When She Flew (21 page)

I lay awake until I heard sparrow song and it was almost light. Then I must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing I knew, it was bright and even hotter in the room, and crows were cawing, and Pater was sitting next to me on the bed.

“Wake up, Lindy,” he said. “Get your things together. We have to go.”

 

 

 

In the KITCHEN, REVEREND ROSETTA was cooking again.

“Come get yourself a plate, honey,” the reverend said. “Eat up. It’s going to be a big day.”

“What’s going on?” I said. I heard a television in the other room, a news voice talking, but who was watching it? Everyone was in the kitchen.

The reverend and Pater looked at each other, then he turned to me. “People are looking for us, Lindy. The police aren’t happy that Officer Villareal disobeyed orders and they want to find us and bring us both back to the station.” He looked angry and tired. Had he gotten any sleep? I wondered. “And now the TV and newspaper reporters want to find us, too, because they’re bloodsucking—”

“Oh, no, is Officer Villareal in trouble?”

“Lindy, sweetheart,” Reverend Rosetta said, “the first thing you’re going to do is eat, and we will discuss everything that’s happening, and how to keep you safe, okay? We have a place for you to go where no one will find you; we’re good at this sort of thing. Here, take your breakfast back to the table. There’s a good girl. Ray, honey, you want more bacon? There’s plenty.”

We all sat again at the table: a man, a woman, and a girl. If everything weren’t so awful, it would have been nice to pretend we were a family.

“We have a wonderful couple who live out in the country,” Reverend Rosetta said. “They’ve agreed to have you two come stay with them. There are lots of animals, Lindy—chickens and a couple of horses. Some goats, I think. They have a real nice dog, too. You like animals, right, sugar? They even have peacocks!”

“Are we breaking the law?” I asked. “What’s going to happen to Officer Villareal? Can we call her?”

“Michael’s working on that now, sweet pea,” the reverend said. “Have another pancake, why don’t you?”

“Are they going to find us?” I could hear the TV voices in the other room, all fast talking and official sounding. Too close, too insistent.

“Not if we can help it.” She picked up a pancake with her long fingernails and laid it across my plate, even though I shook my head no. “They don’t call us the Underground Northwest Passage for nothing.”

“What are they saying?” I asked. There were familiar words: Joseph Woods, Columbia Police, something about birds and a girl running away. Were they talking about me?

Pater said, “Hurry up and finish, Lindy. Then go brush your teeth and get your things. We have to get going.”

As I was packing away my towel and toothbrush and yesterday’s clothes, Reverend Rosetta came in and walked to the closet. Inside were so many clothes it reminded me of her kitchen, with things filling every space. She hummed as she pulled hanger after hanger along the rack, like she was looking for something.

“Yes, I think it will do just fine,” she said, finally pulling out a rose-colored dress, lace over silky material. Other than Crystal’s silver one, I’d never owned a dress before. She held it up to me. “Want to try it on?”

“Do I get to keep it?” I asked, afraid to touch the material until I knew for sure.

She snorted like I sometimes do, and didn’t even seem embarrassed. “Well, of course you do, Miss Lindy. Something tells me you didn’t get to pack your Sunday clothes. We’ll see if we can’t find you some good shoes at the church clothing bank. Your daddy looks like he could use some Sunday clothes, too, don’t you think?”

She winked at me, and I said, “Yes, ma’am,” so anxious to try on that dress that I practically pushed her out the door. Pater would have told me to behave, not to dawdle trying on dresses, but she just laughed.

22

O
n Jess’s bedroom TV, the pert young news anchor looked serious in a gray suit and pearls. Jess pulled her wet hair back into an elastic band and sat on the bed to put on her hiking sandals. She’d wear sensible shoes today, by god.

“In breaking news this morning . . .”

The picture changed to the exterior of the North Station House, Officer Madison walking through the employee entrance in her civvies. She didn’t even realize she was being filmed. Jess gasped as a clean-shaven, short-haired Ray appeared next on screen, a driver’s license photo from before he’d gone feral. He’d been handsome. Jess supposed he still was, beneath the hair.

The TV image changed to file footage of the wildlife sanctuary, the forest surrounding it. “The transient Iraq war vet and his daughter have been living . . .”

They know everything,
Jess thought.
Stupid goddamn David Greiner.

“. . . custody of human services, but late last night . . .”

The cell phone rang where she’d left it in the kitchen. Jess ignored it. It was probably her mother.

And there it was: her ID photo from work, the frumpiest picture of her ever taken. The newscaster sounded suspicious when she said, “The girl was last seen in the custody of this woman, who has also disappeared, Columbia police officer Jessica Villareal, a fourteen-year veteran of the force. . . .”

“Fifteen,” Jess said. “And I’m right here.”

The picture changed to the front of her house, with the word LIVE stamped in red in the upper-right corner. A small crowd of her neighbors stood in a clutch to the side.

“Shit,” she said, and clicked off the TV. She stood and holstered her weapon under her shirt, then walked to the kitchen, grabbed her cell phone, and checked her purse for her badge.

She heard a light rapping at the back door and checked again to make sure she had her keys, then opened the door slowly.

“Officer Villareal?” One of the tallest, meanest-looking bik ers she’d ever seen stood at the bottom of three steps, yet still towered over her.

“You’re . . . you’re Michael?” she said. From his voice she’d expected a mild bookkeeper type, a pale, nerdy church guy. The behemoth before her was bald and tattooed and pierced, and well . . . intimidating. How had he not been seen?

He nodded, then motioned for her to follow him along the line of birches that rimmed her side fence. For a large man, he was quick and nimble. They cut through the neighbor’s back-yard and onto the greenbelt, then wound their way along a footpath until they reached a street two blocks from Jess’s house.

He strode quickly toward a parked Harley and handed her a helmet.

“You got any ID or anything?” she asked. “How am I supposed to know you’re legit? You could be some weirdo who saw me on TV this morning.” He looked like the guys she busted for drunk and disorderly outside Patsy’s Tavern at closing time.

He reached inside his leather vest, pulled out a business card. “We really should get going before someone sees us,” he said as she read:
Michael Rogers,Assistant to Rosetta Norton Albert, City of Refuge Church
. “I already had to scare a couple of reporters away. Luckily they assumed I was a garden-variety badass.”

Jess could understand the assumption. “Are we going to the church?” she asked, slipping the card inside her purse.

“We’re on our way to a farm out in wine country, right past Seven Hills.”

“Wine country? I don’t know abou—”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve been sober for eighteen years.” He swung his leg over the bike, settled into the seat. “We’re going to see the reverend and the Wiggses.”

“Oh,” she said, wondering why she trusted him, but the thought of seeing Lindy again clutched at her, compelled her to pull on the helmet and climb onto the back of the bike.

Michael let out the throttle and settled his boots onto foot pegs as they rumbled away from the curb.

They made their way out of her neighborhood, then along back roads until they reached Highway 20. The wind stung her arms as they gained speed. She tried to peek at the speedometer, but he was too large for her to see around.

“I’m doing the speed limit, Officer,” he yelled above the roar.

Jess sat back, her mind racing as quickly as the pavement beneath the tires, so close to her feet, her bare toes. She tried not to let in images of what it would look like, feel like, to crash and scrape along the road.

It was still only seven a.m. Depending how far away this place was, she could be back in town before her noon deadline with the chief, but she knew she wouldn’t be bringing anyone in.

Could the church really help her? Should they? What she had done was technically wrong—she was still cop enough to believe in consequences.
No matter what,
she decided,
I will go to the station house, take my licks.
She’d never feel worthy of being a police officer again, should that be an option, if she didn’t.

As they left the city, Jess tried to relax, to take in the rolling green hills, a few blanketed with juvenile Christmas trees, giving way to fruit orchards and rows of trussed grape vines. Inside the purse on her lap, her cell phone trilled every few minutes, but it wasn’t safe to answer it, so she closed her eyes and held tighter to Michael’s jacket. The sun felt warm on her back; the air smelled of peat and motorcycle fumes. Who could be calling so often? Maybe she should have called Z back and apologized for her rudeness. He was just being nice, and she was no doubt quickly losing friends on the force. She wondered what Ellis and the others were making of all this. What would she think if she woke to one of them on the news, disobeying orders, hiding two people who weren’t suspects in anything, exactly, other than extreme hard luck, but who’d been ordered turned in? She felt the heat in her chest again, drew a deep breath to expel it.

After another twenty minutes, Michael downshifted, slowed, and turned onto a small, barely paved road. After twisting up and over hills of nut orchards and vineyards, they finally pulled in at a dirt driveway, through old stone gateposts and a wall of towering poplars, then downhill to a large white farmhouse. A white dog ran out to greet them, followed by two middle-aged men, the shorter man carrying an orange striped cat.

Michael found a flat spot to park the bike and Jess climbed off, removing the helmet. The dog loped toward her and let her pat it on the head.

“Welcome,” the taller man said, now close enough to shake hands. “I’m Mark. You’re much prettier than your picture on TV.”

Jess cringed; the others laughed. She shook hands with the other man, John, who was short and compact but looked strong and had a grip like a pro wrestler. The men were a couple, she realized, and this was where Ray and Lindy were going to live.

Inside her purse, her cell phone rang again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for it. She looked at the display but didn’t recognize the number.
Reporters,
she thought. That was probably it. At least it wasn’t the chief or Everett. She switched the phone to vibrate and swung her purse back on her shoulder. “I seem to be very popular this morning,” she said.

“Oh, you’re notorious,” John said. “But you did the right thing, you know.”

She pasted on a tight smile. She could only hope. “Where are Ray and Lindy?” She saw no sign of them.

“On their way,” Mark said. “Rosetta just called from the highway. She always gets lost trying to figure out which turnoff to take.”

Jess took a deep breath and looked around. Lindy would love it here. There were trees everywhere, graceful limbs undulating in the breeze above them. Twenty or so yards behind the house sat an elegant old barn, a few orderly chicken coops. White fences delineated pasture area for the two horses that grazed the emerald grass at the far end and a small band of goats by the coops.

“Who wants coffee while we wait for them?” Mark asked.

“Michael and I have to talk, actually,” she said. As much as she’d kill for a cup of coffee, she’d waited long enough for an explanation.

“Come on, I’ll show you around,” Michael said. “These guys built a great apartment down in the barn.”

The two men walked back to the house, and Jess and Michael picked their way down a gravel path surrounded by tall flowers. She quickly checked her messages as they walked along. Sure enough, there were calls from all the local network affiliates and
The Oregonian
. How on earth had they gotten her cell phone number? She shook her head. Everyone wanted to know what was going on with the “forest people,” to know where she was hiding them, to interview them. Knowing Ray, that was the last thing he wanted.

They bypassed large barn doors and walked along a concrete sidewalk, entering the building at the back, and climbed a flight of steps. At the end of a short hall was a door and, through it, an apartment.

The smell of Pine-Sol and freshly laundered linens greeted them. Though sparsely furnished, the apartment was full of light from wide windows and, in the small kitchen, a skylight. Michael walked in and took a teakettle from the stove, filled it with tap water, turned on the burner.