A Catch in Time Page 32

  Lily had no guide to this extra sense only she possessed. The rainbow of information she received had innumerable shades and colors for which she had no words; even its arc was indescribable. So she poured her frustration into generous creations because she had to; she wasn’t big enough to hold it.

  On her fifth birthday, Laura had laughingly captured Lily as she ran past in the front yard, face hot and sweaty. Lily had twisted from her grasp, body taut with the need to finish her current project. “Not now, Mommy. I need peace,” she’d implored, frantic to be on her way. With a quick kiss, Laura had sent her off, smiling at just another of Lily’s strange sayings. But Lily had meant exactly that, for it was only when she had completed something and given it to the person for whom it was meant, that she felt, for a moment, at peace. Understood.

  Of all the people in Lily’s life, only Lucas had never received a gift meant just for him. She gave Lucas things, but those things she gave were, to her, meaningless. She had never grasped the meaning of Lucas. At first, his elusiveness bewildered her and she became frustrated. Later, the lifelessness of creations begun for him seemed threatening, unpleasant, edging into fright. She found herself dreading to begin a gift for him, so she gave up.

  When Mack had grabbed Lily, the sensations that had abruptly overwhelmed her were far worse than his blood-bathed hands and arms. Terror unlike anything she’d ever felt froze her mind. She could not process the fiery chaos emanating from Mack. Her brief struggle ended when she went into shock, unable to contain the loathsome agony of knowing all that was this evil man.

  She didn’t remember being carried from the house, then flung into the backseat of Mack’s jeep. The rumble of the engine finally penetrated her mind fog, followed by the sight of Lucas, peering over the front seat at her. His presence meant something, but she could not think.

  The jeep sped over holes and ruts. Lily stared at the back of Lucas’s head until a hard jolt threw her against the door. The sudden physical pain caused her to burst into tears. She wrapped her arms over her head and cried hysterically, unable to cope with the suffocating terror.

  It was Lucas, turning to grin at her, that caused her to focus through blurring tears. Lucas. Sudden hope burned through her. But when her vision cleared, she saw the grin Lucas wore was a rictus in a flat, cold face.

  “Hello, Lily,” he said, then turned away. Lily’s scalp prickled. Lucas had changed, terrifyingly. The boy she’d known—his facial expressions, his movements, even the tone of his voice—was gone. In their place was a spontaneous cruelty that seemed to pulse. Gone was the cleverly devised persona with which he’d fooled everyone, and confused Lily.

  The meaning of Lucas that had for so long eluded her was now revealed. And it bore a striking resemblance to the thing driving the jeep.

  The jeep bucked, jumped, swerved, and sped, and the seat belt cut into her lap. Her side banged against the door every time the jeep hit a rut. Where was her mother? Had she been near enough to see this car leaving? Lucas was here and Lucas had been with her mother.

  Lily stretched and twisted, trying to look over the back of her seat at the road behind them, but the seat was too high, and her head wouldn’t stop bouncing. She sagged down and pressed herself into the corner as the jeep careened onward.

  Mommy will come, she told herself stubbornly. She fought to not become more afraid. It was dark. She’d never been by herself after dark. Chaotic emotions pulsed around her. Tears pooled and her throat ached. Mommy will come, she whispered to herself.

  CHAPTER 43

  SAN FRANCISCO GLITTERED IN THE EARLY MORNING sun. As the Suburban moved down the Waldo Grade, on the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge, Josiah took one hand off the steering wheel and squeezed Laura’s knee. “Almost there,” he said.

  Sitting between Josiah and Catherine, Laura stared at the city across the bay, unable to remember how it once looked. There used to be more skyscrapers. The pyramid-shaped TransAmerica building was gone. Houses still covered the hills, clustered thickly, but there were large, blackened gaps.

  Distant building-covered blocks, checkered by dark gaps, sprawled all along the peninsula to the open ocean. Midway, the golden onion dome of the Russian Orthodox Church gleamed brightly above surrounding houses.

  “My goodness,” said Catherine, “I haven’t seen this little traffic on the bridge in over fifty years.” They were, in fact, the only car on the bridge other than a pickup truck far ahead of them, passing beneath the south tower.

  “Look at all the boats,” Kate said from the backseat. “Freighters and tankers and—holy shit! Chinese junks.”

  Mohammed, seated behind Catherine, saw the ocean, where the bay widened into deeper waters and the distant horizon. An outgoing tanker and several fishing boats dotted the blue-green coastal water. He unbuckled his seat belt and craned to see the ship-crowded bay. It had been years since he’d seen so much activity.

  In Year 4, Josiah and Eli had risked a difficult trip to San Francisco, to see for themselves if the rumors of a thriving city were true. They’d traveled by motorcycle, retracing the route they had all used to flee after the blackout, and had returned home with news of a city changed almost beyond recognition; many of the skyscrapers that had once defined the San Francisco skyline were gone. Entire downtown blocks had been demolished, the rubble removed so the ground could be planted. Chicken farms were scattered throughout the city. Golden Gate Park was a huge cooperative farm, with plots of vegetables and grains interspersed among the few trees left standing.

  They’d found the city to be dominated by an Asian population, with new, unwritten laws; justice relied on the perspective of the individual. Weapons abounded, though killing remained a serious crime, condoned only if the slain was a proven Shaitan. Clan systems thrived, networks of respectability with which everyone wished to affiliate; clan members protected each other and vouched for each other’s good standing. Thus, Shaitan were quickly outed.

  San Francisco’s language had become a mixture of English and Chinese dialects. Non-Asians spoke Chinese as often as they could. A pidgin-English/Chinese was evolving.

  The well-armed population crowded along the wharves, close to their source of economy. The bay was crowded with every possible configuration of vessel. Oil refineries in Richmond, on the eastern shores of the bay, were functioning, guarded by mercenaries. Tankers brought in crude oil from Alaska and Texas and left with the refined product.

  “Where’s the map?” Laura asked. She fretted over finding the address on Sutter that Mack had given them. The city was definitely different. Downtown would be different, and Sutter Street was downtown.

  “Right here, dear.” Catherine handed her the outdated map. She’d given up reassuring Laura that she knew the city as well as the back of her hand.

  Kate turned to John Thomas. He was slumped against his seat, staring straight ahead.

  “Are you all right, honey?” she asked him. “You look a little pale.”

  John Thomas smiled wanly. “I’m fine.” He couldn’t explain the images fading briefly in and out of his mind. One of the images seemed to be of this bridge, but it was full of crashed cars and was accompanied by a nightmarish feeling. Another had a strange boxy look, but the sides of the box were opaque, like shattered windows, thick and somehow still whole. This image brought a suffocating sensation. There were others that made even less sense. Suddenly, he heard Lucas’s voice as clearly as though his brother sat right next to him. “John Thomas,” Lucas said. “John Thomas.”

  John Thomas sat up, darting glances at the others. That was weird. No one else looked startled, even though the words were so loud. Heart thumping, he wondered if Lucas, trapped somewhere in the city with that horrible man, had really called out to him and he’d somehow heard him in his mind. Lucas’s voice had been too audible to be a memory. It had been real.

  “What’s going on?” Kate asked. She had heard it, then. But no, Kate was staring through the windshield. John Thomas followed her gaze and s
aw a diagonal line of orange cones angling across the lanes. Josiah was slowing down, steering to the far right lane. They were close enough to make out the figure of a person in the tollbooth toward which the cones funneled them.

  “Checkpoint,” Josiah replied.

  “We gotta pay a toll?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Josiah said. He rolled his window down and braked by the booth.

  The man inside, armed with a semiautomatic weapon, smiled at them. “Business, pleasure, or immigration?” he asked.

  “Business,” Josiah answered.

  “Length of stay?”

  “Hard to say.” Josiah shrugged. “Long enough to make a few trades, short enough not to spend all our profits.”

  The man laughed, then bent slightly at the waist and ran his gaze over each of them. Straightening up, he waved them through. “Happy trading.”

  “Thanks.” Josiah accelerated and, within moments, they were on Doyle Drive, heading toward the Marina district.

  Laura swiveled in her seat. “You’re still sure, Mohammed? You haven’t changed your mind?” Her voice was tense and pleading.

  “I am sure. I will not change my mind, Laura, don’t worry.”

  Laura buried her head in her hands. “Oh, God.”

  The tension everyone had been rallying to ignore was breached.

  Catherine harrumphed. “There’s no point in second-guessing our plan. It’s the best we can come up with and it will either work, or it will not. Uncertainty can only undermine us.”

  “So many holes in the plan,” Laura agonized. “What if Mack’s hidden Lily and we kill him and then can’t find her? Or what if he’s holding her so close that we can’t get a shot at him before he realizes that Mohammed isn’t Conrad? The hat just won’t help. He’ll demand to see Mohammed’s face. What if…” She faltered, unable to say the awful words. What if Lily’s already dead?

  “What if everything works right?” Josiah interrupted firmly. “What if Mack does see Mohammed’s face and Plan B works: he accepts Mohammed’s offer to lead him to Conrad. What if Mack accepts Mohammed in trade for Conrad, like Mohammed said he might.”

  Mohammed had told them the entire story of the night Mack had raped Conrad, of how sure he’d been that Mack had been going to come after him instead. He was certain Mack would have gotten him, had he not escaped with Conrad early the next morning. None of them understood why Mack had fixated on Conrad, and perhaps Mohammed as well.

  Entering the Marina district, they were engulfed in noise and traffic. By the time they turned onto Bay Street, moving toward North Beach, they had slowed to a crawl, weaving through streets crowded with drivers, cyclists, and horse-drawn wagons. Pedestrians swarmed between the wheeled traffic, the sidewalks offering only narrow paths alongside the makeshift booths crowding their lengths.

  “There must have been an earthquake,” Catherine remarked. “Or several.” She pointed out a few canted buildings, drawing their attention to the side of one particularly expressive two-story house. Large, dark cracks meandered along its pink stucco exterior, wide enough in places to expose wounded wood and plaster.

  “Fires, too,” said Laura. “I saw a lot of black, empty areas in the Richmond District when we came over the bridge.”

  “I suggest we try a different route,” Catherine said. “It may be even worse on Columbus. Hyde Street should be coming up … yes, there, turn right.”

  “Hey, that’s not Hyde,” Kate said, squinting at the hand-lettered sign tacked atop the corner pole. “It says … oh. It’s in Chinese.”

  “It is Hyde,” Catherine said. “Turn, Josiah. A rose is a rose.”

  Josiah turned and, by the second block, was able to drive faster as the traffic thinned. Three blocks later, the street ended. He stopped and they stared at the excavated hill in front of them, long wooden ladders sprawled along its face.

  “Goodness,” Catherine said. “Turn left.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, no one else spoke as Catherine guided Josiah through a series of turns and detours, managing somehow to move southward.

  “Are we still going in the right direction?” Laura asked worriedly.

  “If the place is south of us, we are,” Mohammed said. “You said you’ve never been to San Francisco,” said Kate. “Indeed, I have not.”

  “Good sense of direction,” Josiah said, turning right at Catherine’s gesture.

  Five minutes later, Catherine told him to stop. They were definitely downtown. Tall, dark buildings sat shoulder to shoulder along every street. “This is close enough,” said Catherine.

  “Where’s Sutter?” Laura asked.

  “The street directly in front of us,” Catherine answered. “The address we were given should be about three blocks to the left.”

  “Here we go,” Kate said. She scrambled onto her knees and began rummaging through a box behind her seat, handing items to John Thomas for distribution. “That’s for Catherine,” she said, handing him a dark shawl. “Josiah.” She tossed a baseball cap over. “Me.” A wig of glossy black hair, styled in a pageboy, landed on John Thomas’s lap. “You.” Another wig, also black, the hair shorter and unkempt. “Mohammed.” A tan cowboy hat. “Mohammed.” A tan London Fog raincoat. “Josiah.” A knee-length, dark nylon raincoat. “And Catherine.” She flipped around and handed Catherine a lap robe.

  “I still don’t like the idea of getting John Thomas into this,” Kate protested. She watched him fit his wig over his closely cropped hair, then bent her head forward, flipped her own wig on, and jammed her red curls beneath it.

  Adjusting his tightly fitted cap of black hair, John Thomas said, “You know how good I shoot.” His voice was determined, but his face was pale.

  “That’s another thing.” She glared at Mohammed. “Why I ever agreed to …”

  Mohammed, coat on, placed the cowboy hat on his head and said, “He is old enough to avenge his brother, who is in danger.” No one had yet told Mohammed of their belief that Lucas was Shaitan. And it certainly couldn’t be discussed in John Thomas’s presence.

  “Like Catherine said,” Josiah added, giving his baseball cap a tug, “no point in second-guessing our plan. Two, two, and two. It’s our best bet.”

  Laura and Mohammed would enter the building, Josiah and Catherine would cover the entrance, and Kate and John Thomas the rear. If there was no back exit, Kate and John Thomas would wait across the street, ready to help.

  Laura sat tensely, waiting for everyone to start moving. Get out get out get out, she screamed inwardly, let’s GO. Her nerves were raw, her thoughts ragged with the knowledge that Lily might be just a few blocks away. She felt the heaviness of the gun in her jacket pocket. If Lily wasn’t directly in front of Mack, she would shoot through her pocket. But she suspected Lily would be. It was how she pictured it. A shadowy room. Mack sitting in a chair, facing the doorway. Lily in his lap.

  The scene played itself out: she and Mohammed entering the room; Mack ordering Mohammed to remove his hat; a snarl of rage when he saw his face. Laura yelling “Wait!” frantically shouting the words of Plan B, “Take him! He’ll go!” but too late. Mack already shooting, Mohammed down, the flash of the bullet coming for her, knowing she couldn’t shoot because Lily—Lily, oh, God—

  “Laura,” Josiah said. His hand covered her cold fists and she jumped. “I wish I could go in with you.” His eyes were full of worry.

  She shivered and leaned against him. “I wish you could, too.”

  Mohammed got out, went to the rear of the car and opened the back doors. Lifting out Catherine’s old wheelchair—the one Laura had used to bring her home from the hospital the day after the blackout—he unfolded it and wheeled it to Catherine. Seated, she adjusted her lap robe to conceal her gun, then draped her shawl over her head in such a way that her face was hidden.

  “Goddamn this leg,” Josiah exclaimed as he watched Catherine’s preparations.

  Laura stroked his cheek. “You still wouldn’t be able to go i
n with me. You’re too tall. He’d know right away that you’re not Conrad.” Concern and love in their eyes, they exchanged a sudden, hard kiss.

  Josiah and Catherine would make the first pass of the building, identifying it and getting as much information as they could. The wheelchair would help disguise Josiah; using it for support, he could conceal his limp.

  Counting the buildings on either side of their target, Catherine and Josiah would continue around the corner to see about a rear access, then rejoin the others one block north and one west with their information.

  Kate and John Thomas scrambled out of the car. With a last, fierce hug, Laura and Josiah followed them. The car was locked up and the six of them set off, Josiah pushing Catherine’s wheelchair toward the corner of Taylor and Sutter while the others walked in the opposite direction, to the corner of Bush and Taylor.

  Laura could barely keep herself from pacing as she and Mohammed waited on their corner. Josiah and Catherine had completed their mission and were headed back to the front of the building. There was indeed an alley behind the address Mack had given them, and Kate and John Thomas were hurrying toward it.

  Her hands clenched. This was it. A few more minutes to allow the others to position themselves, then she and Mohammed would confront Mack. Lily, Mommy’s here, I’m coming, baby. Adrenaline thrummed through her. She had to calm down. Her teeth chattered.

  Mohammed, finished with his silent prayer, raised his bowed head.

  “Time?” Laura choked.

  He shook his head. “It has only been a few seconds. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.”

  She tried.

  “Again, please,” he directed. She took another, deeper breath.

  “Again, slower.”