In Borrego Springs, wherever there are not vast expanses of concrete and blacktop, there are even bigger expanses of bare, sandy earth. On three sides, mountains rise in the distance, and on the fourth side, they loom closer, barren crags of rock as forbidding as the cliffs where Zeus chained Prometheus and sent an eagle to tear out his liver every day, for the crime of giving fire to humanity. Desert surrounds the town and intrudes everywhere, spotted with withered scrub, no doubt abounding with rattlesnakes, poisonous lizards, and tarantulas the size of basketballs. The strip shopping centers and the standalone businesses are landscaped with pebbles, cactuses, and curious arrangements of rocks that seem intended to convey some mystical message.
Clusters of dusty trees are planted close to the sides of houses to shade them. In the business district, however, there are little more than widely separated palms rising from small cutouts in blacktop and concrete, casting meager patches of shade. They look pathetic, desperate, as though they long to be dug up, root-boxed, and hauled on a truck to Florida.
Sun glares off bare earth, pavement, buildings, and windows, which store the heat and radiate it back. The entire town is like one giant pizza oven.
The only grass seems to be in the heart of Borrego Springs, in what is called Christmas Circle, a park with a comparative wealth of trees, mostly palms and evergreens, encompassed by a roundabout from which seven streets radius off like spokes from the hub of a wheel.
Jergen feels displaced, foreign, shipwrecked on a strange shore. A pizza-and-beer restaurant. Taco shop. Mexican grill and bar. Coffee shop. Liquor store. He sees no evidence of a French or Northern Italian restaurant, or any place with refined Mediterranean cuisine. Not even sushi. He suspects that every eatery in town will accept a customer in T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. Looking through an art-gallery window, he does not see one item that fits any definition of art known to him. Everywhere are pickups, Jeeps, and SUVs. Although summer is months away, everyone has a tan, as if they’ve never heard of melanoma, and they’re weirdly sociable. Most people whom they pass on foot, total strangers, speak to them—“Beautiful day,” and “Good afternoon,” and “Have a nice day!”—which is the most alien thing about the place, though not to Dubose, who smiles and returns the greetings.
“Why’re you talking to strangers like you know them?” Carter finally asks. “We shouldn’t be calling attention to ourselves.”
“You’re calling attention to yourself by not speaking when spoken to.”
“They’re strangers. What do I care if they think it’s a nice day or want me to have one? What’s wrong with them, anyway? Why’re they so concerned I shouldn’t have a crappy day?”
“Just relax, Carter Northrup Jergen the third, and look for something out of the ordinary.”
“Everything here is out of the ordinary. And I’m the fourth, not the third.”
“That explains a lot.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The quality of any gene pool,” Dubose said, “is adversely affected by the number of generations in which unfortunately few new bloodlines have been introduced.”
Jergen considers commenting to the effect that the Northrup and Jergen families do not, unlike some, have numerous pairs of married cousins in the family tree. But he’s too hot and too afflicted with desert-inspired ennui to get into a tit for tat.
31
The stress of leaving their comfortable life behind, the chase in the desert, and a night without sleep left Gavin with bloodshot eyes, a stiff neck, various sore muscles, and a general fatigue against which he had to struggle to remain alert. For breakfast, they’d eaten PowerBars, nothing for lunch; now every edible item that Jessie added to the shopping cart made his stomach growl.
A month’s supplies for three people and two dogs would require two grocery carts piled high with goods, which meant both Gavin and Jessie would be too preoccupied to be constantly, adequately on guard. The solution was to split the task between the town’s two main markets, buying only canned and packaged goods in the first, more canned goods and all the perishables in the second, a single piled-high cart per store.
In the first market, Jessie pushed the cart, and Gavin tagged along, commenting on the prices and pretending to quibble about brand choices, trying not to be obvious when he scoped out the other shoppers to make sure nobody seemed to be taking an unusual interest in them.
He didn’t think their photographs were on TV. The Arcadians wouldn’t want the media to know that those sheltering Jane Hawk’s son had been identified. The bastards never intended to rescue the boy; they meant to capture him. If the authorities made an official announcement, they would thereafter have to operate by the book and place Travis with Child Welfare Services, whereupon Jane’s in-laws—Clare and Ancel Hawk, in Texas—would seek custody. Considering that he was a cute five-year-old who’d recently lost his father and whose mother was the most-wanted fugitive in America, the human-interest factor would ensure a media frenzy. Any judge who ruled against the grandparents would be a villain in the public’s eye, create sympathy for Jane, and raise the suspicion that there might be more to her story than the carefully crafted image of a “beautiful monster” who had sold her country’s most important, if unspecified, secrets to an enemy power, killing numerous people along the way. So the grandparents would be given custody. And sooner rather than later, to regain control of the boy, corrupt authorities would inject Clare and Ancel with brain implants, the worst of all possible outcomes for Jane. No, the bad guys would not risk losing control of the media narrative; they would keep the hunt for Gavin and Jessie out of the news.
Everything went smoothly in the first market. In the parking lot, they transferred their purchases from the cart to the trunk of the Honda. They drove a short distance to the second establishment.
32
As they are strolling around a little shopping complex, Jergen suddenly feels revitalized when he does indeed see something out of the ordinary. About fifty feet ahead of them, a black couple in their thirties crosses the parking lot and approaches the entrance to a market. Jergen can’t clearly see the man’s face, but his height and body type are right for Gavin Washington; the guy is bald, but maybe he shaved his head. The woman appears to be black, which Jessica Washington isn’t; she could be wearing a wig. What’s out of the ordinary about them is the same thing that makes Jergen and Dubose different from everyone else they’ve seen in Borrego Springs: On this hot afternoon, both the man and woman are wearing sport coats, and the coats are cut roomy enough to conceal weapons.
As the two disappear into the market, Dubose says, “But she has her own legs.”
“She’s wearing full-length khakis. How do you know what’s under them?”
“She’s walking like people with real legs walk.”
“Because she’s got Ottobocks.”
“She’s got what?”
“She uses blade-runner legs when she’s in races. Other times she uses Ottobock X-Threes.” Jergen spells O-t-t-o-b-o-c-k. “Evidently you didn’t read everything in the background report on the bitch.”
Dubose is unrepentant. “Background reports are written by deskbound pussies who believe they’re gonna write a novel one day and win a Pulitzer. I skim their flowery shit.”
“Avoiding the flowery shit,” Jergen says, “here’s the essence: Each prosthetic knee has multiple sensors, a gyroscope, terrific hydraulics, a microprocessor, software, a resistance system, and a battery. She can run reasonably well, walk backward, climb steps, and look natural doing it.”
“So you think that’s them?”
“What do you think?” Jergen asks.
Dubose frowns. “I think we should have a closer look.”
33
Jessie kept checking her wristwatch, thinking about Travis at the house with just the dogs and the pepper spray. She didn’t worry that the people hunting for him would find him. But there was always the possibility of a fire. Or an earthquake. Or he might cut himself somehow, on something, and be bleeding badly.