his lessons had taken root, that Sammi understood she had the strength inside her to face whatever was happening to her.
Tomorrow he would find her. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know where. But he would find her.
Tonight he had to find Cass.
He knew something had gone wrong. Sensed it the way he observed coming changes in the weather, the moods of his people or the stores coming in for trade. Dor was so finely attuned to the energy around him that it was painful at times. That was why he lived apart, in the trailer that was little more than a tin prison; it was better than being in the midst of all those lives being lived around him. The static could be almost unbearable on days when he was weakened by a lack of rest or a too-strenuous workout-all those people, their tempers and desires and jealousies on display for anyone who looked.
Well, for people like him, anyway. And he’d sensed the change in Cass immediately. He just didn’t know what it was. Still didn’t. But in the time she’d been gone in the afternoon and come back, something had changed. Something at the Tapp Clinic had stripped her of her fragile strength, hardened and wounded her.
Dor scooped Ruthie up in his arms. She was so light, hardly a burden at all. He hated bringing her. She should stay and sleep, but it wasn’t safe yet; he didn’t know who to trust. That had always been his strength, choosing those he could trust. But now he had only himself. So Ruthie would come.
It would be awkward and it would increase the danger for both of them. But what other option did he have? Waiting it out, waiting for Cass to come back, might be the smartest thing to do; after all, he was here for Sammi. Venturing out would require him to use resources that were meant for her. He would risk showing his hand, alerting the Rebuilders that he wasn’t who he pretended to be. In the worst case, he would endanger his own mission, and his chances to get Sammi back.
Nothing mattered more than his daughter. He would trade any living soul for her without hesitation-even Cass’s, if it ever came to that.
But leaving Cass to an uncertain fate was not an option, either. He had always told Sammi that she had to stand up for the things that mattered. And Cass, despite their awkward relationship, despite the things they had done-or maybe because of them-mattered.
There was no other way. He put the silver box back in his pocket, careful to make sure it was properly closed first, protecting the soft rubbery ball with its cells of gel and powder separated by the thinnest membrane. He shifted Ruthie so that he could hold her in one arm. In the other he held one of the darts he’d smuggled in the hidden pocket along with the silver box. And he set out down the darkened hall.
The way the tree had grown, struggling for purchase on the slope behind the fence that marked the far end of the park, made a perfect saddle in which Cass could sit with her legs dangling above the creek. The creek was dry in all but the few rainy months of spring, dotted with stones submerged in cracked earth, tall dead weeds, jackrabbit warrens. It wasn’t much to look at, certainly not compared to the park, which the developers had situated at the end of the broad avenue that ran through the neighborhood, so that you could see it from the entrance and the mouth of every cul-de-sac. They’d made it nice, nice enough to justify the prices they charged for what were just glorified tri-level tract homes.
Mim had fallen in love with the development-granite countertops, his-and-her sinks in the bathrooms, three garage stalls, architectural columns separating the dining room from the great room-and would not be swayed, especially when a bank-reclaimed model came on the market cheap. She and Byrn spent their weekends shopping for outdoor furniture and bar stools, and Cass wandered down to the park and found this secret place where no one came.
The developers put in the usual specimens, agapanthus and gaillardia, dwarf Japanese maples and society garlic. Hedge roses lined split-wood fencing, and ornamental plums shaded banks of New Guinea impatiens and dianthus, snapdragons and alyssum. But after all the houses were sold, the association hired a cut-rate gardener who did little more than mow and blow, and within a year the plants were stunted and dying.
Hardly anyone came to the park. Kids in this neighborhood-with the exception of Cass-were overscheduled after school: lessons, sports, art classes. And there were no old people. Other than a few mothers with toddlers, it was usually just Cass.
Her special tree was really an overgrown madrone bush. Cass had been attracted to its red-brown smooth bark and gnarled branches. Along the base of the trunk where she liked to sit, the bark had peeled away, revealing a silvery-green surface underneath that she loved to run her fingertips along. It was so smooth, smoother than any other tree she’d ever seen. Cass had always been fascinated by different types of bark. On the old redwoods she’d seen on a class trip to Muir Woods, it was so light and porous that it seemed impossible it could protect a tree so massive. Sycamore bark was scaly and split. The old oaks in the foothills were rough and splintery.
In the late summer, little red berries appeared on the madrone’s branches. The berry clusters had sharp thorns, and Cass broke them off and wove them into long strands, like a necklace of teeth, of claws. She peeled away the bark with a fingernail, leaving curls of it like wood shavings to fall to the dried grasses. Sometimes she gathered stones from the creek and made little cairns around wildflowers that took root in the richer soil of the creek bed. Later, much later, she would learn the names of the plants, but then she thought of them by their flowers. Fringed purple; bright yellow puff; white-going-to-pink star.
She sat in the embrace of her tree and ran her hands along the smooth bark and breathed the faint sage scent of the sunbaked weeds and listened to dogs barking several blocks away, the faraway roar of the freeway half a mile to the south. She concentrated hard on all of these things, sense-memories and wishes, and in this way she made them disappear-the two men who’d dragged her to the broom closet, the one who held her hair in his fist and the one who was unbuckling his pants-taking herself back in time to her secret garden.
She breathed the scents of that other place and time and thought of the butterflies and ladybugs and bees that landed on the leaves of the shrubs and flowers, and when there was an enraged shout and her head was jerked up hard, her eyes flew open just in time to see Jimbo teeter and fall as a second and third burst of sound echoed off the room’s walls.
A man stepped into the light of the lantern Jimbo had set on the floor.
And clinging to him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, her face pressed to his shirt, was Ruthie. “Take Ruthie. Go in the other room,” Dor growled.
Cass reached for Ruthie, seized her out of his arms.
“Wait for me there,” he said.
Cass did.
The man had gone down on his good knee, clutching the other one where blood was spurting out, basting his boot with hot red blood. The other, the one who’d been stripping off his pants-Dor’s vision went black at the thought-was slumped to the ground. The dart was imbedded in his shoulder; even if only a fraction of the toxin entered his system, he would be out for many hours, and not feel very good when he woke-especially when he saw what Dor had done to him with his own blade.
Dor grabbed the unconscious man’s collar and dragged him to the side of the small room, his belt buckle banging against the floor as he went. The man was not light, but adrenaline and fury pounded in Dor’s blood and it felt good to slam the man’s limp form into the wall.
Dor snapped on the man’s flashlight, arcing it back and forth. The room had been used for a supply closet of some sort; on one high shelf were spray bottles partially filled with pinkish liquid, but otherwise there were only cans of powder, a few crumpled pieces of paper, water stains on the walls, tiny black pellets on the floor signaling that rodents still thrived down here. A bucket in the corner had the stink of human waste; Dor guessed that the guards used it as a lavatory, emptying it only at shift change.
In the beam of the flashlight the man on the floor looked even paler, his eyes wide with fear, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a parody of a grin.
“What do you want,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“Ni-Nigel Ralston.”
“Where are you from?”
“What the fuck do you care? What do you want?”
