from its shattered front window and empty doorway. 

The little that Penny could see of Sullivan’s was a smoke-blackened ruin.  The door and picture window lay shattered on the sidewalk, and the blue canvas awning hung in charred, soaked tatters.

Susan’s shop, her livelihood, was destroyed.

“Penny,” Katie said quietly, and then grabbed her arm to shake her from her shock.  “Look.”

Penny followed Katie’s pointing finger and saw three figures approaching Main Street.  They watched the procession in silence, Joseph Duke in the lead, handcuffed and dazed, guided forward by Michael in his mud-splattered deputy uniform.  Behind them was one of the men Penny had seen loading the fire hose earlier.  With a start of shock, she realized it was Katie’s dad.

Then the rest of the town saw them, and the disquieted hum of talk stopped.  A woman, Katie’s mother, broke from the crowd and ran toward them.  Mr. West took the lead and met her before she could get near Michael and his prisoner.  For a moment she struggled to get past him, to see Michael, but he restrained her.  She struggled for a moment, then gave up and fell into his arms.

There were two figures conspicuously missing from the crowd … Morgan Duke and Ernest Price.

“I gotta go,” Katie said at last, and began to drift toward the park.  “There’s a side door into the garage … it’s unlocked.”

Penny watched her walk away, then scanned the park for Susan.  She found the old Falcon first, parked with so many other cars in the school parking lot, and then Susan standing with Jenny, just apart from the crowd, next to Michael’s cruiser.  They watched Michael approach with his prisoner, and when the men finally reached the car Susan lunged for them.  Jenny grabbed her around the waist and held her back as Michael deposited Joseph roughly into the back seat.

Penny could hear her voice rise above the new babble in the park, but couldn’t make out her words.

She tore her eyes away from the drama in the park and sprinted to the door before someone spotted her loitering, and stepped through into her bedroom to change out of her wet, filthy clothes. 

Five minutes later she was on her bike and flying high above the deserted highway back to town.  When she saw the first lights of town below her, she guided her bike down to earth.

“Susan!”  Heads turned toward her as she guided her bike through the parking lot and into the park.  “Susan!”

The crowd refused to part for her, so she dropped her bike, checked that her wand was still secure in her sock, and shoved her way in.

“Susan!”

“Penny?”  She heard Susan before she saw her, but a second later the crowd that would not part for her opened to let Susan through.  “Penny, what are you doing?”

Penny found herself hoisted from her feet before she knew Susan meant to do it.  A moment later they were outside the crowd again, Jenny trailing behind them.

“I told you to stay home,” Susan said, but hugged Penny so tightly it hurt.

“I had to see,” Penny said lamely, but Susan seemed unable to scold her any further.

Jenny’s eyes were red, puffy, and still wet, as if she’d only just finished weeping.  Susan’s were dry, but wide and wild with shock.

“It’s gone,” she said simply.  “My shop is gone.”

*   *   *

She was on the way home, her bike safely secured to the rack on the Falcon’s rear bumper, when Penny realized she hadn’t heard from Zoe since they’d parted back in town.

Susan drove them home in silence, a silence Penny didn’t attempt to break, and after a quick and distracted good-night hug, went to her room.  The tears she’d kept back all that night broke free now, and Penny fled from the sound into her room.

She was tired, and she was heartbroken for Susan, but before she let herself sleep she had to make sure Zoe was okay.

“Zoe,” she whispered into her mirror, but there was no reply.  “Zoe?”

She called for Zoe until sleep finally crept up and took her, and fell asleep with the mirror still in her hand.

Penny arose late the next morning, her body still aching from the night’s adventure, the mirror resting beside her on the covers.  She picked it up blearily, regarded it, and remembered her desperation to reach Zoe the night before.  She couldn’t remember why, only that it had been important.

Need … coffee
.

Yes, that was just the thing she needed.  And then a shower.  She felt filthy.

She opened up the trapdoor to the house below, letting the ladder unfold smoothly on its way down to the floor, but froze with her foot on the first rung.

“My insurance was paid up, so it’s not a total loss, but it’ll be a while before I’m back in business.”  Susan was speaking with someone, maybe on the phone since Penny couldn’t hear a reply.

Susan should be at work
, Penny thought.

And then she remembered.  The fire, Morgan Duke’s creepy kid down in the service tunnel attacking Michael, Susan’s shop destroyed.