Chapter Fourteen
Chris woke up with a pounding head, the pain worse than any tension headache or hangover she had ever experienced. She forced open her eyes and was met with a wave of nausea, and she broke into a cold sweat. “Drink this. It will help.” A gentle, cool hand briefly rested on her forehead, and the hand’s owner, a dark-haired girl, helped Chris sit up against some rough surface. She pressed a mug into Chris’s hands. “Don’t worry. It’s just ginger tea. It will help, I promise.”
Chris sipped the drink, which indeed tasted of ginger and smelled of lemons and honey. She realized suddenly how parched she was and ended up draining the cup. The girl smiled and took the cup from her. “That’s good. You should feel better soon.”
The only light in the dim space was from an old-fashioned camping lantern, which gave off an erratic yellow glow and the faint odor of gas. Chris shoved herself up into a sitting position, fighting a new wave of dizziness and nausea. She had been lying—and was now sitting—on what appeared to be an old sleeping bag laid out on the floor of a chamber hewed out of rock. The entrance wasn’t visible from where she sat, but a draft of fresh air to her left probably came from that opening. “Where am I?” she asked.
“We’re in a cave, I think. Or maybe something to do with one of the mines around here.” The girl set the empty cup aside and picked up a basin filled with water. “Let me look at the back of your head. I want to make sure the bleeding has stopped.”
Most of her fogginess had cleared, and the memory of what had happened on the trail returned, sharp and enraging. Chris leaned away from the girl. “Who are you? Why am I here?”
“My name is Serena.” The girl’s expression was guarded. Unsmiling. Nevertheless, she was strikingly beautiful. She had the kind of arresting beauty that might grace magazine covers or classical paintings. “And we are both here because the Exalted wills it.”
Of course. Chris hadn’t really had to ask the question. The Exalted was the only person who would want to kidnap her. “You’re a member of the Vine,” she clarified.
Serena dipped a cloth into the water and wrung it out. “I was born into the Vine.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m ten.”
“Who else is here?” Chris looked around the cave. Anything more than a few feet from the lantern’s flame was pitch black, but it didn’t feel as if anyone else was nearby.
“There is a guard outside the entrance. Probably several guards. Please, let me look at your injury.”
Chris hesitated, then turned her back to the girl. Serena was so slight that even in her injured state, Chris felt sure she could defend herself against the child if necessary.
“I’m going to clean away some of the dried blood in your hair,” Serena said.
Chris winced as the cool water—or maybe the soap in it—stung the gash on her head. “That was a nasty fall you took,” Serena said as she dabbed at the wound. “You must have hit a big rock.”
“I didn’t fall,” Chris said. “Someone hit me, though maybe they used a rock.”
“Who would do that?” Serena asked.
Chris didn’t answer. How could she explain anything to this child?
Heavy bootheels striking rock echoed around them. Serena’s hand stilled, and Chris turned to see Jedediah. The lantern’s flickering flame cast macabre shadows over his face, deepening every crag and crevice, turning his eyes to dark smudges and highlighting his large yellowing teeth. “Good, you’re awake,” he said.
“She said she didn’t fall,” Serena said. “Someone hit her in the head.”
Jedediah didn’t look at the girl. “She’s confused. She fell.”
“I didn’t fall until someone hit me.” Chris wanted to stand up to face him, but she was afraid if she did so, she might faint. She had to settle for glaring up at him. “You can’t keep me here. People will be looking for me.”
“They won’t find you.”
“Where am I?” She didn’t remember any caves in the area around Guthrie Mill, but there were plenty of old mines.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re not going to stay here long. We’re moving you to a new hiding place right away. By tomorrow you’ll be halfway across the country.” He turned to Serena. “Get her dressed in those clothes I left. And don’t forget the wig.”
He left, his footsteps echoing behind him. Serena moved to Chris’s side, a bundle of fabric in one hand, a curly blond wig in the other. “You need to put these on,” she said. “I can help you if you’re still feeling dizzy.”
Chris eyed the long-sleeved dress, with its high neckline and long skirt, and the blond wig. “Why do I have to wear those things?” she asked, even though she thought she knew the answer. Once she put on that outfit, no one would be able to see her tattoos or blue hair—the very things anyone searching for her would be looking for.
“I don’t know.” Serena thrust them at her again. “The Exalted wills it.”
This was the reasoning given for any number of actions within the Vine, from a designated fasting day to a dictate of what clothing people would wear, to the decision to move to a new location. Chris eyed the dress—a particularly drab shade of faded gray. “I won’t wear any of that,” she said.
Serena bit her lower lip. “If you don’t put them on, they’ll punish you,” she said.
“I’m not afraid of their punishment.” Not entirely true, but right now she was too angry to pay much attention to the fear lurking at the back of her throat.
“They’ll punish me too.” The words came out as a whisper, but they stung like a scream. The child had been hurt before.
“Where are your parents?” Chris asked.
“My parents have gone on to glory,” she answered, blurting the statement like a child reciting the multiplication tables.
The familiar phrase sent another chill through Chris. “Do you mean they’re dead?” she asked. “Both of them?”
Serena nodded. “Please put the clothing on,” she said.
“All right.”
Serena—who was strong despite her slight frame—helped Chris stand. “Do you need help undressing?” she asked.
“I’ll just put this on over my old clothes.” Before the girl could protest, Chris slipped the dress over her head. Burlap sacks had more shape than this piece of clothing, Chris decided. “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked.
Serena fussed with the tie at the back of the dress. Chris thought she wasn’t going to answer, but after a moment she spoke very softly. “I wasn’t supposed to hear, but Jedediah said something earlier about a helicopter flying in to take you and the Exalted to a safe place.”
“A helicopter?”
“Yes. The Exalted flies in one sometimes.”
This was certainly a step up from Edmund Harrison’s mode of transportation back when Chris and her mother were part of his followers. Then again, he had been collecting money from his acolytes for a long time. Enough, apparently, to pay for a private helicopter. If he took Chris away in that, her friends would have a very difficult time locating her.
Before she could prod the girl for more details, Jedediah returned with three other men. “We need to go now.” He took Chris’s arm. One of the other three took hold of Serena. “Don’t try to fight,” Jedediah said. “If you do, we’ll hurt the girl.”
The look in his eyes made her believe he would enjoy doing so. She bowed her head and meekly went with him. But inside, she was seething, her mind furiously searching for some way out of the mess.
She was startled to find it was almost dark out, the sun only a lavender afterglow above the mountains, the air cool despite her layers of clothing. It would be full dark soon, an inky blackness without the benefit of light from buildings or cars or streetlights. The kind of darkness in which a person could step off a cliff and never know it until they were falling.
The guard’s headlamps lit the way up the trail. The group climbed higher, up into the mountains. Were they taking her to a place where the helicopter could land and pick her up? It seemed very late in the day for that. If walking in the mountains after dark was dangerous, flying then presented a host of other hazards. The rescue helicopters they sometimes used needed daylight for their maneuvers.
They stopped before what was clearly a mine entrance, complete with a massive iron gate designed to keep out treasure hunters who might end up falling down a shaft or crushed by collapsing rock or drowned in flooded tunnels. Jedediah pulled open the gate and shoved hard at Chris’s back so that she stumbled forward. Serena was pushed in after her, and the gate clanged shut. Jedediah fitted a heavy chain and a brass lock to the entrance. “You can’t break the lock,” he said. “Don’t waste time trying. And we won’t be far away.”
They left, and Serena began to sob. Chris put her arms around the girl and tried to comfort her even as she fought her own fear. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “I have a lot of friends looking for me.”
“Are the police your friends?” Serena asked.
“Yes.” At least, Chris was sure law enforcement would be part of the search. The sheriff and the deputies she knew were friendly and good at their job, even if she wasn’t close to them. She wasn’t really close to anyone other than her mother.
And Rand. She was beginning to feel close to him. Surely he would be looking for her.
“I saw two men in uniform with guns,” Serena said. “I came to the camp where Jedediah had sent a few of us. I wanted to get water for you, and the ginger tea. The two uniformed men and a third man with them saw me. That made the others angry at me. They told me it wasn’t smart of me to let the lawmen see me.”
“You are smart,” Chris said. “I had only known you a few minutes before I figured that out. And it’s good that the officers saw you.” And the third man—had that been Rand? “That means they were close. They’ll keep looking for us.”
“How will they find us now that we’ve moved?”
They had probably been moved in order to get farther away from the searchers. “Search and rescue has a dog that can follow people’s scents and find them,” Chris said. She had marveled at how adept fellow SAR volunteer Anna Trent’s standard poodle, Jacquie, was at locating lost and missing people.
“A dog?” Serena sounded skeptical.
“It doesn’t matter how they find us,” Chris said. “I know they won’t give up until they do.” And Chris wouldn’t give up either. She would find a way to fight back. She would follow her mother’s example and do whatever it took to break free of the Vine once again.
D ESPITE R AND ’ S DETERMINATION to search for Chris all night if necessary, he was sent home as darkness fell. Danny had cornered him as he prepared to set out with a new group of volunteers who planned to focus around the area where he and Travis and Dwight had interviewed the campers. “Go home,” Danny said. “You’re dead on your feet, and you’re going to end up hurt and we’ll have to rescue you too.” Before Rand could protest, he added, “I haven’t announced it yet, but we’re pulling in all the searchers. It’s not safe to have people up on the mountains after dark. Try to get some rest, and we’ll start up in the morning.”
Rand wanted to protest that he could keep going. He’d be careful, stick to known trails and use his headlamp. But he saw the wisdom in Danny’s words. The chances of finding Chris in the dark were minuscule, and the odds of himself or someone with him getting hurt increased with the loss of daylight.
When he unlocked his door, he was greeted by Harley, who howled and sniffed him all over, then gave him what seemed to Rand a reproachful look. “I’m sorry, but she’s not with me,” he said, rubbing the dog’s ears. “I promise we’re going to find her soon.” He hoped that was a promise he could keep.
He fed the dog and forced himself to eat a ham sandwich. He should take a shower and go to bed, but he was too agitated. He riffled through his collection of hiking maps and found one for the area around Guthrie Mill and spread it on the table. While Harley watched from his dog bed in the corner, Rand studied the map. He circled the spot where he thought the campers he had visited today had been with a yellow highlighter, then chose a blue marker to inscribe a circle around this spot. At least half the circle was occupied by a rocky couloir falling away from a 13,000-foot peak that was unnamed on the map. Hard to get to for searchers, but also for anyone trying to hide Chris.
That left the rest of the area encompassed by the circle—a network of abandoned mines, lesser peaks and high mountain meadows. Chris could be anywhere in this area. There were no roads up there, so the only way to get her away from the trail near the mill where they had taken her was to walk. And they would be able to walk only so far in the approximately six hours since they had kidnapped her. Darkness would halt their progress, just as it had the progress of searchers. Or at least, it would slow them down, if they were foolish enough to try to traverse the terrain by starlight. So the odds were high that she was still in the area within that blue circle.
Harley followed Rand into his bedroom, where he filled his pack with extra clothing and first aid supplies. Then the two of them went into the kitchen, where Rand packed food and water. He glanced at the dog, then stuck in packets of canine food and biscuits. Harley wasn’t a trained tracker, but he was devoted to Chris. Rand counted on the dog to home in on any scent of her.
Lastly, he returned to the bedroom and unlocked the safe where he kept the sidearm he had owned since his days in the service. He had no doubt the members of the Vine were armed, and he wanted to be prepared.
Only then did he take a shower and go to bed. He set his alarm for an hour before sunrise. At first light, he and Harley would be back at the spot where he had seen the girl, Serena, emerging from the woods. The girl was part of the Vine. Following her should lead him to the group and—he hoped—to Chris.
C HRIS COULDN ’ T SLEEP . Her head pounded and her stomach churned. Everywhere she tried to sit or lie was uncomfortable. Her stomach growled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. And what about the girl? “Are they not going to feed us?” she asked.
“I guess not.” Serena sat nearby, close enough that Chris could hear her breathing. “The Exalted says fasting is good for purifying one’s thoughts.”
It was another one of those things members of the Vine said, parroting their leader. Chris had said those things, too, when she was a child, trying to please the adults around her and not stand out from the group. She couldn’t say if she had actually believed those things, having become part of the group when she was five. But Serena had been taught these lessons since birth. That was the only reality she knew—a frightening thought itself.
“Come sit beside me,” she said, and patted the ground next to her.
Serena slid over, and Chris put an arm around her. “I lived with the Vine when I was your age,” she said. “My father died. They said it was from eating poisonous mushrooms. After that, my mother decided she and I should leave the group.”
She waited for Serena to express the usual horror that anyone would leave the Exalted and his teachings. How could someone give up the chance for new life on a higher plane? How could they sacrifice the opportunity for true enlightenment and rejoin an evil and dangerous world?
“I never knew anyone who left,” Serena said. She cuddled closer to Chris’s side. “I mean, I’ve heard people whisper about ones who left, but they were just...gone. No one ever heard from them again.”
“I never knew anyone who left either,” Chris admitted. She knew there were others who had escaped, and her mother remembered some of the names. But they never met any former members out in the “real” world. Had some of them, like her father, been eliminated at the Exalted’s orders? Was it possible she and her mother were the only ones who got away, and that was part of the reason for the Exalted’s dogged pursuit? “What happened to your parents?” she asked.
“Something was wrong with the heater in our trailer, and they went to sleep and never woke up,” Serena said.
“Do you mean carbon monoxide poisoning?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Where were you when this happened?”
“I was spending the night with Helen. I was eight, and it was supposed to be a special treat.”
So Helen was still with the group. “Is Helen your friend?” she asked.
“More of a teacher, I guess.”
“Had you spent the night with Helen before?” Chris asked.
“No. This was the first time. We made pizza and played Chinese checkers.”
A treat, or a means of getting the little girl out of the way while her parents were gotten rid of? “Where do you live now?”
“With Helen. We have our own trailer, next to the Exalted. I have my own room. Sometimes he comes to visit me. When I’m older, I’m going to marry him. But you’re going to marry him first.”
A shudder went through Chris. The life Serena was living would have been Chris’s life if she and her mother had stayed with the Vine. Chris squeezed the girl’s shoulders. She was furious but trying not to show it. Someone had to stop this man, who preyed on innocent children in the name of religion. “I’m not going to marry the Exalted,” she said. “I’m going to get away.”
“You can’t do that. You’ll suffer for all eternity.”
“Not as much as I’d suffer if I married the Exalted. I’m going to get away.”
Serena didn’t say anything for so long that Chris thought the child might have fallen asleep. Then she stretched up, her mouth very close to Chris’s ear. “When you go, will you take me with you?” she whispered.