But when Sandra had asked Ruskin whether Lisa Carver had children, he’d said he did not know. There was talk, he’d said, that she’d had a child in her teens.
So how did Ruskin know a password based on the name of a child that he did not know, with any certainty, existed?
There had to be an explanation, Sandra thought. Ruskin could have lied to her, although she couldn’t understand why he’d have lied about that.
Even as she rode the bike, Sandra shook her head.
As she got to within a block of her house, and her hopes rose that her kids would be there, she pushed these riddles out of her head.
The turn was up ahead. The shrubs on that corner were so high that whenever Sandra was in her car — her real car — she always had to sneak out into the intersection, beyond the stop sign, to see whether it was safe to pull out. But she was cycling on the sidewalk today, so she rounded the shrubs without slowing down.
A purple Arrival was coming straight at her like a homicidal plum.
Sandra figured the car had probably been on the street, but shifted to the sidewalk when its sensors picked up her approach.
Sandra didn’t even have time to scream.
She leapt off the bike, swinging herself off like Annie Oakley dismounting a galloping horse. She tumbled into the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the road and rolled twice as the Arrival bounced right over the bicycle.
As Sandra got to her feet and started running, the Arrival, the bike still stuck underneath it, make a quick turn and initiated a pursuit.
Sandra glanced over her shoulder long enough to see the Arrival was after her, although she hardly had to look. The bicycle trapped beneath it was scraping against the pavement, making a sound a thousand times more unnerving than fingernails on a blackboard.
She sprinted across the street toward a house that sat behind a low, stone fence running parallel to the sidewalk. At less than three feet high, it was more decoration than a secure barrier.
But it might be enough to save Sandra.
Sandra dived over the stone wall and before she’d even hit the ground on the other side the Arrival crashed into it. She got up onto her knees and peered over the edge, almost nose to nose with the car’s crumpled front end.
She thought she smelled smoke. No, not quite smoke, but definitely a burning smell. More like an electrical fire.
And then she saw flames starting to lick out from beneath the car. Dragging the metal bike must have created sparks significant enough to set something under the car alight. Was it enough to put the car out of commission?
Sandra crept to the end of the stone fence, took a step out into the open, and waited to see whether the car would resume pursuit. When it showed no interest, she continued on, this time on foot.
Two minutes later, she was running up to her front door. She had her key ready, but when she tried the door, she found it unlocked.
She opened it wide, stepped into the front hall and shouted: “Archie! Katie!”
Nothing.
Sandra’s shoulders sagged as she stood there. Her head drooped, her arms hung limp at her sides.
The events of the day suddenly overwhelmed her like a tidal wave. She began to weep.
Her cries were subdued at first, but within a minute they grew into sobs. Fearing she might collapse, she reached out for the nearby staircase banister. She gripped it tightly, hanging on, as if this handrail were the only thing keeping her from spinning off into the abyss.
“Oh God,” she whimpered. “This can’t be happening.”
But then an inner voice spoke to her. A voice that sounded a lot like... Adam.
Pull yourself together, her late husband told her. You’re going to get through this. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.
Sandra struggled to tamp down the sobs. She slowed her breathing, let go of the railing, and wiped the tears from her eyes.
She heard another voice.
“Mom?”
But this one wasn’t in her head. This one was real. And it was coming from right behind her.
Sandra whirled around. And the tears she’d just managed to get under control burst forth again, as if some sort of emotional dam had burst.
“Katie!”
She pulled her daughter into her arms and squeezed her, patted the back of her head, wept into her shoulder, barely noticing the blood on her shirt and her hands and her scuffed knees and the grass and dirt stains on her clothes.
Sandra would have held on to her for much longer, but she pulled away long enough to look at her and say, “Archie.”
Katie, as teary-eyed as her mother, shook her head. “I don’t know. I—”
“You were supposed to be—”
“I know! I know!” Katie shouted. “He got away. He went with his friends, in one of those cars.”
“Oh God,” Sandra said. “When was this? When did they go? Where did they—”
“Right after you left. They were going to the mall. But—”
“We have to go,” Sandra said, suddenly frantic. “We have to get to the mall—”
“I know! But, Mom, Bruce—”
“How are we going to get there?” Sandra said, more to herself than her daughter. “The bike got crushed. I have—”
“What bike?” Katie asked.
“Have to find some other — are you sure he’s at the mall?”
“All I know is that’s where he was going, but I don’t know if he ever got—”
Sandra spotted the keys to her regular car sitting in a plastic dish and, instinctively, went to reach for them, but stopped herself. “Goddamn it,” she said. “Why did we let them take our cars away?”
“Mom, you need to listen. You need—”
“Which friends?”
“What?”
“Which friends did he go to the mall with?”
“Nick and Rory.”
Sandra closed her eyes for an instant. “Where do they — doesn’t Nick live close by?”
Katie nodded. “About a block away. Both of them.”
“Maybe they went there. Maybe Archie’s there.”
“Yeah, maybe, okay, we can go check. But, Mom, stop and listen to me for one second.”
Sandra blinked, looked into her daughter’s blood-smeared face and touched her cheek tentatively. “You’re hurt.”
Katie shook her head. “Not me. Bruce.”
“Bruce?”
“That’s who I’m trying to tell you about. Bruce, the old man who lives across the street.”
“Archie’s serial killer?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “He’s a retired English teacher, and he’s a friend. He’s been teaching me to drive. He’s had this old Cadillac hidden in his garage and—”
“He’s been what?”
“Mom!” Katie shrieked. “Shut up and listen!”
Sandra recoiled. “Okay,” she said. “Go ahead.”
“Bruce is a good guy. He’s my friend. He’s been teaching me to drive. And today we took out his real car so we could go find Archie, but then we got swarmed by those fucking cars and there was this hitchhiker with a gun, but we got rid of him and we thought we were in the clear, but then this Arrival T-bones us and Bruce is hurt real bad and I got back here and we have to find some way to help him or I think he’s going to die.”
Katie, somehow, managed to get that all out in one breath.
“Where?” Sandra asked. “Where is he?”
Katie filled her lungs with air and said, “Turner Point Road, I think it is. The car’s half in the ditch. When I left Bruce he was still alive but he’s not good. We have to get an ambulance out there.”