once that I would lose him with that. The conversation would end as suddenly as it had begun. I cleared my throat.
—What kind of things was she doing that would so anger your father?
Val seemed to fold in on himself until he was a mass of defensive knees, elbows, curved back as sharp as those elbows, and lowered head.
—I don’t know. But she was gone a lot in those last weeks—hell, months—before she was killed in that convenient auto accident. She was sneaking out a lot. When the Old Man was putting in double shifts down at the precinct, gone whole weekends—sometimes four or five days at a time—so was Mom. She used to have me stay with my friend Samuel’s weird, smelly old grandmother—Sheila—down the street when she was going to be away overnight. Sometimes for several nights in a row. And the Old Man never knew. Mom swore me to secrecy, Leonard. Imagine a parent swearing her ten-year-old kid to secrecy.
I thought about it. It didn’t sound like the way Dara, my daughter, the light of my life, had ever behaved before. Or would behave.
—What do you think she was doing, Val? Having an… affair?
I couldn’t believe that I was asking my sixteen-year-old grandson this question. But suddenly I wanted to know the truth as much as this tormented boy had for the past six years.
Val shrugged. He suddenly looked very sleepy.
—Yeah, I suppose. Probably with that fat slob of an assistant district attorney she worked for, Harvey Cohen. That whole last year, he was always picking Mom up at weird hours when the Old Man was away at work. And the Old Man was always away at work.
My mouth was very dry and my chest hurt now not from emotion but from the more alarming pain of an old man’s thrice-treacherous heart.
—So, Val, you think that Dara was having an affair with her employer, Harvey whoever, and your father found out and killed her? Or arranged for her to be killed in that automobile accident that also killed an old couple and a truck driver? Does that make sense, Val?
He glared at me now and I knew that he was sorry he’d said anything about the old cell phone. The pot and the closeness between us were wearing off.
—Yeah. And if you want to tell me that the Old Man wouldn’t hurt her, save your breath. You don’t know the Old Man. You don’t know cops.
I merely nodded at that. It was true. I’d never spent much time around police officers—or wanted to—and for all my visits when Val was a baby and I still lived in the area after Carol, my third wife, died, I really had never been comfortable talking to Detective Nick Bottom. So instead of defending a man I didn’t know, I said…
—Could I see the encrypted text?
I could feel Val’s reluctance to show the files to me, mixed with his anger at himself and me for saying as much as he had about something he’d kept secret for six years, but without letting go of the phone, he activated it, thumbed through icons, and held the screen up so I could see it in the Nevada darkness.
I looked for a long moment, only asking Val to thumb forward through the pages of text. He did so—gracelessly. Then he turned the phone off and thrust it away in his pocket. He rolled away from me, pulling the thin blanket high up on his bony shoulders, but I wasn’t quite finished with our conversation yet.
—It’s a word-or book-cipher, Val. Based on a five-letter key word.
The boy snorted.
—Tell me something I don’t know, old man.
I let the rudeness pass. Something like excitement was stirring in me. Those encrypted pages might include a message to me. Dara and I had loved sending coded messages to each other when she was little. It irritated Carol, but Dara and I continued doing so, even after Carol got sick.
—Perhaps I could help with…
But I’d let my enthusiasm show through. Val pulled the blanket higher and edged farther away on his cot, showing me his back again.
—I know the kind of words that Mom would’ve used for such a cipher. None of them work. And it doesn’t matter anyway, old man. We’re probably going to get killed in the canyon tomorrow anyway. It don’t matter. Nothing matters.
The sudden bad grammar was a parody of his father’s police-speak, although Nick Bottom didn’t speak that way either. I was tempted to say aloud the “Bullshit, you tiresome little twerp” I was thinking but stayed silent until I said softly…
—Carol.” It could be “Carol.” Her mother’s name.
Val did sound almost asleep as he answered groggily one last time.
—Nope. Tried it. I told you… I tried all the fucking five-letter words that would’ve meant something to her. It’s just gonna… stay… encrypted. Go… to sleep, Leonard. We gotta get up early to get shot at tomorrow. Let me sleep, for Chrissakes.
I let him sleep.
After about an hour of lying there looking up at the cold desert stars, I sat up silently. My eyes had adapted to the darkness and I could see the phone protruding from his pocket as Val lay there snoring rather more loudly than I’d heard before.
I knew the five-letter word. I was sure of it.
I started to reach for the phone but stopped. If possible, I wanted Val to give me permission to try the word and for us to watch the encrypted pages of Dara’s diary decrypt into readable text in front of us.
If possible. If it wasn’t possible, I’d take the phone away from him soon and read those pages for myself. For some reason I was sure that Dara’s last, secret message to the world was more important than the feelings of a surly sixteen-year-old.
I’ve written this in my own hand-written journal—hiding it away so Val won’t find it—and will go to sleep thinking of my daughter and of why she would have chosen the five-letter word that I am certain is the key to her final message to the world.
1.11
North of Las Vegas, New Mexico—Wednesday, Sept. 15
The tank shell that hit Nick and Sato’s Oshkosh–Land Cruiser was a lucky shot that exploded partially through the osmotic panel of the weapons dome atop the truck, beheaded the gunner Joe in a shaped-charge surge of fiery plasma, incinerated the rest of the ninja mercenary’s body in a microsecond, and instantly flowed down into the vehicle like a supersonic wave of hot lava that vaporized everything inside the truck that it did not set aflame.
Until that second, two and a half hours of the trip had been eventless to the point of boredom.
For the first ten miles down and away from Raton Pass, the two vehicles were technically under the protection of Major Malcolm’s hilltop artillery, but driving at forty-five m.p.h., they soon passed out of that zone.
Nick didn’t notice because he was too busy half paying attention to Sato going through all the evacuation, PEAP, comm, fire, and other details about the truck. Also because he was too busy trying to find a comfortable position. Not only did his oxygen mask, comm earbuds and microphones, all of his personal body armor and helmet, as well as the seat-sarcophagus itself, get in his way, but he’d shoved the big duffel bag holding his personal weapons in the space under his legs and now it was also getting in his way.
When Sato was done with his flight-attendant spiel and Nick paused in his squirming—using the relief tube did help—he paid a little attention to the large monitors that took the place of the broad
