Wild Cards: Death Draws Five (27 page)

“Kid?” the old man repeated after she finally got his attention by asking the same question three or four times. Even then it was clear that he hadn’t really heard what she’d asked. “You’re looking for a kid? Not many kids around here. Mostly old people. Mostly old people.”

“No kids around here at all?”

“Nope,” the old man said. “No kids.”

The Angel frowned to herself. She was probably totally off the track. “Thanks.”

“There’s the kids at the camp, of course.”

She stopped. “Camp?”

“Yah. The summer camp up the road.”

“Road?” the Angel repeated.

“Yah. Lower Road. The road that runs by Snake Hill.”

The Angel told herself not to say “Snake Hill?”

“You can’t miss it,” the old man said. “Turn right out of the parking lot, go up the hill, take a right at the stop sign. You can’t miss it. It’ll be on your left after a mile or so.”

“Thanks,” the Angel said trying not to clench her teeth as she went out the door. She brushed by the guy who was waiting for her to go by so he could enter the store. The Angel looked at him suspiciously. He looked like a hippie. Like something off a 1960’s album cover, with ragged, holed bell bottoms embroidered with flowers and other designs, and bushy hair and a colorful silk scarf tied loosely around his neck. His shirt was outrageously colored and patterned and he wore tiny little glasses with purple octagonal lenses hanging on his long, narrow nose. The Angel didn’t have anything against hippies. Especially. She was just surprised to see one in this setting.

The hippie’s eyes were heavy-lidded. The Angel could smell fumes coming off him. It was some sweet smelling incense that made her eyes water. He smiled and nodded in her direction, and then caught sight of the SUV Ray had reserved at Tomlin International.

It was a 2003 Cadillac Escalade. The Angel had been distressed when she discovered that Ray had rented it, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. When she first got it out of the parking lot, it felt like she was driving a tank, but she quickly realized that it had a smoother ride, a much more comfortable seat, great air conditioning, and a killer sound system. It had a three hundred and forty-five horsepower V8 with four wheel anti-lock brakes, independent torsion bar front suspension, an AM/FM radio, cassette player, and in-dash six disc CD changer with eight Bose speakers, a pre-programmed equalizer, and a Bose subwoofer. It also had OnStar Virtual Advisor with e-mail access which, while the Angel thought was really excessive, she kept thinking that she should use when she was lost but wouldn’t because then she’d have to admit to herself that she was lost. She realized that it sounded like something Ray would do, but still... The transmission was a four speed electronically controlled automatic, but that was all right.

“Bitchin’ wheels,” the hippie said.

“Thanks.” She glanced at the beat up old VW van that was parked next to it, guessing that it belonged to the hippie. If it didn’t, it should have. “Your wheels are, uh, nice, too.”

“Thanks, man” the hippie said. “See you around.”

I doubt it, the Angel thought, but bit her tongue. There was no need to be impolite. She nodded and smiled briefly and got in the car and backed out of the lot onto the traffic-less road.

The Escalade, whatever that meant, took the small, steep high with a smooth purr. It was nice, actually, to drive something so big, so powerful, yet so quiet and smooth. She didn’t have a car herself, as she didn’t have a house nor much else in the way of material possessions, but she’d grown up a child of the South and had learned to drive on a succession of beat up junkers with clunky manual transmissions that her mother briefly owned before they’d been repossessed or died within months of chugging out of the used car lot. This vehicle was quite different, and, she had to admit, actually enjoyable to drive.

A small white-framed wooden church stood on the right side of the road at the hill’s crest. The Angel pulled off to the side of the undivided county road to get a better look at it. The sign board in the front said “Saint Andrew Bobula,” and listed the times for Sunday services. Pity. It was Papist, though it did remind her of the white clapboard churches her mother was always dragging her to. Not dragging her to. She went with her mother willingly because she wanted to. Because it was the correct thing to do.

She thought briefly about going in anyway to offer a quick prayer. It was her habit to attend service as often as was practical, but for the past couple of days it hadn’t really been practical. She made up for it by praying more than usual. When she had the chance. She hoped that her prayers would be to good effect. No. She knew they would be, even if appearances were to the contrary. The Lord, after all, had a plan, even if she wasn’t privy to it.

She went on past the church, glancing out the driver side window to her left where there was an entrance to a working gravel pit which had been eating away at the hillside for apparently quite some time. From her vantage point on the hill’s crest, the Angel could see a steam shovel down in the depths of the pit biting big chunks of dirt and rock out of the hillside.

Even here, she thought, in the middle of apparently peaceful country, they were destroying the land. Carving it up, chewing it to pieces, and spitting it out into dump trucks to be hauled away. She wasn’t against progress, but she could mourn the price of that progress, and what it cost the peace of the natural world.

She glided down the hill’s backslope and approached the T-intersection that the old storekeeper had told her about. She paused briefly at the stop sign, and read, thanks be to God, an actual road sign that said “Lower Road.” She hung a right. A long, steep, heavily-forested ridge loomed on the left. On the right the terrain was more open, sloping gently down to what looked like a small river meandering in the middle distance. She drove slowly, studying the terrain she passed. The thickly wooded ridge on the left must be what the storekeeper had called Snake Hill. It seemed to be totally undeveloped forest, fronted by open fields or meadows bordering the road.

She went a mile or more without seeing a single building, before noticing a cluster of rustic-looking dwellings standing in a big open area bordering the forest margin. A dirt driveway meandered from Lower Road to a parking lot that obviously served the buildings. She wondered if this was the long sought-for camp. She slowed down as she approached. Her heart beat a little faster at the thought that she was perhaps only moments away from again coming face to face with her personal savior. With Jesus Christ, himself.

A car, actually another SUV of some sort, was parked by the side of the road next to the driveway leading up to the scatter of buildings. Three men were standing around it, talking. Two were unfamiliar. But the third...

She pulled the Escalade over to the side of the road and killed the engine.

The third was Billy Ray. She stared at him. The three men looked back. Ray broke off his conversation and laconically headed in her direction.

“Well,” Ray said as she rolled down the driver side window. “Well, well, well. Look who finally showed up.”

“How did you get here?” the Angel asked, astonished.

He looked irritatingly smug. “It’s a long story,” Ray said. “I’ll tell it to you some chilly night. Right now, we don’t have time for chitchat. We’ve sent a couple of search teams out looking for John Fortune, and we’re about to head into the woods ourselves.”

“Looking for him?” The Angel asked.

Ray nodded. “He was here. So were Dagon’s boys. In fact, so was Dagon himself. Now they’ve all seemed to vanish. Creighton lost the kid in the woods somewhere. We assume that Dagon’s boys are out there, too, looking for him. We’ve got to get him first.”

The Angel felt lost. “How—Creighton? The bodyguard? He’s here, too?”

“Yep,” Ray said. “That’s him over there. The kind of geeky looking skinny guy. He’s a shape-shifter. We all got here via Blood.” He held his hand up, forestalling questions. “Don’t ask. It seems that these Allumbrados have a couple tricks up their sleeves we didn’t know about, including this joker-ace named Blood who can zap people transdimensionally from, say, Las Vegas to New Hampton. I got zapped here last night, right when Dagon’s boys—actually, supposedly they were led by Witness, but I never saw him—hit the camp. Creighton got the kid out, but lost him in the woods, later.”

“Witness?” the Angel asked, trying to keep up.

“Yeah. Your blonde boyfriend from Vegas,” Ray said laconically. “Remember?”

Blushing, she did. If the Angel felt lost before, now her head was swimming. “All right. Who’s the other man?”

“A guy I know named Ackroyd. He’s a dick”

“Must you swear so much?” the Angel asked, annoyed.

“I’m not swearing. Je—I mean, Go—uh, gosh. The guy’s a dick.” Ray sighed at the look on the Angel’s face. “A detective. A private investigator. He’s Creighton’s partner. He just brought a team of ops to help find the kid.” He turned and waved to them. “Hey, Popinjay,” he shouted, “come over and meet Angel!” Ray looked back at her. “He hates that nickname. I use it every chance I get.”

She rolled her eyes, got out of the Escalade, and stretched. She was hungry again, but this was no time to think of her stomach. John Fortune, the poor boy, was wandering somewhere around the woods. He was probably tired, and much more hungry himself. She could feel her Lord’s pain as her stomach rumbled in sympathy.

Ackroyd strolled up to the Escalade, followed by his companion. Ackroyd was a small man in a rumpled suit without a tie. Creighton was also small, in less formal clothes that fit him like he’d stolen them from someone who was bigger than him. He had a bandage high on his forehead. His real face was much less handsome than the one he’d worn in Las Vegas. She wondered why he’d changed it. He was young, but there was something about him, a sadness in his eyes, that showed that much was missing in his life. She wondered if his heart was filled with Jesus. It seemed unlikely.

“Nice wheels,” Ackroyd said sardonically. “Did you steal them off some geezer on a camping trip?”

Ray grinned. “What’s your ride these days, Popinjay?” Ray asked, then his face took on a sudden look of dismay. “Oh, that’s right. You’re from ‘The City.’ You never learned how to drive.” He looked around searchingly. “Where’s the subway stop that dropped you off in this god-forsaken place?”

“Yeah,” Ackroyd responded. “It is pretty rural.” He indicated his companion. “You know my partner, Creighton, I believe.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “She met him the first time he lost the kid.”

Ackroyd grinned, but there wasn’t much humor in his expression. “Good to see that you’re still an all-around asshole, Ray.”

The Angel made a noise in her throat that was something between a derisive snort and an exasperated prayer, probably because for some obscure reason she felt somewhat compelled to defend Ray. Just a little, anyway.

“We’re here to do a job,” she said forcefully. “Not engage in juvenile repartee and spray testosterone around like skunks marking their territory.”

Ackroyd’s eyebrows went up. “Skunks mark their territory?” he asked Creighton, who only shrugged. He turned to Ray. “Who’s your girlfriend?”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” she said, aggrieved.

“This is Angel,” Ray said. He stood next to her, smiling. “She’s new,” he added, as if that explained everything.

Ackroyd nodded. “How’d the Feds get on the case already?”

“We’re not—” the Angel started to say, and Ray stepped hard on her foot. She shut her mouth and glared at him, momentarily too outraged to speak.

“—at liberty to say how we learned about it,” Ray said. “Confidential sources, and all.”

The Angel suddenly realized that Ray wanted to let Ackroyd and Creighton still think they worked for the government and not The Hand. She could see the wisdom in that. In fact, she should have thought of it herself. She castigated herself silently for a moment, then chipped in brightly, “That’s right.”

“Uh-huh,” Ackroyd said. He looked at Creighton, who shrugged again.

The Angel could tell that Ackroyd was suspicious. Suspicion seemed to be in his nature. But there was really nothing he could do, except disbelieve them. He seemed a man of little faith.

“So,” Ray said, “got any clues as to John Fortune’s current whereabouts?”

Ackroyd smiled. “Clues? Is that what we need?” He looked at Creighton as if for confirmation. “Jeez, Ray, it’s great when you Feds turn up to tell us that we need clues and all. I don’t know if that information came in Detecting for Dummies. That’s the book Creighton and I use to solve all our cases. Right, partner?”

“Knock off the horseshit, already,” Ray said. “Angel is right.”

“Yes,” the Angel chimed in. “Our job is to find the boy. Sparring with each other isn’t helping.”

Ackroyd sighed. “Wisdom from the mouth of babes.” He held up a hand to forestall another outburst from Ray or the Angel, or both. “But, you’re right. Both of you. What do you propose?”

The Angel felt Ray’s eyes on her. They were calculating. Though lust lay behind the calculation, he did seem to be focusing somewhat at least upon their job. “Well,” Ray said, “there’s two of us, and two of you. Why don’t we split our teams?”

“Good idea,” Ackroyd said. “I’ll go with Angel—”

“Uh, no,” Ray interrupted, shaking his head. “You and me, Popinjay. We’re a team. Like the old days.”