“More like revenge on his side,” Bishop added.
“Can you blame him?” Watson said. “We’re all thinking the same thing, so give the man a break.”
“Call it what you want, but they will all pay for what they’ve done,” Nomad said.
Liz nodded. “That’s all well and good, but tell me, how do you expect to find them?”
“Won’t be an issue. Tracking is one of my specialties.”
She pointed at the road ahead. “And by tracking, I’m assuming you mean following their tire tracks in the dirt.”
“Roger that, ma’am. They’re loaded heavy and unless it rains anytime soon, I figure I’ll catch them up to them soon.”
“Except you’re forgetting one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Pavement. You’ll hit that long before you catch up. Then what happens to the tracks?”
“I’ll adjust. I always do.”
“That’s not going to work, my friend. You need us.”
“How do you figure, Doc?”
“We know where Summer and Krista are going. Fletcher probably does too, assuming he had a chance to interrogate someone before he left.”
“Count on it,” Bishop said. “Someone talked. They always do.”
“You really need to think this through,” Liz said. “There are a lot of variables at play here.”
Nomad shook his head. “There’s only one variable that matters—”
Watson knew where the masked man was going with his point. “—how soon you catch up.”
“Which is why I’m not wasting another minute on this, whatever this is.”
“It’s a negotiation. Try to keep up,” Bishop said in a flippant manner.
Liz held up a palm to Bishop and shot him a ‘let me handle this’ look. Then she turned to Nomad. “I know where they’re going. I can help you skip all the guesswork.”
“Where?”
“Sorry, but if I tell you, you’ll just leave us behind and I can’t allow that.”
Nomad dropped his head, holding that pose.
If Watson could have seen the man’s face, he would have bet it was on fire with anger.
Liz continued. “Take us with you and I’ll help you find them a lot faster than you would otherwise. You’re going to waste a lot of time getting out of your truck and checking the tracks all the time.”
“Tell me. Now. I’ll go take care of what must be done.”
Liz put her hands on her hips. “No. I’m not going to tell you anything. You either take us with you or you run the risk of never finding them. So what’s it going to be?”
Nomad didn’t answer, only shaking his head.
Watson thought about interjecting, but he could see Liz getting ready to deliver more of her argument, so he decided to keep quiet.
Liz took her hands from her hips and brought her hands together as if she were preparing to pray before Sunday Mass. “Look, you yourself said they loaded heavy, which means they will be traveling a lot slower than you. Even with two more of us, you’ll get there faster than they can travel. Plus, I know a few shortcuts and you won’t have to stop and check signs all the time. So do the right thing and let us come along and help. Bishop is more than capable of helping you fight, and you’ll probably need a doctor at some point. So come on. It’s the right decision. You know it.”
CHAPTER 37
Sometime later, Wilma Rice stood in front of the back wall of a work lab in Edison’s silo, staring at a grease board with numbers and notes scribbled across its surface.
Even though her eyes were aimed where they needed to be, she couldn’t seem to focus her mind, not with her stomach doing flipflops ever since they’d walked through the vault doors unopposed.
It was bad enough trying to keep her last meal down after what Fletcher had done to Edison’s Nirvana, but she was unprepared for the other sights she’d seen along the way—the smallest of bodies, each with a pose of finality.
Most people think that with enough time and focus, they can prepare their minds and their hearts for the carnage they are about to witness. However, in truth, that’s almost never the case.
You simply cannot prepare yourself to withstand the shock when it comes to the death of innocents.
Children who deserved a chance to live a normal life. To grow up. To excel and experience all that life on this planet is supposed to offer.
What made it worse was the fact that deep down she knew she was to blame, even if she didn’t have a choice in any of it.
That’s what she kept telling herself—she didn’t have a choice.
Yet no matter how hard she had tried to convince herself that she didn’t know what was going to happen, it didn’t change any of the facts. Or her guilt.
Wilma stood firm and closed her eyes as her mind reached into the depths of her memories, remembering a quote she’d read a long time ago.
She wasn’t sure if the words she was remembering were an exact copy of what had been written by a tireless investigator, who went by the codename of Sundance. But either way, it was a conclusive rebuff of all things motivated. Plus, it seemed to apply to what she was feeling at the moment.
By pretending not to know, you effectively give yourself a free pass. There is no subsequent guilt. No actual connection to your own conscience. In the end, the denial of truth allows easier trespass against those who are innocent, allowing oneself to accept the lies, the falsehoods, and the scripted presentations that convince us we are on the right side of wrong. And, as a result, it demands that we grant benefit to our decisions, amid the overwhelming seeds of doubt.
She opened her eyes and took in a long, slow breath, then let it out at the same pace. She knew the pain in her chest wasn’t going away anytime soon. Neither was the ache in her gut. Not that it mattered. She had a job to do.
Wilma brought her eyes up to the calculations written in red and let them soak in for a bit before turning to Craven, who was across the lab from her. “You really need to see this, boss.”
The eyepatch-wearing scientist spun and peered her way from the stack of electronics that had been piled in a box on a table a few yards away. “What do you have for me, Rice?”
Wilma pointed at the board. “These red calcs, sir—I don’t think they’re random work at all.”
Craven walked over, his one good eye in a deadline pinch.
Wilma snatched a notebook hanging off the edge of a nearby desk. She cracked the binder open and fanned through the pages, stopping on one in particular. “I saw these notes earlier, but until I put them together with these equations, it didn’t make sense.”
Craven scanned the grease board from top to bottom, then took the notebook in his hand. He spent a long minute looking it over before he snapped it shut. He flared an eyebrow, looking almost amused. “EOD?”
“End of days, sir,” she answered, figuring her boss would latch onto that exact notation. The man rarely missed anything. He was always paying attention. Always evaluating.
“Looks like a bacteria problem. Something manmade, based on the scribble in the margins.”
She agreed. “That’s the problem with encapsulated ecosystems. Especially with humid, recycled—”