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“It was the drugs,” Nora said, disbelieving her own words even as she spoke them. “Just the drugs.”
Corrie lay back, eyes wild and confused. “Drugs? But… it was soreal.”
“Just the drugs,” Nora murmured again.
The mesa top was quiet now; the wind was at long last dyingaway; and the fire under the first tripod had burned down into a heap of smoldering coals. Nothing was left of Nash’s body—just a meat hook dangling from the cable.
Nora’s blood froze as she heard a sound from the edge of the mesa—a rough scrabbling in the loose rocks. Someone was laboring clumsily up the slope.
Shit. Could one of the cultists have survived the fall and was now making their way back up the mesa?
The gun—she needed the gun. Where was it? The only light now came from the glowing heap of coals. She rose to her feet and scrambled to the spot where Bromley had dropped it.
There it was.
She seized it. It was heavy as hell, a big stupid revolver. She held it up to the reddish light and could see two rounds left in its five chambers. Grasping it in both hands, she took a deep breath, braced herself, and raised it, aiming toward the sound of grunting and scrabble of footsteps just below the mesa rim. A head appeared, obscured in shadow.
“I’ve got a gun!” Nora cried out. “Don’t fucking move!”
Sudden silence.
“Put your hands in the air!” she shouted, her own voice strange in her ears. “Step forward into the light—slowly—so I can see you!”
Jesus, the head. Black against black, it was strangely oblong, with wings, inhuman. Nora’s heart accelerated again.
“Easy now,” came a familiar voice. “It’s just me, Homer. Sheriff Watts.”
Nora, astonished, squinted into the darkness. As he rose to his full height and came forward into the faint glow of the coals, she realized that what she’d taken for a head was really justWatts’s cowboy hat—dented and badly dinged. The man himself appeared dinged up, sooty and ragged, as if he’d been in a fire.
“Homer?” Nora lowered the gun. “What in the world—”
He turned slowly, his eyes wide, taking in Corrie and Skip stretched out on the ground, the tripods and the remains of bonfires, the masks and other detritus littering the top of the mesa. He holstered his gun. “Well, I was expecting to be the cavalry, come to rescue you all. But I can see you’ve done all right on your own.”
Now Nora heard another sound—the distant thudding of rotor blades.
Watts gestured toward it. “Here come the rest of them.” Even in the faint light, Nora could see Watts was struggling to contain his shock. Nevertheless, he spoke to them calmly. “Those choppers will have you out of here before you know it. We’ll get you back to Santa Fe and medical attention. You must have been through hell up here. But they’ll get you patched up, and it’ll all be good.” He went over and knelt by Corrie, who lay on the ground wide-eyed and silent, still in profound shock. He took her hand and murmured, “Corrie, you’re safe now. Everything will soon be normal again.”
They might be safe, Nora thought. But nothing would ever be quite normal. Never again.
64
Four months later
NORA HAD NEVERheard of Piscator, a restaurant recently opened in the Sandia Heights neighborhood north of Albuquerque. But when out of the blue she received Corrie’s invitation for dinner at the place, she’d accepted without hesitation. It looked upscale, and she figured Corrie probably wanted to thank her for all she’d done… or perhaps apologize for once again dragging her into unexpected, unwanted craziness.
In any case, Nora was eager to catch up. The usual law enforcement proceedings had followed their ordeal—debriefings, questioning, depositions—until the red tape finally died away of its own accord. The media did not make a huge fuss about the story—for the simple reason, she assumed, that its pieces were too widely scattered and bizarre to connect. In the end, all there had been were a few notices about suicides in the desert; some obituaries and stories about the sudden, tragic death of Edison Nash, wealthy young collector and archaeology enthusiast; and some passing mentions of the arrests of a few professors at the University of New Mexico. Nothing more had trickled out—and thank God for that.
She bundled Skip into the car and headed south on I-25. While Skip hadn’t technically been invited, Nora felt she could hardly leave him behind. His trauma had been greater than theirs, and he’d taken a lot longer to recover from it.
During his recovery, Nora had realized more than ever what her brother meant to her. He was the only family she had left. Lucas Tappan, due back from the East Coast next week, might in time end up as family—that remained to be seen—but these days she felt more protective of Skip than ever. In the two months he’d taken off from the Institute to convalesce, lying around their house, catching up on his reading or playing the ancient and irreplaceable Martin ukulele, she’d become aware of just how much he reminded her of their father—and also, in certain ways, of her deceased husband, Bill Smithback. But after a rocky few months, Skip had returned to his old wisecracking, quasi-irresponsible self, leading life on his own idiosyncratic terms.
Piscator was even nicer than she’d expected: a sleek, minimalist restaurant serving continental fare perched in the shadow of Sandia Peak on a small height of land above a golf course. Almost immediately upon entering she saw Homer Watts sitting at a large round table set before a picture window with a gorgeous vista.
Seeing them approach, Watts rose. The three embraced and spent a few minutes in small talk, laughing and smiling in the manner of old friends temporarily out of touch.
“I wonder where Corrie is?” Nora said, glancing at her watch.
“Not like her to be late, is it?” Watts replied. “Her idea of late is ten minutes early.”