He feels marooned on an offline island. He has no idea of what’s going on in the world — or even on his own damn website.
Biko stares at him from his spot on the floor in Vinko’s office, the border collie the only consistent presence this morning. It’s close to ten-thirty. They both hear the goats. The beasts need airing, food. Vinko swears and storms out of the house. He feels unhinged. The most critical time of his online life, and he’s been shut off like a light switch.
He opens the barn. Goats spill out into the sunlight. Vinko eyes the lake. Same as it always was. The very normalcy is unnerving.
Golden Voice peers at Vinko through her high-powered telescope, taking great pleasure in his evident frustration. She couldn’t very well let him go online this morning, now could she? Not after taking over his website and impersonating him with his subscribers. While he slept, she used her massive catalogue of his responses to their questions over the years to keep up appearances. He has no idea that Steel Fist has been hijacked. She’ll be using his name for many years. But for the man who claimed it first, it’s all over but the burial.
She must move quickly, though. Once he’s done with his goats she can’t give him any time to head into town to try to find out what’s going on in Hayden Lake. Which is nothing, which would tell him far more than she wants him to know. She can’t imagine that he doesn’t have plans for his escape and his “bail-out bag”—phony passports, cash reserves, compact weapons, maybe even supplies for wilderness survival. She has all of that and more.
Golden Voice steps back from her telescope, smiling at the prospect of what she’s about to do to him. Even more charming to her is what she’ll do to his followers.
She walks down to the basement with a bowl of cold oatmeal for Emma Elkins. The girl squats in the corner of her cage, hunched over like a chimp. Golden Voice checked on her twice during the night. The girl didn’t sleep well on those metal bars; she was tossing and turning every time her warder looked at the monitor.
She must be exhausted.
“Hungry, are we?”
Emma surprises Golden Voice by shaking her head.
“I’m bleeding,” she says, “from down there.”
“How’s your bellyache?”
“It’s more like cramps. But I don’t think it’s my period. It really hurts.”
Golden Voice hears pleas for help underlining the young woman’s voice. She sounds scared of her own body, when she should really be terrified of the one moving closer to her cage.
“You’ve probably miscarried. I thought that was happening when you started whining on the plane. I’m going to wash that mess down the drain.” Golden Voice walks over to the hose. “You must be very happy. You got rid of your baby just like you planned.”
“I’d decided to keep it.”
“That’s what you’re telling yourself now.”
“No, I did. I knew I’d get all the help I need because my mother is very—”
“Successful? Comfortable? She is. But not for long. She’s on her way to save you. Isn’t that sweet?” Golden Voice trills. “I’m sure you saw my chainsaw.” She drops the hose and walks over to a hunter’s orange Husqvarna case. It lies open, displaying a chainsaw long enough to cut through a thick tree. She jerks hard on the cord, bringing it to life.
“Better get up. Better get ready to move, Emma, because I can reach in with this. It’ll give me a lot more to wash down the drain.”
She lunges at Em, who throws herself from the corner of the cage, banging and scraping her elbows and knees on the iron bars. The blade comes within inches of taking off her foot.
“I’ll get you when I really want to,” Golden Voice shouts above the screaming saw. Exhaust pours from it, graying the air. “But I don’t want to cut you too much before your mother joins you. You’re such a performer, right? You love to sing, and every singer needs an audience. You’ll have millions of people watching you, including your mom. You’ll be naked and dead and I’ll make sure to cut you right up the middle.”
She shuts off the saw and pulls it out of the cage, then points it toward a ceiling camera. “I’ll feed out to millions of viewers. They’ll see every cut. They’ll hear every scream. But they’ll never know that I’ll be overseeing your slaughter because I’ll be wearing the mask. We’ll have our own Halloween down here.”
Golden Voice strolls to a cabinet and pulls out four iron stakes with steel cuffs attached to the ends. She carries them with no apparent effort to the center of the cellar. The drain sits a few feet away. She sinks each stake into an opening in the floor, locking them in place with a neat twist of the bar.
“Stand up,” she tells Emma.
The young woman huddles as far from Golden Voice as possible. She shakes visibly. Golden Voice grabs the hose and hits her with a powerful stream, washing the blood from her legs. The water turns pink and foamy and floods across the floor, swirling down the drain.
Lana spots Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. From the air, the nearby city looks much like many of its mid-size western counterparts: a lone river amid ribbons of roads and highways that lace together urban areas, contiguous suburban towns, and exurban sprawl. All of it overseen by dusty mountains that look as dry as petrified rocks.
She reaches over and pats Cairo on the head. The hero of Abbottabad is strapped into a canine harness. She wonders how many missions he’s been on and whether he’ll survive this one.
Lana had caught up on news as she flew west, learning that the CDC had restarted smallpox vaccination programs in conjunction with the Army. Everyone seeking inoculation is now carefully searched by Army personnel or National Guard units. That precaution has led to massive lines but, so far, no more suicide bombings. The most recently declared quarantine areas are in the upper Midwest, eastern Mississippi, and, oddly enough, the U.S. Virgin Islands.
As they come in for a landing, Lana receives a short text message on her phone: “Directions on the ground will follow.”
Cold comfort, those words — a recognition that someone thinks Lana will soon be on the trail of her own undoing.
By her best estimate, she’s beating Tahir to Spokane by at least two hours. She wonders if he’s flying in alone. Mostly, she wonders why he’s flying in at all. Galina lost track of his device once he boarded a commercial flight out of Washington Dulles, which was par for the course. But getting a seat on such short notice — given the crises and their consequences for civilian air travel — was remarkable. Or was it?
Lana told Jeff to alert the Department of Defense about her flight and Tahir’s. They’ll know they’re both going to Spokane, but beyond that only question marks loom for her.
She has a locator on her phone, but can’t imagine anyone sophisticated enough to hack the Fusion and grab Emma will overlook such an obvious means of having government officials track Lana.
True enough. Lana’s first instruction upon landing is to drive a blue Ford Focus from the parking lot. Her second is to park at a convenience market three miles away. Her third has her take the keys from the ignition and walk over to an old Land Cruiser. The fourth instructs her to use a Toyota key on the ring to drive it to a nearby park. In effect, Lana whisks herself away from the air base and from surveillance cameras before changing cars.
Next, she’s told to reach under the driver’s seat of the Toyota 4x4 for a phone and throw her own device into a bear-proof garbage container.
Fresh instructions appear at once on the new phone, directing her to Interstate 90. “Turn left on the off ramp.” She’s heading east, racking her brain for the likeliest destinations. Coeur d’Alene?