Chapter 28
N ick crossed over the bridge, leaving Raven behind, the girl watching him with glassy eyes full of hope. She had given him the details on a rendezvous point if she was forced to slip out of the vicinity, but she warned him, again, about the looming threat of nightfall.
“Get back before dark,” she said, and hugged him, surprising him. “No matter what.”
“Promise,” he said.
A keen sense of urgency pushed him into a run as he traveled the narrow dirt lane. He pumped his arms and legs.
He kept seeing that glowing mark on Raven’s face, his brain trying to process how such a thing was possible, and finding no answers.
It is what it is , his mother liked to say. Sometimes you didn’t have to understand the how or even the why of a thing in order to take the appropriate action. You had only to accept it and conduct yourself accordingly. It is what it is.
The lane diverged into a couple of different paths, but Nick had a simple landmark to guide him in that area. Peering down one lane, he saw, at the periphery, the boxy shape and triangular roof of his grandfather’s smokehouse.
“Thank God,” he said. The sight of the beloved structure was as welcome a vision as dry land might have been to a sailor lost at sea. He ached to be anchored back in the world he knew and understood.
He raced down the path, ghosts of dirt pluming from his rapid footsteps. Arriving at the perimeter of the home place, he looked around.
His Range Rover was parked exactly where he had left it: underneath the wooden carport. He felt in his pocket, found he still had the key fob, too. The helpers had confiscated the rifle, but had left him with his wallet and keys.
He scrambled to the vehicle. As he rounded the back end, he mashed the fob, and the doors unlocked.
“Hold it right there, son,” a familiar voice said.
Nick turned around to the house.
Grandpa Lee stood on the veranda.
He aimed a shotgun at Nick.