Dark Oracle (15 page)

And now she was paying for it. Her vision blurred. How could she have expected Harry to understand? He lived in an entirely different world, a linear one with well-drawn boundaries and clear causes and effects. She didn’t belong in it. She was a fool to think she might have found some common ground, that her fluid world of intuition could coexist and intersect with his.

But she’d had hope, last night. She wiped her dripping nose with the back of her glove. It had blossomed pure and brilliant in her chest, and she had allowed herself to follow her feelings. This time, her instincts had been wrong. How could she have expected that that sense of security, of contentment, could ever become hers?

It was done. One glorious moment, over. And for what? The use of a power that always seemed to lead to ruin. The cards had led her to ruin before, had led her to the Gardener and his tender mercies. How could she expect this would be any different? This gift her mother had given her, this talent for reading the cards, was nothing more than a curse. Perhaps her mother was well free of it.

Cassie painted on the inside fog of the window with her finger, shapes of waves and stars. Tara squelched the image of the Star card that welled up in her mind.

“Where are we going?” Cassie asked.

“We’re meeting Sophia at a diner off the interstate. I don’t know where she’ll be taking you from there, but it will be to a safe house.”

Cassie looked doubtful. “You said she was an old friend of your mother’s. Is she a government agent, too?”

Tara laughed. “No. Sophia is most definitely not with the government. She’s not exactly what you’d call a conformist. Think Birkenstocks, not gun stocks.”

“Nonconformity is good.” Cassie twirled a streak of blue hair around her finger. “I’m envisioning a survivalist? Maybe an eccentric artist? An ex-hippie?”

“A bit of all three.” Tara smiled. “I think you’ll like her. You two will have some interesting debates.”

Cassie frowned. “You’re not staying with us.” Tara could hear the thread of fear, the fear of abandonment, in her voice. Her fingers clutched Maggie’s fur.

Tara shook her head. “I can’t. I have to get back to help Harry.” She paused, thinking about this. Harry may not want her help. Harry would probably refuse to let her do anything more than take notes on the case.

That was, if he wasn’t driving into a trap with DiRosa. Fear bristled through her at the thought. Her intuition tingled, and she forced it down with a bubble of anger.

“We’ll see,” she amended. “I may have some of Sophia’s strudel, after all.”

In truth, she’d like nothing better than to keep going, to keep driving until she found her little cabin in the woods once more. She could lock the real door and keep all the other doors that were opened in the middle of the night firmly shut: Magnusson’s riddles; Sophia; and especially, Harry.

A
DIM SENSE OF UNEASE SETTLED OVER
H
ARRY, STRENGTHENING
the closer he sped to his destination. It was like driving into a cloudy day, the gray folding around him so subtly he didn’t notice when condensation began to stream from the car windows. Above, the sleeting skies had cast a thin spittle of ice on the roads, making the drive slower and more treacherous than he liked. He would be late for his meeting with DiRosa. He tried to call twice, got no answer. He hoped she would wait for him.

Darkness was falling by the time he drove into Bandelier, and he barely got in the park gate before closing time, at sunset. The mountains seemed very close to the sky, as if they scraped ice from those heavy gray clouds. The ruddy rock of the canyons was dulled by frost. In the distance, he could see the myriad holes in the red cliffs made by the Anasazi, centuries ago. No visitors, today. It was too cold for the archaeology students and the hikers to prop their ladders against the cliff face and explore the labyrinths of that lost civilization.

Harry had to admire the ingenuity of living on the face of a cliff, with this glorious panorama spread out below. No one could sneak up on you. One was intimately aware of one’s environment, in complete control.

Unlike this meeting, which Harry felt was quickly slipping out of control. He tried DiRosa’s cell phone again. No answer. He pulled his car to a scenic overlook, offering an incredible view of the blue mountains, rust-colored cliffs, and orange sunset pouring through the few holes in the gray sky in great columns of molten light. This was the designated meeting spot. One other car was parked in the overlook lane, a late-model Beemer with a meticulous sheen of wax. It had been there awhile; frost had accumulated over the windows, and the engine wasn’t running. Perhaps it was an abandoned breakdown.

Still.

Harry parked far enough from the rear of the car that he couldn’t be boxed in by another car parking behind him. He scanned the vicinity, registering no signs of life. Bitter wind stirred blonde grasses growing at the edge of the road. A guide sign beside the overlook described in basic detail the Anasazi homes carved out of the rock below the overlook and across the chasm.

He stepped out of his car, his gun drawn. He left the engine running, the lights on, framing the frost-covered car before him. He advanced on the driver’s side door, knocked on the window. No movement inside. Even after scraping away frost, he couldn’t make out the interior through the tinted windows.

Heart hammering, he tried the door. He expected it to be locked, but it swung open. Harry stepped back away from the door in a crouch, aiming his gun into the cold interior.

Barbara DiRosa slipped partially out of her seat belt, her left hand brushing the gravel. Her camel-colored glove and coat were stained in rust, her highlighted blonde hair streaked with the corroded bloodstain sticking her collar to the seat. She’d been shot and left for him. Harry had walked right into the trap.

“Shit.” He backed away, turning to sprint back to his car.

The bright blue-white of halogen headlights bounced over the road, the engine propelling them revving. A black SUV slammed into the back of Harry’s car, forcing it forward, trying to crush Harry between the front bumper of his car and the back bumper of the Beemer.

Harry jumped out of the way, over the guardrail of the scenic overlook. His shoes skidded in gravel, and he clawed forward with his hands, trying to correct his pitch before he went sliding down the sharp slope. Gravel chewed into his hands and face, weeds slapped him, and he managed to rip out a sage bush before tumbling over the edge.

He heard voices. A shot rang out, pulverizing gravel to his left and spewing sharp fragments into his face. He returned fire, but the angle was too steep for him to see what he was aiming for; he couldn’t see beyond the guardrail. He was a sitting duck.

Harry turned, looked down. The slope disappeared into darkness. He decided darkness was a better bet than bullets, and let go of the sage bush.

He pitched into the gloom, and his stomach leaped into his chest. His feet and hands scrabbled for purchase, and he landed on his knees in a flash of pain on a stone outcropping. Hearing the crunch of footfalls above him, Harry ran downward. By the dim light, he could see a narrow crevasse splitting the red rock, and he followed it. Behind him, voices shouted, pebbles spewed underfoot, and he could glimpse the glimmer of flashlights and the red flash of a laser sight.

The striated rock he wound through was both hollow and solid, honeycombed with large pockets of darkness and air, alternating paths of positive and negative space. He flung himself into the mouth of one vault of darkness, large enough for a man. Feeling his way, he stumbled down a tunnel, slipped behind a vertical rock into a shallow depression. This deep in the cliff face, he could feel the volcanic rock radiating cold around him. His breath hissed too loud, filling the chamber with his exertion. His knee felt hot and sticky. Cold air sliced through tears in his sleeves.

Above him, he could hear the crunch of footsteps echoing crazily, growing louder. He hoped they would not find him, that they’d assume he’d jumped. But the voices gathered closer, intimate in the darkness as lovers’ whispers or the murmurings of ghosts.

He gripped his pistol, counting in his head how many shots he had left in the clip. Not enough to fight. There could have been up to eight men in that vehicle, and more might be on the way. He could either stay where he was, or try to run.

He flexed his torn knee. If he stayed here, they would eventually stumble across him. More suitable cover would be likely to be found on the floor of the canyon, after dark.

The bright white of a flashlight beam washed past him, and Harry leaned as far back into the wall as he could. He closed one eye in an effort to keep half of his vision adjusted to the darkness that would come back when the light passed. He held his breath, trying to keep it from condensing into a fog that would resolve too readily in the beam of light and give him away.

The beam washed away and he let out his breath, opening his other eye. He could see the shapes of men at the mouth of the little cave, outlined as inky figures against the pale charcoal of the sky. He counted four men, armed, and heard the static hiss of radios under enforced radio silence. The lights turned away, and the men descended down a short run of rough-hewn steps, out of his field of vision.

Harry waited until the last sound of disturbed gravel drained away, and stepped noiselessly out of his pocket of darkness. He crept to the edge of the cave, looked down, and spied men milling on a step below. They communicated to one another through hand gestures, fanning out.

He heard the unmistakable click of the safety of a gun being switched off behind his ear. He cursed inwardly. They’d left a man behind to secure the areas they’d already searched. He smelled the tang of gunpowder, assumed the gun had been fired recently. Distractedly, he wondered if this was one of the guns that had shot at him, or if this was the one that had executed DiRosa.

“Agent Li.”

Harry’s heart thudded against his spine. He knew that voice.

“We have some issues to discuss.”

Chapter Fourteen

T
ARA STARED
out the diner window. It felt good to be out of the truck, to stretch her legs someplace warm. The gravel parking lot was empty, except for the pickup and two cars Tara assumed belonged to the waitress and the cook. Inside Martin’s pickup, Maggie’s tail thumped against the driver’s side window. The window fog showed smear tracks from the dog’s nose in abstract scribbles on the windshield. The darkness was falling swiftly, and there were no parking lot lights at this place.

The diner was empty except for the smells. The waitress wasn’t chatty, seeming content to stay in the kitchen and flirt with the cook. The rest of the booths were empty, peppered with duct tape repairs in the torn Naugahyde seats. It smelled like bacon and hash browns, breakfast twenty-four-seven. Across the white and gold-flecked Formica table, Cassie wolfed down her second stack of pancakes. Tara stared into her coffee, her appetite stifled. She’d swallowed a great deal of pride to ask Sophia for help. She hoped it would be worth it.

A glossy black sedan pulled into the lot, headlights washing over the gravel. Tara narrowed her eyes. The car wasn’t Sophia’s old station wagon. Automatically, she reached under her jacket and rested her finger on the trigger guard of her gun.

The doors opened like the wings of a raven. Sophia stepped out of the driver’s side, bundled in a thick gray poncho, her braided hair flipped over her shoulder. On the passenger’s side, a short Middle Eastern woman climbed out. Her long dark hair streamed behind her, her coat brushing her ankles.

Shit. Sophia had brought the Pythia.

Tara’s gut instinct was to call it all back, to flee. Perhaps she could have hidden Cassie herself. But it was too late for that, now.

The cowbell tied to the door jangled. The Pythia brushed through the door first, and the scent of cinnamon came before her. Sophia closed the door behind her and sat down beside Tara. The Pythia slipped into the booth beside Cassie, and her proximity to the girl made Tara’s skin crawl. The Pythia looked them both up and down with eyes dark as sloes.

Tara nodded tightly. “Cassie, this is Sophia, and. . .”

“Amira.” The Pythia smiled serenely at the girl.

Tara closed her mouth. She’d never heard the Pythia’s name spoken before. For whatever reason, she was using it today. If that even
was
her real name, and not a guise she was using for the moment.

Cassie placed her fork down. Surely she was picking up some of the tension. She folded her hands in her lap. “Nice to meet you.”

Tara kept her hand nestled under her jacket. “I’m surprised to see you both here,” she said mildly. “I’d thought Sophia would come alone.”

The Pythia gave a small shrug. “You asked her to bring reinforcements.” She glanced at Cassie and smiled. “Sophia brought me for my mad dancing skills.”

What strange world had she fallen into? The Pythia was cracking jokes? Tara opened her mouth to say something, closed it.

“You’re a dancer?” Cassie asked.

“Among other things. I lead a belly dance troupe in Portland.”

“Cool.”

Tara leaned back in her seat. She wasn’t sure what to do with the situation: the Pythia was attempting to put Cassie at ease, and the effort put Tara on edge. The Pythia never tried to make anyone comfortable, unless it was for something that benefited her.

The Pythia pulled an envelope out of her coat and handed it to the girl. “I have a present for you.”

Cassie looked at the enveloped quizzically. “A present?”

“Open it.”

Cassie pulled out a sheaf of papers. A driver’s license and a passport book fell out into her maple syrup. She rescued them from the goo, wiping the plastic with her napkin. Staring back at her was her photograph on a driver’s license, wearing a brunette version of her hair that Tara had to admit was a very good job of photo retouching. Below it was a different name: Astrid Cole. “What’s this?”

“A new identity. If we get stopped along the way, you’re Sophia’s granddaughter.”

Tara could see the objections forming in Cassie’s face. “But I don’t want a new identity. . .”

“It’s not permanent, my dear,” Sophia reassured her. “Just until we get this settled.”

Cassie looked at Tara, as if asking for permission. Tara nodded, not taking her eyes off the Pythia. Cassie scooped the documents back into the envelope. “Um. Thanks.” A thought flickered across her face. “Does this mean I have to dye my hair?”

Sophia chuckled. “Any shade of brown you like that’s available at the twenty-four-hour drugstore.”

“Thank you,” said Tara.

“You’re most welcome.” Sophia folded her hands on the table, looked Tara full in the face. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.” Tara sipped her bitter coffee. “We’re—I’m—still looking for Magnusson.” She looked down at the counter.

Sophia reached over to grasp Tara’s hand. “Tara. . .” Her attention fixed on the tear in her coat. Her coat was black, so the bloodstain didn’t show, but Sophia still noticed. Nothing ever escaped her attention. Tara fought the urge to pull her hand away. She didn’t want Cassie to see conflict between her and Sophia, wanted Cassie to trust she would be safe with the older woman. Tara’s issues with the Pythia were beside the point.

And Sophia was seizing this chance. “She’ll be safe with me.”

But would she be safe with the Pythia? Tara bit her lip, forced herself to nod. “I know. How’s Oscar?” she asked, changing the subject. She missed the furball terribly.

Sophia’s eyes twinkled. “I took him home with me. He made a nest in the breadbox on the kitchen counter.” She lifted a spoon from the place setting, squinted into it. “He’s fine,” she said, as if scrying into her reflection on the spoon confirmed it. The gesture was just subtle enough to escape Cassie’s notice.

Tara was grateful they were keeping their status as oracles low-key. She didn’t want to explain Delphi’s Daughters to Cassie. The girl had reached the limit of what she could absorb just now, and Tara didn’t want her to crack.

“Oscar’s not allowed on countertops.” Tara smiled in spite of herself at the image of Oscar making a den in Sophia’s kitchen.

“He doesn’t seem to care.”

The Pythia sat back against the booth, observing the banal chatter. She seemed to be appraising Tara. She pulled a silver-inlaid lighter out of her pocket. Tara couldn’t imagine the fate that would befall the poor waitress if she dared tell the Pythia that no smoking was allowed in the diner. The Pythia flipped the switch on the lighter, squinting into the flame, but produced no cigarettes. Tara had the urge to ask her what she saw in the tiny flame.

Cassie wrinkled her nose. “I’m gonna take a pit stop.”

Tara slid out of the booth to oblige her.

“I’ll go with her.” Sophia shadowed the girl to the ladies’ room, engaging her in light chatter about what a pretty chestnut brown would look like over her existing hair color.

And that left Tara alone with the Pythia.

The lighter flicked on and off, the ghosts of its image flashing in the bottomless pit of the Pythia’s gaze. Tara placed her sweating hands, palms down, on the table. The heat from them left condensation marks on the chipped Formica.

Tara’s lips thinned. “Just make sure that you take better care of her than you took of my mother.” Her voice was heavy with threat, with unshed tears.

The Pythia’s attention shifted from the flame to Tara. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I held that back from you. But you must realize. . . your mother didn’t want you to know she had cancer. She swore me to secrecy.”

Tears stung Tara’s eyes. “You should have told me. I could have found her help.”

The Pythia shook her head, a gray tendril of hair loosening around her face. “I tried. She didn’t want it.”

Tara paused. “You what?”

“I tried to get her to seek treatment. I begged her. Pleaded with her.” The Pythia’s eyes shone with tears. “She was like a daughter to me. My successor. How could I have done any less? But she refused. It was her decision.”

Tara leaned against the back of the booth, deflated. She’d felt too many losses. Perhaps she had been trying too hard to find someone tangible to blame. Sophia had been there, just as she always had since she was a child, and had gracefully accepted the brunt of her anger. The Pythia had been far distant from her adult world, and perhaps that made it easier for Tara to place the blame on her. But she wasn’t ready to forgive, not yet.

“What do you want from me?” Tara hissed. “What does Adrienne want?”

The Pythia’s gaze devoured her. “Adrienne wants you dead.”

“And what do you want?” Tara challenged her. “Do you want me to follow nicely in my mother’s footsteps? Be your puppet?”

The Pythia placed the lighter on the table. “I would not ask anything of you that you’ve not already given.”

“Why did you allow her to come after me? Don’t you have better control over your daughters?”

The Pythia frowned. “We don’t foresee everything. We’re not omniscient. You know that. We see bits and pieces, glimpses of a larger, unknowable, and hidden whole. And Adrienne is. . .” Tara watched a lump work its way down the Pythia’s throat, “more powerful than any of us, now.”

“How could you let that happen?” Tara was dumbstruck at the admission.

The Pythia shook her head. “It was a mistake. I saw, from the start, that she could be a great and powerful oracle. What I did not see was that she was incapable of forming attachments with others. Incapable of empathy. I’m sure that, if she were a child today, a psychiatrist would give her a suitable descriptive label. . . reactive attachment disorder? Whatever her life had been before she came to us, it robbed her of the ability to see people as anything other than cardboard.”

Tara narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure Delphi’s Daughters didn’t do that to her?”

The Pythia’s red mouth tightened. “We did the best we could.”

Cassie and Sophia returned from the ladies’ room, but the waitress never did come back. Tara laid her guesstimate of the bill on the table, and the four women jangled the cowbell on the way to the parking lot. Cassie opened the pickup door, and Maggie tumbled out, tail wagging, snuffling over Sophia.

“Can Maggie come with us?” Cassie’s eyes were large with fear that she would say no. Tara understood the dog was the last piece of her former life that she had left.

“Of course.” Sophia scrubbed her fingers into the dog’s coat, and Maggie made awful faces of enjoyment. She followed Sophia and the Pythia to the glossy sedan, and Sophia opened the door. The interior smelled like new leather. Maggie bounded into the backseat and laid down. She looked ruefully up at Tara and whimpered. Tara tried to smooth the worried furrows on her furry brow with her thumb.

Cassie threw her arms around Tara.

“I’ll talk to you soon. I promise,” Tara said. She hoped she could keep her word.

Cassie nodded and handed Tara her heavy backpack. “Here.”

“That’s your father’s laptop. He wanted you to have it.” Tara was reluctant to take it. She understood the weight parental relics could have, these last bits of knowledge, that, for good or ill, were power in their children’s hands. And Tara doubted that she could protect it.

Cassie shook her head. “I’ve read through every file.” She tapped her temple. “It’s all up here in the photographic memory cells, now.” She smiled self-consciously. “I don’t understand it all yet, but it’s here.”

Cassie patted the bag. “I did. . . I think I did what he would have wanted me to do with the data.” Her smile was enigmatic, but Tara thought she understood its meaning. It seemed the girl had taken on something larger than herself, suddenly become older and wiser for having ingested her father’s life work. “The laptop is just an empty shell now. Use it to find him,” the girl implored, then disappeared into the car and shut the door.

The Pythia stared over the roof of the car to the horizon. Her reflection warbled in the paint, and it seemed a great heat was generated from her glare. Tara followed her line of sight, seeing a pair of headlights exiting from the freeway.

“It’s Adrienne,” the Pythia said.

Tara squinted at the shape. “Run. I’ll cover you.”

Tara ducked into the pickup, cranked over the ignition. The Pythia’s car peeled out of the parking lot, and Tara positioned the bulk of the truck behind it. In her rearview mirror, she saw brake lights. The SUV that had exited the interstate realized who they were and was making a U-turn.

The Pythia’s car glided onto the on-ramp like a sleek, black bird. The pickup’s engine groaned to follow. The entrance ramp had been well-salted, and the deep grooves of the tires gained traction.

Tara swung the truck into a slide. It fishtailed, then turned in a half circle to block the entrance ramp. She reached into her holster for her gun and cranked down the window. The bitch was going to have to go through her. In the distance, she could hear the sound of the Pythia’s car accelerating.

The charcoal-gray SUV completed its turn, picked up speed. Its lights flashed over Tara’s truck.

Shit. Adrienne was crazy enough to ram her. Tara stepped on the gas. The SUV slammed into the tailgate of the truck, spinning the pickup around on the glaze of ice. Tara wrestled with the wheel as the pickup clipped a road sign. The truck came to rest on a frozen divot between the exit ramp and the interstate.

In her rearview mirror, Tara could see men in black fatigues climbing out of the SUV. She waited, slumped over the wheel, playing opossum until it emptied. Her heart hammered under her tongue. Three men, dressed in black fatigues and gripping MP-5s, advanced upon the pickup.

Adrienne wasn’t among them.

Tara slammed on the gas pedal. The truck crawled out of the shallow divot with a shudder and a belch. Bullets pinged off its thick hide. Tara’s admiration for the truck increased: it was like a dinosaur. It bumped over the shoulder of the road and onto the entrance ramp. In her peripheral vision, the men clambered back to the SUV.

Alarm coursed through her. Adrienne knew where she was. . . Where was the bitch? And who else had she brought with her? Her thoughts raced to the Pythia’s car. As the pickup labored up to speed, she could see the glow of multiple sets of taillights in the far distance.