One of them said, “Whatcha got there?”
“This shit from Oregon.” She lifted her chin and blew a smoke ring.
“Pass it?” asked one of the disciples, a woman in a phosphorescent green Hulk mask. Skye passed it and the woman took a hit and handed it down to one of the guys on the ground. They were standing behind the fire ring, and Skye asked, “Anybody seen Pilate?”
“Think he’s out at the show,” said one of the men.
“Naw, he went down to the fire thing,” said the other man.
The woman pointed down to the end of the field and said, “That’s Pilate, you can just see him, the guy in the dark suit, he’s dressed like a priest.”
Skye turned to look, and the woman stooped and picked up one of the logs next to the fire ring and hit Skye in the back of the head. Skye dropped as though she’d been hit by an ax and the woman said, “C’mon, we got to hide her.” She stooped and got Skye by the wrists and started dragging her between a car and the RV.
“What the fuck are you doing?” a man asked. He was on his hands and knees, looking out at the Gathering grounds. “There are people all over the place.” He looked at Skye and said, “Shit, she looks like she’s dead.”
“Not yet,” the woman said. “This is that Skye chick. She didn’t recognize me, but I recognized her and her voice. She was looking for Pilate. I bet she’s got a gun.”
Skye was on her side, her breathing rough, bubbly. The woman patted her down, found the REI knife in her leg pocket. “Gonna cut him,” she said. “Gonna kill him. Richie: go get Pilate.”
Richie got unsteadily to his feet, but started down toward the bonfire, found some momentum, and went off at a trot. The woman said to the other man, “Let’s get her over in those trees across the road. Pick her up, put your arms under her armpits, like she’s drunk and you’re trying to help her out.”
“Jesus, she’s hurt bad,” the guy said. Skye’s head swung around, loose.
“Not as bad as she’s gonna be, if I know Pilate,” the woman said. She looked out at the field: “Nobody’s watching. Let’s go.”
? ? ?
LETTY WAS AT THE BACK of the music crowd, twenty-five yards from the stage, turning, looking for Skye. A priest in a clown face went by, and a moment later, somebody called, “Pilate! Pilate!”
Pilate turned, stepped around Letty, and called back, “What?”
“Gotta come back, man.” He poked his thumb back over his shoulder, back toward the ring of cars.
“What?”
“Just . . . you gotta come, man, like right now.”
Pilate could see he didn’t want to say why, but could feel the urgency in his voice. He nodded and started after him.
So did Letty.
? ? ?
SHE LET THEM get twenty yards ahead, then took out her cell phone, called Lucas, and asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m half an hour out. Where are you?”
“I’m at the Gathering. I found Pilate.”
“What? Get the fuck away from there. Letty—”
“He doesn’t know I found him,” Letty said. “I heard somebody call him that. I mean, how many can there be?”
“Stay away from him. I’m coming. I called Stern, he’s talking to the sheriff up there, about getting some people together. We’re hooking up in Hayward, we’re coming out in a convoy. You see any cops there now?”
“I saw a guy who I thought was a cop, but there aren’t any uniforms or squad cars around . . . I could look for that guy.” She was on her tiptoes, trying to follow Pilate as he pushed through the swirling crowd.
“If you can find a cop, it’ll probably be a sheriff’s deputy. Tell him we’re coming. He’ll have a radio, have him get in touch with the sheriff. And stay the hell away from those people.”
? ? ?
LETTY RANG OFF. Pilate and the man who’d come for him were now thirty or forty yards away and headed behind the stage, and she jogged in that direction. Somebody yelled, “Show your tits,” but not at her, though it was about the two hundredth time she’d heard it that day, and from the round of applause, she suspected that whoever yelled had gotten his wish.
She lost track of Pilate and the second man in the scrum around the stage, where the rap was getting better and hotter; the enormous fat man in the John Deere went by again, wearing a shirt now, still passing out bottles of Faygo. Somebody ran past and shouted, “Fart-lighting contest . . . Follow me!”
Letty stayed on track; the urgency of the man’s call to Pilate suggested that they’d go wherever they were going in a straight line. From one of the parking lots, looking over the hoods of parked cars, she saw them again, at the far end of the parking area. The priest and five or six other people were walking past a circle of cars into a stand of trees. There was some light from the stage, and various other sources, including headlights of cars coming and going, but the strobes broke everything up, and she couldn’t get close enough to see what Pilate and the disciples were actually doing, until they seemed to break into an odd dance.
She muttered to herself, “What the heck?” and edged closer, but worried about breaking out of the parking lot. The dancing stopped and they drifted out of the trees, back toward their cars, where they stood around talking.
Letty watched for another five minutes.
Then, afraid they could spot her if she stood in one spot too long, she faded back into the cars and looked around for a cop, or a cop car. She didn’t see one immediately. Where was Skye? Had she found Pilate? Did they have her?
Her phone rang, and she looked at the screen: Lucas.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Where are you?”
“Uh, in a parking area . . . When you come into the field, I’m in the parking area that’s to the left of the entrance.”
“Are you leaving? Are you getting out?”
“Not yet. I think Skye . . . I don’t know, I think Skye was looking for Pilate. I don’t know if she found him, but I can’t find her.”