Worse than that?
“Goddammit.” Through the mask, the mutter sounded almost animal.
The chopper was louder now. He looked up and saw it coming north over the city lights, less than two miles out.
He got to Rachel and knelt down beside her. Her hair lay in a tangle around her neck. He reached through it, to her jawline, and pressed his finger to the carotid artery pulse point.
Her pulse was strong.
Still no chill touching him. Not even a trace.
Understanding hit him a second before he rolled her over. He thought of the silhouettes’ movements in the field, before the barrage started. Something strange in the way they were walking. All at once he knew what it had been.
They had only been moving one at a time.
He let go of the pulse point, grabbed the shoulder, and shoved hard. The unconscious body rolled onto its back, the hair cascading away from its face.
Which wasn’t Rachel’s.
He was on his feet in half a second, tearing off the mask, pulling his phone from his pocket as he sprinted into the wind—into the thinnest reaches of the gas. He pulled up the recent call list, stabbing Gaul’s number even as the sound of the rotors swelled.
One ring. Two. It connected.
“Turn the chopper around!” He screamed it without even listening for a reply. “Turn around! She sprung the trap! Turn the fucking chopper around!”
He saw it happen even as he shouted, the aircraft passing over a point maybe a mile south of the farmhouse—well within Rachel’s reach, wherever the hell she was. The chopper’s pitch and attitude changed abruptly, and as they did Dryden heard men screaming over the phone’s earpiece. He pictured the pilot or copilot—it really didn’t matter which—taking his hands off the controls and attacking the man beside him. Either way, there was suddenly no one flying the aircraft. It tipped steeply to one side, the tail whipping around like a boom, and a second later the chopper simply plunged. It dropped three hundred feet and exploded in the city sprawl like a percussion bomb. Orange flame and thick black smoke rolled up and away.
Dryden stared. He still had the phone at his ear, but the call had gone dead. He watched the flames seethe and curl.
Five seconds passed.
He had no idea what to do.
What was there to do, under the circumstances?
He thought about it a few seconds longer and found he had an answer. He turned off the phone and slipped it back into his pocket and let the gas mask fall at his feet. He glanced at the crash site one last time, then turned and faced east across the field. Around him the gas haze had thinned to nothing, but fifty yards east it was as thick as ever. Thick enough to put him to sleep, if he simply walked into it.
He couldn’t say why it made sense to do that—only that he wanted to. It was all he wanted.
He got moving, each stride putting him deeper into the cloud, sucking in breath after breath as the air thickened around him.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
He woke with his heart pounding, his body spasming under a surge of ice water. A bucket clattered to the floor. He opened his eyes and found himself handcuffed to a chair in the farmhouse’s dining room. The table had been shoved aside. The room was clear, and he was sitting in the middle of it.
Rachel stood before him, watching him.
For a second Dryden couldn’t understand how he’d gotten here. He remembered seeing the chopper crash, with Gaul on board, and he remembered walking into the gas cloud afterward because— Because why? Why the hell had he done that?
The answer settled over him. He shut his eyes for a long beat, getting his head around it. When he opened them again Rachel was still watching him, her eyes large, maybe curious.
Was she in there somewhere? The girl who’d fallen asleep on his shoulder? The hope felt like a blade twisting in his chest.
Rachel blinked, and the curiosity was gone. In its place Dryden saw only cool appraisal.
“Had to let Holly drive away,” she said. Her voice was soft, but there was no emotion in it. “If I’d stopped her, you would’ve had time to warn off the chopper.”
She went to a chair near the wall and picked up a cell phone; Dryden realized it was his own. She turned it on and opened the call list and showed it to him.
“One of those is Holly’s number,” she said. “I want you to call her and tell her it’s okay to come back.”
“I’m not doing that. Force me if you want. I’m not doing it on my own.”
She stared at him, impassive. For a second he expected her to simply lock him again. He waited for the change of mind to come over him—the desire, out of nowhere, to make the call.
Seconds passed. Nothing happened.
Rachel turned aside. She stared off at empty space as if considering options.
“It comes out better if I don’t have to make you say it,” she said.
“What?”
“Did Holly show you the notes? I bet she did.”
Dryden nodded.