Warrior (Freelancer Book 2) (21 page)

He swept his eyes across the scene, looking for the two ABN couriers he knew would be here. He spotted Kyle Sims' red hair first and then the stockier body of Sam Watkins. Both were just yards away, concentrating on an engine. Running toward them, he shouted, "Hey guys. I need help!"

Both men stood and turned to look at him with clear disbelief. Sam said, "What are you doing here?" Putting Sage down, he slapped her helmet and said, "Sage. Hide somewhere. Under an RV or something. Now go!"

He pointed after her as she scrambled away, the big helmet wobbling, and the jacket flapping. "Listen, there are some assholes coming right behind me who want to take that kid and . . ."

How did you explain what he feared?

Might as well try honesty, he decided. "Listen, these are guys who like to fuck little kids, OK?"

The faces of his friends went from amusement to shock and anger and others turned toward Rick from the nearby tents.

He raised his voice even more. "Listen. There are some real assholes about to come in here and grab that little girl. I need some guys to block them at the bridge." Bikers and fans across the paddock began to pick up heavy wrenches or tree branches, and several grabbed weapons from their vehicles. In seconds, dozens of people were heading for the bridge.

As Rick turned and started back, he yelled over his shoulder, "Oh, and I set the bridge on fire; so, if you ever want to get out of here, you might want to help me put it out."

"You do realize this is two motorcycles you've destroyed in less than a year?"

Eve gave Rick a moderately believable scowl and returned to sipping her tea. They were sitting at the kitchen table on Ingomar Street, alone after an hour of explanation and celebration with Kristee and the other housemates.

"Yeah, well, I really never liked that little green monster." Rick was squeezing his pink ball and stretching out back muscles stiffened by riding. "It was fast as hell but, man, it was a bitch to drive. I had to spend about half my time just keeping it from heading off into a ditch or landing on top of me and pretending it was a hat."

"Are you saying that you would have set fire to it anyway?" Eve's eyes gave the lie to her scowl.

"Someday, probably. It was only a matter of time before the damn thing made a serious attempt on my life."

"You said your bikes always developed a personality." Eve reminded him, "Was it a girl or a guy?"

Rick looked at her suspiciously. There were lots of wrong answers to this question. "Well, she did do a pretty thorough job on those Saigon street cowboys and then tried several times to turn me into road kill. How about 'Lizzie Borden'?"

Eve immediately quoted, "Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks."

Rick chimed in with the second verse, "And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." He stretched out his legs, put the pink ball on the rough wooden table, and began to massage the small of his back with both hands. "Yeah, that's a pretty fitting description. I felt I had to be ready to stop her from doing something stupid."

A pause and then Eve said thoughtfully, "At least you're learning. I don't think you even considered saying, 'Just like a woman.'"

Rick gave her his very best innocent look.

Kristee came into the kitchen and said, "Stand up, Rick."

Rick stood up, and Kristee wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. A bit confused, he shot a questioning look at Eve who just shook her head, warning him not to say anything.

Kristee began to shake, and Rick realized she was crying. Hard. He patted her shoulder.

Finally, Kristee took a long, ragged breath, and stepped back. Then she grabbed Rick by the hair, pulled his head down, and kissed him fiercely on the forehead. "'Thank you' just isn't enough." She let him go and gave him a gentle shove that sent him back into his chair.

"Um. You're welcome," Rick said in honest confusion.

Kristee turned to the stove, giving Eve a squeeze on her shoulder as she passed. Eve reached up and patted her hand affectionately.

As she made herself a cup of instant coffee, the thin woman said, "OK, I've heard it as far as you setting fire to the racetrack, but Sage fell asleep before she could tell me more. How did you get out of there?"

"Well, Flick didn't seem to be nearly as tough when he was facing a couple of dozen bike racers." Rick thought a second. "Although, it could well have been their wives and girlfriends. Hell, I was innocent, and they were sure as hell scaring me."

He shook his head at the memory. "So, after his front windshield and two side windows were smashed and the women started to rock the car, Flick decided to get the hell out of there.

I guess he might have tried to come back when everyone went back to racing but a considerable number of the women starting standing guard at the main gate. You'd be amazed how many people have shotguns in their RV's. Must be part of the vagabond culture."

He pulled another kitchen chair over with the toe of his boot, and Kristee sat down with her coffee. "After that, it was all pretty simple. We got the fire out before the bridge was damaged much, not that such a little fire could have done much to eight-inch railroad ties. Then, Sage and I watched the races until Kyle won his final heat. I mean, Sage went nuts. You should have seen her, screaming and waving as he took his victory lap. I tried to tell her that Kyle wasn't worth all that, but she wasn't about to be convinced."

Rick shrugged. "We gave the Kawasaki a decent burial by pushing it into the trees behind the grandstands on Turn 11 where all the other busted cars and bikes end up and caught a ride home in Sam's van. Someone might have been looking for us but about a hundred people left at the same time, and we were lying on the floor between the seats, so I don't think it's a problem."

Kristee looked up from her cup. "Well, that girl couldn't stop talking about getting a bike and going racing. I will hold you responsible for putting that dream to rest in a couple of years. As for everything else, well, what I've got is yours."

Eve chuckled, "Sure, that's easy. You don't have anything, girl."

"Yeah, well, it's the thought that counts."

Suddenly, Kristee reached forward and pulled the top section of the copy of the Washington Post that sat on the far side of the table. "That son of a bitch. What's he doing now?" She stabbed her finger at the smiling picture of a slightly chubby man on the front page of the Metro section.

Rick leaned over and read the accompanying headline aloud, "'Leesburg Landowner Stephen Cloyes Reveals Plans for New School.' So that's what he looks like."

Eve grabbed the paper out of his hands and studied the picture intensely, "Wait a minute. This guy was in the building yesterday!'

Kristee asked, "The building?"

"Marsden Angle. The law firm where I work. He came to visit Tommy, the lawyer I work for." She threw the paper down on the table. "Now what in hell would he be doing with Tommy?"

Rick shook his head. "Well, does Tommy do religious cults?"

Eve shook her head. "Not unless you count contributions to Catholic Charities."

"Well, what about the tobacco companies?"

Kristee interrupted. "Stephen doesn't have anything to do with tobacco. Gary told me that his place had been a tobacco farm before he bought it, and he refused to plant a crop even though the subsidy transferred along with the property. Gary said the farm managers were pissed because it was far more profitable than the feed corn they're growing now."

Eve said, "Well, then there's coal. I've had the feeling that Tommy has been keeping me from working on the coal stuff intentionally, but Josie, the other paralegal, says he's leading the team working to implement the 1971 North Central Power Study. That's the wonderful plan by the Interior Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the coal companies to strip-mine most of the Midwest. I got my hands on a copy, had to read it in the ladies' room, and the basic idea is to dig out the Fort Union Coal Formation—all 1.3 trillion tons of it—and use that to power most of the East Coast."

She sighed. "It's a gold rush, just like when they stole the Black Hills from the Cheyenne, except this time they want to strip the entire reservation down to bedrock. If we ever get it back, it will look like the surface of the moon."

Rick said, "I thought the Tribal Council had voted against the coal leases back in May."

"They did, but the BIA doesn't really have to listen to the Council, and there are a lot of Cheyenne who need the money that working coal would bring in."

"What about those guys outside Wounded Knee? The ones who were shooting at everyone in sight."

Eve snorted. "You mean the strange guys who followed us all the way through the Black Hills?"

"Yeah. And that asshole Flick was working for them." Rick swung around to Kristee. "Hey, did you ever see a strange tattoo or maybe more of a scar when you were around the Crusaders?"

"You mean 'God's Hand'?" Kristee rolled up her sleeve to reveal the blackened scars on her upper arm. "Everyone in the Children's Crusade has one. It's a big ceremony where Stephen cuts the mark into your skin and then rubs in this mixture of ground-up pages from the Bible, dirt from Indian holy sites, and his own blood. Puffs up and hurts like hell for weeks and when it heals, it looks like this."

She rolled her sleeve down. "Everyone gets it when they pass the first stage—that's Light Seeker—and become a Knight of the Holy Road. After that, the devout and dangerous become 'Crusaders,' and, at the top, there are the Masters of the Inner Circle. What a load of crap."

She looked disgusted and then shook her head violently, as if trying to banish a memory. "Gary even held me down when it was happening. Said it showed how much he loved me. What a dickhead."

Rick looked at Eve. "Well, I think with the tattoo and the reference to the Inner Circle, that's a confirmation that it was the Children's Crusade who caused that clusterfuck at Wounded Knee."

"Then they must have been the bastards who killed Pete and tried to take us down on the way back to Lame Deer. They've got to be working with Tommy to eliminate opposition to the strip mining."

She turned to Kristee. "Can you see any reason that Stephen would work with the coal companies?"

"Sure," Kristee replied, "Money."

"Money?"

"Yep. I mean the man changes his politics the way you or I change clothes. His religion is a load of crap aimed at getting little girls into his bed. In the end, it's all about the money those poor kids on the street bring in, and he's not paying the mortgage on that estate out in horse country off candle sales."

For several minutes, Rick and Eve just looked at the thin, tough woman.

"You're not really certain, are you?” Rick joked.

Eve looked for something to throw at him and had to be satisfied with kicking him—hard—under the table. She turned back to Kristee, "Well, it looks like my boss and this religious nutcase are in cahoots."

"Is that a legal term?” Rick asked while quickly moving his legs away from the table, inches from the toe of Eve's loafers. "Why would Tommy hire someone whose brain is filled with worms?"

Rick turned to Kristee. "At the racetrack, I said Cloyes had a thing for little girls, but I will admit a certain amount of that was working the crowd. But you really think it's true?"

Kristee slowly nodded her head and then answered in low, careful tones. "The girls get separated out for 'special religious training,' they start wearing these white robes, and—" She stopped, apparently unable to continue.

Eve scooted her chair a bit closer and took the other woman's hands in hers, waiting until Kristee could speak again.

"The thing is . . ." Another pause.

"I didn't . . ." Pause.

Eve spoke in a gentle whisper, "Come on honey."

Kristee took a deep ragged breath. "I think the girls are being raped by the bastards on the High Table. I was pretty sure—" She clenched her teeth and then clearly forced herself to continue. "I was sure it was happening, but I didn't do anything about it. I let Gary and all the other true believers convince me that it wasn't happening. That it couldn't be happening. In the end, I didn't protect the other girls."

She hung her head, and the words came from behind a curtain of hair. "I knew and I didn't do anything. I was just worrying about Sage, and all those little girls who were laughing and running around and being smartasses were turning quiet with holes where their eyes used to be."

Eve stroked the back of her neck and whispered, "Shh. Don't blame yourself. There wasn't anything you could have done."

"That's bullshit!" Kristee jerked away from Eve's hand. "I could have done something. Anything. I could have gone for help. I should have gotten the girls out. I could have . . ."

She had been talking increasingly quickly like an engine when you've missed a gear. Now, it was as if she couldn't get words out fast enough. She was sitting rigid and silent, unable or unwilling to look Rick and Eve in the eyes.

Eve got up, knelt by the other woman's chair and, batting aside Kristee's unconvincing attempts to push her away, wrapped her arms around her, their heads touching. Whatever they were saying was so low that Rick couldn't make it out.

Rick felt hollow. The humor of just moments before was gone along with the feeling of triumph from today's run. He busied his hands with lighting another Winston and picking up the bits of tobacco leaf that fell on the table one by one with a wet fingertip before carefully rolling them off into the ashtray.

After what seemed like a terribly long time, Kristee and Eve stood and walked to the stairs, Eve almost holding up her friend to keep her from collapsing.

Steve and Eps were watching TV in the living room with a running commentary by Scotty who was on the Digi-Comp. Rick was suddenly aware they had been laughing and talking because now there was silence.

The television suddenly seemed loud. Sonny and Cher were teasing a special guest, heavyweight boxer George Foreman. When he asked, "What am I going to do?" they chorused, "Anything you want" to a cascade of canned laughter.

The TV switched off, and Rick's housemates wandered into the kitchen. Steve sat down at the table while Eps and Scotty rummaged in search of snacks.

"That as bad as it looked?" Steve asked.

"Worse, if anything," said Rick.

Scotty spoke without turning from the sink where he was pouring water from the metal teapot, filling it with fresh cold water, and putting it on the stove. "Sage is a smart kid. She's really getting to be useful with Gidget."