Shit, Karen thought, slamming her eyes shut against the sudden light. She had forgotten to draw the light-blocking shades before turning in, and now her bedroom glowed like a searchlight, courtesy of the insanely bright halogen bulbs the rangers from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had installed in the backyard’s motion-sensor lights to help scare off the black bears and grizzlies. Animals had started making their way down here, to a lower elevation, looking for food. It was a big problem this time of year, she’d been told, from mid-September all the way to December, thanks to global warming; and yet locals like Gina Miller, the Bible-thumping old bird who lived up at the top of the road, kept feeding bears from her back porch despite several warnings from the rangers. The only saving grace was that Miss Miller hadn’t had any children to carry on her stupidity.
Karen was way too comfortable and way too warm and cosy to get up and draw the bedroom shades – and she should, because if some animal were moving around out there, the backyard lights would continue to shine on, preventing her from getting a good night’s sleep. She thought about getting up as she stared out the window, at the trees lining her little stretch of backyard and beyond them, the seemingly never-ending stretch of forest packed with massive pines and other trees (the names of which she did not know, having lived in cities most of her life) that blocked out the sun on even the brightest of days, casting the hiking and, in the winter, snowmobile trails in perpetual gloom.
Her father said, You’re in danger.
No, Karen told her father. I played it nice and cool yesterday. He didn’t notice a thing. No one noticed a thing.
You don’t know that.
I do. I’m in the clear.
Then explain to me why you’re sitting in bed with not one but two loaded handguns.
You’re forgetting about the Mossberg in my bedroom closet and the other shotgun stored inside the closet by the front door. I’ve got handguns hidden in just about every room inside this house, Pops. I’ve been living this way for years.
Because you’re scared.
After what happened to us that night? You’re goddamn right I’m scared.
Then, as if to prove her point, her mind replayed the nightmare that had just woken her up – only it wasn’t a nightmare but a home movie, and it always began with her, at thirteen, sitting in the back seat of the family station wagon, with its plastic blue seats and fake panelling along the sides. They were parked in a dirt lot in Vallejo, California – the site of a campground. Her father, an avid outdoorsman, had decided to take them hiking and camping along the California coast. They were eating burgers and drinking milkshakes and sharing thick steak fries from a white bag splotched with grease when a car driving fast across the dark and quiet road suddenly pulled into the dirt lot and came to a sharp stop behind them – an unmarked cop car, she guessed, like the one she’d seen on her favourite TV show, ChiPs, because a searchlight exploded through the station wagon’s rear window. The piercingly bright, white light began to move and come closer, and she thought it was the portable kind the police used to check vehicles for alcohol and drugs, just like on TV. Her suspicion was confirmed moments later, when her father told everyone to relax, that it was just a cop checking to make sure they weren’t riffraff up to no good. It was the start of the long Fourth of July weekend.
Karen did relax, because she’d seen the driver’s licence and registration pinched between her father’s fingers. She turned to her two-year-old brother, Paul, with his gap-toothed grin, and was about to feed him a French fry when the shooting started.
The first shot hit her father – it was like a cherry pie had exploded inside the car – and, by the time the man who would later become known to the world as the Red Ryder turned his silenced 9-millimetre Luger on her mother, she had already draped her body over her brother’s, her shaking and red-slicked hand covered with her parents’ blood reaching for the car door.
Now she was sitting in a bed in another state thirty-eight years later. Was she scared? No. She was terrified. But on the subject of terror, what people generally forgot about was how it could sharpen the mind. How it cleared away the bullshit and focused your attention so you could zero in on the heart of the matter, which was this: no matter how scared she felt, no matter how much she wanted to leave (and there was certainly a part of her that did), she had to stay here and keep an eye on him until the evidence came back. Once it did, then she could decide what to do, and only then.
The outside lights clicked off, plunging the bedroom back into its gloom, and she thought she heard the snap of dry branches from the backyard – an animal moving through the woods, searching for food, maybe. It alarmed her for a reason she couldn’t explain, and for a moment she felt as though someone – or something – was sitting on her chest.
Make the call, her father said. At least do that.
No. Not until I have some more information. Besides, talking isn’t going to change anything, and you know it.
Do you want to end up like the others?
That wasn’t going to happen. She’d been living here for four months as Melissa French. Before coming to Fort Jefferson, Montana, she was Cindy Otto, living in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Before Cindy she was Sandra Jane Healey, and before Sandra she had been someone else – the list of names went on and on, every one of them with bland back stories. And, while all roads led back to Karen Lee Decker, that life – her first life, as she called it – had been successfully erased. Karen Lee Decker was, for all intents and purposes, dead and buried. She had hired trained professionals – erasers, as they were called in the businesses – who could turn you into a ghost as long as you followed the rules, the first of which was you were never to contact anyone from your former life, for any reason. No problem there. She had followed the rules, so no one, not even the FBI, could find her. She had made certain of it.
You can never be certain of anything, Karen. That’s why you –
I’m not asking for your advice, she told her father. But, since we’re on the subject of putting one’s life in danger, let’s not forget that you willingly signed over your life, not once but several times – and left your family, not once but several times – all to help the good ole US of A. I love you, but you don’t get a say in this one. Sorry.
It was then Karen noticed she had traded the comfort of her dad’s handgun for the comfort of the second and last item from her first life: the St Christopher medal that hung from a gold chain as thin as a piece of thread. The oval, gold-plated medal, not the chain, had belonged to her father, a gift from his parents for his first Communion. Lieutenant-Commander Samuel Decker, he of great religious faith, had carried it with him during his secret missions, believing it would protect him. And it had.
The backyard floodlights came to life again. This time she whipped back the covers, thinking about how no one could be protected forever, no matter how many saints or angels were on your side. Good ole Saint Chris was the perfect example. After carrying little baby Jesus on his back across a swollen river (and almost drowning in the process), Chris went off to spread the good word, and how was he rewarded for his devotion? Decapitation.
Karen had her fingers pinched on the shade, listening to the snap, crackle and pop of dry twigs and small branches, when she was struck with a new thought: Whatever animal is coming this way, please don’t let it be a baby cub. When a cub appeared, the mother wasn’t too far behind, and momma bears were extremely vicious and –
A girl stumbled out of the woods.
Karen slammed her eyes shut, sure she was hallucinating. Yes, that’s it, she told herself. It had happened before, a handful of times – one of the not-so-common but very real side effects of extreme exhaustion brought on by adrenal fatigue. Another common symptom was an elevated heart rate. She had that too; her heart was jackhammering furiously inside her chest.
But when she opened her eyes she saw the girl running across the backyard – and not just any girl but someone she recognized and knew well: Miriam, the daughter of her next-door neighbour. Karen had babysat for Miriam and the older daughter, Tricia, a number of times, and now the eight-year-old was in her backyard – in the middle of the night – wearing her knee-high green boots and lavender winter jacket with a Dora-the-Explorer patch on her breast pocket.
‘Let me in,’ Miriam screamed. She banged on the back door with her fists, her long, stringy blonde hair blowing in the wind and scattering across her pale, chubby face. ‘Let me in right now!’
Karen was turning away from the window, frightened, a greasy sweat breaking out across her skin, when she saw the deadbolt on her bedroom door slowly turn then stop with a soft click. Again she had a moment where she wondered if she was hallucinating, but that thought quickly vanished when she saw the doorknob turning.
Her father’s Colt .45 was still gripped in her hand. She brought it up as the door swung open and there he was, the Red Ryder, dressed in the exact same clothing she’d seen him in over thirty years ago: the dark-red hoodie covering his head, the chino slacks and dark military boots.
He didn’t come into the bedroom, just stood in the dark hallway, his head bent slightly forward and his face covered in the gloom. Miriam was still kicking the back door and screaming to be let in when Karen pulled the trigger and heard a dry click.