Virgin (45 page)

Emilio slowed
as he blinked away the purple afterimage of the flash. Through the blur he saw
flames licking at the blackened trunk of the pine. The whole tree was swaying
wildly in the wind . . . seemed to be moving toward him.

He blinked
again and cried out in terror as he saw the huge pine toppling toward him. He
floored the accelerator, swerving the ambulance ahead on the bridge. The right
rear fender screeched against the metal side rail. Emilio bared his clenched
teeth and let loose a long, low howl as he kept the pedal welded to the floor.
Had to move, had to get this huge, filthy
puerco
going and keep it
going, couldn't go back, couldn't even
look
back, straight ahead was the
only way, even if it looked like he was driving into the face of certain death,
his only hope was to get off this bridge and onto the solid ground straight
ahead on the far side of the ravine. Because this bridge was a goner.

Branches slashed, crashed, smashed against the roof and
windshield, spiderwebbing the glass in half a dozen places. It held, though,
and Emilio kept accelerating. He heard the flashers and sirens tear off the
roof as he slipped the ambulance under the falling trunk with only inches to
spare. But he wasn't home yet. He heard and felt the huge pine's impact
directly behind him. The ambulance lurched sideways as the planked surface of
the span canted right and tilted upward ahead of him. He fought to keep
control, keep moving, keep accelerating, because he knew without looking that
the bridge was going down behind him. The wet tires spun and slipped on the
rapidly increasing incline and Emilio filled the cabin with an open-throated
scream of mortal fear and defiant rage.

Emilio Sanchez refused to die here, smashed on the rocks
a hundred feet below. His
destiny was not to meet his end as a storm victim, a mere statistic.

The tires
caught again, the ambulance lunged forward, its big V-8 Cadillac engine
roaring, pushing the vehicle up the tilting incline and onto the glistening
asphalt and solid ground.

Emilio slammed on the brakes and sagged against the
steering wheel, panting. When he'd caught his breath, he held his hands before
his face and watched them shake like a palsied old man's. Then he stepped out
into the wind and rain and looked back.

The bridge was
down. The giant pine had broken its back, crashing through the center of its
span and dragging the rest of it to the floor of the ravine.

Emilio began to laugh. He'd stolen an ambulance and now he
couldn't use it. No one could use it. And no one would be leaving Paraiso, not
Emilio, not the
senador,
and certainly not Charlie.

Prisoners in Paradise.

His laughter died away as he remembered the fourth occupant of
Paraiso. That ancient body. He'd have to do something about that. It was evidence
against him. He had to find a way to dispose of it. Permanently.

"Turn
here."

Dan sat behind
the wheel of their rented Taurus and stared at the electric security gate that
stood open before them. Through the wind-whipped downpour he made out identical
red-and-white signs on the each of the stone gateposts:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

NO TRESPASSING

VIOLATORS WILL BE

PROSECUTED

"Are you
sure?" Dan said. "This is a private road." "Turn
here," the voice from the backseat repeated. Dan glanced at Kesev in the
front passenger seat.

The bearded man
nodded agreement that they should proceed through the gate.

"Yes. The
feeling is strong. The Mother is near."

Dan then turned
to look at Carrie where she sat in the back seat, staring up the private road.

She wore one of
Dan's faded plaid flannel shirts over his oldest pair of jeans, and a pair of
dirty white sneakers they'd found in the housekeeper's closet. She looked like
a refugee from a Seattle grunge band.

Once again
Brad's AmEx card had come in handy for the tickets and the rental car agency.
They'd drive
south from San Francisco, following Carrie's directions as she took them deeper
and deeper into increasingly severe weather. Now they were somewhere near the
coast in Monterey County.

Dan faced front
and did as he was told.

He was on
autopilot now. His head throbbed continually, but it had been aching so long
now he barely noticed anymore. The post-concussion dizziness and nausea were
what plagued him physically. Emotionally and intellectually . . . he was numb.

With no sleep
for thirty-six hours, with the woman he loved murdered but sitting in the
backseat giving him directions toward the corporal remains of the Virgin Mary,
what else was there to do but shut down his emotions, turn off his rational
faculties, and become some sort of servo-mechanism?

Go through the
motions, follow instructions to get to where you're going, do, do, do, but
don't think, don't question, and for God's sake, don't feel.

Because mixed
with the guilty joy of having Carrie back was the horrific realization that she
wasn't really back . . . not really back at all. And Dan knew if he unlocked
his emotions he'd go mad, leap from the car, and run screaming through the
trees.

So he kept everything under lock and key, turned the car
onto the narrow asphalt path, and kept his eyes on the road.

Water sluiced
down the incline toward the Taurus but the front-wheel drive kept them moving
steadily. Pine needles, pine cones, leaves, and fallen branches littered the
roadway. Dan drove over them, letting them snap and thud against the underbelly
of the car. He didn't care. Didn't care if they punctured the oil pan or the
gas tank. All he wanted was to get where he was going.
Somewhere ahead
was the Virgin, and with her maybe the man who shot Carrie.

And then what
will I do? he wondered.

Whatever he did
or didn't do, Dan sensed that he was on his way toward a rendezvous with
destiny . . . or something very much like it. Whatever it was that lay ahead,
he wanted to confront it and have done with it. Things had to change.
Something
had to give.

Because he
couldn't go on like this much longer.

The trees
thinned as they came to the top of a rise. It looked open ahead. And then Dan
saw why it was open: a deep ravine lay before them.

"Keep
going?" Dan said.

"Straight
ahead," Carrie said.

"I see a
bridge," Kesev said, pointing.

Dan gunned the
engine. The car accelerated.

"And so,
Senador,"
Emilio said, spreading his hands expressively, "I'm afraid we are
stuck here."

Arthur Crenshaw
nodded slowly, amazed at his own serenity. Here he was, trapped in a house that
was little more than a giant bay window set in a cliff overhanging the ocean, looking
down the barrel at the most powerful Pacific storm on record. He'd watched the
front steamroll in, the lightning-slashed clouds sweep past, blotting out the
rest of the world as the storm launched its assault on the coast--his
coast.
And
every time he'd thought he'd seen the peak of the storm, it got worse. The
ocean below churned and frothed like an enormous Jacuzzi; thirty-foot waves
lashed at the rocks, hurling foam a hundred feet in the air; wind and rain
battered the huge windows, warping and rattling the glass, and yet he was not
afraid.

That amazed
him.

Perhaps he was
too drained to be afraid.

Charlie was
worse.

Arthur didn't
need a CD-4 count to know that. Instead of falling, Charlie's fever had risen
through the night. He was now in a coma.

His son was
dying.

Arthur moved to
Charlie's side, passing the so-called miraculous relic as he did. He was
tempted to boot the piece of junk off the table, even drew his foot back to do
so, but for some reason changed his mind at the last moment. Why bother? Just
another in a long line of fakes.
And to think a young woman had been killed in
order to bring it here.

And then it
occurred to Arthur that perhaps that was why Charlie had not been healed. An
innocent life had been snuffed out in order to save Charlie's, and so Charlie
could not be saved.
Because a life had been taken on one end of the country,
another life would be allowed to burn out on the other. A balancing of the
scales.

Rage flared.
Damn Emilio!

But he'd only
been following orders. Arthur remembered his own words:
Bring me that body
--
no
matter what the cost.

But he'd meant
money and effort and expense--not life.

Hadn't he?

Not that it
mattered now. The inescapable reality of Charlie's impending death was truly
hitting home for the first time.

"He's
going to die, Emilio," he said, staring at Charlie's slack features.
"Charlie . . .my son . . . flesh of my flesh and Olivia's . . . the last
surviving part of Olivia . . . is going to be gone. Why didn't I appreciate him
while he was here, Emilio? When did I stop thinking of him of a son and start
seeing him as a liability? That never would have happened if Olivia were still
here. She was my heart, Emilio. My soul. When I lost her, something went out of
me . . . something good.
Charlie was harmless but I came
to loathe him. My own
son!
And that loathing
infected Charlie, causing him to loathe himself. That's when he stopped being
harmless, Emilio. That's when he started becoming harmful to himself. His
self-loathing made him sick so he'd end up here in this pathetic miniature
intensive care unit in the big gaudy showplace of a home where he was never
really welcome when he was well."

Arthur bit back
a sob.

"I've got
so much to answer for!"

And unbidden,
unwelcome, another thought slithered out of the darkest corner of his mind,
whispering how if Paraiso were damaged by the storm . . . if, say, some of the
windows were smashed and Charlie's terminally ill body were washed out into the
Pacific, he'd be listed as a storm victim instead of an AIDS victim, wouldn't
he?

Arthur shook
off the thought--though, despairingly, not without effort--and shoved it back
down the dank hole it had crawled out of.

Is this what
I've come to?

He backed away
from the windows as the wind doubled its fury, battering those floor-to-ceiling
panes until he was certain one of them was going to give.

Emilio watched
the
senador
retreat from the storm, but he stood firm. He felt no fear
of wind and rain. What were they but air and water? And even if he were afraid,
he would not show it. He feared nothing . . . except perhaps that body he'd
brought back from New York. He had to get rid of that.

An idea formed
. . . put the body in the back of the ambulance . . . send them both over the
edge of the cliffs into the wild, pounding surf far below . . .

And as the plan
took shape . . .

The storm
stopped.

The thunder
faded, the wind died, the rain ebbed to a drizzle. Suddenly there was only
swirling fog beyond the windows.

"Senador?"
Emilio said. He rested his hands against
the
now still windows and stared out at the
featureless gray. "It is over?"

"Not
yet," the
senador
said, his voice hushed. "I've read about
this type of thing. I believe this is what they call the eye of the storm, the
calm at its center. It won't last long. But why don't you hurry up topside and
take a look around, see how much damage we've got up there. Don't get too far
from the door. As soon as the wind starts to blow again, get back inside,
because the back end is going to be just as bad as the front, maybe
worse."

Emilio nodded.
"Of course."

He hurried up
the stairs and stepped outside into a dead calm.

The still, warm
air hung heavy with moisture. Fog drifted lazily around him, insinuating
through his clothes, clinging to his skin. So strange to have no wind. Emilio
could not remember a time when a breeze wasn't blowing across the cliff tops.

And silent . .
. so eerily silent. Like cotton wadding, the fog muffled everything, even the
sound of the surf below. No birds, no insects, no rustling grass . . . silence.