Authors: Jon Steele
“Know what we're going to do? We're going down in the garden to sit in the sunshine. Soak up some vitamin D. How's that for an idea?”
She saw Max watching where the light met shadows on the floor. He pulled himself to his feet, unsteadily walked a few steps into the light, plopped down. He reached out with his left hand and touched the floor where light met shadow, watched the sunlight move over his hand.
“What are you doing, Max?”
He looked up at her and smiled as the light crawled up his body and brightened his face. He looked up, stared at it, pointed to it.
“Sol.”
“Yeah,
sol
, sun. And who's teaching you Spanish?”
“Solsnnn.”
“
Sol
or sun, buster, take your pick. Saying them together makes you sound like you've been hitting the sauce instead of Molly's apple juice.”
“Solsnnn.”
“Hey, you, this is your mommy dearest speaking, one or the other.”
Max saw the same funny look on his mother's face, and heard the same funny tone in her voice.
“Solsnnn,
maman
!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come here.”
Katherine picked Max up from the floor, tickled him and kissed his cheek. She carried him into her bedroom and set him on the floor. Her bedroom faced southwest, away from the direct light of the early sun. Max seemed to study the layout of the room . . . floor, windows, angles. He giggled to himself, got to his hands and knees, hammer in his hand, and crawled in ever wider circles around the room.
“What are you looking for, Max?”
He kept crawling and giggling till he landed in the corner of the room. He spun around and sat with his back to the wall and stared at the floor. The sun crossed the bedroom window and a beam of light parted shadow and found Max in the corner. Katherine felt something stir, like a long-forgotten memory. Watching a light move over a dark stone floor, somewhere, finding her. And there were colors, brilliant colors, because the sun was passing through a great round window of leaded glass, high in a gray stone wall. She could see it. And the sun was warm, and she felt the warmth deep in her body, and there was a voice:
to purify the light before it touches the life within you.
Then the voice was gone, the colors were gone, and there was just Max sitting on the floor, now holding his hand into the beam of light coming through the bedroom window.
“Max?”
He looked at her.
The light has crossed his face, brushed his eyes.
She dropped her towel, put on her bathrobe. She slid her wet feet into her slippers, walked to Max, picked him up, and carried him to the bathroom. She carried him to the mirror above the sink, but it was fogged with steam and the light was coming from the wrong direction. She lifted Max to her right hip, carried him to his own bedroom. The sun was hitting the mirror above Max's dressing table and reflecting into the room. She stepped close to the mirror, into the light. Katherine studied Max's face, his eyes. Then, she saw it. The color of Max's almond-shaped eyes had shifted from baby blue to match Katherine's own hazel color, and just now in the light, both their eyes sparkled with flares of emerald green. Max could see it, too; raised his right hand, pointed to Katherine's face in the looking glass.
“Sol.”
“No kidding.”
She carried Max into the bathroom. Her Morning Light tea was sitting next to the sink. She poured it down the drain.
II
S
HE SET THE BLACK CIRCLE BETWEEN THE REAR SIGHTS, RAISED
the barrel of the Glock till the front sights lined up on the target, twenty meters downrange. She held her breath, squeezed the trigger, fired six shots in double taps. The Glock's slide snapped back. She pressed the magazine release behind the trigger, pulled the clip from the grip. She checked it: empty. She stuffed it into the clip pouch on her belt. She checked the firing chamber of the Glock: empty. She lay the weapon on the table, took off her ear protection and blast goggles.
“Well done, Kat,” Officer Jannsen said, pointing to the screen of the electronic scorekeeper. “Looks like your first two shots went just wide of the circle, but the next four were in the second ring. Last four fired off in two and a half seconds. That's really good.”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say about bicycles.”
“No, what do they say?”
“Once you learn to ride it, you own it. Reload?”
“Go ahead.”
“How many rounds?”
“How many do you feel comfortable with?”
“Fourteen, full clip.”
“Go ahead.”
Boxes of ammunition lay on the table.
RUAG Ammotec, AG. 9x19mm parabellum
the lettering on the lids read. Katherine pulled the magazine from her belt, loaded a round against the spring mechanism, pressed down with her thumb, then another.
“The bullets are like the water in this place,” Katherine said.
“Pardon?”
“The bullets. RUAG Ammotec, AG. The AG means they're made in Switzerland, doesn't it?”
Officer Jannsen smiled.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Nothing. Just that the bullets in this place are like the water we use in the house. They're imported.”
“They're very common rounds, Kat. RUAG has factories all over the world.”
“Is that right? So why don't we buy our bullets from Big Dick's Guns and Ammo down the road in Carson?”
“Who?”
“A gun shop next door to the lumberyards. It's set back from the road, so if you blink, you miss it. But the sign grabbed my attention on one of our trips to Portland to see Max's doctor, or my shrink, or my ob-gyn, or my dentist. I can't remember, have I ever been to a dentist since we've been here?”
Officer Jannsen crossed her arms under her breasts, still smiling.
“Yes, five months ago.”
“Really?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I can't remember it happening. By the way, what's
parabellum
mean?”
“Parabellum?”
“It's on the box. Latin, isn't it?”
Officer Jannsen was wearing yellow-tinted blast goggles. She pulled her ear protection from her ears and let it hang around her neck.
“Did you have your tea this morning, and after lunch?”
“You were there, in the kitchen, you saw me make it, remember? So what's
parabellum
mean?”
“It means âprepare for war.' From
si vis pacem, para bellum
.”
Katherine continued to load the magazine.
“
Pacem.
Now, I know that one from my one year at college. It means peace. So I'm guessing altogether it means âyou want peace, get ready for war.'”
Click.
“Fourteen rounds, ready to fire.”
Katherine lay the loaded magazine on the table, put on her ear and eye protection. She grabbed the magazine, grabbed the Glock. Jannsen's hand slammed down and pinned Katherine's firing hand, smashing her knuckles into the wooden table.
“What the fuck are you doing, Anne?”
Officer Jannsen spoke calmly but firmly: “You're not concentrating.”
“Who says I'm not concentrating?”
“Me. You put eleven rounds in the magazine, not fourteen. You lost count.”
“So you smashed my hand on the table because I lost count?”
“No, because you're being sloppy with a weapon designed to kill.”
“It wasn't loaded.”
“It would have taken you two seconds to load the magazine into the grip and pull the slide with your left hand.”
“So fucking what?”
“The index finger of your right hand is inside the trigger guard, Kat, that's fucking what. Rule number one: Your finger never goes inside the trigger guard until the moment you're ready to fire.”
Katherine looked down at the Glock. Saw her finger wrapped around the trigger, heard Officer Jannsen's voice.
“You would have pulled the slide, loaded a round in the chamber. The jolt could've caused your finger to override the trigger safety mechanism and misfire. You're on a live fire range, there's no room for sloppy. Sloppy means dead.”
“Can I have my fucking hand back, Officer Jannsen?”
“Of course, Madame Taylor. As soon as you lay down the magazine.”
Katherine dropped the loaded clip with a thud. Officer Jannsen let go of Katherine's hand; the knuckles were bleeding.
“Step away from the table, Kat.”
Katherine didn't move.
“I said, step away from the table.”
“Is that a command?”
“Take it any way you want, but you will step away from the table or I will take you down so hard, you'll feel it for a week.”
“Gee, that might fuck up your lockdown drill, won't it? Won't look good on your résumé.”
“Do it!”
Katherine jumped, backed away. Officer Jannsen pulled a handkerchief from her coat, handed it to Katherine.
“Here, wrap this around your knuckles. Stop the bleeding.”
“It's fine.”
“ABC, Kat. Airway, breathing, circulation. Learn it, know it, do it. A cut you don't attend to becomes an infection. An infection means your firing hand is useless.”
Katherine had heard the ABC's of survival before. All part of life in Grover's Mill. The heavy-duty physical workouts with the Swiss Guard boys, battlefield first aid, hostile environment recognition, weapons training. All things she thought she wanted to learn to protect herself. All things she'd been herded toward like a good little girl. She took the handkerchief, wrapped it around her hand.
“Thanks.”
Officer Jannsen slid the Glock from Katherine's reach.
“Now, do you want to tell me what this is about?”
“If I looked up this house on Google Earth, would I see it? Would I find it on a map?”
“What on earth are you thinking?”
“What I'm thinking is none of
this
shit is real,” Katherine said. “I mean, I'm here all right, but this place doesn't exist, does it?”
“Where is this coming from?”
“I did a little experiment. One of the boys came into the kitchen while I was making lunch. He was adjusting the CCTV camera. I asked to use his iPhone, to play solitaire on it. He did everything right before he gave it to me: disabled the Internet and the phoneâbut not the GPS. I looked up the coordinates of the house. I jotted them down like I was making a grocery list. He left, and I logged on to my laptop, the one you let me use to keep an eye on me. I logged on to Google Earth. There's nothing at those coordinates but a forest. How come?”
“That's easy. Google Earth isn't up-to-date in this area.”
“No?”
Officer Jannsen moved close to her, looked into her eyes.
“You didn't drink your tea this morning, did you?”
“I dumped it down the drain. Same way I dumped the midday tea, and the same way I'll dump the rest of it. I'm fucking tired of being a zombie for the cause.”
“What cause?”
“Whatever fucking cause it is you and the rest of you are pretending is worth keeping me and my son as your prisoners. That's what we are, isn't it?”
“Listen to me, you're not yourself right now.”
“No. This
is
me, and I feel fine.”
“All right. Tell me what set this off.”
“I told you, I dumped your fucking teas down the drain. Good-bye, Swiss mindfuck.”
“Why?”
“Because I remembered something looking at Max.”
“What is it you remember?”
“The color of Marc Rochat's eyes. Something happened to me at the cathedral, didn't it? Something that affected me while I was pregnant. Not that I give a fuck, but it means something happened to Max, too. Something you're hiding from me.”
“What am I hiding from you?”
“It isn't me the bad guys want, it's Max.”
Officer Jannsen stared at Katherine for ten silent seconds, then she whipped around in a blur, pulled her own Glock from her hip, and let off fourteen rounds downrange. Rapid-fire, spent casings flying. The slide popped, and in one quick move she dropped the empty magazine from the grip, slammed in a fresh one, ripped off fourteen more rounds in double taps till
blamblam, blamblam, click.
The gun was dry. Katherine looked at the screen display of the target. Twenty-eight shots in less than nine seconds, every one of them dead center. Officer Jannsen slowly pulled another clip from her belt, eased it into the Glock, reset the slide, and holstered her weapon.
“It's time you learn to speed reload, Kat.”
III
A
FTER THE VILLAGE OF
V
ILLENEUVE-D'
O
LMES, THE TAXI WAS THE
only car on the narrow road. At Montferrier, the taxi took a left and started to climb through a series of switchback turns. The headlights panned across trees and farms like searchlights. Coming around one turn onto a straightaway, the taxi was speeding up when a gray-faced deer jumped across the road. The driver hit the brakes, but it was too late. There was a sickening thud, and the taxi shuddered and skidded off the road. The driver turned right and left avoiding trees and stopped the taxi at the edge of a ditch. He shut off the engine, looked over his shoulder.
“Ãtes-vous blessé, monsieur?”
Harper peeled himself from the back of the front seat.
“Ãa va,”
he said.
The taxi had done a three-sixty turn, and beyond the windshield, in the glare of the headlights, Harper saw the deer in the middle of the road. It was clawing at the asphalt with its front legs, trying to pull itself into the cover of the trees.
“It's still alive,” Harper said.
The driver looked ahead.
“Merde.”
They got out of the taxi. The driver rushed to the front end to check the damage. The left headlight was out and the fender smashed.