Rachel Caine - Unknown

He didn’t answer this time. I don’t think he understood my point, so I made it clear.

“When we tracked Isabel toward the Ranch where Pearl was keeping her, what did Pearl do?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it, thinking. Then squeezed his eyes shut as if he had a terrible headache.

“She whistled up the cops and accused us of kidnapping,” he said. “Nothing the cops will respond to faster than an endangered, abducted child.”

“And when they arrive,” I said softly, “they find a boy dead in the back of our van.”

He understood, then, and leaned forward to press both hands to his face. He had a record with the police, the kind of thing that predisposed them to suspicion. His own niece had disappeared.

This would not go well for him.

I continued, only because I felt I had to drive the point home. “She intended this to slow us down, confuse us, delay us. Separate us. As you pointed out before, the police can be defeated, but they are many, and we can’t fight them on fair terms. We must run. And we must leave the boy behind.”

“Wouldn’t do any good. Forensics and shit, don’t you watch any of those cop shows on television? They’ll link the kid to me sooner or later. Hell, the blanket around him is Isabel’s. And my DNA’s in the system.”

I shrugged. “Those things, I can fix. We leave him, and I remove all traces and links to us, both physical and aetheric. But we must do it now, quickly. She won’t be waiting to put her plans in motion. All my skill won’t help if the police search the van and find him here. I can’t credibly hide him from their sight. It’s too small an area.”

Luis waited a torturously long second, then wiped a palm over his hand and nodded. He looked ill. I didn’t hesitate; I picked up the boy, slid open the door of the van, and jumped down the embankment of the road in a shower of pale dirt, sliding out of sight of the road.

“Wait,” Luis said. He’d lunged to the opening in the van, and his knuckles were white where he gripped the door frame. “Don’t just—don’t just dump him. He meant something to somebody. Like Ibby means something to us. Please. I’m asking you. Treat him—treat him like you care.”

That said a great deal about what Luis presumed he knew about me.

I stared at him for a few seconds, saying nothing, and then walked away.

Desert stretched out on all sides, hot and sterile, dotted with the alien shapes of the only plants that could fight the harsh conditions. But the desert was far from empty; no, it throbbed with life, from the busy burrowing insects to the running rabbits to the cunning, coiled snakes.

It was a hard place to leave a child.

I let the sense of bruised hurt fade, and focused on my task. I balanced my burden—suddenly much heavier than its mere physical weight—and set off at a steady run, heading far from the road.

I didn’t look back, but I heard Luis say, very quietly, “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know if he meant it for the boy, or for me.

I made the boy a grave on a hillside, near an overhanging fragrant bush that offered a little shade. It overlooked a valley lush with the rainbow of the desert—russets, ochers, and tans, dotted with vivid greens and the occasional struggling flower. It had a kind of empty, wild beauty. It was all I could offer as apology, as acknowledgment of what Luis had said—that somewhere in the world, someone was missing this boy.

I stripped away the blanket and carefully, using bursts of Luis’s power, removed any traces that might link the boy back to us before wrapping it tightly around him again, in an obscure wish to give comfort. Conscious of the press of time, I knew I couldn’t hesitate, yet something made me do just that.

I looked down on the boy’s silent, empty face before covering it, and said, “Be at peace, child. I will stop those who hurt you.”

Then I leaped out of the grave and triggered a heavy landslide of dirt to cover him. The earth flowed and shifted, thumping heavily down, and I felt myself flinch from the sound. Not a Djinn reaction, a human one, a primal recognition of what it meant to be beneath the ground. To be gone from the world.

I sent out a thought that might have, in a human, been a prayer, as the earth settled in place above him.

I felt the Mother stir slowly and quietly beneath my feet, a sense gifted to me through my connection to Luis—although even Luis rarely felt Her presence so clearly. A tendril only, a whisper, questioning, like a murmur in sleep. This borrowed touch, fleeting and faint, made me drop to my knees and press my hands flat into the sand. I gasped in ragged breaths, begging with all my soul for the blessing of her awareness, of her embrace.

I had forgotten how alone I was, until for a single, shining instant, I was found.

Then sense faded, and I was alone, lost, and afraid once more.

Human, again.

I rose, still breathing hard, and wiped the tears from my dusty face before heading back to the van.

“Here they come,” Luis said, less than half an hour later, glancing in the rearview mirror. “You know the drill, Cass. Stay cool.”

I nodded. The van was completely empty of any trace of the boy. No doubt there would have been witnesses that saw the boy back near the Rocha house, but one thing I had quickly learned about Luis’s neighbors: They were not eager to help the police.

It was highly doubtful any of them would talk.

I looked in the mirror on the passenger side and saw the lurid red and blue lights, and heard the rising wail of a siren. Luis immediately slowed the van, pulling off to the gravel shoulder of the road.

The police car pulled in behind.

It went as Luis had no doubt assumed it would; we were ordered to get out of the van and lean against the hot metal of the vehicle. The policemen—two large men who kept their ready hands near the butts of their guns—searched the van, then each of us. Luis stayed bland and calm. If I fumed at the casual way that they dared to touch me, I kept the reactions carefully hidden. That was one thing that Detective Halley had done for me; he had taught me to handle these official invasions with some semblance of control.

All licenses and registrations were current, and, as I had expected, the police had nothing but an anonymous report on which to question us. Without some physical evidence, they were forced to let us go.

I didn’t imagine for a moment that they were happy about it.

Luis let out a slow breath as the police car, its lights still flashing, disappeared behind us. He kept the van to a careful speed, mindful of all road laws, and at the next turning pulled off in the parking lot of a diner that advertised HOME COOKING. It smelled like grease, even from where I sat a hundred feet away.

“Are we turning around?” I asked. I sincerely hoped we weren’t stopping for food. Not here.

“I was thinking about it,” Luis admitted, then shook his head. “No, it’s no good. We need information, and we’re not going to get it sitting around waiting for Pearl to send another kid after us. The Ma’at know things we don’t. Let’s see what we can get out of them.”

Activity. I felt a slow smile spread across my face, warm and genuine. “Sounds like fun.”

“Your definition of fun sometimes worries me.” Dark eyes examined me for a moment. “You want something to eat?”

I shuddered. “Not here.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“Not even pie?”

I did love pie. I turned my gaze to the diner, and said, “Not here.”

“You’re too picky.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Perhaps I have a better-developed sense of self-preservation than you do.”

He frowned. “You just got no appreciation for the little things.”