“What makes you say that?” Dryden asked.
Holly answered before Gaul could. “Under questioning in El Sedero, Rachel made her intentions toward me very clear. She has no interest in making me commit suicide. Remember how locking works: I would actually want to kill myself, in that final moment. That’s no good, for her.” Holly’s voice almost cracked on the next part. “Rachel wants to kill me. Really kill me. She wants to be looking me right in the eyes at the end.”
A silence fell over the huge room.
“I’m not naive, you know,” Holly said. “I know what I’m volunteering for.”
She went quiet again.
“That’s it for the briefing,” Gaul said. “We put you two in the farmhouse and you stay there. Holly’s employer in Amarillo will be given the address and a fake explanation for her departure. Rachel will easily get that information once she’s … herself again. Once her memory comes back. Beyond that, we wait.”
“Rachel’s going to see through that setup like it’s cling wrap,” Dryden said. “She’s going to know the farmhouse is a trap.”
“Yes,” Gaul said. “She was always going to find out anyway. When she’s close enough to lock the two of you, she’ll hear your thoughts. It would be impossible for you to hide why you’re really there.”
“So why the hell would she go for it?” Dryden asked.
“Maybe she won’t,” Gaul said, “but I expect her to. This time around she’ll know it’s a trap. She can watch for its teeth. Drones, for example—you can spot them with the right equipment, which she and Audrey can probably get. So those are out. Knowing it’s a trap may give Rachel confidence. She might think she can outsmart us.”
“She might be right,” Dryden said.
Gaul simply nodded.
“And Audrey’s going to just let her take this risk?” Dryden asked.
“Do you really suppose Audrey’s in charge of her?” Gaul said. “That she and Sandra were still calling the shots, after all these years? Here are three people: Two of them can hear thoughts across a room; the third can make anyone in the nearest mile do anything she can imagine. Over time, who do you think would emerge as the alpha?”
Dryden thought about that. It clashed so vividly with his own understanding of Rachel that it hadn’t even occurred to him.
“Don’t assume you really know her,” Gaul said. “We know what the real Rachel wants with Holly. As far as how she’ll feel about you, don’t even try to guess.”
The real Rachel.
Seeing the effect of that notion on him, Holly stood from her chair. “I’m like you,” she said. “I know what she would’ve been, if none of these things had ever happened to her. I believe she can be that way again.”
“Then let’s go,” Dryden said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Marcus Till rolled his old hatchback to the end of his driveway, stopped at the turnout, and stared back at the trailer he had called home for all his adult life. The place wasn’t much to look at, but it was his. He watched it and wondered if he would ever see it again, and then he pulled onto the county two-lane and headed east toward town, and didn’t look back.