I skidded to a stop.
The pinhead was right here.
I saw nothing. Nobody.
Smoke licked the blacktop.
I checked my phone: 7:02.
No reception.
Before losing contact with the network, the map application had loaded the destination and portions of the surrounding area. I brought up the satellite image and matched its features as best I could to the shadows on the other side of the glass: naked hills to the north, country road snaking eastward toward the county line, substation at my back.
Millar Ranch Road stuck out like a thorn, lancing southeast for half a mile to end at a group of structures with holes in their roofs. The Millar Ranch. A ranch no longer. More profitable to lease the land to the power company. Stanchions sprouted like freakish outliers in fields of chest-high weeds.
I put on my vest and loaded the SIG Sauer.
Took my knife and my flashlight and my mask and got out with the engine running.
The stench was instant and acrid and intense. It pooled like oil in my lungs. I began to cough uncontrollably. The sound died inches from my face, as though I were shouting underwater. Dozens of incoming power lines ran overhead. I couldn’t see them through the haze but I could hear sizzling. All the hair on my body was standing on end.
I blinked out tears, coughed out gunk, squinted. The greenish pall of the substation floodlights seeped over the fields and gasped out to nothingness. Along Millar Ranch Road, trash was strewn on the roadside. Particles swirled in the flashlight beam. A plywood sign read DEAD END. A shopping bag with knotted handles hung from an orphaned fence post.
Smoke crowded in like a silent enemy.
I aimed the flashlight at the bag. It was from Target, its red logo a puncture wound.
Something inside was pulling it taut.
I inched up.
My name was written on the ash-flecked plastic.
It could contain an explosive. It could go off if I opened the bag. If I got close enough.
Just because I couldn’t see them didn’t mean they couldn’t see me.
I didn’t think they’d settle for killing me remotely. They wanted the pleasure of direct violence.
I lifted the bag off the post and untied the handles. Inside was a green-and-black five-channel walkie-talkie, set to channel one.
I looked back the way I’d come, wishing for a battalion of emergency vehicles.
It was 7:05. My brother had been dead for twelve minutes.
I switched on the walkie-talkie and held the CALL button. “I’m here.”
Chapter 23
The receiver blipped.
“You’re late.”
I turned, trying to place him.
Fields. Stanchions. Weeds. Smoke.
“I’m here now,” I said.
No answer.
“Hello?” I said.
“Start walking.”
Flat voice, fighting to avoid the upper register.
A boy, masquerading as a man.
Each time I forced him to think or speak or adjust it tipped the balance of power in my favor. Every second I stretched was one more I gave to Nwodo or Shupfer or Rigo.
I ran to the car, got in, and shut the door. Turned on the radio and detuned it to white noise.
“Hello?” I said. “Are you there? I can’t hear you.”
“I said start walking.”
I raised the volume. “Sorry. I’m having a lot of trouble hearing you. Say that again?”
“Walk, fuckhead.”
Not Get out of the car and walk.
He couldn’t see me.
The smoke.
It was giving him problems, too.
The enemy of my enemy.
“Hello,” he demanded.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s really hard to hear you. Maybe we can try another channel.”
Ten precious seconds ticked by. I studied the map on my phone.
The receiver blipped. “Channel two.”
I cranked the static up higher and switched to channel two.
“That’s worse,” I shouted.
“Just walk.”
“I’m switching to three,” I said. “Can you hear me? Channel three.”
“Four.”
“What?”
“Channel f—” He dissolved into coughs. “Channel four.”
“I think you’re saying four. Is that what you said?”
“Ye—” More coughing. “Yeah,” he croaked.
He was feeling it.
He was outside.
I dialed the noise down to a murmur and switched to channel four. “Are you there? Can you hear me now?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat noisily. “Can you hear me?”
“It’s a little better,” I said. “You said walk?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to tell me where I’m going? Give me some instructions?”
“Follow the road.”
“Follow the road.”
“That’s what I said.”
Other than the substation, the ranch was the only human structure for miles. They had to be back there somewhere.
They were putting me in a funnel. Monitoring my approach from a safe remove.
They had a vision of how this was supposed to go.
I grabbed a Post-it and pen from the center console. “Which road? The one I’m on? Or the other one?”
“What other one?”
“Right now I’m on the highway,” I said, scribbling ATTN first responder. “Is that the one you mean?”
“No — you got the bag, just keep going that way.”
“Okay.” Proceeding on foot Millar Ranch Road SE. “So Millar Ranch Road.”
“Yeah.”
I climbed out of the car, trapped the Post-it beneath a wiper blade, and ran toward the field at the southwest corner of the intersection. “Southeast.”
Twelve glorious seconds elapsed while he figured it out.
“... yeah,” he said uncertainly.
“Okay. Southeast. How far do you want me to go?”
“Just get going, asshole. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Switching off the flashlight I ducked into the weeds and began crabbing due south, using the substation and the nearest stanchions as reference points. “Let me talk to Luke first.”
“Bitch, you don’t make the rules.”
“For all I know you killed him,” I said, parting stalks. “I need to know he’s alive.”
There was no answer. I maintained south, diverging from the road, moving as quickly as I could while staying low. Which was not very quick, because the terrain was pitted and uneven, and the weeds were high but not that high, and I’m tall, and the smoke while thick was unpredictable. Light erratic wind brushed it this way and that, slicing short-lived windows of transparency. One badly timed movement and I’d be exposed.
Within fifty paces my legs and back were cramping. I sucked at the inside of my mask, struggling to draw enough oxygen, my heart beating triple time. I covered another fifty paces and paused to poke my head up.
I was in the middle of a dark, trembling sea.
Smoke eddied, languid as ink in water.
I could no longer see the road.
I adjusted southeast and crouched down and began moving again, parallel to the invisible road. The boy hadn’t spoken since I’d asked for proof of life.
Either Luke was dead and they couldn’t produce him.
Or they’d kept him alive for a reason.
The receiver blipped.
“... Clay... ”
My brother’s voice, altered horribly, shivved with pain.
“Luke,” I said. “It’s hard to hear you. Are you there?”
The boy said, “Move it, bitch.”
He hadn’t seen me enter the field.
He thought I was still at the intersection.