“I think they maybe forced him to take some, yes.” Ela eyed the door. “I really should be getting back.”
“That would be back to the place where Dylan was assaulted and tied to a tree with baling wire, according to what you’ve just told me.”
“I can’t talk to you about this,” Ela said, reluctant to meet Caitlin’s gaze.
“Well, then, can you talk to me about why his assailants, these cousins of yours, left him out there, what they expected to happen next, exactly?”
Ela continued to avoid Caitlin’s gaze. “He was snooping around where he didn’t belong. They just wanted to teach him a lesson, maybe scare him a little.”
“Does that include forcing him to ingest a dangerous drug?” Caitlin felt her thinking veer, midsentence. “Oh, that’s right—you’d already forced him to do pretty much the same thing.”
“I didn’t force him to do anything.”
“And what about that Miraculous Medal of his that we found near the body of that construction worker?”
“What about it?”
“You think it got up and walked out of wherever the two of you were prior to that time?”
“I think Dylan lost the medal earlier in the day. I can’t explain how it ended up where it did.”
Caitlin could feel the heat rising behind her cheeks, a dull ache in her teeth from clenching her jaw. “And what do you suppose he was doing in the woods tonight, when he got jumped?”
“I have no idea. He snuck out after I fell asleep.”
“You do drugs when you’re at school, Ela?”
“Peyote isn’t a drug.”
“Oh no?”
“Not the way you mean it.”
“And how do I mean it? Or let me put it another way: How would you feel if those disabled kids you came back here to teach knew you were using?”
Ela had moved almost imperceptibly toward the door, putting distance between her and Caitlin. “Could you ask Dylan to call me tomorrow, please?”
“I don’t believe he’ll need me to remind him. And I’d like you to answer my question before you leave. Serious mind-altering drugs weren’t in Dylan’s vocabulary until last week, as far as I know. Would you like to tell me different?”
“I’m sorry,” Ela said, sounding as if she had to pull the words up her throat. “I’m sorry about all this. I don’t know what else to say.”
“How about that you’ve decided to tell Dylan to reenroll at Brown, now that the protest is over?”
“That’s up to him, not me.”
“Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, when I stop by to sort out whatever happened on the rez tonight.”
“You’ve got no authority there, Ranger.”
“That didn’t stop my great-great-granddad, and it’s not about to stop me, either, not anymore. How about I start with those cousins of yours Dylan calls the Lost Boys? On account of the fact that I’m guessing they take their marching orders from you.”
Ela shook her head, looking almost bemused as she headed the rest of the way to the door. “Why would I tell them to tie Dylan to a tree in the middle of a peyote trip, only to let him go and bring him home?”
“I don’t know, Ela. Why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you tell me what your grandfather and everyone else on your reservation is hiding? Why don’t you tell me why there’s a secret chamber in a cave overlooking White Eagle’s land that looks like something from a horror movie?”
Ela opened the door and stepped mostly out, leaving only a flicker of herself behind. “I think my cousins took Dylan’s phone. Please tell him I’ll try to get it back for him.”
“I’ll be sure to do that. And if you don’t—”
But Ela was out the door before Caitlin could finish her thought, slamming it so hard the whole house seemed to rattle.
71
HOUSTON, TEXAS
“You have been given a great honor,” Hatim Abd al-Aziz, supreme military commander of ISIS, said to Daniel Cross, “joining us in this most holy of missions.”
Cross stood before him on the sixtieth-floor Sky Lobby, the observation deck in the JPMorgan Chase Tower. Zurif and Saflin were hanging back but within earshot, near the ISIS commander’s hulking bodyguard. Cross’s insides had turned to ice as soon as he stepped into the elevator, in anticipation of meeting the man behind so much of the unspeakable carnage that had dominated the news for years now. His breath had seized up in his throat when he reached the Sky Lobby and the bodyguard held Zurif and Saflin back so Cross could proceed alone.
Sunlight framed al-Aziz’s shape like a shroud, blinding Cross as he drew closer, further unsettling him. Since going down this path, to once and for all escape the shadow of Diaper Dan, Cross had never once doubted his intentions or his actions, not even for a minute.
Until now.
What have I gotten myself into?
Al-Aziz’s presence brought home the reality of what his actions had set off, even more starkly than the demonstration Cross had staged at Hoover’s Cooking. He had truly reached the point of no return; no going back now.