Girl Called Fearless: A Girl Undone Part 11

The men carrying Jonas and Sarah pa.s.sed through the gate of the house closest to the church, and my voice dissolved in my throat. "Beattie will take good care of Sarah and Jonas. They'll be okay."

"Not if Nellie and Rogan don't make it." Luke's voice was flat.

"The feds won't kill your parents with the cameras watching." Streicker had slipped back in the room without us hearing him. "But the media's attention span is dangerously short. And once they leave-" Streicker looked at me. "You ready to talk now, Avie?"

Streicker had me cornered. Luke would hate me if I didn't cooperate. Either he'd go ahead and tell Streicker everything himself or he'd blame me if anything happened to Nellie and Rogan.

"Fine, you win," I said, not feeling fine at all.

14.

Streicker took in everything we said about Jouvert and the tapes, and didn't doubt a word of it. But when Luke told him we needed to get the evidence we had to Congressman Paul, Streicker told us that wasn't happening.

"You must not have heard. He got jumped about a week ago leaving a bar on Capitol Hill. The guy beat him pretty bad, and the docs don't know if he'll live."

"d.a.m.n," Luke muttered.

"Maggie talked about a friend at the Department of Justice," I offered.

Streicker looked like he wanted to spit. "You want to bring DOJ in on this? You do realize they're probably orchestrating the hunt for you."

"No, I didn't."

"FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals-they're all DOJ."

"Stop badgering her," Luke said. "Maggie told us to contact this guy." He gave Streicker a name and t.i.tle.

"So, he's in the inspector general's office."

"That's what Maggie said."

"Then his job is to find out who's dirty in the government. There's a chance he's clean and knows who else can be trusted."

"How do we find him?" I said.

"I'll find him," Streicker said.

"You will?"

Streicker c.o.c.ked his head, giving me a clear view of his tattoo. The path of the righteous man is beset by the tyranny of evil.

"Nothing would please me more than taking out Jouvert," he said.

I shrank from Streicker, not wanting even his breath to touch me, but Luke leaned forward. If Satan had a recruiter, Streicker was it.

"Interesting," Streicker mused. "The Saudi king demands that Jouvert restrict women in the U.S. But we know that isn't what he's really after."

"No? Why not?" I said.

"Because he's a calculating political strategist who doesn't give a rat's a.s.s about you and your girlfriends. Right now, he's testing Jouvert."

"Testing him? Why?"

"To see how much he can control him."

"So the king's got something bigger in mind," Luke said.

"Absolutely, and Jouvert's playing right into his hands."

I remembered Father Gabriel saying that girls were the p.a.w.ns in a big game that powerful people were playing. "So what do you think the king wants?"

"Don't know," Streicker said, "but if I had to bet, it involves cutting the legs out from under his archenemy, Iran. Jouvert's meeting with the Saudis in two weeks, so a deal's probably already on the table. And if the king gets what he wants, he'll make d.a.m.ned sure Jouvert gets the money he needs to take the White House in the next election."

"Jouvert can't be the next president! He has to be stopped."

I cringed, hearing the tone in Luke's voice. It was the same one I heard in Sparrow's when she'd talk about Paternalists.

Streicker's phone hummed and he checked the screen then tapped out a message. "How about you do me a favor?"

"What kind?" I muttered right as Luke said, "Sure."

Streicker snapped a set of keys off his belt and tossed them to Luke. "I've got something that needs to be picked up."

Luke was already on his feet before I could protest. "You're sending us back out on the road?" I said to Streicker. "We barely made it through the roadblock."

"Well, I'd have gone myself, but unexpected visitors showed up." Streicker let that sink in for a second. "Relax. There aren't any roadblocks on this stretch. It's back roads, about ten miles each way. Besides, I think this will appeal to your sense of righteousness."

Luke ignored my raised eyebrows as I followed him and Streicker out. Streicker let us into the fenced-in yard around the back building. A white, windowless van was parked outside, and he slapped two magnetic signs to its sides. RED ROCK PLUMBERS.

Luke climbed into the driver's seat and I buckled into a jump seat right behind him. The van was empty except for the nine other seats folded against the stripped-down walls. Streicker waved as we drove off.

"I don't understand why you're so ready to trust Streicker," I said. "You see what kind of person he is, right?"

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

"What kind of bulls.h.i.+t answer is that? You trust him because you both hate Jouvert?"

"I don't trust him, but yeah, we both hate Jouvert."

I watched the road over Luke's shoulder. The sun had set and the moon hadn't come up. The sky was washed with stars over the solid black hills.

Luke didn't say a word for a couple of miles, and I couldn't stand the tension. "I'm not trying to be difficult," I said.

He drove another minute or so. "Well, you're mighty talented to be able to do it without trying." His eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror and I smiled back.

"Yeah? Well, what about you? Were you always this stubborn?"

"No, I was worse. Pa used to make me chop wood when I got that way. I think I chopped wood for half of Salvation one summer."

I laughed. "What was going on that summer?"

"That summer? Barnabas."

"What about Barnabas?"

"I was twelve when he moved to Salvation. n.o.body'd told me he was my father, but everybody knew."

"That must have sucked."

"I wouldn't look at him, wouldn't answer him, and the harder Pa pushed me, the worse I got."

"But you and Barnabas seemed so close."

"Yeah. He was even more stubborn than I was."

"So how did he conquer you?"

"He didn't. He wasn't about conquering people." Luke's voice caught. "He'd take me off fis.h.i.+ng or hunting. He'd talk and show me little tricks with traps or tying flies. But he didn't ask me to talk."

"And Barnabas never got mad?"

"Not that summer. But the next summer Maggie showed up? n.o.body would have blamed him if he'd decked me."

I wasn't surprised to hear that Maggie's return had set Luke off. He was a newborn when she gave him to her brother to raise. "What did you do?"

"I smashed a custom guitar he'd been working on all winter. The wood was imported from Honduras. It cost hundreds of dollars."

"You must have chopped a lot of wood that summer."

"Nope, not a single cord. Barnabas told me to pack up, because we were going into the woods. Then he took most everything out of my pack. For three weeks, we survived using a knife, fis.h.i.+ng line, and a plastic sheet for a tent."

I could see them disappearing into the mountains. Barnabas might have told himself he was teaching Luke a lesson, but after hearing the song he wrote for Maggie, I knew she'd broken both his heart and Luke's.

I felt Luke sinking into the past, so I tried to lighten things up. "So if you had a knife, a fis.h.i.+ng line, and a plastic sheet, you could keep us alive?" I joked.

"I've been thinking about that."

The way he said it, he wasn't joking. "What do you mean?"

"Once we hand off the evidence in D.C., I could take us up the Appalachian Trail into Maine. No one would be looking for us there. We could cross over the border into New Brunswick or Quebec."

Luke was ignoring all the obstacles we faced getting to D.C., but the fact that he had a plan for what we'd do after the handoff made me feel slightly better. "How far is it from D.C. to Maine?"

"Five or six hundred miles."

Hiking in the mountains in the dead of winter? It would take weeks. "Well, we probably wouldn't run into a lot of people."

Luke turned his attention back to the road because we were coming up on our destination. In ten miles, we'd seen only two other cars. Now we strained to read names on mailboxes at the edge of the road using our headlights.

Finally, we found the name on the mailbox that matched the one Streicker had given us. The kitchen light was on in the ranch house and a security light beamed over the garage. As we drove in the gate, a large brown-and-black dog leaped up. It ran until it reached the end of its chain by the garage, and then stood on its hind legs, barking and straining to get free.

An older woman came out and snapped, "Lie down," at the dog. It silenced, and she called out, "Mikhaela! He's here."

The woman motioned to us to stay in the van as she came around to Luke's window. "Here's her birth certificate. An official copy just like you asked. And here's the money." She shoved the envelope into Luke's hands. "It's all there. Seven thousand in cash. Nothing bigger than a fifty."

She turned back to the house. "Mikhaela, hurry!"

d.a.m.n!

"Did Streicker tell you we're picking up a girl?" I whispered.

"Nope. But he said if I saw a maroon pickup out front to drive on." Luke reached up and felt for a length of copper pipe snapped to the ceiling above his head.

Great, I thought. Streicker sent us out to do his dirty work because he expected trouble.

A girl came out of the house, a backpack slung over her shoulder. Her head was down, and she swiped her cheek with the back of her hand. She stood on the porch, the yellow light from the kitchen tinting her face and red ponytail. Even from twenty feet away I could tell she'd been crying.

The older woman marched over and wrapped her arms around her, and my eyes began to fill, remembering the night a couple weeks before in the darkened airplane hangar when I said good-bye to Yates, my heart fighting to believe we would be together again.

The woman raised her voice and I heard her say, "I cannot let your stepfather get his hands on you."

"But, Gran, Canada's so far away. I might never see you again!"

"If that man gets custody, he'll auction you off before you turn fifteen. And if that happens, I don't know where you'll end up. This way, I know you'll be safe."

I watched her stroke her granddaughter's hair. Streicker had demanded seven thousand to get this girl to Canada. He wasn't like Father Gabriel, who risked his neck for the cause but would have never taken money for himself.

"Do you believe Streicker's really going to smuggle her out?" I said to Luke.

"You think he's lying?"

"I don't know. Doesn't it bother you that there's a girl in his house with scars around her wrists? What if Streicker takes this woman's money and does something bad to this girl?"

A truck roared up the drive, catching Mikhaela and her grandma in the headlights, and they broke apart.

"Holy mother, he's speeding up," Luke said.

"Brace yourself!" I said, grabbing hold of his seat.

The truck veered before it hit us, thumping across the dirt to a stop. Then a man hopped out, his coat half on and arms flailing as he landed awkwardly on the ground. "I came to take you home, Mikhaela. Get in the truck."

The chained dog barked wildly, frantic to get at him. "Tell that dog to shut up!" he yelled.