The footsteps retreated. The screen door opened and banged shut.
Rachel stood. She pulled back her shirt sleeve and studied the slash wound. It was bleeding steadily, but she seemed unfazed. She went to the chair in the middle of the room. She spun it around and sat in it, leaning forward and staring down on him.
“Call Holly,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can.”
Dryden shook his head and looked down, still trying to get control of the tears.
For a long time Rachel didn’t speak. When she finally did, her voice was softer than before.
“Ever heard of a place called Lucero, Colorado?”
Dryden shook his head again.
“My mom told me about it, in Building Sixteen. In our cell. She talked about it all the time. Her own mom and dad took her camping there when she was a little girl. It’s up in the mountains, and there are horses you can ride, and trails you can walk on. But what my mom really liked was that you could rent canoes at the lake above town. You could rent them even at night, and that was the best thing, because at night all this cold air would come spilling down out of the mountains higher up, and the lake water would still be warm, so this little fog layer would rise up off the surface, just about as high as the canoe. It would cover the whole lake, and in the moonlight it looked like you were riding on a cloud. The last thing my mom said to me, before I sent Holly those messages, was that we were going to go there, to Lucero. Soon as we got out we were going there, and we were going to rent a canoe and go out on the lake the very first night.”
Her voice had changed pitch, just noticeably. Her throat was constricting.
“That’s all she wanted,” Rachel said. “A regular life, with her little girl, where she could take her to see a place like that when she felt like it.”
“Holly didn’t know what would happen to your mom, Rachel. How could she have—”
“All she had to do was what I begged her to do. Just talk to someone, any reporter in the world. That e-mail address, the things they would’ve seen in it—”
“She was scared out of her mind. Anyone else would’ve been, too.”
“I didn’t ask anyone else. I asked her.”
“She regrets what she did. She’d take it back if—”
“I finally went there, you know. To Lucero. About a year ago. They still rent out canoes. Even at night.”
“Holly Ferrel didn’t kill your mom. The people who made all that happen are dead. You got them. It’s over.”
Rachel swallowed and forced resolve back into her voice. Her eyes hardened again.
“Call her,” she said.
“You know I’m not going to.”
“You might change your mind. There are other things I can make you do to me. Some of them, you’d rather die than do.”
Dryden understood. At the thought of it, his insides seemed to contract. Like filthy rags being twisted.
“You better call her,” Rachel said.
“Please don’t do this—”
“It’s up to you—”
“I’m not going to fucking betray her!”
Rachel took a deep breath. Steadied herself.
“Don’t,” Dryden said.
“Sorry.”
Dryden fixed in his mind the image of Rachel in the first moment he’d met her, pleading with him to trust her, to protect her. Maybe if he could hold on to that picture, maybe— “Headlights!”
Audrey’s voice, out at the screen door.
Dryden felt the change of mind brush past him like a wing. There and gone. Rachel had already let it go. She rose from the chair.
“Chevy Malibu,” Audrey said. “Coming up the driveway.”
Rachel crossed toward the doorway to the living room.
“This isn’t you,” Dryden said.
She stopped. Looked down at him.
“This is only what those two trained you to be,” he said. “You wouldn’t be this person if your mom had raised you.”
If it stung her, she didn’t show it. She held his gaze and spoke evenly. “She didn’t, though.”
Headlights washed through the house as the car pulled up in front. Rachel turned back to the doorway, and a second later she was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Dryden got to his feet and followed. He entered the living room in time to see Rachel reach the screen door. Audrey was holding it open with her shoulder; in her hands she had a 12-gauge shotgun. Looking past Rachel, she saw Dryden start across the room.
“We’re done with him, right?” Audrey said. She was already turning, raising the weapon toward him.
“Leave him alone,” Rachel said.
Audrey looked at her. “Why?”
“Because I told you to.”
Rachel said it like she was used to giving orders. Audrey reacted like she was used to taking them. After Rachel went through the doorway, Audrey turned to face Dryden again, the gun falling away to her side.