“Keep facing forward.”
I was lying. Aaron had told me, but I wasn’t intending to trust Clay yet. I needed to keep my guard up. Both verbally and physically.
“Llorenzo’s family got long-term illnesses by a water supply polluted by fracking,” he said. “Drake Oil’s fracking lines.”
It was a legendary litigious nightmare spanning years. Clay knew every nuance of it and retold the chronology well enough for me to believe he was at least part of Aaron’s legal department, or had been well briefed. The trial controversially ended when the Llorenzo family was exposed for taking bribes from a rival corporation. Another oil company was bribing Llorenzo to fabricate the entire lawsuit. The whole case was exposed as a lie. That was the brilliant Drake defense team at work. That’s what won.
“I don’t see how this is news,” I replied when he finished.
“Ah, okay, good. So you’re up to date,” said Clay. “So what you probably don’t know…what Aaron probably hasn’t told you…is that those bribes never happened.”
“You mean Drake fabricated the bribes?”
“Drake fabricated the family.”
He was no longer the requisite twelve feet ahead of me on the trail. I’d dropped my guard. I’d completely lost focus on our spacing.
Fabricated the family?
“I don’t get it,” I said to him.
“Our legal team found a father of three who was willing to say he was sick.”
“Even though he wasn’t? Sick?” This made no sense. “So Drake invented its own fake case? Against itself?”
He was walking alongside me. My gun was no longer safely defending my personal bubble. He could’ve easily done something to me during this time. He could’ve strangled me, pushed me down, and disarmed me. I’d been completely distracted by his claim.
“It’s a con game,” he said. “We called it a false god. You control your enemy by controlling their hero: you create their hero…then you humiliate their hero.”
“Why?”
“So you can make sure one big case, just one, will lose exactly the way you need it to. And when that case loses, it sets a precedent for all other cases to lose. It sways public opinion. It sways juries. It’s unstoppable.”
“How would you pull that off?”
“Pay everyone. Pay opposing lawyers. Pay the clerks. The cops. Judges. The hardest judge is the first one. But once a few are in, the pressure to conform is enormous. And contagious.” Then he looked over at my face to mention something he knew would jar it. “Like the bonus Aaron got last year. The $145,000.”
He saw me react. I tried to stay unperturbed. But the mention of that $145,000 wasn’t easy to hide.
“Then what does that make us?” I said, half rhetorically. “What does that make you?”
“Drake is a monster. I work for them. So…” Then came an honest, grave, uninflected admission. “I’m a monster. Aaron isn’t.”
He talked a good game. Too good. His spin was so potent I didn’t even care if he was conning me anymore.
“But I’m trying to makes amends,” he added. “I’m here to help him. I was lucky to be recruited on this hunt but not lucky enough to be put in charge of it. So I had to be patient before making a move.”
I decided to take a risk. “Who’s Jed?”
He scrutinized me again. The gears turning in his head.
“You mean Jedediah,” he said. “He’s a retired judge. Drake has leases on his property for some of our fracking sites.”
“So Jed is helping,” I concluded.
“No, Miranda.” He stopped to look me deep in the eye. “Let me make this crystal clear: you can’t trust Jed.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t tell him to keep moving. I didn’t need to. We had arrived.
We could now see the site where our minivan had crashed. All four wheels were belly-up, facing the sky. The vehicle had been drenched, jostled, twisted ten degrees, carried, scraped, then dumped back on the silt of the same bank several yards downstream.
It definitely looked like a crime scene, though.
“They were at the wreck?” asked Clay, scanning the area in front of us. “They were at the wreck the whole time?”
I kept him in front of me for the final few steps. I wanted to monitor his reactions. I wanted to see if he licked his lips with a thirst for vengeance, or was genuine in wanting to talk to Aaron.
“Here?” he asked again, almost squeaking the word. His incredulity mirrored a growing, nagging, terrifying fear that was welling up within me.
I was about to find out if they made it. If they had an accident. Or worse.
Or if they made it to the SUV, but someone was waiting for them when they got there.
Chapter 21
I started shouting for them. “Aaron! Aaaaaaarrrrron!” I repeated the refrain as I stood looking up the cliff face, looking for any signs of life.
“I thought you said he was here,” said Clay.
I continued to scan the cliff, and that’s when I saw it: a small purple smudge about halfway up.
“What…is…?” I muttered to myself.
Her little kangaroo hat, lodged up in the rock. Which could only be up there if—
“Sierra!” I shouted.
Clay turned around and saw me looking up.
“Aaron!” I shouted.
“So they climbed up,” said Clay. He brushed past me, leaving me in his dust.
He was already on his way.
I ran after him. Soon I was ahead of him. He chose one route. I chose the other. Within minutes we were vertical. I tried to peer downward, directly along the vertical face to inspect the long, thin pocket space that ran along the foothills.
“Aaron!” I shouted upward, past Clay, into the elongated void.
No response.
Clay didn’t stop, and soon our two routes began to converge. They started out parallel but around the halfway point they angled into each other. He wouldn’t look at me. You’d think it was the shame of knowing he’d betrayed me, but I caught sight of a cocky smile.
Without even glancing over he said, “You’re not gonna get there before me, Miranda,” he said.
He was a genuine climber, too. Perhaps better than I was.
“If you were really an ally,” I replied, “you’d call out for him.”
I started to outpace my rival. I was taking more chances than he was, reaching for holds beyond my normal span. But Clay kept up.
“You’re not calling out to him,” I continued, “because you don’t want him to know that you’re with me.”
I was gradually forming a new theory. I didn’t think Mr. Clay Hobson was simply ordered to do the job of attacking my husband. I didn’t think this entire day was merely an assignment. The truth was that my nemesis, hovering twenty feet to my seven o’clock, was directly implicated in whatever ugly history they all shared. This wasn’t a job—it was personal.
“Aaron!” I again shouted upward. “Run!”
Chapter 22
I was about fifteen feet ahead of Clay. I would have to use that advantage as soon as I reached the top. If only I had some hot water or oil.
He wasn’t taking any chances. He freed up his right hand, pried loose a small rock, and threw it at me. I thought there was no way it’d actually—
“Ow!” I screamed, as the rock hissed into my hand.
He’d tagged me directly on the knuckles. A one-in-a-hundred shot. The pain was instant, loosening my grip, but it was a miss for my opponent. He was aiming for my head.
I looked down toward him. Thirty feet behind me now—but he’d chosen his route badly and had hit a dead end. He’d have to go down and over to my route and, maybe in a few minutes catch up with me. But he readied another rock to throw.
I had the rifle on my back. I remembered when I fired it into the air, the recoil. My shoulder was still sore. If I tried shooting it now, it would knock me off the wall. Thinking about the gun, I lost concentration, promptly losing the f
oothold under my left toe.
I started to fall.
I swung half a pendulum arc, my body anchored only by my middle three fingers on my right hand as I lost three of my four holds. Pebbles crumbled from where my feet were, a hundred feet down to the crevasse below me. My rifle strap slid off my shoulder, down my torso, past my legs, and sailed toward the abyss, ricocheting off the cliff face, past where Clay might have caught it midair—no chance, although he did try—before spinning into the trench below.
We both paused for a moment.
He broke the silence. “Let’s stop and think, Miranda. I believe we may have a misunderstanding.”
I could see the look in his eyes. There was no misunderstanding. He was a demonic tarantula crawling up from below relentlessly. I’d originally thought we were evenly matched. I was wrong. He was immensely better at this. He had chosen a bad route, but was now rushing up behind me with a violent focus.
Bloodlust.
Then he made a move I didn’t see coming.
“Aaron!” he yelled upward.
What is he doing?
“Aaron Cooper!” he yelled again.
I kept climbing.
“Your wife is coming to kill you, Aaron!”
What?!
“She thinks you betrayed her!”
He’s insane. Did he actually think this would work? I started accelerating my climb even faster than its already uncomfortable speed. I took risks that required not looking down. “Don’t listen to him!” I shouted upward.
“She’s lost her mind, Aaron!” he yelled. “Protect Sierra! Because Miranda is coming to kill you!”
My husband would never believe this. Though, in his delirious state…I scrambled over the edge in an ungraceful lunge, then stood by the road getting my bearings. I grabbed the purple kangaroo hat. My predator was no more than thirty seconds behind me on the trek. I’d need every nanosecond of that margin.
Go!
The black SUV was parked down the road. I vaulted the guardrail and sprinted directly for it. I was of course profoundly relieved to see it there, but also instantly reminded that this vehicle was the source of my misery.
No matter, it was a sight for sore eyes. This model came with all the options I ever wanted: Aaron and Sierra!
As I got closer, stumbling my last few steps, I could see the two of them lying against the rear wheel. When I sent them up here, it had seemed impossible. I don’t know if I actually believed they could make it. But there they were, delivered as promised. One napping daughter and one still-intact husband.
“Get inside!” I shouted at them. “Get inside!”
Clay was just making his way over the guardrail, only ten seconds behind me. I fumbled for the keys and the unlock button. Aaron and Sierra started to stir, roused by my voice, but gradually, too gradually for my liking. I arrived like a train wreck, my own momentum slamming me against the rear door on the driver’s side. I yanked it open to shove (as gently as I could) the wobbling Aaron into the interior, throwing Sierra in his lap. I flung open the driver’s door and jumped in, cranking the ignition just as the rear window was shattered.
Clay had found a rock—probably forged from his own kidney stones—to smash the window. He was already thrusting his arms into the backseat, attempting to grab my husband by the collar.
“Daddy!” cried Sierra, seeing her father about to get yanked into the clutches of pure evil.
I stomped on the gas and gunned it. Clay’s arms retreated as the SUV rocketed forward, and we finally hit the road at full speed. I wanted to make Clay appear in my rearview mirror and shrink.
And he did. Just as two white vans emerged in the distance behind him. His reinforcements.
Chapter 23
The speed limit was fifty on this treacherous desert road. I was doing eighty-five. Barely paying attention to handling the turns, I only cared about making the little white dots in my rearview mirror shrink.
Both vans had stopped to pick up their overlord, then quickly regained their cruising speed. I was mesmerized by the rearview mirror. I lost focus on the road before I corrected my swerve, fishtailed a bit, and steadied. Miranda, you’ve officially been issued a second chance to get this right.
To steer into the skid.
I banked hard on the next turn. It was a tight enough curve that it was marked with a road sign in cautionary yellow. SPEED LIMIT 45 MPH.
I took it at a hundred.
The back tires squealed as our entire SUV tilted toward the cliff. Not decisively so, but enough for me to dig my fingernails into the supple, calfskin, optional leather-covered steering wheel.
The white vans weren’t slowing down at all. In fact, the closer one was a turn behind me as we slalomed along the S-curves.
“Hold on tight, please,” I said to my cargo.
I lowered my glance at the rearview mirror to peek into the backseat at Aaron. He looked sickly pale, his skin was a blank, white canvas for a wife’s deepest fears.
“I’m gonna find us a hospital,” I said to him.
I started fumbling for the air-conditioning switch. These brand new SUVs have monstrously elaborate control panels. It looked like NASA in there. Temperature. Humidity. Angle. Dual. Custom.
“Babe, there’s gotta be a bottle of water somewhere.”
He didn’t answer. There was an orange backpack on the seat next to me, which I started to dig through, filled with hard paper rods. No water.
“Babe?” I said.
“I can find it, Mommy,” Sierra spoke up.
Before I could caution her not to roam the interior of a vehicle that’s careening around cliff roads, she was up and about, crawling over the headrest, so that her tiny bottom filled my rearview mirror for a moment. And just behind her, flying out of the previous turn we just finished, I could see something terrifying.
The first white van. Directly behind us. With passengers. With guns.
My hand fumbled across the air-conditioning panel, inadvertently scraping the radio volume knob upward. I grabbed the wheel with both hands and floored it, as music started blaring—Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”—while our SUV roared down the road at one hundred five miles per hour.
We thoroughly skidded at every turn. The back of the vehicle fishtailed and I’d correct it by guiding the front wheels toward the potential danger. It worked. We stayed in control.
But so did the white vans, who apparently had less to lose than we did, because they both dared every law of physics. Every maneuver, every curve—they were gaining on us.
And soon they were on either side.
“Mommy!”
Out came those guns. On my left, a man leaned out of the passenger window, wielding a nasty-looking contraption that fired more bullets than I ever wanted to know about.
BRATATATATAT! Either it was a warning shot or his aim was bad, but I could see the bullets whiz by in front of my windshield, and I didn’t want to find out.
I’m sure the best move would’ve been to slam on my brakes and have him magically end up shooting the other van. That’s how it works in cartoons, but I’m just not that kind of animated rabbit. Instead I jolted the steering wheel sharply to the left and slammed our SUV against the passenger door he was shooting from.
We bounced into the van and would’ve lost control had I not escalated the maneuver by swerving back across the road into the other guy for stabilization.
Wham!
Our SUV thus corrected its course and remained centered down the stretch of road, as the vehicles on either side of me lost traction. The first van wiggled, slowing him down so he was now slightly behind us; the other scraped the rock face and, to my shock and delight, careened back into the first one.
Now the two vans were meeting in my rearview mirror. And at a hundred miles per hour, that wasn’t a simple collision.
This would buy us at least five minutes.
I sped up to one hundred twenty-five miles per hour. I had to assume they’d resume the chase, if the
y could, when they could. I didn’t know what the capacity of my engine was but I knew my tires were shaking. Big, oafish SUVs are not meant to go triple the speed limit. Yet, miraculously, within a few minutes we were emerging out of the canyons, beginning the hundred-mile downslope back toward civilization. I still shook with adrenaline, constantly checking my rearview mirror as the mountains gave way to hills and landscape broadened to wide-open space.
Finally arriving at the closest intersection with the highway, I saw a flimsy barricade shutting down access to the opposite lane. No wonder! This was already a desolate highway, but Clay had ensured total privacy.
“Mommy, this is water,” said Sierra. She’d found a bottle, half full with its lovely, clear contents.
“Thanks, honey. Back in your seat. We’re safe.”
We weren’t safe, yet. We still had to encounter our first normal human. The road ahead remained sparse, mile after mile. Empty. But I needed her to hear those words. And I needed to say them.
We needed a doctor, but also needed protection. Clay said not to trust Jed, and we obviously could not trust Clay, and Aaron said be careful who you trust, so I had no idea what else was in store.
As the land opened up I could finally see my way ahead. There were roadside stores, gas stations, signs of civilization, and finally a sign for a town: Chasm, Arizona. I knew it had a population of maybe a couple thousand people, seemingly spread throughout the hills on either side of the highway.
I was driving us to the only location I knew of. Our original destination before all this started. Jed’s ranch.
Chapter 24
“Salvation,” I said to Aaron in the backseat.
He stirred.
We pulled into Jed’s ranch, which was easy to find because it was the only settlement for miles. I remember how isolated it had looked on our map when we started the drive—what seemed like ten years ago.
There were two small oil derricks just inside the front gate. We drove in with a flurry of dust behind us, barely slowing down for the turn.
“Plant,” he murmured.