Jane took a last look back. The two men with rifles were nearly across the burned stubble. As soon as they reached their post at the blind and got their rifles comfortably sighted in, she knew, they would give some kind of signal for the assault to begin.
Jane set off again, making her way through the dry chaparral and spiky plants, threading between rocks and along gravelly inclines, straining to see Rita’s shape ahead of her. She could feel the effect of the extra weight on her feet, calves, and knees, but if she kept her hands clasped at her belly and her back straight, she found she could move at a good walking pace.
In ten minutes, her shoulders and neck were tight and painful, and when she heard hard, sharp gasps, they were her own. The sweat had begun to run down into her eyes and sting them, then fall in drops from her nose and chin.
When Jane reached the dry arroyo, Rita was waiting for her, staring at her in horror. Jane stopped, bent her knees, and let Bernie down. Rita whispered, “How can you do that?”
Jane sank to the ground and lay there. She answered in a strained and winded voice, “I kept reminding myself of what would happen if I didn’t.” After a minute, her voice was stronger. “How do you feel now, Bernie?”
“Better.”
“Good,” said Jane. “Rita, give me the shotgun. I’ll go ahead for a bit. Walk with Bernie at his pace. If there’s a problem, run ahead and get me. Don’t call out.”
“Okay,” said Rita.
Jane got to her feet. “Watch your step here. There’s a slope.” She went down into the arroyo and came up on the other side, then slowly increased her speed to a trot.
Far behind, Jane heard the sound of glass breaking, then a loud creak and bang, as though the front door had just burst inward, the dead bolt wrenching the frame off with it. She kept moving until she thought she heard distant shouts. She glanced over her shoulder.
She could see Bernie and Rita walking toward her. Bernie had his head down, but he seemed to be moving steadily. It looked as though Rita was leaning close to his ear, whispering to him. But far behind them, the lights were going on in the house.
Jane set off again, watching the path ahead and trying to pick out easy, smooth stretches where the others could move quickly. She held the shotgun close to her chest, with her left hand on the foregrip and the right on the stock just behind the trigger guard. A few minutes later, she heard car doors slam, and an engine turn over and start. She turned to see one of the cars pull up the long driveway to stop beside the lighted rectangle of the kitchen door. A man appeared in the doorway, blocking some of the light, then moved and was replaced by another. They appeared to be carrying bulky objects. Were they loading the computers into the car?
Jane hesitated, feeling the impulse to take the disk drives out of her pockets and bury them in the dirt, but resisted. She knew that she couldn’t take the time to do it, and she had a fear that the men would come out here in the daylight and be able to see the hiding place that had seemed invisible to her in the darkness. She could hear Bernie’s and Rita’s footsteps much closer to her now, so she set off again. She heard Bernie stumble, but when she took a step back toward him, she saw he was already coming ahead again, with Rita’s hand on his arm.
Jane went on, and after a time she began to see configurations of plants and rocks that she didn’t quite dare feel sure about, but then she saw distant lights, and she knew that they were approaching Apodaca Hill Road. She stopped and turned back.
She could see the faces of Rita and Bernie. Bernie’s forehead was wet with sweat, and his neck and cheeks had a darker shade, which she knew would be red in the light. She moved closer to look at him.
Bernie saw that she was staring at him, and he rasped, “What are you looking at?”
Jane said, “Sit down and rest.” She turned away from them and crept closer to the edge of Apodaca Hill Road. She went to her belly and slithered forward a few more feet to stop between thick bushes, then peered up the road. It was empty highway as far as she could see. She looked down the road in the other direction. She could see a car parked a few hundred feet away, on the other side of the intersection with Canyon Road. The night was too dark and the car too far away for her to be certain. She couldn’t see people inside, but why else would anyone park there, where there was no building?
She thought about the men at the house, and tried to reproduce their thoughts in sequence. When they had discovered that the house was empty, and the car was in the garage, they had guessed that the occupants had left on foot. It would have been reasonable to assume that they would head for the city, and to get there, they would have to cross this road.
A big truck appeared on the highway to her left, and Jane pushed her face down into the dirt to be sure its headlights fell on her hair rather than her skin. As soon as she felt the sudden gust of wind from its passing, she lifted her head to watch it go on down the road. When it drew near the parked car, its headlights shone on the windshield and illuminated the heads of four men inside.
Jane began to ease herself backward away from the road, but when she turned to head back, she saw more headlights, this time coming along Canyon Road from the direction of the house. The car appeared, turned right, and drove up to the car that was parked on Apodaca Hill Road, and paused for a moment beside it. Then the car turned around and went back along Canyon Road toward the house. As it turned, she could see heads in the back seat as well as the front.
Jane pondered for a moment. That was eight men so far. They had one car waiting here at the cutoff, and one car driving up and down the road searching. She had begun to move again when she heard another car. She stopped and watched it follow the same routine. When it came to Apodaca Hill Road it paused beside the parked car, turned around and went back out Canyon Road. This one had only two men in it. She waited, and then the fourth car appeared. As it turned, she saw that this one carried two men also.
The empty seats in the last two cars worried her. There could be as many as four men coming on foot across country the way she and Rita and Bernie had. She knew that trying to cross the road in front of the cutoff car would be like jumping into a grave, and it seemed that going back would be no better.
Jane crawled back and lay down beside Bernie in the weeds. “There’s a cutoff car with four men in it just down the road, facing this way. The other three cars are driving up and down Canyon Road, one after another.”
“Could we stay here and wait them out?” asked Bernie.
“Some of the seats in the cars are empty,” said Jane. “I think there might be men following us from the house on foot.”
Bernie held out his hand. “Give me the shotgun.”
“What for?”
“I’ll go down to the cutoff car, blow the windshield out on the driver’s side. It’ll take them a minute to get over it, and another minute to haul him out of the way so they can drive. By then we could all be in town.”
Jane looked at him, trying to make out his features in the darkness. “Tell me, Bernie. Have you done this kind of thing before?”
“Well, no,” said Bernie. “But anybody can see it’s the sensible thing to do, and anything I get on my conscience now, I’m not going to be burdened with it for long.”
“I don’t think so,” said Jane.
“Why not?”
“Too much noise,” said Jane. “I’d rather have the rest of them searching the road and the brush back there than up here in our faces.”
“When Frank Delfina is taking the skin off your back with a lemon peeler, I hope you remember that I offered,” he snapped. “So what’s your idea?”
“Figure out what they know, and make it not true anymore.”
“Christ,” he muttered. “What do they know?”
“It looks as though they’re sure we’re here, south of Canyon Road, and the cars going back and forth will keep us here. They just have to wait until the men on foot catch up or it gets light enough to see us.”
“How do you know that?”
“The cutoff car is facing this way on the other side of the intersection. All the men are still in their seats, facing this way. If they thought there was a chance we were on the other side, one or two would be out of the car, looking in that direction. They’re not. So that’s where we go.”
