Burden had said, there was nothing he could do about it, but he couldn't help scanning the traffic and wondering which of these ordinary-looking people were actually working for Luquin.
As they pulled in through the gates and headed up the curved drive to the house, he said, “I've got some people working here, ”he said.
“Doing what? ”she asked without concern.
“For one thing, working on the security system, ”he said. “It's on the blink.”
He pulled up beside Herrin's trucks and got out. He got her bags from the back, and they went into the shade of the veranda and through to the kitchen, where they encountered Mark Herrin carrying an armful of digital meters.
Titus introduced them, and Herrin had the good sense to make himself immediately scarce. As he walked out of the room, Rita was standing by the island counter and her eye caught the list of rooms that had been swept. She read it at a glance, dropped her carry-on bag on the floor, and turned to Titus.
“What's going on here? ”she asked.
“We've got some trouble, ”he said, “but we can't talk about it here. Let's take a walk.”
They walked through the allee of laurels together, each with an arm around the other, and sat on the low rock wall that ran behind the orchard. Thirty feet away, the freshly dug grave where he had buried the dogs remained a bare reminder of their changed lives. Mourning doves burbled in the peach trees. He began at the beginning and told her nearly everything.
Rita was stunned, of course, and while Titus was telling her what had happened during the last two days, his own words sounded bizarre even to him. She interrupted him only a few times to ask questions, but most of the time she sat quietly, her lack of a reaction more telling of the profound effect this was having on her than if she had wept and railed.
After he finished, neither of them spoke for a little while. Midday was well gone, and the heat was building in the orchard. Cicadas droned in the woods.
“God, Titus, ”she said. “Good God.”
She stood, unable to sit still, and he watched her move away a few paces to the edge of the shade of the burr oak that was sheltering them from the sun. She turned around and crossed her arms.
“Are you absolutely sure of this? That this man's responsible for Charlie's death?”
“Yes.”
Dumbfounded, she stared at him. Then her eyes reddened and the tears came so suddenly and profusely that it was odd to see, even disarming. She didn't hide her face, and her mouth didn't contort, but her chin quivered. Her crossed arms shifted until she was hugging herself in the summer shade with the bright light behind her. The tears just came and came until her cheeks were lacquered with them, and they dripped off her chin in a copious mixture of fear and anger and grief.
“Oh, horrible, ”she finally managed to say with a kind of sob. As she looked at him, he knew that she already understood intuitively, without having to reason it out, that all of their yesterdays had been absurdly innocent. Their future had been abruptly truncated and, perhaps, reached no farther than the distance between them. All around them lay the debris of their assumed well-being. The past, the normal life, had been as naive as a child's daydream.
Then Rita began wiping her cheeks with her palms and fingers, sniffling. She produced a tissue from her pants pocket and wiped her nose. She cleared her throat. She bent her head and pulled her hair behind her head as if she were going to put a band around it, but she didn't.
“God, ”she said, and looked up and dropped her hands. She took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips, wrists turned in, then exhaled and fixed her red eyes on him. “Louise's life has been devastated because of us!”
She couldn't think of what to say because what the hell did you say to this? She couldn't stop staring at him, and he could tell that she was having a hard time trying to absorb the enormity of what he was talking about.
“Rita, I want you to go away, to get out of here. I'm going to talk to Burden about putting you up at a safe house. Someplace where… you won't have to worry-”
“What! What in God's-what are you thinking, Titus?” She was looking at him as if he'd suddenly begun speaking in an unintelligible language. “That's… unthinkable. No! I will not! I'm staying right here. Whatever's going to happen, happens to both of us, Titus. I can't even believe you'd think I'd do such a thing, ”she said, her voice holding off a quaver.
“It's crazy for you to stay-”
“You're crazy, ”she snapped. Tears weren't in her eyes, but they were in her voice. Everything was happening in a slightly surreal way, anger and fear and love melting together in disregard, their characteristics blurring and smearing across categorical boundaries.
“You tell me what's going on here, Titus, ”she said. “you've told me what happened, now you tell me what's going on.”
Still sitting on the rock wall, he looked out over the land that fell toward the creek.
“Burden's going after this guy, Rita, and he's moving fast, but there are no guarantees.”
He wanted to be honest with her, but he didn't want to tell her everything. He didn't want to tell her his fears, or the grim probabilities, or that he was trying to ignore where it was all going. If he was lucky, they could get through this without her learning things that would be hard for her to live with when it was over.
“Oh, for God's sake, Titus. What have you gotten into here?”
“What have I gotten into? ”He was furious at her remark. “This came to me! Rita, listen to me: This son of a bitch is going to kill someone else. Think of that! He's going to kill someone else. And then someone else, and then… Friends, all of them our friends! I don't give a damn how Burden stops him, and I'm going to do everything and anything in my power to help him do it.”
Again she could only stare at him. A scrum of bluejays moved through the orchard, fighting and screaming, flinging themselves about like crazed hotheads, blue flashes tumbling through the orderly rows of peach trees. They battled their way to the other side and out, carrying their internecine hostilities into the cedar brakes toward the creek. In their wake, silence, then the doves began again, the voices of solace.
Rita had that look on her face, the odd angle to her mouth that she had when she was suddenly frightened and hadn't yet had time to order her mind and overcome the adrenalinedriven confusion. He had seen it when she had heard about her father's hunting accident and when she had heard about her mother's illness. And he still ached when he remembered seeing it the day the doctor had told them that the fetus was horribly deformed.
“This is impossible to believe, ”she said, “all of this. I just don't know how to… ”She took a short, jerky breath. “I can't believe you've done this without the police. The FBI…” She was shaking her head. “Somebody with a legal responsibility.”
“I just went over that with you, the reasoning behind it.”
“Well, I think you've lost your mind, Titus.”
“I'm trying to save lives, ”he said.
“And you think this is the way to do that? With this… vigilante?”
He started to come back at her, then stopped himself. “I trust Gil Norlin's advice, ”he said.
“Great! A guy you met briefly four years ago, and even then he was a little slimy.”
“I never said that.”
“You told me he was shady.”
“He just wasn't working up front like the rest of them, ”he said. “That's all I meant by that.”
Again they glared at each other. This was killing him. He watched her eyes reddening again.
“Titus, ”she said, and her voice had a break in it that surprised even her, he saw it in her face, “are we going to regret this? ”She was actually trembling. Titus had never seen Rita tremble-ever.
“I'm making the decisions I have to make, ”he said, “and I'm making them the best way I know how. You've got to understand, there are no guidelines for this, Rita. This is like waking up from a nightmare and discovering that being awake didn't stop the dream. I'm just having to work through it the best way I can.”
He hesitated. “I need your help, Rita. I can't do this without you.”
Her expression shifted. She wasn't sure she wanted the conversation to go in the direction his tone of voice was suggesting. At this point her emotions weren't attuned to conciliation.
“I need you to cooperate with me here, ”he said. “I'm going to have Burden find you a place to stay where I
