Шарлин Харрис - Small Kingdoms and Other Stories

“She was sure it was you,” Anne said.

David appeared both confused and angry. “Do you believe I’m an embezzler? Twyla, Greg?”

Twyla said, “Anne,” at the same moment Greg said, “Holt.”

“Does it matter what we think?” Holt continued. “One of you will take the blame. I hope it’s her.”

Anne began to pick up the items that had scattered from the grocery sack. Among them was a knife. Anne smiled. She retrieved her own from her jacket. Then, just in case, she got her gun out of the drawer and put it in a handy spot. After all, everyone else in the room was armed.

She was waiting for the inevitable question. Holt obliged by saying, “What do you want to do with her, David?”

“The options are limited,” David said slowly. “We call Farm East and tell – who, Jay Pargeter, I guess?—to come get her. Or we wait until she wakes up, and we ask her some questions. Or we let her go. Or we kill her now.”

“We’re not part of the system any more,” Anne told David, pointing from Holt to herself. “We shouldn’t take part in an interrogation.”

“You can’t let her go,” Holt said.

David looked down at Cassie unhappily. “If she was anyone else, I’d put her down. But she’s earned some respect. She’s done a good job since you left, Anne. Until now.”

Holt glanced at Anne and then said, “There’s another choice. You could take Cassie up to Camp East yourself.”

David looked at Holt with narrow eyes. “Why?”

“Enough people know where Anne is already,” Holt said. “Someone had to tell Cassie. If you call from here, at least ten more people will know. Anne, did Cassie say how she found you?”

“Gary Pomeroy in tech support. She also knew you were here, so she figured David might visit.”

“Son of a bitch,” David said, disgusted. “I’ll pay Gary back. Maybe officially. Maybe on my own time.”

“If you don’t, I will,” Anne said. “I don’t want to have to start all over again. It seems to be too easy to pry the information out of Gary. At least we’ll assume it was him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” David tensed.

“You knew all along where I was. You sent Holt here.”

“You were getting death threats!”

“Like that’s new. I never believed that’s the only reason he came.”

David looked at Holt. “So you’ve never told her why you left?”

“We never talked about it,” Holt said calmly.

“We don’t talk about the past a lot,” Anne said, which was absolutely true.

“Well, Anne, you might be interested to know that Holt here, back when he was Greg Baer, was suspected in the disappearance—and probable murder—of a doctor in Grand Rapids, Michigan,” David said.

“And?” Anne was unconcerned.

“I got tipped off Greg was going to be arrested,” David said. “We couldn’t let the police come to the facility, obviously. They believe it’s a wilderness camp for adults, but if they had a closer look that wouldn’t fly. I had to drive Greg into town to meet with them. They’d flown in from Michigan.”

“They took me to the local police station and put me through the wringer,” Holt said, smiling. “But considering where I work, it was nothing.”

David stared at him. “Man, they were going to arrest you!”

“Maybe.” Holt didn’t sound worried.

“Oversight voted to hide him on my strong recommendation,” David told Anne, though he sounded as if he considered that was a mistake, just at the moment. “Otherwise his background might raise a red flag, though I swore to them that Greg wouldn’t talk about the program. His background fit the opening here. He had his ears modified and his tattoos removed. A nose job. I figured you wouldn’t recognize him right away. You two hadn’t actually met, as far as Greg could remember. You could get to know him as Holt.”

“You’re right, I didn’t recognize him.” He’d made her vaguely uneasy, though, and it had explained a lot when he let her know who he’d been.

David nodded, pleased. “Oversight charged me with arranging your identities. No one else knew.”

“Except Gary in tech support,” Holt said in disgust.

“Except him.”

“Thanks, then,” Anne said. She smiled brightly. Holt was going to have some talking to do after this. From his face, he knew that.

David looked from Holt to Anne. “All right, I’ll take Cassie with me. I’ll call Pennsylvania once I’ve gotten a couple of hours under my belt so no one can find out where I started. I disabled the GPS on the rental. It’s a seven hour drive?”

“Yes,” Anne said. “Thereabouts. One of us could go with you, fly back. You might need help.”

“No thanks,” David said. “I need to think. Someone took that money. It wasn’t me, and I believe it wasn’t Cassie. But we both might lose our jobs.”

Holt and Anne glanced at each other, quickly looked away. Yes, they needed to talk.

“Where’s your car?” Anne asked David.

“We drove over here in it,” Holt said. He was staring at Cassie, sizing up her shape and weight. He was a practical man.

“Good. We need to find her car,” Anne said.

“Search,” Holt said briefly. Since it was possible Cassie was playing possum – though Anne didn’t think so – Anne stood a safe distance away with Holt’s gun aimed at the prone figure. Holt knelt to search her. In a practiced way, he rolled Cassie to one side, then the other, as he searched her. He pulled two sets of keys from her pockets and stood. “Rental,” he said, “and personal.”

“She’s got a cabin five miles from camp,” Anne said. “If she hasn’t moved.”

“She won’t stay out for much longer,” David said. “If I get stopped… I’m a black man. Just saying.” He was saying that not only might he get stopped no matter how carefully he kept to the speed limit, but also that he didn’t want to have to kill policemen. But it would be very, very awkward if he were arrested with a tied-up white woman who was screaming bloody murder.

“I have something to keep her out until you get there,” Anne said. “You sure you don’t want me to come? I could manage her. But I’d have to be back by Monday morning for school.”

“You have no idea how weird it is to hear you say that,” David said, smiling reluctantly. “I’ll take her solo, if she’s drugged. What do you have to keep her quiet?”

Anne ran up the stairs to her attic to open her carefully concealed stash of things she’d figured might prove handy. She was a “waste not, want not” kind of person.

“This should be two doses of thiopental,” Anne said when she returned. She handed the vials of freeze-dried powder to David, along with sterile water and two hypodermics.

“You keep that around? Geez, Anne. What else you got?” David went over to the sink to prepare the injections.

“Oh, this is a holdover from Camp East,” she said. “I picked it up in the infirmary after a trainee broke his leg. I thought it might come in handy some day. I stuck it in my go-kit and I didn’t clean it out… in the haste of my departure.” (In the middle of the night. With two armed and wary “escorts.” Not her favorite memory.)

“Thanks,” David said. He gave Cassie the first injection. “Is the other side of your garage free?”

“Yes, there’s a control button by the kitchen door. You can drive right in. Might as well leave the kitchen door open.”

In a few seconds—not long enough to have a conversation—Anne heard the garage door rumble up. She nodded to Holt, who squatted to take Cassie’s feet. Anne took her shoulders. Cassie’s body drooped between them like a hammock.

David had lowered the garage door and opened the trunk. “I’ve disabled the safety latch,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on the clock and stop to give her the second shot. Four hours?”