“I know that.”
“Good.” Bill peered through the window. The woodshed was around back and she couldn’t see the menfolk, but she heard Moses curse and Tim’s laughing oath and was satisfied.
“Why do you want to go to New Orleans?”
“What?”
Bill turned to see Amelia pointing at the Frommer’s guide to New Orleans lying open on the bunk. “Oh. Why? Why not? Best music, best food in this hemisphere. Who wouldn’t want to go?”
“What’s it like there?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been.”
“When are you going?”
“I don’t know. Sometime. Have to get free of the bar.”
“Dottie’s taking care of the bar right now,” Amelia pointed out.
Bill turned, half laughing, half exasperated. “What’s going on? You want to come?”
Amelia’s eyes lit up. “Sure!”
Bill shrugged. “Okay. Start saving your money for a ticket.”
“Oh.” The light in the girl’s eyes faded. “I don’t have a job.”
“Get one.”
A silence. “Yeah,” Amelia said slowly. “I could do that.”
A rustle of clothing told Bill that the girl was getting dressed. “One more thing.”
“What?”
Bill turned to meet her eyes. “Don’t hurt that boy out there. Not any more than you have to, anyway.”
The girl flushed. “I won’t.”
“Good.”
“Bill-?”
“What?”
“We saw you,” the girl said in a low voice. “You and uncle. On the porch. When we were coming back from the pond.” She sneaked a look through her hair and saw that Bill looked more amused than appalled.
“You did, did you? That must have been an eyeful.”
“I-we-”
“Never mind,” Bill said. “I can guess.” She turned. “It was okay?”
Amelia blushed a deep vivid red this time. “Yes.” She hesitated.
“Go ahead. Tell. Ask. Whatever you need to know.”
“We-well, we did it twice.”
“Ah, to be a teenager again,” Bill murmured.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“It was okay,” Amelia said, the wondering tone back in her voice. “It didn’t even hurt. And the second time… it even feltgood. ”
“It’s supposed to.”
“It is?”
“Yes,” Bill said firmly.
“Oh.”
“Amelia.”
The girl raised her head from contemplation of her clasped hands.
“You’re seventeen, you’ve been to school, you know all the dangers. Hell, you have to know about the STD problems in the Bush, especially AIDS.”
The girl nodded.
“Be careful, okay? Just be careful.”
Amelia stood up, very solemn. “I promise, Bill,” she said, as if she were taking an oath. “I promise I will be careful.”
“I checked your day pack,” Bill said.
Amelia ducked her head, her face flushing. “I thought maybe you did.”
“I notice your prescription runs out this month.”
“I have more at home.” Amelia paused. “My husband doesn’t want kids.”
Bill nodded. “Do you?”
“Yes. Someday. Not now.” The response was automatic, and Bill watched the girl listen to herself say the words. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “I don’t really know that I do want to have kids.”
Bill nodded, as if Amelia had confirmed some inner conclusion. “We have choices about that nowadays. Get the prescription refilled.”
“I will,” Amelia said, still with that look of surprise. “I will,” she said again, more firmly.
There was a noise at the door and Amelia looked alarmed. “Don’t worry,” Bill said, grinning. “This was strictly girl talk.”
Amelia looked relieved.
The door opened and a third woman fell into the room.
At first they couldn’t tell she was a woman, she was so covered in snow and frost and mud. Leaves and twigs were caught in hair so lank and matted they couldn’t tell what color it was. Her blue jeans were soaked through. She was wearing tennis shoes, one of which was missing, and the white anklet on that foot was torn and the flesh beneath bleeding. Her shirt was ripped at the left shoulder, the same with the T-shirt under it, revealing a long tear of flesh, reaching from the top of the shoulder to halfway down the back. A flap of skin hung loose, to show the shoulder bone gleaming whitely.
They were caught motionless in shock. The woman looked up at them and opened her mouth. Her voice was the merest croak of sound. “Help.”
She tried to say more, but couldn’t. “Help,” she said again, and lay her head down on the floor and closed her eyes.
Portage Creek, September 6
The strain of holding the plane more or less level was beginning to tell in her arms and legs. The pedals pushed hard against the soles of her feet, the yoke pulled steadily against the grip of her hands, and she was constantly on the alert, constantly adjusting her limbs to meet the demands the weather was putting on the exterior surfaces of the aircraft.
She risked a look at Liam. He was staring straight ahead with a grim expression. His blue eyes were narrowed, as if in concentration, as if by concentrating on the control panel he could by sheer effort of will make the plane fly straight and true. His knuckles were white where his hands were knotted on the edge of his seat.
She’d taken the Cessna. Heavier plane, more power. Faster, too, although that didn’t seem to matter much. The wind was gusting thirty to thirty-five knots out of the southeast, and the Cessna was being continually buffeted from the right, which meant she continually had to correct for drift.
She glanced down at the GPS, and thanked whatever the gods might be for it. The digital readout recorded their progress. She’d logged in the latitude and longitude of their destination, and it would tell her exactly and precisely when they had arrived, a good thing since they sure as hell weren’t going to see it very far ahead.
So it wasn’t like they were forced into dead reckoning, although the weather on the outside of the cabin made it feel like it. Torn wisps of fog kept the ceiling at a hundred feet. She was maintaining an altitude of fifty feet and even then she wasn’t always sure which way was up. The snow on the ground merged with the clouds and the fog to form a sphere of white all around them. She didn’t look up from the instrument panel. She was afraid to, afraid she would lose all sense of where the earth was, and fly straight into it.
She couldn’t do that. Tim was at fish camp. So was Moses. So were Bill and Amelia, for that matter.
She was following the river in hopes that she would spot the fish camp dock. If she could just locate the cabin, she could buzz it, open the window, yell a warning. Tim, be careful, she thought. Watch your back. Look out for yourself.
They’d only found each other two years ago. Two years filled with joy and laughter, rage and tears. Two years of getting used to sharing her home with an adolescent boy, the equivalent of one gigantic nerve ending rubbing up against the world. She was doing a good job, she was sure she was, but she’d only had him two years. He had just turned thirteen, and she wanted him for another five, she wanted to care for him until it was time for him to go out into the world. She wanted to give him a chance, the same chance her adoptive parents had given her when they rescued her from her birth parents. What was the point of returning to Newenham to live if she couldn’t help out her own?
And she loved him. Tim, oh Tim, please, please be all right. Please let whoever this crazy killer is miss the fish camp. Please let him be lost and stumbling around a hundred miles from here, or on his way to Acapulco. Please let this goddamn fog lift.