Keira's imminent death, nothing else was likely to touch them. "She's receiving therapy," he said.
"And it isn't enough?" Ingraham asked.
Blake shrugged. It hurt to say the words. He could not recall ever having said them aloud. "Shit." Ingraham muttered. "What are we supposed to do with a kid who's already-"
"Shut up," Eli said. "If we've made a mistake, it's too late to cry about it." He glanced back at Keira, then faced Blake. "Sorry, Doc. Her bad luck and ours." He sighed. "Well, you take the good with the bad. We won't hurt her-if you and
Rane do as you're told."
"What are you going to do with us?" Blake asked.
"Don't worry about it. Come on, Rane. Meda's waiting." Rane clung to Blake as she had not for years.
Eli gazed at her steadily, and she stared back but would not move. "Come on, kid," he said softly. "Do it the easy way." Blake wanted to tell her to go-before these people hurt her. Yet the last thing he wanted her to do was leave him. He
was terrified that if they took her, he would never get her back. He stared at the two men. If he had had his gun, he would have shot them without a thought.
"Use your head, Doc," Eli said. "Just slide over to the passenger side. I'll drive. You keep your eyes on Rane. It will
make you feel better. Make you act better, too."
Abruptly, Blake gave in, moved over, pushing Rane. He wanted to believe the gray-skinned black man. It would have been easier to believe him if Blake had had some idea what these people wanted. They were not just one of the local car gangs, obscenely called car families. No one had looked at the money in his wallet. In fact, as he thought about the wallet, Eli tossed it onto the dashboard as though he were finished with it. Were they after more money? Ransom? They did not sound as though they were. And they seemed strangely resigned, as though they did not like what they were doing-almost as though they were under the gun themselves.
Blake hugged Rane. "Watch yourself," he said, trying to sound steadier than he felt. "Be more careful than you usually are -at least until we find out what's going on."
Blake watched Ingraham follow Rane through the muddy downpour, watched her get into the red Mercedes. Ingraham said a few words to the woman, Meda, then exchanged places with her.
When that was done, Eli relaxed. He thrust his gun into his jacket, walked around the Wagoneer as casually as an old
friend, and got in. It never occurred to Blake to try anything. Part of himself had walked away with Rane. His stomach churned with anger, frustration, and worry.
After a moment of spinning its wheels, the Mercedes leaped forward, shot all the way across the highway, and onto another dirt road. The Wagoneer followed easily. Eli patted its dashboard as though it were alive. "Sweet-running car,"
he said. "Big. You don't find them this size any more. Too bad."
"Too bad?"
"Strongest-looking car we saw parked along the highway. We didn't want some piece of junk that would stall or get stuck on us. One tank full and the other nearly full of ethanol. Damn good. We make ethanol."
"You mean it was my car you wanted?"
"We wanted a decent car with two or three healthy, fairly young people in it." He glanced back at Keira. "You can't win
'em all." "But why?"
"Doc, what's the kid's name?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Keira. Blake stared at him.
"Tell her she can get up. She's been awake since Ingraham took your wallet."
Blake turned sharply, found himself looking into Keira's large, frightened eyes. He tried to calm himself for her sake. "Do you feel all right?" he asked.
She nodded, probably lying.
"Sit up," he said. "Do you know what's happened?"
Another nod. If Rane talked too much, Keira didn't talk enough. Even before her illness became apparent, she had been a timid girl, easily frightened, easily intimidated, apparently slow. Patience and observation revealed her intelligence, but most people wasted neither on her.
She sat up slowly, staring at Eli. His coloring was as bad as her own. She could not have helped noticing that, but she said nothing.
"You get an earful?" Eli asked her.
She drew as far away from him as she could get and did not answer.
"You know your sister's in that car up ahead with some friends of mine. You think about that." "She's no danger to you," Blake said angrily.
"Have her give you whatever she's got in her left hand."
Blake frowned, looked toward Keira's left hand. She was wearing a long, multicolored, cotton caftan-a full, flowing garment with long, voluminous sleeves. It was intended to conceal her painfully thin body. At the moment, it also concealed her left hand.
Keira's expression froze into something ugly and determined.
"Kerry," Blake whispered.
She blinked, glanced at him, finally brought her left hand out of the folds of her dress and handed him the large manual screwdriver she had been concealing. Blake could remember misplacing the old screwdriver and not having time to look for it. It looked too large for Keira's thin fingers. Blake doubted that she had the strength to do any harm with it.
With a smaller, sharper instrument, however, she might have been dangerous. Anyone who could look the way she did
now could be dangerous, sick or well.
Blake took the screwdriver from her hand and held on to the hand for a moment. He wanted to reassure her, calm her, but he thought of Rane alone in the car ahead, and no words would come. There was no way everything was going to be all right. And he had always found it difficult to lie to his children.
After a moment, Keira seemed to relax-or at least to give up. She leaned back bonelessly, let her gaze Hicker from Eli to the car ahead. Only her eyes seemed alive.
"What do you want with us?" she whispered. "Why are you doing this?" Blake did not think Eli had heard her over the buffeting of the wind and the hissing patter of the rain. Eli obviously had all he could do to keep the car on the dirt road
and the Mercedes in sight. He ignored completely the long, potentially deadly screwdriver Blake gripped briefly, then
dropped. He was a young man, Blake realized-in his early thirties, perhaps. He looked older-or had looked older before Blake got a close look at him. His face was thin and prematurely lined beneath its coating of dust. His air of weary resignation suggested an older man. He looked older, Blake thought, in much the same way Keira looked older. Her disease had aged her, as apparently his had aged him-whatever his was.
Eli glanced at Keira through the rearview mirror. "Girl," he said, "you won't believe me, but I wish to hell I could let you go."
"Why can't you?" she asked.
"Same reason you can't get rid of your leukemia just by wishing."
Blake frowned. That answer couldn't have made any more sense to Keira than it did to him, but she responded to it. She gave Eli a long thoughtful look and moved slowly toward the middle of the seat away from her place of retreat behind
Blake.
"Do you hurt?" she asked.
He turned to look back at her-actually slowed down and lost sight of the Mercedes for a moment. Then he was occupied with catching up and there was only the sound of the rain as it was whipped against the car.
"In a way," Eli answered finally. "Sometimes. How about you?" Keira hesitated, nodded.