I stopped, shaking my head. “I don’t…” I tried to control my breathing. “Why would he betray us?”
“He knew everything we were doing,” said Nathan, “and he had the time and the means to tip Rack off. Dammit, John, he had hours alone with Brooke, for weeks on end, to be seduced by whatever promises the Withered were making.”
“Seduced?”
“Trujillo practically lived over there, and you honestly think he didn’t know about the letters she was sending? I’m the one who found them, not him—if I hadn’t been there to force the search, we might never have found out about them. And now we’ve been betrayed and he’s disappeared, and there’s no way that’s a coincidence.”
“Trujillo wouldn’t just turn like that,” I said, though I knew as I said it that I couldn’t be sure. “He worked as a profiler for years—he put dozens of serial killers in jail.”
“Because he trained himself to think like them,” Nathan countered. “Obviously some of it rubbed off, and now a few talks with Nobody, maybe a talk or two with Rack directly, was all he needed to tip over the edge.”
I stopped on a corner, looking at the street signs: Leonard and Morgan. Whiteflower was still miles away. “I’m going to try to grab a bus, but I’m still at least a half an hour out. If Trujillo is the traitor and you’re not dead, he’ll be going after Brooke next.”
“He won’t kill her, he’ll just take her to join them.”
“You think that’s better?” I asked. I turned and started jogging toward the nearest major street. I was covered with Diana’s blood; I’d have to find some way to clean up, or at least hide it. “Do you still have a gun?”
“Are you kidding? With all the crap we’ve been through I don’t let that thing out of my reach even to shower.”
“Get Brooke and get out. Take her somewhere we’ve never been before—a Denny’s or something, something that’s open all night—and make sure you walk. Your car is traceable, especially to someone with Trujillo’s police contacts. Call me when you have her, and I’ll call you when I’m close. And Nathan?”
“Yeah?”
“Brooke is literally, without exaggeration, the only thing I have left in my life. If you let anything happen to her, you’ll wish Rack had gotten to you before I do.”
*
I met up with Nathan and Brooke in an old movie theater, where they huddled in the back row while a late night horror movie flickered on the screen. There were only a handful of other people in the theater, most of them either high or making out in the corners. I sat down next to Brooke; she was dressed in her plain cotton pajamas, with big rubber boots and Trujillo’s long trench coat over them. Trujillo was a wide man, and it dwarfed her like a circus tent.
Brooke grabbed my hand. “I missed you.” She stopped, frowning, and held my hand up to the faint light from the screen. “Your hands are sticky, here between the fingers.” She peered closely. “You have blood on you.”
I nodded. “I don’t know if the guy at the ticket counter noticed, or if the police even have time to respond if he calls it in. Either way, we shouldn’t hang around here much longer.”
“Where are we going?” asked Nathan.
“Did you find Trujillo?” I asked.
“I don’t like him,” said Brooke.
Nathan shook his head. “No sign of him at Whiteflower or the office.” He held up a cell phone. “I’ve got his phone.”
“Too bad,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind calling him if he ever came back to get it.”
“You want to talk to him?”
“You don’t?” I asked. “The least he could do is tell us why he turned.”
Nathan swore. “I don’t even care anymore. What’s our plan to get out of town?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “We can’t trust any of our own homes, any of our own cars; we can’t go anywhere Rack might be expecting us to go. Even the bus station out of town is too risky.”
“That leaves stealing a car,” said Nathan, “do you even know how to do that?”
“I do,” said Brooke.
“If we steal a car then Rack and the police will be looking for us,” I said. “We need to go to the one place no one’s going to expect us.”
Nathan frowned. “Back to the crime scene?”
“To the mortuary,” I said. “Elijah’s car is still there from the night he was captured, so he’ll go straight—”
“Absolutely not,” said Nathan.
“He’s not a traitor,” I insisted, “but Rack knows we think he is, and that makes him the only person we can trust right now. His entire cover in Fort Bruce is blown, so he’s probably just as desperate to leave town as we are. If we get to him soon, we can leave with him.”
“Are we talking about Meshara?” asked Brooke. “He’s so sad.”
“I don’t like it,” said Nathan. “He’s a Withered—Brooke is half Withered, for crying out loud.”
“Keep your voice down,” I urged.
“Trusting the Withered is what got us into this mess in the first place,” Nathan hissed.
“Do you have any better ideas?”