He crouched over her, his smooth-skinned face looking impossibly youthful, the unlined visage of a Renaissance angel.
She felt revulsion pressing at the back of her throat like vomit. "No."
"Yes." A smile lit his face, showing off the perfect line of his teeth. "Yes, yes, yes."
She resisted, but he was sufficiently overpowering to make clear she had no options. He manipulated her body with a calm forcefulness, guiding her through the motions of undressing, navigating her arms from the shirt as if changing a doll with stiff limbs. Then he pushed down on her knees, forcing one leg straight, then the other, and pulled off her jeans.
Wearing a soft, paternal smile, he kept his eyes on hers. "There you go. Let me show you."
He sank on top of her, his right knee pinning her left leg down, the kneecap boring into the soft flesh of her inner thigh. She was trapped – she couldn't react violently without giving away her greater deception. TD secured her arms, vise-gripping her wrists in one hand. Through her panic Leah felt his left knee dig between her clenched legs, forcing them open. It rolled up the curve of her right leg, trapping it, too. His practiced dexterity was all the more sickening.
"You're all alike. You think your virginity is so cosmically important, as if God and mankind have nothing better to do than worry about girls keeping their cherries intact. As if your body is some holy shrine. As if it matters at all when you let a man inside you. It doesn't. You'll see. This will be so good for your growth, Leah. You'll learn so much."
His face had darkened with blood, accenting the chestnut square on his chin, the whites of his eyes. He twisted a finger in the side of her panties.
For a moment she thought she'd started screaming out loud, but then an idea sailed into her head, cutting through the imagined noise. "You're right, TD. But that's not why I don't want to be with you. It's because…well, when I changed this morning, I noticed…uh, some midcycle spotting and -"
He stiffened. Panic touched his eyes, and he scrambled off her. "Out now. Off my sheets." He stumbled backward across the room. "You should never come into my cottage this way."
Leah's thighs and wrists throbbed. TD's face burned with rage; Leah's rash seethed. As she tried to dress quickly, he shooed her out, carrying half her clothes.
"Leave. Now."
Over the din of the crickets and the bang of the screen door, she heard him crying out for Lorraine, his voice holding a jarring note of distress.
Chapter forty-four
Stretched shivering beneath two sheets, Leah lay on Tim's bed, breath pluming from her mouth at intervals. Tim sat beside her, plastic bags wrapping his shoes, bobby pin set between his teeth, one hand resting on her forehead.
Waiting.
Amid all the activities, dinner had conveniently been forgotten. Tim's stomach growled despite the enormous breakfast he'd eaten in preparation. He pulled a protein bar from its hiding place, broke it in two, and gave Leah half.
They chewed in sullen silence.
Watching the rain bounce off the puddles outside, Tim grew increasingly tense. Still no Skate, no Dobermans.
The best time for Tim and Leah to escape would be tomorrow during the predinner Orae. That left him roughly fifteen hours to gather whatever evidence he needed. Tonight provided his last chance to recon under cover of darkness, but if Skate had reported on Leah's meddling with the mail, he'd likely be walking into a trap.
He waited a few more minutes, then opened the window and dropped outside. Leah shut it behind him, and her face drifted down out of view.
Tim made his way from cabin to cabin, pausing at the edge of Cottage Circle. He forged through the brush to the north of the trail, taking a more direct route to the shed, one that provided him better cover. Brambles and branches tore at him, forcing him to move more or less parallel to the trail. His plastic-sheathed feet found sloppy purchase in the mud.
He heard the whine of dogs around the bend of the trail, followed by Skate's two-note whistle, releasing them to seek.
He crouched in the dense foliage, biting on the bobby pin, shifting slightly to improve his obstructed view of the trail ten yards south. The dogs swept past, Skate lumbering to catch them.
One of the dogs circled back and sat, nose twitching, glaring downslope. Tim hoped the rain provided sufficient scent cover, that the winds wouldn't shift, that the spindly branches around him wouldn't crackle.
Skate stopped by the dog, his broad boots pushing mounds into the mud. "Whatcha smell?" He scratched the dog's scruff.
Tim held his breath. Skate squatted, bringing his face inches from the dog's saliva-wet snarl to mimic its sight line down the trail.
Inadvertently overlaying Tim's scent with his own.
The dog backed up, shaking its head, sneezed twice, and trotted after its companion. Skate remained on his haunches, head pivoting. Just before he turned to face Tim, Tim drew the bobby pin into his mouth and closed his eyes to hide the white glint.
A plop of a footstep. Then another. He opened his eyes and made out Skate's receding back. He exhaled and pulled himself free, branches scraping him through his clothes. Wet wind whipped his face as he jogged to the clearing.
As always, the shed glowed orange. Passing behind it on his way to the mod, Tim discerned Randall's stooped, bulky form and heard the complaint of the stove door's stubborn hinges. The chimney coughed out a burst of ginger flecks, and Tim halted, realization striking.
So brilliant – hiding in plain sight.
He inched forward, minding his foot placement, trying to get a look through the rift in the planks of the wall, but he couldn't make out more than a slice of Randall's empty cot.
Randall came into view, one ash-covered finger tracing down a computer printout nailed to the wall. His nail tapped twice, leaving smudges. He flipped his cot over, fussed with the dial on the hidden floor safe, and removed a phone cord. He snatched a mechanical clock from its perch on a crude shelf, took note of the time, and scurried across the clearing.
Before the screen door of TD's cottage swung shut, Tim was inside the shed, negotiating the cramped space around the overturned cot. The postal bucket sat empty on the floor before the open loading door of the potbellied stove. Inside, a scattering of paper curled in a leaping yellow flame. A few of the marshal's letters remained partially buried in the cinders – Tim noted the writing on the unopened envelopes before fire consumed them. Plenty of legible scraps peppered the mounds of cooled ash to the sides.
He turned to go, his hand pressing on the wall as he high-stepped over the cot. Something poked through the skin of his palm, and he jerked his weight off, almost falling. The nail impaling the computer printout.
TD's Phone Sheet, April 24. Callers' names, precise times of incoming calls, and topics were listed neatly in three columns. Ross Hanger, Merrill Lynch. 4:10 P.M. Re: JS's preferred securities. TD had wasted little time digging into Jason Struthers's financials. Tim was turning to go when another entry caught his eye. Phil McCanley, Lowdown Investigations. 11:00 P.M. Re: TA update.
A tingle ran across the small of Tim's back. TD's extensive extracurricular investigation was closing in on Tom Altman. Tim could play a cover game in the interrogation that would surely follow the call, but there was no way Leah could stand up to equal scrutiny.
His eyes found Skate's clock: 10:59 clicked to 11:00.
Across the clearing in TD's cottage, the telephone rang.
Tim leapt over the cot through the door and hit a full sprint up the trail. He skidded out onto Cottage Circle. Sheets of rain cut visibility to less than ten yards; he couldn't make out Skate or the dogs. To his right, past the line of cottages, stretched the woods, the creek, and, miles beyond, a beater of a pickup Bear had left for him roadside at Little Tujunga, the keys hooked behind the rear license plate.