Taking a large bag of corn chips off the top of the stuff in the shopping cart, Gavin contrived to drop it on the floor. “Oops.”
If this was it, there was only one way out. The people who arrested them would not be operating according to the law. They would be Arcadians, and there would be no future for him or for Jessie that didn’t involve a control mechanism. Slavery.
He stooped, ostensibly to pick up the bag of corn chips, though in fact to draw the .45 before Eddie saw him making the move. As he slid his hand under his coat and pulled the pistol, he looked at Jessie again and thought, Oh, God, how much I love you, thought it so hard that he hoped she’d actually hear him telepathically.
36
Maybe ten seconds before Washington and wife will be exactly where they are wanted, ten seconds before Jergen and Dubose would have pulled their peacemakers and shouted Police, the man seems to block the cart from coming in farther, and he drops a bag of corn chips. Jergen does not like the way the dude drops the corn chips.
His pistol is on a shelf under the cash register. As he reaches for it, Washington is coming back up from his stoop, and—shit—he’s got a cannon in his hand.
Just then Dubose, who’s been crouched behind the magazine rack, comes out into the open and doesn’t bother to shout Police, like it would matter even if he did, and just rushes forward, squeezing off two shots, one of which takes Washington in the head. In a death reflex, Washington fires a round that misses Jergen but point-blanks the cash register, and even as the register responds with noises of electronic distress, the woman is so quick that she’s drawn a small gun designed for concealed carry and is emptying it not at Jergen, who is much closer to her, but at Dubose, who is forced to drop and scramble. The expression on the bitch’s face is the most frightening thing that Jergen has ever seen, such horror and hatred and fury and indomitable intent that she seems supernatural, like some creature risen out of an infernal bottomless darkness to collect souls and tie them, wriggling, to her belt. His first shot takes her in the shoulder, staggers her, and his second shot knocks her down.
Customers and market employees are screaming and running for the doors, and Dubose is shouting—“Police! Police! Police!”—just in case some witness has a license for concealed carry and, in an unfortunate misunderstanding of the situation, might open fire on the legitimate authorities. In the wake of the gunshots, all that noise echoes hollowly in Jergen’s ears, as though it’s issuing out of a deep well.
Jergen opens a waist-high gate and exits cashier’s station number three, stepping into the lane for station two. Staying low, pistol in a two-hand grip, heart knocking so hard that his vision pulses, he rounds the display of candy and gum and copies of the National Enquirer. There on the floor behind the full shopping cart is the woman, on her back, head turned toward him, still alive. She seems unable to get up, maybe paralyzed, but with her left hand she is reaching for the dropped pistol.
He moves toward her and kicks the weapon out of her reach and looks down as blood bubbles on her lips. Her eyes are fierce, one brown and one a dazzling green, and if a stare could kill, he would be as dead as her husband. Jergen’s hearing remains temporarily impaired because of all the gunfire, and though the woman’s voice must be weak, it comes to him with piercing clarity. “I’m not done with you,” she says, and then she dies.
Her eyes are fixed on Jergen, as if she can still see him from some far shore.
At first he backs away from her corpse. But then in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he suddenly wonders if they have made a mistake, if perhaps these aren’t the Washingtons, after all, but some innocent couple of similar appearance and with a legitimate reason to be armed. This is a big mess, any way you look at it, but if they aren’t the Washingtons, it’s an even bigger mess, a career-ending mess. As agents of the revolution, a failure this epic will not earn them early retirement; the only way careers like theirs are ended is two bullets in the back of the head or nanoweb enslavement.
He goes to the corpse and squats beside it and, after a brief hesitation, pulls up one leg of the khakis, revealing the Ottobock. Relief floods through him as he looks into her dead eyes and says, “Try to run a ten-K now, bitch.”
1
The frozen sky lay invisible behind the numberless flakes that scaled from it and crystaled the air in their silent white descent.
By two o’clock, they had traveled U.S. Highway 50 west and then south. They exited onto a county road, and from there made their way to an unpaved track that, according to Booth Hendrickson, had been carved out and was maintained by the forest service. The single lane, with periodic lay-bys, had been plowed during the current storm, though probably not during the past hour. With four-wheel drive and tire chains, Jane felt confident that she could navigate it.
The fabled lake lay to the west, a quarter mile from this rough track and still far below, screened from sight as much by forest as by the quiet storm. Lodgepole pine, red fir, white pine, juniper, and mountain hemlock received the snow. In spite of the urgency of this mission, there was a timeless quality to the scene and a sense that all the works of humanity and all the dramas of Jane’s life were but a dream from which she had awakened into this.
Booth had been her captive for well over twenty-four hours. The longer he remained missing, the more effort would be expended in the search for him and the wider the net the Arcadians would cast.
Those in charge of the search didn’t know about the crooked staircase, about what a profound impact it had had on his life and what thing of great value waited for Jane at the bottom of that fearsome descent. Other than Booth and the couple who maintained the estate in the absence of its owner, only his mother, Anabel, and brother were aware that the vertical passage existed. Simon hadn’t been admitted to the Arcadian conspiracy; he knew nothing of the brain implants. And Anabel might not credit the possibility that her elder son would speak about this place where his abject humiliation and formation occurred—unless she knew that Jane possessed ampules of the control mechanism and might have injected mama’s best boy.
Booth hadn’t known of the ampules, however, so perhaps no one else knew, either. And if the most elite of the conspirators did know, it was only Anabel who also knew about the crooked staircase, only Anabel who might in time realize why Jane would go there if she learned of it.
A second track branched off the first, likewise white-mantled but plowed recently enough that it was passable, and she switched to it at Booth’s direction. The way grew steeper. The trees crowded closer. She was just minutes from her destination.
For centuries, for thousands of years, the lake, as well as the forests and alpine meadows surrounding it, had enchanted those who journeyed there. For some, the effect was greater than enchantment; this place had a mystical aura and evoked a feeling that the truth and meaning of the world lay behind fewer veils here than elsewhere.
Only the Great Lakes were larger than Tahoe, but Tahoe was far deeper, shaped by glaciers a million years ago and plunging 1,645 feet at its deepest. The clarity of the water provided visibility to surprising depth, and the coloration under a summer sun transformed it into a vast display of emeralds and sapphires.
The lake never froze, but its cold temperatures greatly slowed decomposition at extreme depth. Seventeen years after he drowned, a diver was found three hundred feet below the surface, his body all but perfectly preserved.
“Stop here,” Booth said, and pointed.
She pulled into a lay-by and put the Explorer in park.