All the patients were in the tunnel now, not far from Andre’s mother. I got it. The goons would be back and this time, they could blow up the street. Stopping a company with helicopters and troops wouldn’t be easy. Andre was probably right to go for the Gorgon’s head.
The question was, would Andre behave rationally or just blow Gloria off the map?
Andre in a rage could terrorize small countries. After being warned all day not to let him kill anyone, I apparently wasn’t the only one fearing for his sanity. I ripped off a bite of sandwich and did my best to act as if I wasn’t panicking.
Avoiding any lingering results of the explosion—like fire trucks parked in the street or cops looking for witnesses—Tim and I took Andre’s back door and the alley over to Pearl’s fenced-in backyard where I kept my Harley.
I added calling Max to my to-do list. If Dane started showing up anywhere besides his gas appliances, I wanted to know about it. If I had to keep fighting the souls I sent to hell, I’d rather become a hermit.
“Where are we going?” Tim finally had the smarts to ask.
“You hid from the goons in the warehouse, didn’t you?” I asked, to confirm my suspicion. “You’re learning to control your little trick?”
“Sort of,” he said warily, finishing off his sandwich before donning the helmet I handed him. “I went out like a light when that guy tackled me, though.”
“Disappearing when attacked is an instinctive defense. Disappearing at will and staying invisible is a little more difficult.” I strapped on my helmet and tucked Milo and his canvas bag into the bike’s leather pouch, where he’d be safer.
This conversation would have had me checking into a mental ward six months ago. Since Max’s death and my emergence as some kind of freak of nature, anything seemed feasible. And the kid needed someone to teach him that he was special, not weird. The Zone had its positive side. I needed to reinforce it.
“I walked past Leibowitz last week without him seeing me,” Tim bragged.
“You’re scared of Leibowitz. Disappearing when scared is still pretty much a defensive action. Remember the time we visited Senator Vanderventer in the hospital and you pulled his hair? Were you scared then?”
“You bet your shit I was. You do scary things.” Horny male adolescent climbed on the bike and grabbed the bar instead of the hot babe.
I do not lack self-esteem. He’d just proved his sexual orientation.
“And you still haven’t said where we’re going.”
“Just for a Sunday drive in the country,” I said cheerfully, roaring the bike into action. I didn’t want him getting scared and winking out on me before we got there.
I didn’t turn the helmet radio on, so Tim couldn’t question me further. I’d taken Sarah with me the last time I’d planned on terrorizing the Vanderventer homestead. That hadn’t worked so well. My latest theory was that Zone inhabitants were survivors because they had an accelerated flight instinct—except the Zone had perverted that instinct into invisibility and shape-shifting instead of running. Sarah had shifted into a chimp the instant Gloria’s guards had turned on us. Tim would go invisible.
And I’d be left standing all alone. Again.
Maybe I’d stop and call Max and tell him to give Dane’s granny a visit today. But if Andre was heading in Gloria’s direction, I feared I’d really have more trouble than I could take on. Having Dane/Max and Andre under the same roof might amuse Granny Gloria, up to the point that Andre aimed his toy guns at her grandson. No love lost between those two.
It was a lovely September day. It would have been nice to linger. A few trees along the mansion-studded roads of Towson were just starting to show color. Maple tree crowns flared with the occasional bright orange and red in the sunlight. Even as I roared down the center lane, I could feel Tim swiveling to take it all in. This was a world of luxury and beauty, just half an hour’s drive from our blighted rusted-metal-and-blacktop environment.
I geared past the court building and wondered guiltily what the pink ash might have done to the inhabitants. I’d not seen any reactions beyond those of the comatose patients yet. Maybe it took a large quantity of ash and a compromised immune system. The baby docs had said their patients hadn’t been healthy, which might have been why the homeless camp had taken such a hit. Bums didn’t get good medical care. Neither did poor people with no medical insurance, which equated to just about everyone in the Zone, but odds were better that young people were stronger.
I hoped Julius or Paddy had gone down to help the gun-toting med student and his patients, because I didn’t have time for them. Apparently I was more interested in preventing Andre from getting his head blown off by Gloria’s goons than in protecting comatose patients. I made a lousy goddess, domestic or otherwise.
Since Andre had obviously known Gloria Vanderventer since childhood, he wouldn’t have had the same difficulty I did in locating the mansion hidden down one of a thousand and one narrow lanes in this gazillion-dollar district. I’d only been here once. I remembered her mansion as being on top of a hill overlooking all the luxury homes that had usurped the countryside over the last century. Gloria had the last remaining estate-size acreage in the neighborhood.
I knew better than to drive through her gates this time. Despite the idyllic, tree-lined country lanes, her place was guarded by security cameras and black-suited thugs with cell phones and walkie-talkies and probably AK-47s just like Andre’s. Gloria really didn’t like surprise company.
I glanced in as I putted past the main ironwork gate and noted Andre’s Mercedes sports car in front of the house. Despite the hair-raising speed with which we’d traveled, we didn’t have much time.
I pulled down a side lane, out of sight of any cameras, and halted the bike near a grove of bamboo. “Work time,” I told Tim, unfastening my helmet.
I knew better than to believe Milo would stay safely with the bike. I threw his bag over my shoulder. Milo and I would just have to adjust to the idea of short life spans.
It didn’t seem to matter that my rational brain said that visiting Gloria again was a very bad, awful idea. That other overdeveloped lobe where my conscience dwelled said Andre and the other Zone inhabitants had been run roughshod over more certainly than any small farmers shot out by cattle barons. It was John Wayne time.
“Are you scared enough to wink out yet?” I asked carelessly when Tim had his helmet off. “Can you get over that wall?”
He flickered just seeing the high stones.
“I’d give you a boost, but I’m afraid the cameras might catch me,” I said apologetically. “They probably have Wanted posters all over the place with my head on them.”
Well, maybe not, if Gloria was stupid enough to believe I’d actually saved her grandson. Since Dane had kidnapped me off her back lawn just before he got shot, I was betting she’d ask questions after tying me to a cannon, but maybe she wouldn’t shoot first.
“What do you want me to do once I get over?” Tim asked with intelligent suspicion.
“There’s usually an electronic lock on those things.” I nodded at the wrought-iron gates. “Looks like there’s a pedestrian gate. This side will require a key code, but I bet just a button opens it on the inside. Push that to let me in.”
Tim bravely switched out. The boy took clothes and all with him. I admired that ability. I couldn’t see how he scaled the wall, but after a while, I could hear the click of the electronic security pad at the guardhouse, and the pedestrian gate slid open.
I probably wouldn’t set off any alarms, but the cameras would see me. I was just hoping a person on foot wouldn’t attract too much interest. Guests, servants, delivery people must walk in and out all the time.
“How do you know how these things work?” Tim whispered as I joined him.
“I have a broad education,” I told him. The real story was much too long to tell and involved my peripatetic childhood with my tree-hugging, lawbreaking mother. One didn’t save the whales by owning the keys to places like these.
I’d learned from the best how to protest injustice. I was just taking a different route than PETA and Greenpeace.
Watching the shrubbery for black suits, I boldly jogged up the drive toward the Mercedes with invisible Tim raising dust at my side. If I told myself I was just visiting Andre’s car, maybe I could pretend I wasn’t flaming
