kitchen, curtains, and office floor, lit a match, and thumbed the flame toward the puddle. He ran out back to the woods and grabbed his motorcycle. It had taken him less than three minutes.
The man got on his motorcycle and peeled off after Kendrick’s car. He didn’t have to hurry and catch up to them; he knew where they were going, and it was a beautiful day for a mountain ride.
FORTY-SIX
Dodd drove a Lincoln Navigator, black, spacious. Seating was difficult; no one whom Groote had tried to kill wanted to sit with him. But Groote sat in the back, with Celeste, and Nathan sat in the front seat. Dodd gave Groote a piece of pillowcase from the motel room to stanch the flow of blood from the cuts Celeste had given him.
Celeste slumped in the seat and guessed that Miles had worked out a deal with Dodd – had he found Frost? If he was trading Frost for her and Nathan, she would have told him to keep running, because Dodd, she believed, wanted them all permanently silenced about his operation.
The spectacular scenery as they drove along the winding narrow road that led toward Bridalveil Falls sickened her. Valley and rock tumbled away to their left; mountain rose on their right, studded with evergreens. The vastness of the blue sky, the sheer openness, nearly overwhelmed her. God could see her. Brian could see her. She closed her eyes, tried to calm herself. She’d made it farther than she had thought possible; she could cope. She must.
‘I bet a week ago you wouldn’t have thought you’d be in California, Celeste,’ Nathan said. Excited now, confident, but not quiet. Manic.
‘No, Nathan, I sure didn’t think so.’
‘The mountains, the valleys. All shaped from broken rock pushed and pulled over millions of years, under unimaginable force. Beauty out of pressure. Just like us.’
‘Not like us,’ Celeste said.
‘If you need proof Frost fixes you, look at Celeste,’ Nathan said. ‘Yosemite would be an agoraphobe’s nightmare, and she’s holding it together.’
‘You aren’t the guy I believed you were,’ Celeste said.
‘You misjudge Nathan,’ Dodd said. ‘He’s a hero.’
‘He wants to be one and you’ve taken advantage of him,’ she said.
‘Shut up,’ Nathan said. ‘Frost is going to help every soldier coming back from war, for years. No more suicides. No more broken marriages, no more inability to fit back into regular life. None of what I went through. The whole country will be grateful.’
‘I know, Nathan.’ Celeste kept her voice steady. ‘But kidnapping and threatening to kill Groote’s kid, is that heroic, Nathan?’
He swallowed hard. ‘He saved your life, Celeste, so you shut up now.’
Dodd said, ‘I never used the word kill, Mrs. Brent. I’m not a monster and I resent the implication. I have no desire to hurt you or Amanda Groote.’
‘You get Frost, what happens to us?’
‘You can be in a testing program. A legitimate one we can make public when the drug works. And I can arrange for you to reenter public life, given your disappearance from Santa Fe. We’ll say you simply checked yourself into a clinic after Allison’s death. It won’t be hard. If you can keep your mouth shut.’
‘And if I don’t, you kill me.’
‘You were much more diplomatic on TV.’ Dodd sounded amused. ‘Are you going to speak out about how Frost was born, ruin it for millions of other people?’
Celeste ignored him. ‘Groote.’ She tapped his leg until he looked at her. ‘What’s wrong with your daughter that she needs Frost?’
‘Like you would care.’
‘I might,’ Celeste said. ‘She’s not you.’
Groote put his eyes back to the mountains’ rise, the last slivers of snow still in shadow. Celeste could not pity him, exactly, but with his broken nose, his bruised and razor-sliced face, and his frayed gaze Groote looked as if he had gone to fight a hundred wars for his child and lost them all. Such a man did not stop. He did not quit. She was afraid Groote still had more fight in him. Or perhaps he needed Frost himself, she thought with a jolt. Dodd might have forced Groote into that hinterland of sanity where she had wandered after Brian’s death, lost, alone, with no map to guide her home.
Groote ignored Celeste Brent’s question – he would never discuss his baby girl with these nutcases – and thought, Dodd doesn’t know. He doesn’t know Allison had both the research and the buyers’ list. He thinks she just stole the research. They don’t know about the second auction Sorenson mentioned. They haven’t put the whole picture together on what that bastard Sorenson’s doing. The two crazies didn’t seem to know, either, or seem to care.
He had a trump card, value to trade for Amanda, and he knew he had to wait for the right second to play it. A deal of sorts was brewing between Miles and Dodd, and this was exactly the info that could change the deal in his favor, in Amanda’s favor. Dodd was nothing more than a smug bureaucrat who thought he was running the show. Dodd was dead wrong, Groote knew, if he could just keep his nerve.
He promised himself he’d bring Amanda to this mountain paradise someday, whole and healthy. The fresh air would do her a world of good if she wouldn’t be afraid of the winding roads.
Miles drove through the amazing Yosemite landscape with no eye for beauty. Rising, jutting mountains, clear sky, huge pines. Spectacular, but he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. Wallace sat next to him.
‘Tell me about her,’ Miles said.
‘She was… tough.’
‘It’s not what I expected you to say.’
‘It’s what comes to mind,’ Wallace said.
Miles edged over to the right as a motorcycle drew up to them, passed them, a young man with a heavy pack mounted behind him, glancing at them as he sped past.
Wallace said, ‘She grew up poor. Went to college on full scholarship, had med and grad schools fighting over her. Bright beyond belief. Great at reading people, telling them what they wanted to hear …’
‘You didn’t say anything about her helping people.’
‘Did she help you?’
‘Yes. I thought for a while she was the only one would could.’
‘She was good at making people think she was the cure, all right,’ Wallace said, staring out the window.
‘She wasn’t?’
‘No one doctor is the Holy Grail,’ Wallace said. ‘But patients want to believe it of their doctors, and doctors indulge the fantasy. She liked being needed.’
A sign announced Bridalveil on their left. Miles steered the car into a parking slot.
‘You stick close to me,’ Miles said.
‘I thought you didn’t trust me.’
‘I don’t. But the point is to come to agreement, and all of us walk away, no problems. You included.’
They got out of the car and started to hike toward the falls. The trail to Bridalveil led up a series of terraced steps. White water cascaded in fury down a creek, topped with froth. The roar of the falls increased as they approached; the snowmelt gave way in torrents under the early May sun. Now Miles could see the top of the falls, jetting down, the mist rising from impact, the water almost dancing with the strong wind that swept through the valley.
They headed right, toward the falls themselves, walking along the raging creek of cascading snowmelt. There wasn’t much of a crowd this early in the season; Miles saw a trio of Japanese tourists; an elderly couple with a decided spring in their step, leaning on each other, smiling; a young couple staring up at the falls with worshipful rapture.
