The last time I was here I’d learned quickly that when night fell I needed to stay in my room or risk seeing things I couldn’t explain.
Like Sawyer coming in from the desert, naked and covered in blood, his eyes wild, unfocused, inhuman. That made a lot more sense now than it had then.
We’d never spoken of it, of course. His expression had made me believe that if I did, he’d have killed me. I still believed it.
Once inside, I found no trace of Jimmy beyond the closed door of the first bedroom. I assumed he was asleep or at least pretending to be, but I didn’t check. Right now any contact with Jimmy would lead to an argument— when didn’t it?—and an argument could lead to—
My mind filled with the images of all that might transpire in a bedroom with Jimmy Sanducci. But doing those things in Sawyer’s bed, in Sawyer’s house, with Sawyer right next door…
Wasn’t going to happen.
I fell asleep easily. That should have been my first clue. It usually took me a good half hour, sometimes more, to drift off. But that night my head was so full of information, problems, men, I shouldn’t have slept at all. The instant I closed my eyes, I found myself in Ruthie’s world.
The house was full again. Though the sounds of children at play should have lifted my spirits, the knowledge that they were here because they were dead put a damper on things.
I skirted the front yard and headed for the back. The first kid I saw wore a Little League cap. Why did it look both familiar and different?
“Because it’s clean,” I murmured. The last time I’d seen that hat it had been black with blood.
Now the insignia could be read as a huge red C on a bright blue background, the cubs. Another team that annoyed the hell out of me.
I stood outside the gate and watched the children play. I recognized something about each and every one of them. It didn’t take long to understand that these children had once lived in Hardeyville.
Ruthie’s sadness the last time I’d dreamed of her made sense. She’d known they were coming. She’d known I would be too late to save them.
Guilt washed over me once more, but there was nothing I could do except try my best to make certain the same thing didn’t happen again.
The distant cry of a baby had me glancing at the house. Ruthie came through the back door with a squirming bundle. I didn’t remember a baby in that field house—thank God. That might have sent me into gibber-jabberville along with Jimmy.
I tilted my head at the thought. Maybe Jimmy had seen the baby. Or—
I had a sudden flash of a pastel green room with gi-raffes and elephants cavorting across the brand-new wallpaper. Ah, hell.
Ruthie bent and placed the bundle in a carriage, murmuring softly. The child quieted.
“You gonna come in?” she asked without turning around. “Or you gonna keep standin’ out there starin’ like a fool?”
I came in.
Several of the children stopped what they were doing. A few of them waved. The little boy in the Cubs hat kicked me in the shin. I guess I deserved it.
“David!” Ruthie said sharply. “It wasn’t her fault.”
He scrunched up his face, mutiny on the way, but when Ruthie started across the grass in our direction he caved, running off to join a game of tag already in progress.
“Why?” I asked when she reached me. “Why send me there when it was already too late to help?”
“Some things are meant to be. No matter what we do, we can’t change them.”
“How could that be meant? What kind of God does that?”
Ruthie smacked me in the mouth. I guess I had it coming too.
“You won’t stand on sacred ground and blaspheme, Lizbeth. You won’t blaspheme at all.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She shot me a glare. “I mean, no, ma’am.”
“Everyone has their time. There’s nothing that can be done if God is calling them home.”
I did believe that. You couldn’t be a cop for very long and not. Stray bullets missing one woman just because she’d ducked to pick up her child. Not her time. Another equally stray round killing a second woman for exactly the same reason. Must have been her time.
I’d seen a hundred examples just like that, both on the job and off it. Terminal cancer disappearing without a trace. Perfectly healthy thirty-year-olds dropping dead on the street. Was the universe that random? I’d had to say no, even before I’d seen this place.
“How do you know it was their time?” I asked. “How do you know that it wasn’t my fault, that I wasn’t good enough?”
“They were dead before I showed you the location. They were already dead when it was shown to me. How could you have done anything more than what you did?”
Some of my sadness eased, though not all. I couldn’t look at this playground full of children gone to heaven too soon and not feel guilty for every birthday I’d ever had.
“You did what you were supposed to do,” Ruthie continued. “You killed the Nephilim in Hardeyville. You saved the next town on their list, the next person who might have innocently crossed their path.”