Sanctuary (12 page)

Rob said a very bad word in response to this. Then he pushed away from the bar and went stalking over to the jukebox … which he punched. Not hard enough to break it, but hard enough so that Chick looked up and went, “Hey!”

Rob didn’t apologize though. Instead, he said, looking at Chick with appeal in his gray eyes, “Can you help me out here? Can you please explain to my girlfriend that she must be suffering from a chemical imbalance if she thinks I’m letting her anywhere near Jim Henderson’s place?”

Which was a horribly sexist thing to say, and which I knew I should have resented, but I couldn’t, since he’d called me the G word. You know. His
girlfriend
. It was the first time I’d ever heard him call me that. Within earshot of someone else, I mean.

Being his date at that Christmas Eve wedding didn’t look so far out of the realm of possibility now.

But Chick, instead of doing as Rob had asked, and telling me to forget about busting in on the True Americans, stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “You know,” he said. “It isn’t the worst idea I ever heard.”

Rob stared at him in horror.

“Hey,” Chick said, defensively. “I ain’t saying she should go in alone. But a kid’s dead, Wilkins. And if I know Henderson, this other one hasn’t got much time left.”

I threw Rob a triumphant look, as if to say,
See? I’m not crazy after all
.

“And you might say,” Chick went on, “this is a homegrown problem, Wilkins. I mean, Henderson’s one of our own. Ain’t it appropriate that we be the ones to mete out the justice? I can put in a few calls and have enough boys over here in five minutes, it’d put the National Guard to shame.”

I raised my eyebrows, impressed by the
mete out the justice
line.

Rob wasn’t going for it, though. “Even if we did agree this was a good idea,” he said, “which I am not doing, you said yourself it’s inaccessible. There’s nearly two feet of snow on the ground. How are we even going to get near the place?”

Chick did a surprising thing, then. He crooked a finger at us, then started walking—though, given his girth and height, lumbering was really more the word for it—toward the back door.

I followed him, with Rob reluctantly trailing behind me. Chick went down a short hallway that opened out into a sort of a ramshackle garage. Wind whistled through the haphazardly thrown up wooden slats that made up the walls.

Flicking on the single electric bulb that served as a light, Chick strode forward until he came to something covered with a tarp.

“Voilà,” he said, in what I assumed was a purposefully bad European accent.

Then he flung back the tarp to reveal two brand-new snowmobiles.

C H A P T E R
11

H
ey, I’ll admit it. I wanted on that snowmobile. I wanted on it, bad.

Can you blame me? I’d never been on one before.

And for someone who likes going fast, well, what’s more thrilling than going fast over snow? Oh, sure, I’d been skiing before, over at the dinky slopes of Paoli Peaks. It had been fun and all. For like an hour. I mean, let’s face it, Indiana is not exactly known for its mountainous terrain, so the Peaks got old kind of fast for any thrill seeker worthy of the name.

But nothing could compare to the sensation of zipping over all that thickly packed white stuff with my arms wrapped tightly around the waist of my hot, if disapproving, boyfriend.

Oh, it was good. It was real good.

But I have to admit, the part after we’d pulled up in front of the True Americans’ barbed-wire fence, and just sat there with the engine switched off, gazing at the lights of Jim Henderson’s house, glimmering through the trees?

Yeah, that part wasn’t so fun.

That was on account of the fact that deep in the backwoods of Indiana, on a late November evening, it is very, very cold. Bone-chillingly cold. Mind-numbingly cold. Or at least toe and finger-numbingly cold.

You would think that Rob and I could have thought up something to do, you know, to pass the time—as well as keep warm—while we waited for Chick to catch up to us with the backup he’d promised. But given the fact that Rob was still so mad we were here at all, there hadn’t been much, you know, of
that
going on. In fact, none at all.

“So what are we waiting for, again?” I asked.

“Reinforcements,” was Rob’s terse reply.

“Yeah,” I said. “I get that part. But can’t we just, you know, go and wait inside?”

“And what are we going to do,” Rob said, “if we find Seth?”

“Bust on out of there,” I said.

“Using what as a weapon?”

I thought a minute. “Our rapier wit?”

“Like I said.”

Well. So much for that.

Rob didn’t seem as cold as I was. Why is that? How come boys never get as cold as girls do? And also, what’s with the peeing thing? Like how come I totally had to pee, and he didn’t? He’d had as many Cokes back at Chick’s as I did.

And even if he had had to pee, it wouldn’t have been any big deal for him. I mean, he could have just gone over to any old tree and done it.

But for me, it would have been like this major production. And a lot more of me would have been exposed to the forces of nature. Which, with it being like ten below, or something, were pretty harsh.

Whatever. Life is just unfair. That’s all I have to say.

Not that I had it so bad, I guess. I mean, comparatively, I guess I’ve always had it pretty good. I mean, my parents are still together, and seem pretty happy to stay that way … except, you know, when one of us kids is causing them trouble, like hearing voices that aren’t there, or dropping out of Harvard, or being struck by lightning and getting psychic powers and then causing the family restaurant to be burned down.

You know. The usual parental stresses.

At least we were pretty well off. I mean, no one was buying me my own pony—or Harley—but we weren’t exactly on welfare, either. In all, the Mastriani family had it pretty good.

As opposed to, just for an example, the Wilkins family. I mean, Rob had been working in his uncle’s garage pretty much full time since he was like fourteen or something, just to help his mom make ends meet. He hadn’t seen his dad since he was a little kid. He didn’t even know where his dad was.

But I did. I knew where Rob’s dad was.

Not that I was very grateful for the information. But there it was, embedded in my brain just like Seth Blumenthal’s current location and status.

The question was, should I tell Rob, or not?

Would I want to know? I mean, if my dad had disappeared when I was a little kid. Had just walked out on Mom and Mike and Douglas and me. Would I want to know where he was now? Would I even care?

Yeah. Probably. If only so I could go pound his face in.

But would Rob want to know?

There was only one way, really, to find out. But I really, really didn’t want to do it. Just come out and ask him if he wanted to know, I mean. Because I didn’t want him to know I’d been snooping. I hadn’t, really. His mom had needed that apron from her room. Was it my fault that while I’d been in there, I’d happened to see a picture of Rob’s dad? And that afterward, as always tended to happen when I saw photos of missing people, I dreamed about his dad, and exactly where he was now? Was it my fault that, thanks to that stupid lightning, that I can’t see a picture—or sometimes, even smell the sweater or pillow—of a missing person without getting a mental picture of their exact location?

“Listen,” I said, pressing myself a little harder against his back. It was damned cold on the back of that snowmobile. “Rob, I—”

“Mastriani,” Rob said, sounding tired. “Not now, okay?”

“What?” I asked, defensively. “I was just going to—”

“I am not going to tell you,” Rob said.

“Tell me what?”

“What I’m on probation for. Okay? You can forget it. Because you’re never getting it out of me. You can drag me out to the middle of nowhere,” he said, “on some lunatic mission to stop a murdering white supremacist. You can make me sit for hours in sub-zero temperatures until my fingers feel like they are going to fall off. You can even tell me that you love me. But I am not going to tell you why I got arrested.”

I digested this. While this was not, of course, the subject I’d meant to bring up, it was nonetheless a very interesting one. Perhaps more interesting, even, than the current location of Rob’s father. To me, anyway.

“I didn’t tell you that I love you,” I said, after some thought, “because I wanted you to tell me what you’re on probation for. Although I do want to know. I told you that I love you because—”

Rob swung around on the back of the snowmobile and threw a gloved hand over my mouth. “Don’t,” he said. His light-colored eyes were easy to distinguish in the moonlight. Because yeah, there was a moon. A pretty full one, too, hanging low in the cold, cloudless sky. Any other time, it might have been romantic. If, you know, it hadn’t been like twenty below, and I hadn’t had to pee, and my boyfriend had actually sort of liked me.

“Don’t start on that again,” Rob said, keeping his hand over my mouth. “Remember what happened last time.”

“I liked what happened last time,” I said, from behind his fingers.

“Yeah,” Rob said. “Well, so did I. Too much, okay? So just keep your I love yous to yourself, all right, Mastriani?”

Sure. Like that was going to happen, after a girl hears a thing like that.

“Rob,” I said, tightening my arms around his waist. “I—”

But I never got to finish. That was on account of a figure moving toward us through the trees. We heard the snow crunching beneath his feet.

Rob said a bad word and turned on the flashlight Chick had loaned us.

“Who’s there?” he hissed, and shined the flashlight full on into the face of none other than Cyrus Krantz.

Now it was my turn to say a bad word.

“Shhh,” Dr. Krantz said. “Jessica, please!”

“Well, whatever,” I said, disgustedly. “What are you doing here?”

I couldn’t believe his getup. Dr. Krantz’s, I mean. He looked like somebody out of
Icestation Zebra
. He had the full-on arctic gear, complete with puffy camouflage ski pants. I had barely recognized him with all the fur trim on his hood.

“I followed you, of course,” Dr. Krantz replied. “Is this where they’re holding Seth, Jessica?”

“Would you get out of here?” I couldn’t tell which was making me madder, the fact that he was putting our plan to rescue Seth in jeopardy, or that he’d interrupted Rob and me just when things had been starting to get interesting. “You’re going to ruin everything. How did you get out here, anyway?” If he said snowmobile, I was going to seriously reconsider my refusal to work for him. Any institution that willingly supplied its employees with snowmobiles was one I could see myself getting behind.

“Never mind about that,” Dr. Krantz said. “Really, Jessica, this is just too ridiculous. You shouldn’t be here. You’re going to get hurt.”

”
I’m
going to get hurt?” I laughed bitterly—though quietly. “Sorry, Doc, but I think you got it backward. So far the only person who’s gotten hurt is one of yours.”

“And Nate Thompkins,” Dr. Krantz reminded me softly. “Don’t forget him.”

As if I could. As if he wasn’t half the reason I was out there, freezing my
hooha
off. I hadn’t forgotten my promise to myself to try to help Tasha, if I could. And the best way to help her, I couldn’t help thinking, was to bring her brother’s murderers to justice.

And of course to keep them from hurting anybody else. Such as Seth Blumenthal.

“Nobody’s forgetting about Nate,” I whispered. “We’re just going to take care of this in our own way, all right? Now get out of here, before you mess everything up.”

“Jessica,” Dr. Krantz said. “Rob. I really must object. If Seth Blumenthal is being harbored on this property, you are under an obligation to report it, then stand back and allow the appropriate law enforcement agents to do their—”

“Oh, bite me,” I said.

I couldn’t be sure, given the way the moonlight, reflecting off all the snow, made it hard to see past the thick lenses of his glasses, but I thought Dr. Krantz blinked a few times.

“I b-beg your pardon,” he stammered.

“You heard me,” I said. “You and the appropriate law enforcement agents don’t have the slightest clue what you’re dealing with here, okay?”

“Oh.” Now Dr. Krantz sounded sarcastic, which was sort of amusing, considering the fact that he was such a geek. “And I suppose you do.”

“Better than you,” I said. “At least we’ve got a chance at infiltrating them from the inside, instead of going in there blasting away, and possibly getting Seth killed in the crossfire.”

“Infiltration?” Dr. Krantz sounded appalled. “What are you talking about? You can’t possibly think you have a better chance at—”

“Oh, yeah?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What number comes after nine?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “What? What does that have to do with—”

“Just answer the question, Dr. Krantz,” I said. “What number comes after nine?”

“Why, ten, of course.”

“Wrong,” I said. “What are Coke cans made out of?”

“Aluminum, of course. Jessica, I—”

“Wrong again,” I said. “The answer to both questions, Dr. Krantz, is tin. I’ve just administered a Grit test, and you failed miserably. There is no way you are going to be able to pass for a local. Now get out of here, before you ruin it for the rest of us.”

“This,” Dr. Krantz said, looking scandalized, “is ridiculous. Rob, surely you—”

But Rob straightened on the back of the snowmobile, his head turned in the direction of the lights from Jim Henderson’s house.

“Bogey,” he said, “at twelve o’clock. Krantz, if you don’t get the hell out of sight, you’re gonna find yourself with a belly full of buckshot.”

“W-what?” Dr. Krantz looked around nervously. “What are you—”

Rob was off the snowmobile and shoving Cyrus Krantz behind a tree before the good doctor knew what was happening. At the same time, I saw what Rob had seen, a light coming toward us through the thick trees on Jim Henderson’s side of the barbed wire. As the light came closer, I saw that it came from one of those old-fashioned kerosene lanterns. The lantern was held by a big man in red-plaid hunting gear, a rifle in his other hand, and a dog big enough to pass for a small pony at his side.