“He’ll go straight to the police,” Leisha said despairingly. “He has to, or risk his union membership.”
“I know,” Alice said. “But by that time we’ll be out of the car.”
“Where?”
“At the hospital,” Alice said.
“Alice, we can’t—” Leisha didn’t finish. She turned to the back seat. “Stella? Are you conscious?”
“Yes,” said the small voice.
Leisha groped until her fingers found the rear-seat illuminator. Stella lay stretched out on the seat, her face distorted with pain. She cradled her left arm in her right. A single bruise colored her face, above the left eye. Her red hair was tangled and dirty.
“You’re Leisha Camden,” the child said, and started to cry.
“Her arm’s broken,” Alice said.
“Honey, can you…” Leisha’s throat felt thick, she had trouble getting the words out “…can you hold on till we get you to a doctor?”
“Yes,” Stella said. “Just don’t take me back there!”
“We won’t,” Leisha said. “Ever.” She glanced at Alice and saw Tony’s face.
Alice said, “There’s a community hospital about ten miles south of here.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was there once. Drug overdose,” Alice said briefly. She drove hunched over the wheel, with the face of someone thinking furiously. Leisha thought, too, trying to see a way around the legal charge of kidnapping. They probably couldn’t say the child came willingly. Stella would undoubtedly cooperate but at her age and in her condition she was probably non sui juris, her word would have no legal weight…
“Alice, we can’t even get her into the hospital without insurance information. Verifiable on-line.”
“Listen,” Alice said, not to Leisha but over her shoulder, toward the back seat, “here’s what we’re going to do, Stella. I’m going to tell them you’re my daughter and you fell off a big rock you were climbing while we stopped for a snack at a roadside picnic area. We’re driving from California to Philadelphia to see your grandmother. Your name is Jordan Watrous and you’re five years old. Got that, honey?”
“I’m seven,” Stella said. “Almost eight.”
“You’re a very large five. Your birthday is March 23. Can you do this, Stella?”
“Yes,” the little girl said. Her voice was stronger.
Leisha stared at Alice. “Can you do this?”
“Of course I can,” Alice said. “I’m Roger Camden’s daughter.”
Alice half-carried, half-supported Stella into the Emergency Room of a small community hospital. Leisha watched from the car: the short stocky woman, the child’s thin body with the twisted arm. Then she drove Alice’s car to the farthest corner of the parking lot, under the dubious cover of a skimpy maple, and locked it. She tied the scarf more securely around her face.
Alice’s license plate number, and her name, would be in every police and rental-car databank by now. The medical banks were slower; often they uploaded from local precincts only once a day, resenting the governmental interference in what was still, despite a half-century of battle, a private-sector enterprise. Alice and Stella would probably be all right in the hospital. Probably. But Alice could not rent another car.
Leisha could.
But the data file that would flash to rental agencies on Alice Camden Watrous might or might not include that she was Leisha Camden’s twin.
Leisha looked at the rows of cars in the lot. A flashy luxury Chrysler, an Ikeda van, a row of middle-class Toyotas and Mercedes, a vintage ’99 Cadillac—she could imagine the owner’s face if that were missing—ten or twelve cheap runabouts, a hovercar with the uniformed driver asleep at the wheel. And a battered farm truck.
Leisha walked over to the truck. A man sat at the wheel, smoking. She thought of her father.
“Hello,” Leisha said.
The man rolled down his window but didn’t answer. He had greasy brown hair.
“See that hovercar over there?” Leisha said. She made her voice sound young, high. The man glanced at it indifferently; from this angle you couldn’t see that the driver was asleep. “That’s my bodyguard. He thinks I’m inside, the way my father told me to, getting this lip looked at.” She could feel her mouth swollen from Alice’s blow.
“So?”
Leisha stamped her foot. “So I don’t want to be inside. He’s a shit and so’s Daddy. I want out. I’ll give you 4,000 bank credits for your truck. Cash.”
The man’s eyes widened. He tossed away his cigarette and looked again at the hovercar. The driver’s shoulders were broad, and the car was within easy screaming distance.
“All nice and legal,” Leisha said, trying to smirk. Her knees felt watery.
“Let me see the cash.”
Leisha backed away from the truck, to where he could not reach her. She took the money from her arm clip. She was used to carrying a lot of cash; there had always been Bruce, or someone like Bruce. There had always been safety.
“Get out of the truck on the other side,” Leisha said, “and lock the door behind you. Leave the keys on the seat, where I can see them from here. Then I’ll put the money on the roof where you can see it.”
The man laughed, a sound like gravel pouring. “Regular little Dabney Engh, aren’t you? Is that what they teach you society debs at your fancy schools?”
Leisha had no idea who Dabney Engh was. She waited, watching the man try to think of a way to cheat her, and tried to hide her contempt. She thought of Tony.
“All right,” he said, and slid out of the truck.
“Lock the door!”
He grinned, opened the door again, and locked it. Leisha put the money on the roof, yanked open the driver’s door, clambered in, locked the door, and powered up the window. The man laughed. She put the key into the ignition, started the truck, and drove toward the street. Her hands trembled.
She drove slowly around the block twice. When she came back, the man was gone, and the driver of the hovercar was still asleep. She had wondered if the man would wake him, out of sheer malice, but he had not. She parked the truck and waited.
An hour and a half later Alice and a nurse wheeled Stella out of the Emergency entrance. Leisha leaped out of the truck and yelled, “Coming, Alice!” waving both her arms. It was too dark to see Alice’s expression; Leisha could only hope that Alice showed no dismay at the battered truck, that she had not told the nurse to expect a red car.
Alice said, “This is Julie Bergadon, a friend that I called while you were setting Jordan’s arm.” The nurse nodded, uninterested. The two women helped Stella into the high truck cab; there was no back seat. Stella had a cast on her arm and looked drugged.
“How?” Alice said as they drove off.
Leisha didn’t answer. She was watching a police hovercar land at the other end of the parking lot. Two officers got out and strode purposefully toward Alice’s locked car under the skimpy maple.
“My God,” Alice said. For the first time, she sounded frightened.
“They won’t trace us,” Leisha said. “Not to this truck. Count on it.”
“Leisha.” Alice’s voice spiked with fear. “Stella’s asleep.”
Leisha glanced at the child, slumped against Alice’s shoulder. “No, she’s not. She’s unconscious from painkillers.”
“Is that all right? Normal? For…her?”
“We can black out. We can even experience substance-induced sleep.” Tony and she and Richard and Jeanine in the midnight woods… “Didn’t you know that, Alice?”
“No.”
“We don’t know very much about each other, do we?”