Forty-Four Book Eleven: 44, #11

PROLOGUE

I inhaled the sweet smoke, holding it in my lungs as I dropped down into the darkness. I heard the wind whipping at the fire, an owl hooting in the distance, the loud drumming of my heart pounding against my chest. And then all was quiet, the sagebrush and cacti and warm night breeze of the desert disappearing completely.

When I opened my eyes, I was floating in a river, the bright sun kissing my face. I smiled, letting in the warmth and light.

I was happy.

And free.

You must go deeper, the voice said. This is not what you have come to see.

I didn’t want to leave, but told myself to be brave. I sank into the water and swam through the depths until I reached the bottom and there was nowhere else to go.

And then I took in a deep breath.

I found myself sitting in a row boat surrounded by dense fog, my bare feet resting on the cold, wet wood.

I saw that I wasn’t alone.

Shrouded in the swirling mist in front of me, I could barely see the silhouette of a man moving back and forth as he rowed, the sound of oars slapping at the water.

Suddenly, the air grew heavy and a familiar evil rushed in. I could feel his dark energy and those terrible cat eyes watching me.

CHAPTER 1

He didn’t tell me his name that first day I picked him up on the side of the road as I drove away from Bend with nothing but panic and sadness and fear in my heart. He didn’t tell me when I asked him again later and after a while I didn’t care.

We drove in silence through Arizona, and then through Utah with its towering rock walls and large buttes and mesas off in the horizon. Then through parts of New Mexico. I wasn’t particular about the route. I was in full flight mode. Survival. I just followed the road anywhere it was empty, anywhere I could blend into the desert, breathe in its solitude and desolation, and hide in the cracks of the vast, lonely landscape.

He said nothing when the waves of pain overtook me, the tears flowing down my face and splattering on my shirt. He just sat there, quiet and gazing out the window, allowing my grief to escape into this land of sun and nothing.

He looked the same as when I had seen him before, when I was following him around Bend thinking he was a killer. He was tall and rugged. Striking. His short hair framed a serious face, a face that carried secrets. Deep lines were etched across his forehead and in the edges of his cheeks. He wore faded jeans, a Clash T-shirt, and an old leather jacket that he kept on even in the triple-digit temperatures.

His energy was as intense as I remembered too, and the few times he used my name I jumped, as if an electric jolt had passed right through me.

What he lacked in conversation and warmth, he made up for in other ways. He seemed to know things. He helped find good places to stop. The spots he suggested were off the main highway and well hidden. He showed me where to go when I needed to rest or get gas or food. And he told me which places to avoid. Sometimes he suggested that I slow down and as I eased off the gas pedal, I soon saw that there was a patrol car hiding behind shrubs waiting for speeders.

Sometimes I stayed at cheap roadside motels, but most of the time I just slept in the back seat. He never stayed with me at night. Instead he wandered off into the desert, returning with the dawn.

Time rolled by like this, through small towns and back roads, through BLM lands and reservations, my foot always on the accelerator, the scorching, gritty air blasting my face like sandpaper, my memories my only companion.

The police were officially hunting me now, calling me their one and only suspect in the killing of Benjamin Mortimer. The last time I had checked on the story was in a small internet café in St. George, where I found out I was considered armed and dangerous. I thought it was kind of extreme. Even if they believed I had killed Ben, they had the murder weapon. But then I remembered the gift certificate I had bought for Kate to replace the gun I had thrown in the Deschutes River one Christmas. Maybe they thought I had used the certificate myself.

According to the article, Bend PD suspected I might have fled to Portland.

Surprisingly, the story reported that I was driving a Jeep. I was sure that it was a mistake that would be corrected soon, but at least it allowed me to keep David’s Impala for the time being. But only for the time being. It wouldn’t be long before they found out that what was left of my Jeep was sitting in a junk yard back home.

With some luck, I could evade arrest for another day. And maybe another one after that. And if my senses stayed sharp and I didn’t take anything for granted and my fortune held, I could string those days together like the lights on a porch railing around a house that wasn’t there.

But there was no escaping the pain.

I thought about Ben Mortimer obsessively. All I could see of him now was his body, dead at my feet. I couldn’t get him out of my mind, couldn’t shake the sadness. The worst thing, worse even than the police hunting me, was the look on Ben’s face as he took his last breaths, those shocked and hollow eyes asking why I had done it. Why I had murdered him. If he thought I had killed him, how would anybody else ever believe the truth of what had really happened? That it was the ghost of his dead brother, Nathaniel Mortimer, who had slipped into Ben’s body and stabbed him repeatedly. I had tried in vain to stop it, managing only to plaster my fingerprints all over the murder weapon.

It was all so hopeless.

Whenever the thought of proving my innocence streaked across the blackness of my mind like a meteor, it was quickly extinguished by the cold hard facts. No one would believe that it was the ghost of his dead brother who had done it, and they certainly wouldn’t believe that Ben had committed suicide. Not with a witness and those fingerprints pointing back at me. And not with all those stab wounds. That wasn’t how people killed themselves.

Nathaniel Mortimer had committed the perfect crime.

After a few moments of thinking about it all, I would start to cry all over again. I cried and cried until there was nothing left, and after that, I still cried, with air tears and dry heaves and sobs that sounded like a dying animal caught in a trap.

It wasn’t just Ben who had been killed. Nathaniel had plunged that knife straight into the heart of my own life and killed it as well.

Late at night, in the strange pocket between wakefulness and sleep, I’d forget sometimes and think I was home, that Ty was next to me in bed. And for a few magical seconds, I could almost feel his lips on mine as I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close.

But then I would wake up and remember the ring. That beautiful ring he had placed on my finger the night he proposed, the one he gave to me along with his heart. The same ring I had left on his nightstand with the diamond facing outward, like a knife pointed at his chest.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had done to Ty and how I had left. He wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t see it, not now. But I couldn’t keep pulling him down into my world, drowning him alongside me. I had to let him go. And as I drove I held on to the promise that someday he might realize that me leaving was the best thing, and that I did it because I loved him so much. And maybe then he could begin to forgive me.

The hours behind the wheel became harder and harder as my mind ran on an endless treadmill, going too fast and going nowhere at the same time. I thought of Kate, of the pain she must have been in now, losing both the man she loved and her sister all in one swift, horrible moment. I wanted to talk to her, to hear the sound of her voice, but whenever I thought about calling, I always put down the phone. It would have been selfish. I had nothing to offer her, no words to make sense of what had happened, no words to ease her suffering.

I hoped she knew that I hadn’t killed Ben, but ultimately it didn’t matter because in a way, I was still responsible. Nathaniel Mortimer had slithered into all of our lives when I wasn’t looking. I hadn’t been paying attention.

You should take a break, the stranger sitting next to me said. There’s a rest area in half a mile.

My mind returned to happier times. I thought of David and shopping and Lyle and Paloma drinking champagne at the engagement party. I thought of school and the guys at the diner. Soccer. My bedroom, the kitchen, my garden growing without me, the rosemary and thyme wild alongside the house.

I ached for all of it, every drop of my old life.

And deep down I knew I would never see any of it again.

CHAPTER 2

I pulled off the highway, taking in a series of broken breaths. I staggered out of the car and stared at the sand stretching out for miles in every direction. The sky clouded up and fat drops started to hit the desert floor, releasing smells of pinion and juniper into the stifling, hot air.

I walked out into the storm and collapsed to my knees.

After a long while, I stopped crying and just listened. To the wind, to the rain, to the thunder. Soon I heard his footsteps.

You should get going, he said evenly.

I looked over at him.

Who the hell are you? I said.

But he just stared at me, those blue eyes glowing like sapphires. I inhaled angrily, wiped my face, and followed him back to the car.

Twilight fell around us and with it a horrible thought fell hard into my mind. The man next to me had helped Charlie Modine remember the terrible thing he had done. Modine had been the one who had killed his wife, running her down one morning with his car. But he had blocked it out, buried it deep in his subconscious. And it was this quiet stranger who had shown him the truth of what had really happened, the truth that Charlie Modine had refused to see.

Was this man here now to show me my own awful truth I didn’t want to face?

This new terror thrashed around inside for hours. This man, or whatever he was, had to be here for a reason. And it had to be about something that I had done. Did it have something to do with Ben? Had I really killed him like the police said?

But as the night wore on, I was able to finally let it go. What did it really matter? Everything that I cared about, everything that I loved had already been ripped apart. I had nothing more to lose. There was nothing more he could do to me.

I was already in Hell.

I tried to blink away the exhaustion as I drove down a winding, lonely road surrounded by saguaros, their black arms stretching upwards against an even blacker sky. There was no one around. I flipped off the air conditioning and opened the window letting a harsh, midnight heat sweep in, flooding the car like a rogue wave from the center of the earth.

Up over there, he said, breaking his long silence. Turn, then take it a mile or so down.

I veered right, following a dirt trail with the high beams on, and bounced along dry ruts until we came to flat ground that was tucked between hills. I cut the engine. He opened the door and grabbed his rucksack from the back.

Get some sleep, he said, sticking his head through the window. You’ll need it for tomorrow.

A sudden, prickly fear rose up in my throat.

What’s tomorrow?

"You’ll have to leave the