Part 11 (2/2)
Rene cradled the brown paper sack with the food and drinks in the crook of his injured left arm and walked out the front door, back into the oppressive heat. He followed the sidewalk to his left and around the building, meaning to knock on the door to the ladies' room and try to convince Tessa to come out. And if that doesn't work, I'll just kick the G.o.dd.a.m.n door down and drag her out.
He stopped in surprise to see the key to the women's restroom lying on the ground just outside the closed door. Beside it was an unopened Snickers candy bar, Tessa's favorite. She'd told him this only last night, back before he'd gone and f.u.c.ked everything up.
”My grandmother would always bring these back for me and my brothers and sister when she'd go on trips away from the farm,”
she'd told him as she'd unwrapped one and taken a wolfish bite. He'd grabbed it for her from the motel vending machine, and had found it cute, if not sort of s.e.xy, the way a string of caramel had drooped down over the curve of her bottom lip to drape momentarily against her chin. ”One for each of us, and we'd all sit on the floor of her bedroom and eat them together.”
Rene leaned over, hooking the restroom key ring with his finger, picking it up off the sidewalk. He rapped his knuckles lightly against the door before trying the k.n.o.b. ”Tessa? You in there, pischouette?”
When she didn't answer, he frowned and set the bag on the ground. He knocked again, louder this time. ”Tessa, it's Rene. Open the door or I'm coming in.”
Still nothing. His frown deepened and he used the key to unlock the door. He felt his heart shudder to a sudden, dismayed halt when he found the bathroom empty, Tessa's purse upturned on the floor, her belongings scattered across the chipped gray linoleum.Viens m'enculer. f.u.c.k me.
He turned, letting the door slam behind him as he rushed around the front of the building again. He looked around frantically for any sign of her, opening his mind, straining to sense her. Tessa! he called out. Tessa, where are you?
He couldn't think straight. He couldn't breathe. His heart hammered in his chest, and a thousand horrifying images flew through his mind-the strung-out kid from yesterday...
He survived somehow. He wasn't dead and he followed us here, grabbed her!
...the Brethren Elders...
Did they block our telepathy somehow and keep hidden from us? Did they take her?
...any number of potential circ.u.mstances, each more horrendous than the last.
Christ, she's been abducted...beaten...robbed...raped...
Oh, viens m'enculer, the baby!
Tessa! he shouted mentally, darting in and around parked cars at the gas pumps. Tessa, open your mind! Tell me where you are!
Tessa!
There was no sign of her. No one he spoke with, no one he stopped had seen her. The cas.h.i.+er remembered her, but hadn't seen her since she'd left with the bathroom key.
”Do you want me to call the police, honey?” she'd asked, because Rene's alarm must have been apparent in his face. ”There's a state police post just up the-”
”No.” He'd shaken his head, cutting her short. ”No, thanks.”
As he said this, he had held the cas.h.i.+er's gaze, opening his mind and reaching out to hers. He hadn't said another word aloud, but hadn't needed to. In that moment, one reflexive, split second, he'd eradicated the woman's memories not only of him and his inquiry, but of Tessa, as well. The last thing he needed was for her to call the police and report a missing person, despite his insistence not to. The police do not need to be involved in this.
He returned to the ladies' room and collected Tessa's things, her cell phone and lipstick and whatnot off the floor. He didn't know what else to do. He felt exactly as he'd felt when he'd been shot in Vietnam, when the initial pain had worn off, and he'd been left with a handful of his own entrails, his gut blown open. Then, as now, he'd reacted mechanically, his brain utterly on bewildered autopilot.
Christ, what have I done? he thought, distraught. Why did I have to take so f.u.c.king long in the store? What if that's when it happened? What if she screamed for help and I missed it? She wouldn't have even f.u.c.king been in here if I hadn't been such a jacka.s.s, if I hadn't picked a fight with her.
Tessa! He opened his mind again, straining to sense her. Tessa, please, tell me where you are!
And then it occurred to him.
The birds.
There were trees around the convenience store and telephone wires lining the street. He was literally surrounded by birds.
Rene left the bathroom and stood out in the suns.h.i.+ne, closing his eyes, tilting back his head and opening his mind. He called to the birds as he had since he'd been a boy, sensing the fluttering, darting impressions of their thoughts within his mind. There were dozens and he summoned them, sending them out, flying in all directions. He could see through their eyes, rapid-fire, overlapping images in his mind of the sprawling New Mexico landscape around him, miles covered in literally the blink of an eye. The birds swooped and darted along the interstate, and one car in particular drew his attention-a maroon Jaguar.
I've seen that car before, not ten minutes ago, he thought. It was here at the gas station. It drove right past me.
When he saw through the bird's eyes that the car had a Kentucky-issued license plate, his brows furrowed, his hands closing into reflexive fists. Son of a b.i.t.c.h, they took her, he thought. The Elders-those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. They found us.
He sent the bird in more closely; the Jaguar was accelerating but through the bird, he caught a quick, heartbreaking glimpse of Tessa in the pa.s.senger seat, her eyes tearful, a thin crust of blood beneath her nose. There was only one other person in the car that he could see; a man who didn't look much older than Rene, and sure as h.e.l.l not like anything he'd ever consider an Elder.
But he's Brethren, he thought, as the car sped away and the bird was only able to follow now from above. He's got to be-those tags are from Kentucky. If he's not one of the Elders, then who the h.e.l.l is he?
Even as he thought this, he realized.
”Martin was a horrible man,” Tessa had told him. ”He hated my grandfather and punished me because of it. He'd punch me, slap me, knock me to the ground. He'd take off his belt and whip me with it, leave me black and blue...sometimes so much I couldn't even walk.”
”Oh, Christ,” Rene whispered, aghast. He hurried for his car, clutching Tessa's purse in his injured hand and digging his keys out of his pocket with the other. Oh, Jesus, he thought. He followed her somehow, found her, took her. That son of a b.i.t.c.h is her husband.
He drove like the proverbial bat out of h.e.l.l, throwing the little Audi into gear and leaving rubber from his tires seared against the pavement. It hurt like a son of a b.i.t.c.h to close his injured hand around the steering wheel, but as he floored the accelerator and headed for the interstate, he gritted his teeth and bore it.
Martin Davenant had found Tessa, and it didn't take a wealth of imagination to figure out what he had in store for his runaway bride.
He'd punch me, slap me, knock me to the ground. Tessa's words kept reverberating in his skull, brutal knife points sc.r.a.ping at his heart. He'd take off his belt and whip me with it, leave me black and blue...sometimes so much I couldn't even walk.
He'd never tried to drive before while maintaining a mental link with birds. It took all of five seconds to realize there was no way in h.e.l.l he could make it work. The main problem was that birds weren't like human beings. Their thoughts were simple, their memories limited and most of their brain capacity was reserved for instinct. They didn't have distinctive personalities to distinguish them from one another, and the only way Rene could tell one bird's point of view from another was if he held an exclusive and unbroken mental connection with them. Which, as he discovered, was impossible when one was trying to drive.
He realized this at about the same time the Audi drifted across the center lines of the two-lane highway leading to the interstate ramp, and headlong into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer. He wasn't watching where he was going because his mind was fixed on the flurry of images he was receiving from the bird still tailing Martin's maroon Jaguar. When the eighteen-wheeler blasted its horn at him, Rene jerked, severing the mental connection with the bird in his startled fright.
”Viens m'enculer!” he cried, wrenching against the steering wheel, cutting the Audi back into its rightful lane. The semi flew by, close enough for the wind off its trailer to rock the little sports car violently, and Rene was pretty sure he wasn't only imagining the hand thrusting out from the window of the cab-the one balled in a fist with its middle finger strategically pointing skyward.
”Christ,” Rene whispered, his voice breathless and shaky. In fact, his whole d.a.m.n body was shaking and it took him a long second before he realized he'd lost the bird. And therefore he'd lost Tessa, as well. ”G.o.dd.a.m.n it.”
He hadn't seen the Jaguar get on the interstate, so he had no idea which way it had been traveling. But he had a pretty f.u.c.king good idea. This interstate only goes two ways, he thought. East and west. And that pony farm of Davenant's sure as s.h.i.+t isn't west of here.
And with that, he turned the wheel, sending the Audi whipping down the entrance ramp for the eastbound lanes, racing back across the New Mexico countryside in the direction from which he'd come the day before.
Interstate 10 might have only gone two ways, but a hour and a half later, as he stood beside his car, parked on the shoulder, Rene wondered if maybe he hadn't picked the wrong G.o.dd.a.m.n one.
”Viens m'enculer,” he said, then uttered a hoa.r.s.e little cry and smashed his fist against the roof of the Audi.
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