“Stop!” Amanda yelled. Sweat slicked her skin, making her jumpsuit cling to her. “He knows!”
Now the gully was so shallow that Bethany’s hips showed. The lack of cover increased her frenzy. She charged toward a sandy depression, where water presumably gathered during rainy periods. On the opposite side, another gully began.
“You’re not stopping her,” the voice said in Amanda’s ears.
“Trying.” Amanda fought to muster strength, to run even faster. A rock dislodged under her, making her stumble. “Bethany! Stop! Please!”
The urgency in Amanda’s words finally had an effect. Halfway across the depression, Bethany seemed to lose energy. She faltered and turned. Chest heaving, she peered back toward Amanda.
“He can get to you!” Amanda yelled. “I don’t know how, but he can!”
Bethany’s features glistened with sweat. She looked ahead toward the opposite side of the depression and the continuation of the gully. Abruptly, she ran toward it.
“Don’t!” Amanda’s plea was directed to the voice as much as to Bethany.
“She hates open spaces,” the voice said. “It was only a matter of time.”
Amanda strained to increase speed but found it impossible. Like the gap in the mountains beyond, Bethany seemed to recede.
“Better that it happened soon,” the voice told Amanda. “This way, the rest of you will learn not to waste time and strength on futile efforts.”
“No!”
“But I’m disappointed that she didn’t surprise me.”
The moment Bethany reached the continuation of the gully, Amanda felt a shock wave. Amid a roar, Bethany’s gray-covered torso erupted in a spray of red. A hand flew one way while her skull flew another. The vapor of her blood misted the air as parts of her body pelted the ground.
Amanda staggered to a halt, her ears in pain from the explosion. She wavered in shock at the sight of the blood vapor spreading in a sudden breeze. Then the vapor drifted down, speckling the sand.
Amanda felt as if someone kicked the back of her legs from under her. She dropped to her knees. Tears streamed down her face, burning her cheeks.
3
It is a wonderful place, the moor.
Hunched in the back seat of a taxi, Balenger studied the photocopy in his hand, wondering what the hell the paragraph on it meant. A faded copy of a stamp read NYPL HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES LIBRARY. Given the context, he decided that NYPL stood for New York Public Library. He used his cell phone to call information and learned that the Humanities & Social Sciences Library was at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
The Avenue of the Americas was the nearest uptown route from Greenwich Village. Stop-and-go midday traffic slowed the taxi. Frustrated by blaring horns and the lurch of the vehicle, Balenger told the driver to let him out at 40th Street. He paid and ran, relieved to be moving, to find an outlet for his tension.
But impatience wasn’t his only reason for leaving the taxi. He continued to feel shocked by the fire. Someone wanted to stop him from finding Amanda, and that person would almost certainly keep trying.
He ran faster. Feeling exposed on the crowded sidewalk, he glanced behind him, wanting to know if anyone got out of another taxi and hurried in his direction. No one did. He looked ahead just in time to avoid crashing into a man with a briefcase. Veering, he charged through the intersection of 41st Street. A truck beeped and passed close enough for Balenger to feel a rush of air.
Ahead, he saw a crowd on benches amid the trees of Bryant Park. He glanced over his shoulder again and still didn’t see anyone coming after him. Traffic remained motionless.
Turning right, he sprinted to Fifth Avenue and reached the library, a massive stone building, whose wide steps and pillared entrance were guarded by two marble lions.
He hurried through a revolving door and entered a massive hall, where people waited for a guard to examine their purses, knapsacks, and briefcases. As he wiped sweat from his forehead, he got curious looks from some of the people in line. He moved forward, glancing over his shoulder. Feeling seconds tick away, he worked to catch his breath. The high ceiling and stone floor had the echo of a church, but he paid little attention. His sole focus was on people coming through the entrance.
The guard waved him through. After asking directions, Balenger climbed two flights of wide stairs. Off another huge hallway, he reached an information desk.
“May I help?” a spectacled woman asked.
“I hope so.” Balenger gave her the photocopy. “Do you have any idea where this comes from?”
The librarian peered over her glasses, studying the passage.
“It is a wonderful place, the moor,” said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. “You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.”
She sounded puzzled. “Everything else has been blanked out.”
Trying for a simple explanation, Balenger said, “It’s kind of a game.”
The librarian nodded. “Yes, we get that on occasion. Last week, somebody came here with a list for a scavenger hunt. She needed to find a particular novel, but the only clue she’d been given was, ”The sun goes down.“ We finally decided it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.”
The thought occurred to Balenger that the paragraph might indeed be part of a game, one of the crudest anyone ever imagined.
“The problem was, even though people often call us the main branch of the New York City library system, actually we’re a research facility,” the woman said. “We don’t lend books. Patrons can study them only on the premises. I needed to send the game player over to the branch on Fortieth Street.” The librarian continued to study the paragraph. “ ‘It is a wonderful place, the moor.” Interesting.“ She debated for a moment, then motioned to a man at a computer next to her.
He approached.
“Bronte or Conan Doyle?” the woman asked.
After reading the passage, the man nodded. “Those are the two that come to mind.”
“I don’t think it’s Bronte,” the woman said.
“Exactly. Her style is more emotional.”
Balenger gave the woman a quizzical look.
“Mention a moor as a setting, and two novels stand out. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights takes place on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. It’s very atmospheric, Heathcliff talking to Cathy’s ghost as he wanders the moors, that sort of thing. In contrast, the description here is compressed into one sentence: ‘… undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite’… It gets the job done, but what the author seems really to care about are ‘the wonderful secrets’ the moor contains: ’… so mysterious.” That’s the author’s focus. I’d be very surprised if this person didn’t write mysteries. I think this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Hound of the Baskervilles.“
“The Hound of the Baskervilles?”“
“Dartmoor in Devon, England. That’s where most of the novel takes place. In fact, it’s one of the most famous settings in any novel. As I mentioned, we don’t allow books to leave the building, but if you go to the reading room—” She pointed behind her. “—someone will bring you a copy.”
Time, Balenger kept thinking. He made himself appear calm when he thanked her. His experience with Conan Doyle’s detective story was only through an old black-and-white film starring Basil Rathbone. He remembered it as dark and moody with plenty of fog over rugged, sometimes swampy terrain.