All the pain she’d caused in her life. What was wrong with her? She’d been around for like a quarter century… Jesus, you’d think I’d be able to get something right by now.
“Uncle Luke.” An urgent-sounding knock on the door interrupted her. In a surge of panic, she wrapped her arms around Katie.
“Wait!” she said in a fierce whisper. “Don’t answer that!” But then a voice called from the other side.
“Luke! It’s me—Matt!” Poppy relaxed, but only a little. Uncle Matt. That was okay—she hoped.
Uncle Luke gave her a strange look, then opened the door. Uncle Matt, a thinner, bearded version of Uncle Luke, stepped in, all excited and talking a blue streak.
“Luke, there’s been men in town asking about—” His voice cut off as he spotted Poppy and Katie.
“Hi, Uncle Matt.”
His eyes widened. “Is that you. Poppy?” She nodded.
He gulped. “Then it’s true. People are looking for you. They say they’re from the government and that you—”
“Don’t believe them,” she said, quickly overcoming her shock. How could anyone—Mac, the feds, anyone— know to look for her here?
“Not even about being from the government.” She gave them a slightly cleaned-up version of events, something to the effect that she and Katie had witnessed a crime and the bad guys were trying to shut them up. She was trying to get Katie back home to her dad but her plans kept getting messed up.
“So those guys who’ve saying they’re feds might not be the real thing?” Uncle Luke said.
Poppy nodded and hid a smile. Announcing you were from the federal government—or any government, for that matter—was one sure way to get people in these parts to clam up.
“You always were trouble. Poppy,” Uncle Matt said. “You went and broke your father’s heart. You know that, don’t you.”
“Easy, Matt,” Uncle Luke said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We been through all that. What we got to do now is put her someplace where no one’ll find her till we straighten out who’s who.”
“That’s easy enough,” Uncle Matt said. “Hide her with the Appletons.” Poppy would have leaped off the sofa if Katie hadn’t been on her lap.
“Oh, no! Not them!”
“Where else you gonna stay, girl?” Uncle Matt said.
“They’ll be checking every Mulliner in the pines. But nobody’ll be checking the Appletons, even if they could find them.”
Oh, Jesus, she thought. Not the Appletons.
“He’s right. Poppy,” Uncle Luke said. “I’ll lead you out there come first light. Soon as I can see the road. Don’t worry. They won’t turn you away. You’re kin.” She knew. And the thought made her queasy. She’d almost rather face Mac again than move in with the Appletons.
22
Bob Decker lay in his creaky motel bed and glanced again at the glowing numerals on the clock radio.
Almost midnight. He needed sleep, dammit. They’d all be up and moving in five hours or so.
But Gerry Canney’s suspicions about Dan Keane kept echoing off the inner walls of his skull.
And maybe he hates them so much that he doesn’t want to stop fighting them…
What was the one thing all his years in the Secret Service had taught him? Never take anything for granted.
Which meant he couldn’t take Dan Keane for granted.
As much as he doubted—loathed—the possibility, he’d worked out a plan to check out Keane. But he couldn’t do it alone.
He reached for the phone and dialed Canney’s room.
Tuesday
1
“Where are we?” Katie said, staring out the panel truck’s side window.
“We’re in the woods, honey bunch. Like deep in the woods.” Poppy squinted through the windshield into the dim predawn light as she followed her uncle’s pickup along a narrow, winding back road. Weeds growing in the mound between the sandy ruts scraped along the undercarriage.
The forty-foot scrub pines crowded close to the road, leaning over it, seeming to open ahead as she approached, and close in behind as she passed.
She’d been out here a number of times as a girl with her dad when he’d make a run to bring the Appletons some Christmas pies or stock up on their applejack, but she’d never learned the way. Never wanted to. She’d been a passenger those times and had never noticed how one stretch of road looked pretty much like every other, almost as if they were driving in circles.
She wished she could like turn on her headlights or something, but Uncle Luke had said it was safest to keep them off—otherwise he would have brought her out here last night.
Thank God for little favors. Appletons by day were bad enough, but Appletons by night…
She shuddered.
“It makes me feel lonely out here,” Katie said.
“It is lonely. But some folks don’t get lonely like us. And some folks don’t like to have much to do with other folks, so they like it out here.” And some folk shouldn’t be seen by the rest of us.
At least no one would find Katie and her out here— not in a million years. But that cut both ways. She was just as lost out here as anyone else—safe but trapped.
Uncle Luke finally made a sharp right turn and pulled to a stop in a small clearing. Four other pickups in various stages of rust rot were parked any which way in the sand. Poppy’s truck brought the total to six.
“All right now,” Uncle Luke said as he helped her and Katie from the truck. In his free hand he held a gallon jug and the sleeping bag he was lending them. “Stick close to me until they know who we are.”
“They don’t know we’re coming?” Poppy’s stomach was cinched into a double granny knot as she looked around. Trees. Nothing but trees and sand and scrub brush… and a path leading away through the brush.
“How was I supposed to let them know?”
“You didn’t—?” She stopped herself. She’d been about to say something about calling them, but remembered there were like no phone lines out here. No electricity, no running water, either. “Never mind.”
She carried Katie along the path, keeping close behind her uncle. At least the light was better now. The cloudless sky was turning a pale blue as the path moved onto an upslope. Going to be another beautiful sunny day.
“Are these more uncles we’re visiting?” Katie said.
“Oh, no,” Poppy told her. “I’m not related to—”
“ ‘Course you are,” Uncle Luke said.
“Well, sure,” she said, wishing her uncle would shut up. “Everybody in the pines is related one way or another. I meant—”
“No, these are real kin. My great-grandfather Samuel— your great-great-grandfather—married off his sister Anna to Jacob Appleton way back when. These folk are your cousins.” Poppy wanted to kick her uncle in the butt. Damn! Why’d he have to go and say that sort of stuff in front of Katie? She didn’t want the little thing to know she shared blood with the Appletons.
Suddenly Uncle Luke stopped and Poppy bumped into his back.
“Hello to the house!” he called.
Poppy jumped as a voice shouted from no more than ten feet to their left. “Who the hell’s out here so goddamn early in the mornin‘?”
“It’s me—Luke Mulliner. I got my niece Poppy with me, and she’s got a little one with her.” A grizzled-looking guy who could have been sixty or could have been eighty, skinny as the scrub pine he’d been hiding behind, stepped into the open. He held his shotgun ready while he gave them the once over.
And Poppy gave him her own once-over. His overalls were worn through in spots—so fashionable in Soho, but this was the real thing. He wore worn sneakers with no socks, and his ankles were filthy. His hands weren’t much better. His left eye seemed to be stuck looking at his nose while his gray hair shot from his scalp in tufts. His back was bent and twisted, which made him lean forward and to the right.