John Hawks - The Golden City

“Does the guard know that we’re staying here?” Maya asked.

“He doesn’t need to know anything. He’s off in twenty minutes. When I drive back down the hill, a church deacon will be on the night shift.”

Rancho Vista was supposed to occupy a series of terraces cut into the foothills, but only one building had been finished completely. It was a ranch-style house with a three-car garage and welcome signs posted on the front lawn. Farther up the street were two houses with no lawns, and then the wooden frames of a half-dozen abandoned structures. Past that point, Jimson weed and manzanita bushes had reclaimed the hillside.

“This is the model house,” Josetta said as they pulled into the driveway. “The builder set this up so that people could see themselves living up here in the hills.”

She got out of the car, opened up the trunk, and removed a nylon sack and a grocery bag filled with food. Then she led them up the brick walkway and unlocked the front door. Maya thought the model home would be empty, but it was filled with dust-covered furniture. Cocktail glasses and liquor bottles were on a sideboard, and a big bouquet of tulips was in the middle of a coffee table. It took Maya a few seconds to realize that the bottles were empty and the flowers were colored silk and twisted strands of wire.

“There’s no electricity,” Josetta said. “But they’ve left the water on.”

They followed her into the kitchen. It had a central serving island with a granite countertop and expensive-looking appliances. Wax apples and pears filled a copper bowl; a plastic cake was on a serving plate in the middle of the breakfast table.

Josetta dropped the nylon sack on the floor and set the groceries on the counter. She ignored Maya and directed all of her comments to Gabriel. “I bought you some sandwiches for dinner and blueberry muffins for breakfast. A flashlight and two sleeping bags are in the sack. It gets cold up here at night.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “We really appreciate this.”

“When my daughter called me from New York, she always spoke very highly of you, Mr. Corrigan.”

“Vicki was a wonderful person,” Gabriel said. “She had a pure heart.”

Josetta grimaced as if someone had jabbed her with a knife and began to cry. “I knew she was special even before she was born. That’s why I named her Victory Over Sin Fraser. I just wrote a little pamphlet about her with the help of Reverend Morganfield. People want to read about her. Victory is not just my daughter anymore. She’s one of the angels.”

The Traveler nodded sympathetically. Maya wondered if they were going to have to sit around the breakfast table and watch Josetta cry. But Vicki’s mother was stronger than that; she picked up her purse and headed for the door.

“I’ll come back around eight in the morning. Be ready to go.”

They stood in the living room and watched Josetta drive back down the hill to the gate house. “They’re turning Vicki into a saint,” Maya said.

“It sounds like that might happen.”

“But she was just a person, Gabriel. She wasn’t a face in a stained-glass window. Remember the night she sang at the karaoke bar? Remember when Hollis taught her how to dance?”

“A saint is just an extraordinary person plus a few hundred years.”

They sat at the kitchen table and watched the sun drift down to the foothills like an orange balloon leaking helium. Gabriel decided to take a shower. Maya heard him sputtering beneath the cold water as she switched on her computer and sent a coded message to Linden.

Josetta was right-the bankrupt housing development was a safe place to spend the night-but certain aspects of the model home made her uncomfortable. Someone had placed framed photographs in each room of a married couple and their two children. In one photograph, the family was standing on a dock, and the little boy held up a trout. In another, the little girl wore ballet shoes and a snowflake costume.

Gabriel returned to the kitchen with wet hair. He took the sandwiches out of the grocery bag and placed them on the kitchen table. “When I was growing up, I fantasized about a house like this. New furniture. A backyard. Parents who gave parties and invited lots of friends”

“I wanted something like this, too. A brick house in Hampstead and a father who didn’t travel around the world killing people.”

The king-sized bed in the master bedroom turned out to be a plywood platform concealed with a comforter. When it got dark, they placed their sleeping bags on the platform. Gabriel lay next to Maya with his arm beneath her head. At that moment she felt as if they were old married couple that had known each other for a lifetime. She had always thought of love as passion and sacrifice, but it was also like this-a moment of quiet closeness that felt like it will last forever.

Gabriel smiled. “Is it against the Harlequin ‘rules’ to say that you’re beautiful?”

“I think we’ve already broken most of the rules.”

“Good. Because you are beautiful and I’m happy to be here tonight.”

He kissed her one last time, lay on his side and went sleep. Maya sat up and tried to anticipate what might happen. The next few days were going to be dangerous, but at least her leg wound had almost healed. Although she was sick to her stomach in the morning, she still didn’t look pregnant. Gabriel hadn’t noticed the vitamin pills and the snacks Maya carried in her shoulder bag. She decided to wake up early and nibble a few crackers before starting the day.

A night wind blew out of the canyons and cut around the edges of the house. Gabriel shifted over to his left side and she gazed down at the Traveler. There was a three-quarter moon outside and a band of moonlight touched his body. Cold light. That’s what her father had always called the moon.

Maya heard a muffled noise in the distance-the sound of a car coming up the street. Barefoot, she walked across the cold tile floor to the living room and peered through a gap in the curtains. A two-door hatchback had parked in front of the house, its headlights pointing up the hill. The shadow driver turned off the engine and got out of the car. He had something in his right hand. When he stepped onto the sidewalk, she saw the stubby silhouette and curved ammunition clip of an assault rifle.

She ran back to the bedroom and shook Gabriel awake. “Hurry up and get dressed. We need to get out of here.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Someone’s outside the house.”

Still half-asleep, Gabriel pulled on his pants and shirt. “It’s probably just Josetta’s friend.”

“I don’t think a church deacon would carry an assault rifle.”

A fist thumped on the front door. Gabriel finished tying his shoes as Maya grabbed the flashlight and slung the sword carrier around her neck.

“Hurry up. We’ll go out the back.”

Gabriel pushed open a sliding glass door and they stepped into the yard. Maya considered running up the street, using the thick underbrush as cover, but immediately rejected the idea. She didn’t know the terrain, and an attack could come in any direction. The Harlequin rule was: choose your enemy’s path .

Something slammed inside the house. The man with the rifle had forced the front door open. He shouted something, but the words were indistinct.

“Stay with me,” Maya whispered. “We’re going to set up a position in another house.”

They ran up the sidewalk and then darted across the street to one of the houses that had never received a driveway and landscaping. Gabriel circled around the back and kicked in the kitchen door. The empty house smelled of roof tar and pine board. There were no light fixtures; bare wires hung down from the ceiling like roots in a cave.