‘Hey, Tin Soldier, how you doing?’ Groote started, but then he saw what Celeste did, framed in the open door.
‘Fire,’ Celeste said in a whisper, pointing down the hall. ‘Fire… he set a fire.’
Then the smell of smoke, sweet and awful and rising.
‘You crazy bastard!’ Groote yelled, standing up.
‘You want Frost? It’s upstairs,’ Miles lied.
Groote put the gun’s barrel on Miles’s forehead. ‘Show me.’
‘Let them go.’
Groote hesitated. ‘Out. Both of you. Just go outside. You run, he’s dead.’
Nathan grabbed Celeste, steered her toward the back door. She started to scream as he pushed her into the yard.
Groote turned Miles, dug the gun hard into the back of Miles’s head. ‘Give me Frost. Now.’ He strong-armed Miles past the hallway and up the stairs. In the kitchen, the curtains above the sink blazed. In the den, heavy draperies, a large cotton rug, the entire couch, burned brightly.
He’ll kill me when he figures I don’t have Frost, Miles thought. He fell as Groote pushed him on the stairs.
‘Faster, crazy.’
‘Don’t hurt me,’ Miles pleaded, and at the same time braced himself against the stair and dealt a savage backward kick. His foot caught Groote in the groin. Miles kicked again, aiming for the broken nose but catching the chin. Groote staggered, lost his footing, and tumbled down the stairs, landing in a heap on the tiles.
Miles grabbed the gun away from his hand, finding its fellow in Groote’s jacket pocket.
Leave him. Run.
But the fire was spreading fast. He couldn’t abandon anyone, not even a bastard like Groote, to die. He dragged Groote into the backyard, dumped him into the cold water of a stone fountain. Groote gasped.
Miles put one of the guns to Groote’s head. He dumped the clip from the other, put the clip in his pocket, tossed the second gun into the water. ‘We’re leaving now. Don’t follow us. I lied to you. I don’t have Frost. I don’t know where it is. We’re not a threat to you. We’re just going away where no one will bother us and we won’t bother anyone. Tell Quantrill. You understand?’
‘I understand you’re a liar.’ Groote glared at him with hate.
‘Stay in that fountain or I’ll shoot you.’ Miles backed away and ran. He jumped over a low-lying fence, headed for the front yard.
Nathan was coaxing Celeste once again into the car. Miles got into the front. He spun into the street and powered the car away from the burning house.
Groote was at the driver’s window, trying to grab the wheel from him, and Miles floored it, broke free, roared down the street, and wheeled hard onto Old Santa Fe Trail.
‘What – what do we do?’ Nathan said.
‘We don’t stay here. We can’t. We run.’ He looked for Groote in the rearview, saw nothing. ‘We go where Allison hid the files. California.’
Celeste started to moan.
Groote staggered down the street to his car. A couple of neighbors stood in the road and watched the flames popping from the windows, cell phones clutched to their ears. They stared at him and he ran down the road to where he’d left his car. Still with Hurley and Pitts dead in the trunk.
Think. Where would they go? Where would they hide? He had to change tactics, flush them out, figure their next step. But best not to be here when the fire trucks and the other authorities arrived. He had bodies to bury. A plan to make.
These crazy people were ruining everything for him.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Friday afternoon, Groote stopped at church on the way back from burying the bodies.
A shrine in Chimayo, north of Santa Fe, claimed that the dirt from its foundations could work miracles: smother the fire of AIDS in the blood, corral cancer cells, drive death into retreat. Groote drove past the cars lining the road that led to the old church, steering slowly past the camera-necklaced tourists, past an old woman in a wheelchair, past a kid about Nathan Ruiz’s age with a fresh burr, crutches, and an empty camouflaged-pant leg, huffing himself toward the church as though he were competing in a race.
Groote parked and watched the kid and wondered if a dash of that Jesus dust would help Amanda. After all, salvation might be close at hand. Frost – in a form to fix his girl – still seemed miles beyond his reach.
All that, he decided, was about to change.
He got out of the car and walked along the outside of the church, toward the building’s back.
Quantrill was waiting for him.
‘My God, you’re a horror,’ Quantrill said, inspecting Groote’s nose brace, the battered jaw.
‘Thanks. How was your flight?’
Quantrill lit a cigarette. ‘The peanuts were stale.’ Ice in his voice. ‘I’m not happy with the services you’ve provided so far.’
‘I’m not happy with being lied to.’
‘How have I lied to you, Dennis?’
‘Tell me the truth about what Sorenson said – is there a second auction of Frost being set up?’
Quantrill blew out a frustrated sigh. ‘Yes. I’ve heard about it from two of my contacts. Very unfortunate.’
‘You could have told me.’
‘I didn’t want you distracted. Two of my contacts said they’ve been contacted by a guy willing to sell them the research – at half my asking price.’
He didn’t give a rat’s ass about Quantrill’s money. ‘I don’t think Sorenson is behind the auction. I think it’s Miles Kendrick.’
‘Who?’
Groote explained what he’d learned about Miles’s background. He left out that he’d let Miles and company escape; he wasn’t about to admit his own underestimation of Miles Kendrick.
Quantrill considered. ‘Then it’s just a sick coincidence. The mobsters want him dead, they kill Allison, it has nothing to do with Frost.’
‘That’s what the feds are supposed to believe. But not us. Miles Kendrick had to know that when his shrink died in a bomb blast, his past might come to light and he’d be blamed for her murder. It covers up that he stole Frost, because he must have known we wouldn’t run to the cops. I almost admire the guy; he built a brilliant plan.’
Quantrill nodded. ‘You have to stop this second auction…’
‘Do I? I want my kid to have the medicine. A drug company buys the research cheap, they produce it faster. You’re screwed, true, but I’m not.’
Quantrill didn’t blink. ‘But what if it’s not Miles Kendrick running the second auction? What if it’s Sorenson?’
Groote said, ‘I don’t get it.’
‘And you say you admire clear thinking.’ Quantrill tossed his cigarette an inch from Groote’s toe. ‘I think you actually hate Miles Kendrick, for a reason you’re not telling me.’
‘He’s a goddamned mobster. I used to put people like him in prison.’
‘And now you put them in graves.’
‘A few might be in urns.’
Quantrill shook his head. ‘Revenge won’t make Amanda healthy. But Frost will, Dennis. Think, with a clear head, what we’re facing. His threat is not that he’ll sell Frost to someone. Consider what he’s done and what that fed told you – Kendrick wants to bring whoever killed her to justice. He’s killed Hurley, he’s broken into the hospital. But the end result, each time, is to rescue a patient who was being tested with Frost. He doesn’t want to sell it. He wants to expose it. What do you think will happen if Kendrick and his psycho buddies go public about Frost? Illegal testing of a drug on the traumatized, including veterans? No pharmaceutical will ever come near us, no matter the drug’s efficacy. Even a worthy drug might be buried for years until the pharmas don’t have to worry about lawsuits or bad publicity.’ Quantrill lit a cigarette. ‘I can derail the auction – doesn’t matter if it’s Kendrick or Sorenson. There are very few willing buyers to touch hot research. A few well-placed phone calls, a suggestion that the stolen research isn’t complete, or if the second auction takes place I threaten to cut a plea bargain and name names for the FDA. It would be enough to stop the auction in its tracks. But if Miles Kendrick is intent on exposing us because he wants to avenge his doctor, then we’re dead in the water.’