“But they are. All men are. That’s what Father was so afraid of, you see. That’s why he wouldn’t let us leave the valley. I didn’t give him enough credit. I admit that now. He knew. He knew others were out there, that we’d find them, that we’d understand: all men are equal. He knew that if we understood that, we would refuse to submit to him.”
“We submitted to the Lord, not to Father.”
“And who told us what the Lord wanted? Father. Who told us what to do, when to do it; how we’d be punished if we didn’t? Who changed the rules when he saw fit? He did.”
“Why would he lie?”
“To control us. That’s what men want. Power.”
“What makes you special?”
“Nothing,” he says. “I’m like any man. I am no different. But we are. An assemblage of men. What makes us special is that there are many voices speaking at once. Some speak for each other. Some against. It’s that loud mass of voices that produces a unity. Look at what we’ve been able to build. Not because of any one person. I’ve taken the greatest burden on my shoulders, yes, but I rely on people to help me. Do you see what I’m saying? Man survives together. It isn’t right to be alone. Not for anyone.”
He pauses. “Not me. Not my son. He needs a mother. He needs you. We both do. I brought you here to show you what we’re building. I’m building this for you. It’s a monument to togetherness. We’ve both wandered, we’ve both been alone, we are all that we have. Don’t you think I’ve had offers of marriage? Every man in the city wants to give his daughter to me. I refused them all. I waited for you. Every day I watched the horizon. I put sentries by the gates and I told them to watch for you. I sent the dog out to hunt for your scent. I still have your robe. I carried it with me, over mountains and through the plain. When I felt I could not go on, I raised it to my face and I remembered you. It still smells like you. I told the dog to find you and he did. Because I knew you would come, and I knew that by the time you arrived here you’d be coming in love, not anger. I have loved you forever and I will love you forever still.”
A silence.
Asham says, “Forever is a long time.”
Cain laughs: a high, frightened sound. “You see? That’s what I love you for. I love you for saying that. I live in a world of flatterers and liars. You speak the truth. I need truth to come home to. I need you to come home to. Enoch does. Do it for him. No. No. Do it for me. Because you love me, I know you love me. You can’t deny that. You wouldn’t.”
He kneels by the edge of the tower. “If you say you don’t love me, I will fling myself off.”
A silence.
Asham says, “I do love you.”
“So it’s yes,” he says. “You will be my wife, as you have always meant to be.”
The wind slices through Asham’s cloak, and she shivers.
Cain says, “Don’t stand there like a statue.”
She kneels to be level with him.
“My love,” he says, “my love.”
She presses her mouth to his. His tongue pushes back, and their bodies kiss from chest to groin.
His skin smells of dust and oil; with demanding hands he urges her toward the ground, as he has done once before, and she breaks away, and he says, “What? What is it?”
She brushes his hair from his eyes, kisses the crown of his head, embraces him again, staring over his shoulder at a dark sky speckled with dark crows.
She holds him tightly, so as to never let him go, and — fixing the balls of her feet against the rough surface of the clay — says, “Forever.”
With the strength and conviction of vengeance long deferred, she pushes them both over the edge.
Chapter twenty-five
Roughly twenty-seven thousand white Ford Econolines were registered in the state of California, not one of which bore the license plate number Jacob copied from his photograph. He ran it several times, each successive search taking longer to return the same verdict.
Not found.
Head spinning, back smarting, he rechecked that he’d entered the number correctly.
Not found.
Forged plate?
He tried his own license plate number. It came back as expected.
He plugged the van’s plate in for a fifth time. The progress bar slowed, froze. He waved the mouse, whaled on the space bar, cursed. He was reaching around to do a hard reset when the system crashed entirely, a wisp of smoke wafting from the front panel vent.
To stop himself from bashing the screen in, he escaped to the kitchen. Nothing to eat; he didn’t dare take a drink. It was two in the morning. He put on a fresh pot of coffee.
Mindful of his bruised tailbone, he eased down to the floor in front of his sofa, slumping against his disconnected TV, and wondered what terrible thing was happening to him.
He flashed back: the van, speeding past. Screaming tires, stench of burnt rubber. No normal person could grab on without dislocating a shoulder. So either Mai was a stuntwoman, or he hadn’t really seen her.
But he had. Clear as his own reflection.
And Victor — Victor had seen her, too.
And if Victor hadn’t?
Would he trust his own perception?
Subach, cradling him in his linebacker’s arms.
Where’d she go.
Who?
Mai. The girl.
What girl?
The girl.
Jake—
Don’t fuck with me. Don’t you fucking fuck with me.
Jake. Buddy. Calm down.
Did it — did she get hit?
You sound funny, man.
I’m—
Maybe I hurt your neck. You should go to the ER. You might have whiplash.
I need to go.
What’s — hey — wait a second.
I need to get out of here.
Wait. Jake. Wait. You’re not good to drive. Jake.
Breaking free, standing. Tell Mallick to call me.
You need to chill out, lemme buy you a drink — c’mon, give you a ride, at least...
ASAP.
The computer panel was no longer smoking, and the desktop booted up normally, but the moment Jacob opened up the DMV database and retried his search string, the screen froze again.
He left the coffee untouched, the progress bar grinding away in futility, staggered to his bedroom, swept aside the crime scene photos still blanketing his duvet, and fell into a blessedly dreamless sleep.
Divya Das said, “Good news first or bad?”
“Good.”
“I found your second offender.”
“That’s great news.”
“Well, but the bad part is he doesn’t bring up any additional hits. All I can tell you is he’s male and probably Caucasian.”
“Thanks for trying.”
“My pleasure,” she said. “What next?”
“I’m going to start poking around seriously for other cases that match the Creeper MO. Maybe L.A. got too hot and they moved on to someplace else.”
“Sounds like fun.”
It sounded like grunt work, and it was: once he restarted the still-churning computer and sat down at the desk, he didn’t get up for another ten hours except to refill his glass, go to the bathroom, or stretch the muscles bunching in his lower back. Grunt work, and he needed it, because if he allowed himself a second to think freely, his mind brought him to the events of the previous evening, and his guts began to roil.
He had seen her.
He’d seen the letters, too.
He was seeing things, and they were disappearing. Blame Sam and his eyes. Blame Bina and her mind. Sooner or later, he thought, he’d have to get himself to a doctor. An ophthalmologist. A shrink. For now, he wrote his own prescription: facts and liquor, maximum strength.