Chris knew something was up when the entire Council trooped in, trailed by guards. Nathan slouched as if held up by a string. Weller was haunted and hollow-eyed. The others were only grim. When his grandfather, Yeager, ordered Jet, Chris’s black shepherd, into the kitchen with the other animals, Chris knew this something was likely to be very bad. His grandfather also wanted Kincaid to wait with the girls and their new housemother, a grisly woman named Hammerbach, who would be there for the foreseeable future until—unless—Jess came out of her coma. But Chris nixed that. The more witnesses, the better protected he felt, and this wasn’t a trial. Not yet, anyway. Besides, he wanted to make sure Lena heard what he said in case they questioned her. No use both of them going down.
He was in deep, deep trouble. But why, exactly? He had no idea. Alex had been gone for eight days. Those same days of his life had vanished with her, poof. He’d been at Jess’s for more than a week, and barely remembered any of it. What also nagged him was that his memories of the couple days before—when he’d still been on the road, away from Rule—were a jumble. The only thing he recalled with any clarity was that one last, precious moment when Alex’s horse had reared and she’d looked back, and their eyes locked. But that was it. The rest was only a big, white blank.
“I don’t understand why you broke off the search. You don’t know that Peter’s dead,” Chris said. He’d elected to stand. Sitting was too pathetic. But his head was swirling, and he felt gutted as a shriveled pumpkin with nothing left but the shell. “There’s no body. He’s still out there somewhere.”
“Chris, it’s Saturday, for God’s sake.” Weller’s voice was a weary croak. “Eight days since the ambush, and there’s nothing, no trace, not a sign of either Peter or Tyler, and no trail either. I couldn’t tell you if those bastards went east or west, north or south, but I do know this: that boy, Tyler—there was no way he was gonna live another five minutes. As for Peter … I did the best I could. He’s young, strong. He might have made it, but it’s more than likely that he didn’t. I don’t like it, but I accept that he’s gone.”
“Well, I don’t,” Chris said. “It makes no sense. If I were a raider, I would just strip the bodies. I wouldn’t take them.”
“Maybe they weren’t raiders,” Weller said, simply.
“How do you mean?” Then Chris gasped. “The Changed? No, that’s impossible. They’re not that organized.”
“As far as we know,” Weller said.
That had never occurred to Chris, and the idea shook him.
But there were a lot of bodies. The rescue party didn’t make it out there until noon. Plenty of time for the Changed to grab as much fresh meat as they wanted. But why take only Peter and—
“Wait a minute.” He looked back at Weller. “Peter and Tyler were the only Spared.”
“Yes, we noticed that.” Blind in one eye, Stiemke rarely spoke, only listened like a drowsing lizard. Now Stiemke tilted his head to one side, his left eyelid twitching to reveal a thumbnail of milky iris. “What do you think that means?”
“Me?” Chris frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Weller said there were rumors,” his grandfather, Yeager, prompted. His eyes, black as freshly mined coal, narrowed. “Something about bounty hunters?”
“That’s right. We heard the military was recruiting locals to hand over Spared and round up Changed. You think bounty hunters set up an ambush just to capture Peter and Tyler?”
“And you, if you’d been there.” An imposing man in his black robes, Ernst always looked and sounded a little like Darth Vader, minus the heavy breathing. “The question is, how did the shooters know where to stage the ambush? How did they know where to intercept the runner, Lang?” Lang’s horse was found ten miles from Rule, a frozen worm of blood in its left ear and a big piece missing from the right side of its face where the bullet had blasted through. Lang, though, was simply gone.
“I don’t know. We don’t follow the same roads all the time for this very reason.” Chris looked at Weller. “Tell them.”
“I already did.” Weller’s eyes slipped to the floor. “Peter said you guys talked about taking Dead Man four, maybe five days back, right before you split off to go north.”
Had they? “I honestly don’t remember.”
Behind him, he heard Kincaid speak up for the first time. “That’s normal with a concussion, Rev. Boy’s going to be spotty.”
“The point is Chris knew ahead of time,” Yeager said.
“I guess I knew it was a possibility,” Chris said. Then it finally clicked. “Wait, you think I had something to do with this? That’s crazy. I would never—”
“Then why leave your men?”
“I didn’t leave anybody. I already told you. We caught a rumor of Spared near Oren.”
“Ah yes.” From his seat on the far right, Born let out a raspy cackle. “You and your famous rumors. Why is it that Weller has no recollection of such a story?”
Shuffling uneasily, Weller threw Chris a pained, apologetic look. “Chris, I—”
“Don’t worry about it.” The fire was high and the room stuffy and overheated, but he didn’t think that had much to do with the sudden sweat starting on his upper lip. Peter had asked no questions, so Chris had fed him no lies. But now these old men wanted answers he could not risk giving.
“Weller didn’t know because he wasn’t there,” he said to Born. “Peter and I scouted a farmstead just east of the border, and this old guy told us.” They had visited a farmstead, too, although it was long deserted.
“And you always follow up a rumor.”
“Of course. What else do you think we have to go on? Listen, we’re stealing and killing so you can sit there and say you can’t trust me?”
Kincaid’s voice floated up in a warning. “Easy, Chris.”
“I’m fine.” He kept his eyes trained on the Council, his gaze flicking from one judge to the next. “Look, you guys aren’t out there, but I am—me and Peter and some kids like Tyler and anyone else who isn’t so ancient he needs diapers so he doesn’t piss the bed.”
“Chris,” Kincaid said. “Don’t—”
“I’ll handle this, Doctor, thank you.” Yeager’s bird-bright eyes never wavered from Chris’s face. “Watch your language, young man. Don’t presume to challenge us.”
“I’m not,” Chris said. Oh, he wanted to, though. Blame the concussion or losing Alex and now Peter, but he was suddenly sick to death of these old men. “I just don’t get what you’re driving at. I would never hurt Peter, ever.”
“Fine.” His grandfather glided from his chair on a whisper of black robes. He extended his hands, palms up. “Then all you have to do is answer our questions.”
Chris hesitated for the briefest of moments, then told his first lie. “Sure, I have nothing to hide,” he said, and then slid his hands onto his grandfather’s palms. The old man’s flesh felt artificial, like slick plastic, and the hairs on Chris’s neck prickled. “What do you want?”
“First, I want you to sit down,” Yeager said.
“No.” He saw the old man’s face crease with surprise. Good. If he could keep his grandfather off-balance, do the unexpected, maybe he had a chance. Whatever I say next has to be the truth. “I’d rather stand.”
“I see.” As if to reassert his authority, Yeager looked at the guard hovering by Kincaid’s shoulder. “I think it’s time the doctor and the others waited in the kitchen.”
“No,” Chris said again. He aimed a quick glance over his shoulder. His eyes brushed over Lena’s pale face, but she was still as a sphinx. He turned back to the Council. “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Do you?”
“That’s not how things are done, young man.” Prigge’s lips puckered like a prissy schoolteacher’s. “We decide, not you.”
“This isn’t a trial. What are you going to do? Shoot them or me? Are you that afraid of what I’m going to say?” When Prigge didn’t reply, Chris’s eyes shifted back to Yeager. “Go on, what do you want to know?”
His grandfather’s expression hadn’t changed, and his face, almost waxy, was blank as a mannequin’s. Only his eyes showed any sign of life, and they were glittery now, like those of a vulture eyeing roadkill. “Did you have anything to do with the ambush?”
“No.”
“But you did advise Peter to take Dead Man’s Alley,” Ernst said.
“I already said I don’t remember.”
“Even if Chris did, that’s not a crime,” Kincaid put in.
“We’re aware of that,” said Prigge.
“Then stop accusing him.” Chris recognized Lena’s voice. “You have no right.”
“Be quiet, girl.” Yeager waited a beat, then asked Chris, “Why did you bypass Oren and head for the Amish settlement?”
His heart sank. The only way his grandfather could know that was if he’d talked to Greg or one of the others. They would’ve told, too, because they had no reason to lie. If he could just keep his answers brief.… “We heard there might be Spared.”
“But how did you know where to look?” Ernst said. “The others said you went from farm to farm but never into any of the outbuildings—until you came to a specific barn.”
The air squeezed from his lungs. The adrenaline burst was tailing off, and Chris’s mouth tasted of crushed metal and fear. “I can’t tell you that.”
Someone gasped. He felt Kincaid tense, and he saw the other guards toss looks he couldn’t read. Nathan’s eyes were slits.
Yeager’s grip shifted as if checking Chris’s pulse. “Why not?”
Keep it short, keep it sweet, but make it the truth. “Because I promised.”
“Your promise is to me,” Yeager suddenly spat. “I took you in, and I can just as easily put you out. You will answer.”
Chris said nothing.
“Better say, boy,” Born warned. “Truth will out.”
“Stop.” It was Lena again. “Leave him alone. This isn’t his fault!”
“Be quiet, girl.” His grandfather’s fingers tightened to wires. “Answer me.”
Chris throttled back the impulse to wrench his hands free. If he did, he’d start whaling on the old man, and might not stop—and that was the truth, too. He said nothing.
Yeager said, “Why did you stay a full day after Greg and the others left? Was it to see if there were others? Did you find them? Who told you where to look?”
Can’t say. Yes. No. Hey, you tell me; then we’ll both know. The silence thickened. His pulse banged so loudly he thought everyone in the room had to hear it, but he still said nothing.
“All right.” Yeager peered up at Chris. “Do you care for Alex?”
The abrupt turn threw him. He felt the heat rush all the way to his scalp, and the answer—the truth—came out before he could call it back. “You know I do,” he said, hoarsely.
“But she lied, boy.” Born gave his dog’s laugh. “She used you.”
“No.” Not true, not true. We kissed, and I felt what she felt. That was no lie. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Of course it was. She wouldn’t be the first girl here to manipulate a boy to get her way.”
“That’s not fair,” Lena said. She suddenly started forward, ducking to avoid the guard. “It’s not the same at all. Don’t poison this for him.”
“You, girl.” Hammerbach lumbered after her, but she was an old woman who had once been very large and was now much too slow. “Come back. This is not your place.”
“Screw you,” Lena said, and then she was standing on Chris’s right, the guard a step behind. “You have no idea what happened. Maybe Alex thought she didn’t have a choice.”
“Of course she did,” Yeager snapped. “You, Lena, of all people, ought to understand that. You’re an expert where betrayal’s concerned.”
“Leave her out of this,” Chris said. “We’re talking about Alex and me.”
“So we are,” Yeager said. “Alex is just a girl, and yet the guards said she had a shotgun and supplies. So who gave those to her? Who helped her?”
That was a very good question. “I don’t know,” Chris said. “Ask the guards.”
“Don’t think we haven’t,” Ernst rumbled.
“Right. Of course, you take their word for it. It’s just me you doubt.”
“In light of the ambush and your convenient absence? The fact that the girl needed help to get out and then succeeded?” Born said. “What would you do in our place? Wouldn’t you wonder?”
“I tried to stop her,” Chris said. “Did the guards tell you that?”
“It doesn’t matter, Chris. Can’t you see it? They’ve already made up their minds,” Lena said. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as she rounded on Yeager. “You think he’s guilty, and even if Alex did come back, you’d make sure she never set foot in Rule or saw Chris again.”
“Because she broke the rules!” Yeager’s face was the color of a plum. “She defied us, and she had help, and I will know who!”
“And I said I don’t know!” Chris jerked free. His wrists burned as if scorched. “You need us and you get to be the boss of how we feel, who we decide to care about? We go out, we take all the risks! We die out there while you sit here in your robes and judge us, and it’s still not enough. You want everything. You want what I think and what I fee—”
“Quiet!” His grandfather’s hand blurred. The slap was so hard and so fast the sound was like brittle ice cracking in two. Chris’s head snapped to one side, his breath snatched from his lungs in a surprised, pained hiss. “Don’t presume to lecture me! Your allegiance is to me and to Rule, and we will have no Judases in our midst!” His grandfather slapped him again, much harder. “I will break you, boy, I will break you!”
“Yeager,” Kincaid said, appalled. He made a move, but a guard grabbed his arms. “Rev, please, listen to what you’re saying!”
“You need me,” Chris croaked. His ears rang. The coppery taste of his blood made him want to vomit. “You need my voice, but only to prove you’re still in charge. You already know enough, or else you wouldn’t have brought all these guards. I can’t win this, and you know it. If I tell you, you lock me up. If I don’t say anything, you lock me up.” He surprised himself with a bloody, bubbly little laugh. “You want me to choose, but there’s only one right answer for you.”
“I want to hear it.” His grandfather’s lips were so thin they were no more than a fissure in stone. “From your mouth.”
“To God’s ear?” Chris laughed again. He dragged his hand across his lips, inking his skin red. His grandfather was Rule, and Chris would bend, or the old man would keep at him until he did. Not going to happen. “You’re not God. There is no god, and if there is, he’s one sick bastard to put you old farts in charge.”
I’ve gone nuts, he marveled. He saw his grandfather’s hand draw back again. I could deck this old guy, but then I’d be just like him, and like Dad. I know how I feel about Alex. No one can take that away.
Lena slid between them. “Stop! You don’t need his voice. You can have mine.”
“I don’t want yours, girl,” Yeager said.
“Lena, it’s okay.” Chris put his hands on her shoulders. “I’ve had a lot of experience with bullies.”
“Me, too,” she said. To Yeager: “You want to know who helped Alex, I’ll tell you.”
She leveled a finger at Nathan. “Him.”