Unforsaken

Chicago if he’d driven fast. Just as Rattler had known where to intercept me and Kaz, he could have known where her captors were going to stop for gas or lunch.

I glanced at Kaz, who was watching me with his eyes narrowed. His expression told me he was thinking the same thing I was.

“Dead?” Prentiss’s face, which was already tight with anger, twisted into a mask of consuming rage. “How the hell did you let that happen?”

My pulse spiked with fear. Had Prairie been killed in a fight with Prentiss’s men? Or Rattler? Or had she somehow managed to fight back-and win?

“How fast can you get there?” I heard fury building in Prentiss’s tightly controlled voice. “You’ve got half that. Secure the bodies. Call Gurz; he’ll assist with the troopers and police. I’m on my way; I’ll be right behind you.”

He hung up without further comment. Mustache lowered his hand from his ear and I realized he’d been listening in, patched into the call. Already he was dialing another number. “Code black,” he muttered.

Prentiss took a deep breath and shut his eyes for a moment; when he opened them, his placid expression was nearly restored, and he managed a brief smile.

“I’m terribly sorry, but I have been called away on an urgent matter. Hailey, Kaz, I leave you in Dr. Grace’s capable hands, and we’ll speak again tomorrow.”

“Is she all right?” I demanded. “Prairie, is she all right?”

The General didn’t answer.

25

JASMINE, RATTLER THOUGHT. She smelled like jasmine, the first white blooms of spring on the shrubs that still grew along the edges of Trashtown, long after the person who’d planted them had died and been forgotten.

He closed his eyes and let himself remember: a long-ago July morning, before the sun scorched the sky, chasing Prairie into the hedge. He just wanted her to stop screaming, so he hooked a foot around her leg and sent her facedown in the dirt under the jasmine hedge. He slid down next to her, rolled her over, saw the scratches on her tearstained cheeks, held her wrists so she couldn’t lash out at him. He wanted to make the tears go away, wanted her to stop screaming so he could just tell her what was inside him, the way she made him feel, but he didn’t know the words.

So he’d ground her hands into the dirt and made her cry harder, all the while breathing in that spring-bright smell of jasmine.

But they weren’t kids anymore. They were grown, and Rattler was a man, and she was his woman and she would mind him. His hands were in her hair and he seized a handful and yanked hard enough to jerk her head back.

“Hush your mouth,” he growled, but she hadn’t said anything. She just stared at him, her green eyes throwing sparks, her lip curled in a sneer that let him know she wasn’t half broke yet.

For a minute he felt rage rise in him and he wanted to break her, devil be damned, right here in a dried-up wash somewhere in central Illinois. He didn’t know this land, didn’t know who owned the tidy white barn a quarter mile away, the row of black walnut trees, the hound baying at the end of its chain.

What he did know: the blood on their clothes had been spilled by his own hand. And he’d spill more if more bloodshed was what it took. He’d do anything for Prairie and for the life they were meant to lead.

It had been almost too easy to take out the ones who’d had her locked up. His spinning eye showed him the way, told him what to do. He shot the first man right through the door. The other didn’t have time to get out of the chair. But Rattler didn’t notice the beat-up mess of a woman in the corner until she came at him like she was hungry for the bullet, dragging her chained-up chair behind her. Rattler didn’t want to shoot a Banished, but she wouldn’t stop and she wouldn’t stop, no matter he told her to stay back.

That messed him up. He hadn’t wanted to shoot her, and as she gurgled her last breath, Rattler felt his rage at Prentiss growing stronger. The man kept taking what was his, and Rattler’s wrath was a living thing now, a hungry beast that would tear his enemies limb from limb, that would roar so loud that everyone in Gypsum would hear. The ground would disappear in a lake of blood before he let Prentiss win.

He raged and he beat his fist on the wall in that fancy hallway, and that was how the last one got away, a fast-moving thing with long curly hair. She darted out the door and down the hall and disappeared into the stairwell, and Rattler could catch her easy, but then he saw Prairie through that door the curly-hair one left open. Prairie with her pretty mouth open a little like she was saying his name, Prairie with her fancy shoes and her fancy hair he wanted to mess up with his hands, Prairie who knew him like no other. He let the curly-hair one go. He took Prairie because Prairie was his, and they rode the elevator together, and when it stopped on the other floors, Rattler stared down every man or woman who wanted to get in the little box with them. The box was not big enough to hold him and his feelings. The world was not big enough to hold him and Prairie and his feelings.

But first things first, which was why he’d pulled off the road for a little talk once they’d got good and far out of the city and night had come down to hide them. A talk and then a night’s rest, that was what they needed.

“Now, before I give you this, girl,” he said to Prairie, “you git to thinking on what you’re gonna do. ’Cause seems you and me got the same goal here, least in the short term. We’re going after Hailey and the rest. We work together, we might just save that little bastard child and them Polacks. You shoot me down, they don’t stand a chance.”

Prairie still said nothing, but she gave him the tiniest of nods. Slowly, reluctantly, Rattler eased off her, slid his hands from her hair, leaned back in the driver’s seat.

Then he handed her his favorite gun.

He watched her settle it into her hands. It looked good on her, warm steel shimmering silver. When she lifted it and pointed it at him, he allowed himself a smile. She was brave, a natural hunter. The blood ran as thick in her veins as it did in his.

“Now listen well,” he said as she raised the gun until it was inches from his crazy spinning eye and sighted down the barrel. “I seen water. I seen more dead before tomorrow’s done, and I seen you by my side. Mind me well, girl, and do as I say.”

He turned away from her then and eased his seat back, fixing to get his sleep. “And put that thing down. You know you ain’t gonna shoot me-not tonight, anyway.”

26

PRENTISS AND MUSTACHE HURRIED OUT of the cafeteria as alarms sounded elsewhere in the building. Several other staffers abandoned their lunch and followed, barking orders into cell phones.

Dr. Grace stared at us nervously. She and Kaz and I were alone in the dining room now. “Everything is fine,” she said uncertainly. “I’m sure they will be back soon. Meanwhile, why don’t we, um, take a tour? I can show you the recreation facilities. We have a gym, sauna, a volleyball-”

“I don’t care about any of that. I just want to see Chub,” I interrupted.

Kaz caught my eye. He shook his head subtly and I followed his gaze to the ceiling above the door. Mounted in the corner was a tiny security camera. I glanced around the rest of the room but didn’t see any others.

Dr. Grace was shaking her head. “You know that is not possible, not without Prentiss on-site. But I’m sure he’ll be back by tomorrow, and once things are back to normal, I can suggest a visit. Perhaps you can observe me working with him.”

Kaz mouthed something, but I couldn’t make out the words.

“Um…,” I said. Dr. Grace looked at me suspiciously. “Have you been spending much time with Chub?”

“I am his principal contact, yes,” Dr. Grace said. “I am in charge of his testing, as well as his daily