“Don’t worry about it. It’s safe. Once you’re inside, there’s a latch. Close that and no one can open it from out here. Don’t undo it until you hear someone knock three times like this.” He tapped lightly against the metal, knock-knock, then paused a second before adding the final knock. He looked out the open end of the truck as if he’d heard something. “I know you have questions, but now’s not the time. Just get in.”
Bobby immediately went inside.
Tamara looked Peter in the eyes. “You’re not lying to us, right?” she asked, already knowing he wasn’t.
“I’m not.”
“And Joe is dead?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. Now get in quickly.
She took a breath and passed through the opening, then watched with a nightmarish sense of the unreal as Peter closed the door behind her.
42
In the dead of night, the landscape of Eastern Oregon didn’t look much different than that of the Mojave Desert surrounding Barker Flats. Perhaps it had a bit more scrub covering the ground, but like the Mojave, neither the flatlands nor the nearby mountains had any trees.
Chloe had done well, and had already saved them an hour by the time Ash took over driving again. Their destination was approximately fifty miles north of the Nevada border, in the southeast corner of the state. That was, of course, if Olivia had told them the truth.
What buildings they’d seen so far had been few and far between. There were stretches where it seemed as if this part of the country had either been abandoned or never claimed in the first place. None of it served to boost Ash’s confidence.
“Should be five-point-two more miles,” Chloe said, her gaze never leaving the road.
Ash glanced at the odometer. She was right. “How do you do that?”
She shrugged. “It’s just the way my mind works, I guess.”
They drove another tenth of a mile before he asked, “Do you think you could do that before? When you still had your memories?”
“I have no idea.”
More silence. “Do you think they did that to you?”
“Can we not talk about this?” she asked, obviously uncomfortable.
“Sorry.”
He looked over at her, but she had her back partially turned to him, her eyes staring out the side window. He started to say something else, but decided it was best to leave it alone. Besides, they were closing in on NB7, and he needed to focus so that he didn’t miss anything.
According to Olivia, just ahead they would find a road that led to the West.
“It’s more asphalt than dirt,” she had said. “But not by much.”
At the forty-nine-mile mark, Ash started scanning the left side of the road in case Chloe’s mileage estimate had been wrong, but it hadn’t been. The road was right where she said it would be. It had the forgotten look of having been abandoned to the elements long ago, as if its construction had been well intended, but its promise never fulfilled. Given the fact that it was literally in the middle of nowhere, Ash wondered why it had been built at all.
Even if Olivia had not cautioned them that the road would be watched, Ash would have still kept driving by just like he was doing. She had told them their only chance was if they hiked in. He didn’t like the idea of following her instructions precisely, but there didn’t seem to be much of a choice.
He drove on for another half mile, then pulled the car to the side of the road. In the wide open landscape, there was really no place to hide the vehicle.
As he turned off the engine, he looked at Chloe. “Stay with the car.”
“No way.”
“I want to make sure it’s still here when I get back with my kids.”
She looked outside, scanning both ways down the road. There were no other headlights in sight. “Where would it go?”
“Just stay here.”
He got out and circled around to the trunk. From the weapons case, he removed another gun, filled its mag, then set it on the floor of the trunk. He grabbed his spare mags and the container of little bangs, and distributed them between his jeans and his jacket. Picking up the spare pistol, he shut the trunk, then walked around and knocked on the passenger window.
Chloe stared at him for a moment, then lowered it.
“Here,” he said, handing the SIG to her. “Just in case.”
She pulled back as if it might bite her, but then reluctantly took it.
“You know how to fire that?” he asked.
“I’ll figure it out.”
He nodded, then said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Her only response was to roll the window back up.
He checked both ways before he crossed the empty highway, then angled into the desert on the other side, paralleling the access road that was supposedly being watched. Olivia said NB7 was about a mile and a half in, on the side of the road Ash was currently on.
His eyes quickly adjusted to the moonless night as he made his way through the scrub-covered land. At one point he thought he heard something in the brush. He paused, listening, but the sound didn’t return. He decided it was rabbit, perhaps, or whatever other types of animals might choose to live in this nothingness.
As he passed the mile mark, his jaw tensed. Mike had warned him to be careful about believing anything Olivia said. Maybe this was just a lie. Maybe he was the only thing out here. Maybe Josie and Brandon were hundreds of miles away, and would die because he had chosen to follow the directions of an obviously deranged woman locked up in a secret prison.
If that turned out to be the case, he would go back to the Bluff and kill her.
He slowed his pace. If NB7 was here, he had to be close. Better to sneak up on it than to stumble.
Again, he heard something in the brush. It came from behind him, maybe thirty yards. He crouched down, then looked back the way he’d come, letting his eyes focus on nothing in particular.
There. Just off to the right of the line he’d been following, a shadow hovering above the brush and moving in his direction.
If that was the case, half a dozen others were probably closing in on him from different directions, and he was going to get taken down before he even got to NB7.
Should he run? Stay where he was? Or what?
He looked at the shadow again. It had moved to about forty feet away, then stopped. Carefully, he turned, scanning around, looking for others, but the only thing he could see was more brush. If there was anyone else out there, they had to be lying on the ground.
If he’d had time to play games, he would have kept moving to see if the shadow was really following him. But time was something he didn’t have.
He pulled out his gun, and made a beeline straight for the shadow. Before he’d even gone halfway, it disappeared. Not moved to the right or the left, or any other direction, just disappeared. But he didn’t slow until he was within a few feet of where it had been.
He was sure whoever it was had dropped to the ground, blending in with the brush, but there was no one there. He swung his gun around, angling it toward the ground, knowing the person had to be close.
“I could have killed you if I wanted to.”
He whipped around. Standing directly behind him, her gun at her side, was Chloe.
