“When do we leave?” Clare asked.
Hughes stood and went to the door, opening it before glancing back at them. “Right now.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
When they pulled out of the sheriff’s garage, Clare saw the humidity of the day before had coalesced into a hovering gloom of clouds staining the sky a deep gray.
Light rain pattered the windshield of Hughes’s SUV as they cruised through town and doubled back along a side street before turning east. “Making sure we’re not being followed,” Hughes said, guiding the vehicle past an abandoned rest stop, its façade lined with cracks and half-hearted graffiti. Several cars back Deputy Wilt’s cruiser followed, its headlights two yellowed stains in the falling rain.
Clare and Shanna both rode in the back seat, fingers interlaced. Shanna hadn’t said anything further upon leaving the interview room and being herded toward the garage where they were loaded into the vehicle, all without seeing another soul. Clare wondered dimly how the city detectives would take to the idea of their witnesses being placed under protection at a location even they weren’t privy to. She decided she didn’t care. As Hughes had said, the fewer people who knew where they were, the better.
They traveled along the highway for nearly half an hour before swinging onto a county road. None of the cars following them turned save for Wilt’s, and before long signs of habitation became less and less, as if they were traveling back in time.
“The place we’re going to is my cousin’s,” Hughes said over his shoulder several miles later. “He’s a dentist in Florida. We grew up together and he’s kept the family cabin for the weekends he gets up here in the summer. Truth be told I don’t think he’s made it the last few years, just pays to have it cleaned and aired out each season. Once in a while I’ll go up here and do a little fishing.”
“It’s on a lake?” Clare asked.
“Yep. Toll Lake, it’s called. Used to fish it a lot as a kid.” Hughes met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “You’ll be safe there.”
The road they were on forked, and they veered right onto a well-kept dirt track. Two mailboxes stood at the juncture, one of them tipped to forty-five degrees and rust-eaten. The land climbed and the drive with it. Birches and tall basswoods stood like sentries on the rolling hills. A hawk swooped into view, then away through a gap in the trees. Clare wondered at the sheriff’s choice of safe house. It was definitely secluded and would be nearly impossible to locate unless someone knew exactly where to go, but that was the crux as well. If they needed help it would a be a long time coming.
She watched Hughes for a bit, thinking of the people who had left the cult in those last days. He looked at her again in the mirror, their eyes meeting for a moment before he shifted his attention back to the road.
She counted the number of bumps the vehicle traveled over as a distraction until glimpses of a lake appeared through the trees’ canopy to the left. A minute later the drive split again and they turned in the direction of the water, which revealed itself fully at the crest of a hill where the foliage opened up into a small yard. Toll Lake seemed to be nearly circular, with only a jagged bay cutting into the wood line to the west. At the top of the clearing stood a single-story house overlooking the water. A large three-season porch faced the lake, while the rest of the house seemed to support it in the form of large windows and short eaves. Rain dripped from the entryway overhang and ran from downspouts.
“Here we are,” Hughes said. He climbed out and opened the door for them as Deputy Wilt pulled to a halt on the far side of the SUV. Hughes carried their baggage for them, having retrieved it from the hotel prior to departing. Clare and Shanna hurried through the drizzle to the front door and waited while Hughes unlocked it and let them in.
The interior was spacious, with vaulted ceilings and natural wood everywhere. A stone hearth stood in a living room that flanked the three-season, affording unobstructed views of the lake.
“Only one other house out here,” Hughes said, setting their bags down at the quaint kitchen’s edge. “Far as I know the owner comes here even less than my cousin.”
Shanna walked through the kitchen and living room, pausing to study some photographs lining the mantle. She moved to the expanse of windows and looked out at the lake, standing motionless with her back to them. Hughes leaned closer to Clare, his voice lowered. “Is she going to be all right?”
“She’ll be fine. She might still be partially in shock. This will be good,” she said, motioning to the house. “She likes it quiet, more simple.”
Hughes nodded. “Travis grabbed a little food before we left and there should be clean linens on all the beds. I’ll be back sometime tonight and I’ll notify you of any developments. It doesn’t look like it, but the place has pretty decent cell reception.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Clare said.
“We’ll get this all resolved for you. Get you both back to regular life.”
“Whatever that is.” They shared a small laugh. Hers felt forced.
Wilt appeared in the doorway holding a pair of grocery bags and Hughes directed him to the fridge, while Clare went and joined Shanna by the window. “It’s pretty here,” Clare said after a time. “We’re safe now.”
Shanna took her hand but wouldn’t look at her. They stood side by side looking out into the gray, their reflections gazing stolidly back.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The house was chill and Clare couldn’t seem to make the thermostat work—who knew if the heating was even turned on yet—so she built a fire in the hearth instead.
When she lit one of the long matches from the upright stand on the mantle she stared at it for a time. Years ago she couldn’t have held a match like this. It would’ve sent her into a spiraling panic attack. But now she could control fear’s impulse at the sight of flame, could appreciate it for what it was. Fire was beautiful in a cruel way. It danced and spun to its own unheard opera, but it bit and chewed too. It cleared all in its path, ate everything away to ash, and also renewed life through fortified soil. At least everywhere except the site of her father’s cult.
Clare set the match beneath the delicate pyre she’d built in the hearth and watched the flame grow. The land where she and Shanna had lived those first formative years was still mostly dead, the foliage unable, or unwilling, to return.
Unwilling? She shook her head. Plants didn’t choose where to grow. They couldn’t discern good from bad. They either flourished or died. Just like people. The reason the growth hadn’t taken root in that place was something she didn’t care to think about. The image of the Refuge’s border was incongruently wrong when compared to wherever else the forest fire had touched. It was almost like the ground hadn’t allowed itself to be subsumed along with the rest of the scorched acreage. Like it had chosen to stay the way it was. As if it were waiting for something. Waiting for—
Clare shook herself free of the trance she’d been in. The fire crackled merrily and she added several logs, heat beginning to seep into the room. She stood and caught movement outside the large windows facing the lake. Deputy Wilt strode slowly across the lawn through the rain. He wore a dark slicker and paused every so often to observe the water’s disturbed surface.