Where had Big Bald gone after leaving Dancer’s house?
Raiff drove around aimlessly as if Big Bald might pop up out of nowhere at any moment. He wouldn’t be alone, either; he’d be accompanied by a team likely larger and more proficient than the one Raiff had dispensed with earlier in the night. The incident report would’ve alerted them and they’d likely left Dancer’s house with a reasonably clear destination in mind.
While Raiff had nothing. All he could do was either drive or park and wait for a text message from a Watcher telling him where Dancer could be found. And even then everything would depend on him getting there ahead of Big Bald.
Everything.
Raiff pulled into a McDonald’s, the interior restaurant closed but the drive-through advertised on the sign as being open until 3:00 a.m. He found a darkened corner to pull into. The funds that supported him wouldn’t last forever, but they’d last long enough. His native world was rich in precious metals, including gold to the point where it was less valued there than here. Decades before, centuries, for all Raiff knew, stores of gold had been brought over and hidden away in anticipation of these times coming at last.
Whenever he ran low on funds, Raiff need only collect some of that gold, never more than necessary, and exchange it for cash. He bought old-model used cars always from private sellers and drove them until they didn’t drive anymore. The identity he’d procured was ironclad, but still precluded an actual residence or owning anything that left a trail. He had a single credit card in the name he’d assumed, necessary in order to fly or rent a car, and of all his documents the California state driver’s license had been the easiest to obtain.
He lived for his mission, and his mission was to protect Dancer, above and beyond anything else. If and when Raiff was needed, he had full operational authority. Anything within his discretion was permissible.
But discretion was pointless until he located Dancer.
The real problem here was Langston Marsh and his Tracker teams. They were the wild card, the factor never considered prior to Raiff’s dispatch because they hadn’t come into existence yet and thus were a presence that could not possibly be accounted for. Protecting Dancer against those hunting the boy was one thing. Protecting himself against those who were hunting their very kind, something else again.
No matter how much the Trackers had come to dictate his actions and movements, though, he had to accept their presence in full awareness that the threat they posed was miniscule compared to the threat looming over this planet. Without Dancer, Earth’s fall would be inevitable. Few things in Raiff’s estimation bore such certainty, or any certainty at all. But that was one of them.
His phone beeped with an incoming text message from a Watcher, the bright translucent letters piercing the spill of the parking lot’s darkness.
FOUND DANCER. LOCATION FOLLOWS.
54
DIAGNOSIS
“I’VE GOT THE CODE,” Sam said, retaking the seat next to Alex.
When his eyes remained rooted on the screen, she leaned across and typed in the access code another twenty dollars had bought her. Instantly, the screen jumped back to life, Alex regarding her briefly before returning his attention to his mother.
*
—until the results of the blood tests came back and Dr. Chu asked us to come back in so he could take another sample. I hated watching him do it, sticking that needle in your arm and filling one vial and then another. He wouldn’t tell me why he needed the tests repeated but I feared the worst.
You were sick, with some awful illness certain to take you from us. Why else would someone have abandoned you the way they did? It all made sense now. A monstrous act for a parent to abandon a child, no matter how sick, especially when your father and I wanted one so badly and never could have a child.
But we had you and that was enough. I held you while Dr. Chu siphoned off the blood he needed, swearing I’d always love you no matter what. Even if always was only another week or a month. I prepared myself for the inevitable, for learning the name of whatever disease you’d been born with.
Except it didn’t have a name; it wasn’t even a disease. The results of the second test came back and Dr. Chu wanted to do a third. I wouldn’t let him until he explained why. He showed me the first two blood tests, identical in all respects, with the results all out of whack. Numbers wildly askew to the point where they made no sense. White counts, red counts, T cells, liver enzymes, kidney function—nothing was right.
There must be a mistake, I told him, even as I knew there couldn’t be, not two times in a row.
It’s impossible, Dr. Chu said, because if these numbers are correct, then your baby couldn’t possibly be alive.