Tribe (14 page)

“I think so.”

“What do you mean, you think so? Did you see her? Did you see my little Ribka?”

Paul took the towel, pressed it against the side of his head, and nodded.

“She's not hurt? She's all right?”

Paul's head slowly went up and down again.

“Then where is she? What happened?”

The heavyset man lifted the towel from his head and studied the brilliant scarlet stain left by his wound. “Oh, crap. I hate getting hit like that. I should've known better.”

“Hit? Hit? Tell me what happened!” demanded Rick.

“I went in.”

“The house?”

“Through the basement. And…and I had her.”

“Ribka?”

Nodding, he held the damp towel to his head and winced in pain. “But there was kind of…”

“Kind of what?”

“Kind of a problem inside—some other guy. First it was just her, the woman, but then this other guy came along and…” He shrugged. “But…but I got her. I had the baby, had her right in my arms. And then I was all the way to my car. I was just putting her in when…when…shit, no one's ever done anything like this to me! No one's ever…ever dared!”

“Someone attacked you?”

“What are you, a rocket scientist?” Paul closed his eyes and moaned in pain. “Shit, the roads are so bad I didn't think I was going to make it back here. It took me an hour and a half!”

Rick's rage was soaring, and he grabbed Paul by the shoulders, shook him, and shouted, “What happened? Who did this to you?”

“Your…your son, the bastard. He jumped me and took the baby,” snapped Paul, glaring up at Rick. “I'm gonna kill him.”

Zeb pulled into the
employee parking lot behind the hospital and drove to a far corner. Turning off his car, he bowed his head forward, resting it on the steering wheel. What a horrible drive that had been. Thank God little Ribka and he had gotten away. But what the hell was going on? Why was Paul here? And how the hell had he found out where Ribka had been hidden? Zeb had been so sure, had felt so clever. He'd thought no one would have guessed that he'd run all the way to Minneapolis. He'd been so smugly confident that no one would find his baby girl at his own birth mother's house. That was supposed to be the very last place anyone would look; after all, he'd met Janice only once and he'd had no ongoing contact with her. So how the hell had they known to look there?

Oh, crap, he thought. It could have been her. Janice could have called someone—his mother, his father?—and told them she had the baby. Maybe that was Zeb's mistake. He'd thought and hoped this Janice Gray, the woman who'd given him birth, was someone he could trust. Or maybe she'd just panicked and called one of them. No, he thought, she was a lawyer, she wasn't dumb, she wouldn't panic. So what the hell had she done, who the hell did she think she was, giving up his own baby girl like that?

And was Paul the only member of The Congregation who'd come looking for him? There could be an entire posse of those lunatics after him, including his own father. He hoped at least that Suzanne's dad hadn't come too. When Suzanne had first found out she was pregnant, that fart of a father had locked her in her room, then come after Zeb, dragging him into a barn behind the bakery and hurling him against a wall. Who knew what would have happened if Zeb's own father and several others hadn't come running. As it turned out, he'd gotten married. Suzanne and he were barely given the chance to wash up before they were wed in the presence of The Elders and the entire Congregation. Some day-old carrot cake had served as their wedding cake.

And it was all because of what they'd been taught.

From living with his mother and attending public school in Santa Fe, Zeb knew he should have used a rubber. Some kind of protection anyway. But, no, God was their protection. They needed nothing else. Or so went the teaching of The Congregation. And Suzanne had agreed that fateful night, for He had always been watching over her. After all, she hadn't gotten pregnant yet, and how many guys had she already done it with?

Well, at least he had this little angel, he thought, staring over at his baby girl, who was bundled in a car seat. Maybe God had been watching over them and this was the best possible thing that could have happened to him. He was a dad and she was an angel. Never mind how horrendously complicated his life had become, at least they were out of there, hundreds of miles from The Congregation. Looking at his daughter, Zeb had never thought he'd care so much for a kid, never realized that being a dad would mean so much to him. But it did, and that's why he'd taken her and run away. All of his parents, both his birth and adoptive ones, had screwed up their lives, and his as well. He wasn't going to ruin hers, though, not little Ribka's. He was going to be there for her always. That was why he'd taken her in the middle of the night and fled The Congregation.

So now what? He had to get out of Minneapolis as quickly as possible. If they knew the baby had been at Janice's, then did they also know about the small room he'd rented by Powderhorn Park? He couldn't conceivably see how, but they might, and he wondered if he dared return there even simply to gather his clothes. Perhaps, but he certainly couldn't stay for any length of time. No, he was going to have to load up Ribka and his few things and they were going to have to hit the road. But where would they go? Someplace south, for sure, where there wasn't cold and snow like this, but how would they get by? He was flat broke, with less than fifty bucks to his name; everything he'd earned at the bakery had gone into the general funds of The Congregation. If only he'd been thinking ahead he would have stolen some of their money. At least he had one of their cars, he thought with a grin. One of their baby seats too. But…but where were they going to spend the night tonight?

As he mulled over the options the baby woke up.

“Hello, sweetie,” he said gently, leaning over his daughter. “Yeah, it's me, Dad. Remember? Sure you do. Everything's going to be all right. I'm here and we're together again.”

Together and getting cold. They couldn't stay out here. Within minutes the cold would overtake them. Zeb had to take Ribka into the hospital and then…then…Well, if there was a God, then He'd figure it out. With no money Zeb had no choice. How was he going to get those keys?

One thing was for certain, Zeb knew he had to be more careful than ever. He couldn't stay long at the hospital, because if The Congregation knew the baby was at Janice's, then maybe they knew about his working here at the hospital as well. But how? Could they have planted some sort of tracing device on his car?

As he unstrapped his baby daughter from her car seat, he wondered if they'd gone down to Santa Fe, if they'd hurt his mom. And what about his birth mother, Janice? She might have contacted them, but would she just have handed over the kid like that? Now that he thought about it, Zeb doubted it, for he'd seen with his own eyes how crazy she was over Ribka. Janice had no way of knowing how dangerous The Congregation was; maybe she had contacted them, but maybe they'd come and stolen away Ribka. If so, might they have hurt Janice? Gripped with worry and confusion, Zeb wondered if he shouldn't call the cops, tell them there was an emergency at Janice's. Perhaps he should just call 911 and get them to check it out.

With the baby bundled up and Zeb himself zipped up in his large nylon coat, he opened the car door and scurried through the blasting snow. Once he'd traversed the nearly empty employee lot, he passed through the side doors and entered the hospital, finding the place more deserted than ever. A lone woman sat at the reception counter, not a single soul was in the waiting area, and no one was strolling the usually busy halls. There almost always was a guard down here, but now even he was gone. As if it were the middle of the night, a number of the lights were off. So, thought Zeb, proceeding directly to the elevator, his daughter in his arms, the hospital was down to a skeleton staff. Maybe it would be easier now after all, maybe this was the time he'd been waiting for.

Zeb boarded the lift and rode it up to the third floor. Stepping into the hall, he found it completely deserted. No patients, no nurses, no one from maintenance. Standing there, he peeled away the blankets covering Ribka, then unzipped his coat. If anyone questioned his presence what was he going to say, that he was going to visit someone? No, better to claim he'd just gotten off work and that he'd forgotten something, say, his wallet.

He proceeded down the hall, his now-wet shoes smacking the linoleum and the baby beginning to squirm in his arms. Passing by several rooms, he peered in the open doors, saw one patient sleeping, another reading, yet another watching television, and he was amazed all over again that just about anyone could walk in here like this. Turning a corner, he eyed the nurses' station, saw it still darkened and empty. Then he saw the door labeled M.S. There were stacks of expensive drugs in there, but how the hell was he going to get in?

Ribka began to fuss more, and Zeb lifted her up, kissed her on the cheek, then settled her in his left arm. She was hungry and he had no food, but that was the next problem. First things first.

He tried the door, twisting the handle and finding it solidly locked. He pushed harder yet. No way in hell was the door going to budge by force alone. Zeb next checked the halls, which still stretched empty and silent, and then hurried over to the nurses' station. He grabbed at the main drawer, found it, too, locked, as were the file cabinets on either side. The overhead cabinets, a door to a back room, the cabinet beneath a sink. Crap, thought Zeb. Everything, all of it locked tight. A key to the medical supply room might or might not be lying around in one of these drawers, but he couldn't get into any of them, nor could he find anything with which to force the door. The countertops were completely clear, no letter openers, no pens, nothing long and hard and rigid.

Giving up on that, he carefully held the baby and reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out his wallet. He had a few dollars, a driver's license, and a credit card his mother had given him years ago, which he'd kept even though she canceled it once he'd stayed on with The Congregation. Could it be so simple a lock that a credit card might work on it? With nothing to lose he crossed the hall, bending over and examining the lock on the medical supply room.

“Come on, Ribka,” he whispered to his child, “work some magic for us, okay, little girl?”

He slipped the credit card into the space between the door and the lock and hit a solid piece of metal. Sliding the credit card upward, he hit something else, pressed, but nothing moved. No, he realized, this was a reinforced lock, there was no way in hell this was going to work, no way… .

Suddenly there was a figure standing nearby, saying, “Zeb?”

Startled, he dropped the credit card, felt himself tumbling to the side, and clutched his daughter. Above him stood a woman in a white uniform.

“What are you doing?” demanded Brenda, the nurse whom he'd met not more than three hours earlier.

“I…I…”

“You were trying to break in there, weren't you? What are you after, drugs?” When he started to get up, she quickly backed away. “That's what it is, isn't it? That's what you were after before too, right? You didn't want to clean in there, you wanted to steal something. God, I'm going to call security!”

“Wait!” he shouted as she turned away. “Wait, Brenda, I can explain!”

“Like hell you can.”

“Brenda!”

His plea was so desperate that she hesitated and looked back at him.

“You don't understand,” he called after her. “This…this is my daughter. She's sick. She's sick and she needs medicine and I don't have any money.”

“You saw the note,
Todd,” said Janice flatly, now seated on her living room couch, a blanket draped over her shoulders, both hands clutching a mug of steaming coffee. “We weren't supposed to call the police.”

“I didn't call the cops. I called Rawlins, that's all.”

“He is the police.”

“No, he's my boyfriend. And your friend too, for that matter. He's family, Janice.”

“I just want to do what they say. I…I don't want anyone to get hurt. I don't want to complicate things.”

“It's too late for that,” said Todd as he began to pace in front of the four arching windows of her living room. “What do you call these bruises on my side or those marks on your wrists?”

“Todd—the baby. I…I just don't want anything to happen to her, I don't know what I'll—”

“What the hell are you saying? She's already been kidnapped.” He shook his head, trying to make sense of this all. “Or maybe I should say she's been rekidnapped. I don't get any of this.” “I just hope she's okay, that he hasn't already hurt her.”

Reminded of the blood they'd found in the snow, he said, “Me too.”

Todd looked out one of the windows, but saw nothing. Rawlins was on his way, but who knew how long it'd take in this storm. And who knew what the hell they'd do after he got here. Touching the painful bruises on his side, Todd glanced anxiously about the living room with its tall, beamed ceiling. He shuffled across the light brown carpeting, stopped near an overstuffed chair. What a mess. Why the hell had she kept this from him?

“Janice, I can't believe you didn't tell me about any of this,” he said, unable to hide the anger in his voice. “I mean—”