I leapt out of the crowd and hit Nat hard, throwing my arms around her waist and knocking us into a pile on the floor. There were screams above us and a rush of bodies. Nat struggled to get out of my grip, finally managing to lift her hand free and bring it up between us. The trigger flashed. Her thumb fell toward it, but I wrenched it out of her hand before she could press it.
Hands fell on my arms and back and I went flying away from her. A black mass of security grabbed Nat and pulled her away while she thrashed, eyes wild, screaming.
“What did you do?! What did you do?!”
The soldiers tossed me aside and I crashed into the floor on the other side of the Lighthouse. I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me up, and I suddenly found myself staring into the wryly smiling face of Nathan Hill.
“My hero,” he said.
A soldier appeared at Hill’s side. “Sir, the Feds are heating up at the front. If they know you’re here—”
“Take the girl to Shrike with us,” he said. “We’ll talk to her there. Our hero is coming with us too, so make room.”
“Yes, sir!”
Hill clapped me on the back. “Can’t let anything happen to my rescuer, can I?”
Another soldier appeared to hustle us off toward the exit. The battle sounds outside were louder now and closer. I looked over my shoulder as we ran. Rhames and the other security guards had Nat on her knees, her robe and bomb vest stripped off, her hands cuffed behind her back. Her eyes burned through the air at me. I turned and followed Hill.
A line of vehicles was idling behind the Lighthouse — two Humvees with .50 cals on top and a Stryker armored personnel carrier. A soldier patted me down thoroughly, then pushed me into the back of the Stryker. I settled onto a bench and watched out the open hatch as the horizon north of Kestrel lit up with tracer fire and the glare from artillery strikes. A flight of Apaches and Kiowas spun up and lifted off their pads, angling out toward the front.
Hill conferred with a group of soldiers just out of earshot. He talked to them quietly and slowly, turning his attention to each in turn. Behind them, Rhames and a scrum of soldiers dragged a bound Nat into an armored Humvee. I imagined her sitting in the back of it, a would-be assassin surrounded by soldiers who looked at her target as only one step removed from God. Hill told them he wanted to talk to her, but that would only keep her alive a little while longer. My plan had bought us some time but if we were going to get out of this, I had to stay focused.
Once Nat was locked away, Rhames broke off from the group and came toward Hill. I pushed myself into a dark corner, out of sight.
Had Rhames recognized me? And if he had, would saving Hill’s life be enough to keep me and Nat alive until I could get to the next part of my plan?
The back hatch of the Stryker slammed shut. I looked up to find Nathan Hill was sitting on a bench directly across from me. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His hands, surprisingly thin and small, were clasped in front of him. Scars stretched from his knuckles up into his sleeve.
“So,” Hill said with his ever-present, gentle smile. “Why don’t you tell me about Benjamin Quarles.”
24
I stared at him, openmouthed, without words.
“Sergeant Rhames told me his version. I’d like to hear yours.”
Anything I said could cause those hands clasped in front of him to reach out and take me by the throat. I grasped for a lie but nothing came.
“Callum?”
“I… found a dog,” I said. “Quarles was going to kill him. Me too.”
“And so you killed Quarles first.”
I swallowed back a dry spot in my throat and nodded.
“How did you feel?” he asked. “After you killed him?”
I saw Quarles lying there on his belly and smelled the sunbaked dust of the market mixing with the metallic stink of his blood.
“Sick,” I said.
“But later? After that had passed.”
Hill waited, but no words came.
“You knew you had done the right thing,” Hill said. “Didn’t you? Rhames told me a little about the man. The things they found out about him once he was gone. He was so far off Path he never should have been in that place. People like that” — Hill looked toward the back of the Stryker, his eyes far away — “my father was a shoe salesman, and to relax after a long day at the shop, he liked to garden.”
Hill saw my look and chuckled, caught.
“Yes. It’s true. I lied to the girl with the explosives who was trying to kill me. There was a vacant lot near the house where I grew up. It had been an old basketball court, I think, only then it was just cracked concrete and trash, and Dad decided that the neighborhood would be better if it was a garden. He was a good gardener, but his biggest problem was weeds. He’d poison them, but they’d always come back, choking off everything he had planted. Eventually he had to get down on his knees and tear every one of them out by the roots with his bare hands.”
The blue of Hill’s eyes seemed to pulse in the dim light, binding us together.
“Is that true, sir?”
Hill smiled. “Does it matter?”
The Stryker shook as it took another hill.
“Good men try to do good things,” he said. “Great nations try to make the lives of their people better, but there are weeds that hold them back. Weeds like Mr. Quarles. Are we supposed to value the weeds above the garden?”
I kept my eyes steady on Hill’s and slowly shook my head.
“But it wasn’t just that,” Hill said. “Was it? Why you left, I mean.”
“No.”
“Mr. Rhames said Captain Monroe was about to make you take part in the Choice.”
The Stryker shook from an explosion nearby and then accelerated. Hill didn’t even flinch. I dug my hand into the bench beneath me to steady myself.
“Stupid,” Hill said. “The Choice is necessary, but it’s not a place for children. I don’t blame you for protecting yourself against a monster, Callum. I don’t blame you for running, either. Sometimes I think you have to stray far from your Path in order to find your way back again. It’s a truth not many people understand, but you do. Don’t you?”
There were helicopters above us now, at least three, flying low. The Stryker strained up a hill, then fell onto a roadway, and the ride went smooth and fast. Hill was waiting. I said that I did.
Hill reached across and took my hand in his. His grip was strong and firm. My fingertips lay along the waxy plain of his scars.
“You were sent to me in a time of need, Cal. I can’t repay you for my life, but if there’s anything I can offer you, tell me what it is and it’s yours.”
This was it. I knew I should play the selfless novice and deny him at first, but there was no time for that.
“The girl’s name is Natalie,” I said. “We came to Kestrel at the same time. You were right. Her parents had just been killed. She was in pain, confused. The Feds took advantage of her. They made her do this. She can find the Path. I know it. Please spare her life.”
“She’s been in contact with the Feds, Callum. She has to talk. Tell us whatever she knows about their plans.”
“I can talk to her,” I said. “She’ll tell us everything she knows.”
“And she has to choose,” he said. “She may have done it before coming to Kestrel, but she needs to make a real choice for the Path. An honest one.”
Somehow I managed to not let my eyes slip from Hill’s.
“She will,” I said. “I promise.”
The Stryker came to rest and the hatch fell. The war was far enough away that I could only hear an occasional thump, like a book falling from a shelf. I searched for the Humvee carrying Nat, but it wasn’t anywhere to be found.