Vanished (19 page)

Luther wouldn't need a knife for him-he'd selfdestruct under his own thundering fear. A hero would
yank the weapon out of the dead guy and chase down the
assassin. But only in movies could a scrawny geek take a bomb
builder who was good at tossing knives, too.

Ben took off at a dead run before his friend's blood soaked
into his sneakers.

How had the day gotten so whacked? All he had wanted to
do was walk with a pretty girl, hold her hand, and maybe-if
Mom was right and there was a God in heaven-kiss her.

Now he expected God to jump from behind a building and
yell, "Hey, dude. You've been punk'd."

Seeing a girl get blasted apart by a bomb was no joke. It was
a nightmare. Seeing a buddy take a knife through the throat
was beyond a nightmare.

Ben ran, his lungs screeching like someone had taken a blowtorch to them. No plan now, just get home. That was the family
disaster plan. Something happens, we both go home.

Even though they were scheduled to move out tomorrow,
the big old house on Townsend Street was the only home Ben
had ever known. He and Mom had felt safe there, once the old
man got sent to prison.

But no one was safe today, not with another knapsack still
in play. Maybe the buses would just stay at the beach. Or go
to Boston, or north to New Hampshire. Anywhere but Tapley School. Yeah, that was it. Then second bomb would blow up a
flagpole and nothing else.

But he really couldn't take that chance, could he? Mom would
tell him what to do, whom they could trust.

Luther would come after him, just like he did Cannon. Ben's
heart stuttered a beat-what about Madeline? She'd be OK.
Luther could have gotten to all three of them in the Tower, but
it was only when they headed for the school that Cannon got
taken down.

A block away from home, Ben stopped to catch his breath. A
mutt named Daisy was tied to a ratty doghouse. She lifted her
head, sniffed once, then went back to her nap.

Even the dog couldn't care less about him.

He should just curl up in that broken-down doghouse and
cry himself to sleep. The way Mom had done after the city
council decided to shut down the clinic. For five nights running,
she had closed the door to her bedroom and played the same
song over and over. Oh, come to me, Jesus. Oh, come and be my
strength.

Even over the music, Ben had heard her sobs. On the fifth
day he couldn't take it anymore and went in to her. She was on
her knees, her face to the floor.

"I hate to see you like this," he had said.

She looked up at him, her face swollen with tears. "Sometimes this is what it takes."

Was that true? Was this crazy thing happening to him what
it would take-to do what? Not to save him. He was too far
gone for that. If Luther didn't get him, the media, cops, court
system would. What Mom had gone through with the lawsuit
was nothing compared to what would come down on her
because of him.

Ben crept through the backyards until he reached his own.
This far from the explosion, the haze arched almost down to
the ground, as if someone had inverted a giant crystalline bowl over this part of Barcester. Let someone else solve that, too. He
was done being the brainy kid who thought he was hip and
happening. The truth was, he was a minus factor.

He stopped, listened. Not even a breeze rustled the leaves,
and the squirrels had disappeared. Dogs could be trained to
sense a person's oncoming seizure. Some wildlife knew when
an earthquake was imminent. Had the animals gone to ground,
sensing another disaster to come?

Ben dashed for the back door of his house and slipped his
key in. Time ticked like another bomb as he tried to unlock the
door. If Luther wanted to take him down, this was the time. He
might be a measly 140 pounds, but he felt like his back was as
broad as Fenway Park's left field wall.

The key stuck.

Deep breath. Focus. Come on!

Waiting for that split-second crack before the bullet found its
mark and the lights went out. Cannon was there one moment,
but then a quick eruption of blood, and he wasn't.

Where did he go?

Mom said there was a God and a heaven and desperately
wanted Ben to believe. But how could he decide? He wasn't even
smart enough to know not to walk the bike path with jasmine.

The lock clicked. Ben rushed through the door, then caught
it before it slammed shut. His mother had pulled the shades so
people wouldn't see that they were moving and be tempted to
burglarize. The kitchen was crowded with boxes that cast long
shadows in what little light there was. They had moved a lot of
the furniture down to the first floor, providing plenty of hiding
places if someone wanted to stalk and kill a stupid kid.

Light-headed, Ben sat on a box and tried to fold his hands
to pray. His fingers couldn't seem to find each other. Fear had
turned him into a slug, sitting in his own stupid slime because
he couldn't get moving.

Our Father...

How was he supposed to know what else to say? He'd never
had a real father. His old man was a slap across the face, a
broken arm, and now a guest of the Massachusetts Corrections
Department.

O God, please make sure Mom is OK. Help me not to die,
and show me what to do about the blue knapsack with the big
pink flower.

A peace like a warm blanket wrapped around Ben. It had no
weight, but somehow it took the weight off his shoulders.

The way a real father would do, he realized.

0 WAY," LEAH SAID. "I'm coming with you."

"No way," Kaya countered. "I'm going alone."

Her bodyguard had already driven off a couple
of young toughs looking to score painkillers at the makeshift
clinic. They couldn't leave Grace unguarded.

Kaya tossed Percocet, ACE bandages, and other supplies
into a knapsack, then shoved her hair up under a Red Sox cap
and slipped out the back door. She cut through the parking lot
and up one block before heading back to University Avenue
and onto the bike path.

Paul Wells had warned her about the mist, but seeing it for
herself made her queasy. She couldn't even bear to look at the
fire. It flamed brightly, yet threw no heat, a phenomenon that
ironically chilled her to the marrow.

Why should she have to do this? Jason Logan and Paul Wells
had gone around the rotary, but they were cops. No one could
expect such blind courage from a nurse.

Except for the little girl with the broken spine, still lying on
the ground because Jamie had been afraid to move her. Her
mommy dead, broken in half by a bomb.

One step, Kaya told herself. And then one more.

"Hey, you!" Stone rushed at her from the other side of the
embankment. "What did you do with my baby?"

"She's in a safe place. So leave me alone."

"Where is she?"

Kaya shook her head. Stone raised the gun.

She dived into the mist, slamming against the pavement. She
rolled and found herself on grass-this was crazy, where was
she-of such a primeval green it was as if all the green in the
world derived from it. The grass cushioned her fall and invited
her to stop.

Keep moving, Kaya told herself, because someone-why
couldn't she remember who-wanted to kill her. Suddenly fouryear-old Matthew Lowe appeared in front of her, grasping at his
throat. This place wasn't the clinic-Kaya didn't know what this
was. But she comprehended Matthew's distress immediately.

His skin was a pearl gray and his lips were bluer than the
sky. Perhaps he had swallowed the sky, because she couldn't see
it, couldn't see anything except the mist overhead and a dying
boy collapsing into her arms.

She tipped his head back and checked his airway. No lollipop
this time-the red knot in his throat was the biggest blood clot
she had ever seen. She wrapped her arms around him and
performed the Heimlich maneuver. Over and over, her fist under
his diaphragm, waiting for the clot to eject from his throat.

Nothing.

Matthew's lips, his fingers, the tips of his ears blued. Kaya
laid him gently in the grass and then found a scalpel in her
backpack. She couldn't remember packing one, wasn't sure
even why she had a backpack full of supplies. There had been
a bomb, she thought, but that was a lifetime ago. She sterilized the boy's throat, her own fingers, and the scalpel with an
iodine wipe.

"Behold your second chance."

Kaya looked up. "What?"

Dressed in a designer suit, crisp shirt, and silk tie, this
was the lawyer who had sued her and the clinic. Everything
about him was gray-his sleek clothing, his bristled hair, his
manicured nails.

His shrewd gaze.

The lawyer sniffed and wiped his nose with his forearm.
Mucus streaked his sleeve but he didn't notice, didn't need to
notice because it blended into the fabric.

"Behold Matthew Lowe. Your second chance," he said.

Under her hand, Matthew's heart stopped beating.

No time to lose. She raised the scalpel, found the space
between his Adam's apple and the cricoid cartilage. Such a
small boy, such a small space, but Kaya had steady hands and
a steady head.

One slit would open the airway.

"Save him and lose the clinic," the lawyer said. "Lose him
and save the clinic. You do the math."

"I'm a nurse, not a mathematician." Steady hands. Steady
head.

"It's not a difficult equation. If you save the clinic, you can
save many Matthews. If you save this Matthew, you lose all
the other Matthews and Sarahs and Angelinas you otherwise
could have saved."

"I can't make that decision."

The lawyer yanked his shirt cuffs, showing blazing gold cuff
links, the same shape as the knot in Matthew's throat. "Ah,
but that's the beauty of this situation. You don't have to decide.
Simply let nature take its course, because this boy is going to
perish anyway. You all do."

God sent His Son so we would never perish, Kaya tried to
say. But the words stuck in her throat, a dry knot that tasted
like blood.

"No one will know if you don't do it," the lawyer said. "If you
do do it, everyone will know. And this time it won't be a civil
lawsuit. It will be murder."

Kaya poised the scalpel over Matthew's throat.

"Murder, because once you cut him and spill his blood, you
won't be able to stop spilling blood."

Spinning head, trembling hand, but Lord, all I need is a
steady heart.

"Don't do it, Kaya."

"I have to." She sliced. Blood bubbled from Matthew's skin,
a bubble so huge that it enclosed her and the child. She ignored
the bubble, though it rocked her and the child like a ship in a
raging sea. Kaya pried the wound open with her fingers, put her
mouth to his throat, and breathed life into Matthew Lowe.

The mist flashed fire, and a bullet came her way, spinning
so slowly she could see the striations in the steel and count
the rotations.

"Behold your last chance," the lawyer said. "Let the boy take
the bullet so you can live."

She sheltered Matthew with her body and continued to
breathe life into him.

The bullet pierced the bubble of blood with a tiny pop. She
still had almost forever before the bullet would slam into her.
Long enough to fall aside and let the child take it for her.

"Remember, nurse. You all perish."

Her heart held steady, held her steady. The bullet slammed
her, splintered her like clay, ripping her meager heart-

"Worm bait," he mocked. "No more than dirt."

-and spilling out secrets and sins, but, dear Lord, not faith
and never hope. This she would hold to, even when her life
spilled out because faith was being sure of what she hoped for
and certain of what she did not see.

And so Kaya sang the words that would show her the way
home.

Oh, come to me, Jesus.

E HAD THEM ON THE RUN.

The cop, scurrying like a rat in a maze. No way out,
buddy. Just keep knockin' your head against the wall.