Karen hadn’t considered this. She felt cold, almost iced over inside. The two messages from the Wolf just automatically led her to certain assumptions. She looked up at Jordan. It took a child to make her understand that nothing was clear.
Karen gripped her coffee tightly to hold the cup steady. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “We can’t assume anything.”
The two women watched each other, letting a small silence fit into the table space between them. After a moment, Jordan shook her head and smiled weakly. “No,” she replied. “I think we have to. I think we’ve got to make some decisions. Otherwise, we’re just walking alone through the forest, just like he told us we were.”
“Okay,” Karen said, slowly elongating each syllable. “What do you think…”
“I think we need Red Two,” Jordan said briskly. “That’s the first thing. We have to find Red Two.”
“That makes sense.”
“Unless, of course, Red Two is the Wolf,” Jordan said.
Karen’s head spun. This thought seemed impossible, but at the same time eerily accurate. There was no way of telling.
She saw the teenager shrug. “We shouldn’t guess. Find her and then the three of us can start to plan.”
Karen nodded, although she was surprised. She had thought that it would be her leading the teenager, not the other way around, even though she had no real idea where to lead anyone, given their situation.
“Okay, how…”
“I can find her,” Jordan said. “I’ll do it.”
Karen breathed out slowly. Leave it to the teenager, she thought. If there’s anything a teenager knows, it’s computers. She reached down and brought up her purse from the floor. “Here,” she said. She opened it up and removed three disposable cell phones. “I bought these this morning: One for you, and one for Red Two when we find her, and one for me. This way, at least, we can communicate privately.”
Jordan smiled. “That’s smart.” She took the phones and immediately started to program them with all three numbers.
“I’m not a complete idiot,” Karen said, although she felt a little like one. “I’ll try to figure out some safe places, like this”-she gestured around the cafeteria-“where we can all meet if we need to.”
“Okay. That’s a good idea, too.”
“Yes,” Karen said, “But that’s pretty much the end of my good ideas.”
“Well.” Jordan shook her head. “I’ve been thinking. And I think it’s pretty simple.”
“Simple?”
“Yes. We have to find him before he finds us.”
“And what do we do…” Karen said slowly. The teenager in front of her seemed both intimately familiar and a total stranger simultaneously.
“You know what we do then,” Jordan said.
“No, I don’t,” Karen replied. But she did, even before Jordan filled in the silence.
“We kill him first,” Jordan said matter-of-factly, just like she was slapping away a stray mosquito that had landed on her arm. The teenager leaned back in her seat. She was a little astonished at what she’d said. She did not know precisely where the idea had come from, but she thought it must have been hiding behind all her fears, just waiting for the brightly lit, oppressively clean place she was seated in to emerge. But just as quickly, she was pleased. For the first time in days, maybe even months, she thought, she liked the direction she was suddenly going in. Cold-blooded and determined. She could feel her pulse quicken. It was a little like jumping up toward the basket and releasing the ball and realizing that her fingertips had scraped the bottom of the rim. Boys, she thought, dream of high-flying slam dunks, so they can pound their chest with look-what-I-did bravado. I’m more modest. I just want to be able to reach the goal and touch it.
15
Red Two stared from the questionable safety of her house at the car parked across the street. She had first noticed it perhaps fifteen minutes earlier, as she had staggered aimlessly about her living room, pistol in one hand, some pills in the other, unsure which to use first. Ordinarily she would have paid no attention to a nondescript car pulled to the side of the road just beyond the reach of a streetlamp’s glow. Someone in search of an address. Someone stopped to make a cell phone call. Someone momentarily lost, seeking their bearings. This last possibility made Sarah think, Maybe someone like me.
But Sarah Locksley suspected that nothing was ordinary in her life any longer, and despite the gray-black gloom of rapidly falling night, she could just make out the shape of a person seated in the car. Man? Woman? The shape was indistinct. For a moment or two she watched through her window, waiting for whoever this was to exit the car and walk up to one of her neighbors’ front doors. A light would go on, a door would swing open, there would be voices raised in greeting and maybe a handshake or a hug.
That would have been my life not so long ago. No more.
She continued to wait, counting seconds as her mind blanked to everything except the steady accumulation of numbers.
The expected scenario didn’t materialize. And when she reached 60 with the figure remaining obscured inside the vehicle, her pulse quickened. Like a picture slowly coming into focus, some sort of off-kilter algorithm coalesced in her mind: I’m alone waiting for a killer. It’s almost dark. There’s a car parked across the street. Someone’s inside, watching me. They’re not just visiting the neighbors. They’re here for me. She slammed herself to the side as the formula took shape within her, dodging out of the sight of the person she suddenly absolutely 100 percent knew was staring back at her with murderous intent. Sarah hugged against the wall, breathing hard, then crept sideways to where she could just tug a small amount of worn chintz curtain away, and peered out at the vehicle.
Evening sliced away her ability to see clearly. Shadows slipped like razor blades across her sight line. She ducked backward, as if she could hide. She had an impossible thought: He can see me, but I can’t see him.
Sarah twitched. She quivered. She thought This is it and thumbed back the hammer on her weapon. It clicked into position with an evil sound.
A hidden part of her-the reasonable part-understood that this couldn’t be the way a killer would work. He would be cautious, prepared, and precise. The first moment she would be aware he was beside her would be her last. The Wolf wouldn’t simply park out in front of her house and then after a suitable wait, giving her enough time to get fully ready, march up to her front door and announce, Hi! I’m the Big Bad Wolf and I’m here to kill you.
But logic seemed slippery and elusive, and it took tense muscles and a sweaty grip to grab any away from her imagination.
Wait, she abruptly insisted to herself, that’s exactly what he does in the fairy tale. He comes right up close to Little Red Riding Hood and she can only recognize that his eyes, his ears, his nose, and finally his teeth aren’t quite right.
She craned her head forward once again and stole another glance at the car.