Just the two of us now, he thought. It's what we've both been waiting for, isn't it Allander?

57.

A L L A N D E R gazed at the clouds rolling across the full moon and wondered when the rain would come. Now that he had the ground beneath his feet, he felt himself drawn inexorably toward the Tower. In a sense, he was going home, and that was what everything had been about.

The Tower was not visible from any point within the forest, but Allander sensed its location as if aligned by an internal compa.s.s. He broke through the last line of trees and walked through the entrance to Maingate. Repairs were still underway, so the grounds were deserted, with only one guard out on the Tower. And one prisoner.

It had been a mere ten days since his escape, though it seemed like years. No one would be on guard against Allander. They were only concerned with people trying to break out of prison; they would never think anyone would be so insane as to break in.

Earlier in the day, Allander had left a bag of supplies hidden at the base of the small guard tower on Maingate's grounds. He removed a dent puller and channel-lock pliers from the bag, and scaled the short ladder. The small window to the door was double-barred. Glancing out across Maingate and the ocean, he figured that the Tower was over a hundred yards away.

Inserting the screw end of the dent puller into the doork.n.o.b lock, Allander carefully tightened the screw. Then, with a single jerking motion, he pulled the metal slide toward the handle. It gave, and he removed the entire lock a.s.sembly from the k.n.o.b.

He clenched the channel pliers on the dead bolt, twisting it with all his might until he felt the retaining bolts break. Then he removed a pick from his back pocket and, using a thick hairpin for a torsion bar, jiggled the dead bolt open. He whistled "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho" as he worked.

The lock on the weapons cabinet was easy, and he soon had the Win Mag .300 in his hands. It was a substantial weapon, laying heavy against his shoulder. He stepped out onto the deck, resting the gun on the railing. It was a bolt gun, holding four rounds in the mag but only one in the chamber.

He saw the black dot of the guard patrolling out on the Tower and raised the gun, leveling the scope's crosshairs on the back of his head. He squeezed the trigger slowly until he felt the gun jerk back against his shoulder. The bullet must have kicked wide because the guard never broke step. Allander ducked as the guard swept around the far edge of the circle and headed back, facing the mainland.

Allander watched him through the scope, pausing to manually rec.o.c.k the gun. The wind gusted strongly, whipping his cheeks, and he realized that he hadn't adjusted enough to take it into account. He peeked through the scope again, finding the back of the guard's head. Taking a deep breath and aiming a touch to the left to compensate for the wind, he fired.

The guard's arms flared and he was down and out of sight instantly. Allander smiled and lowered the gun to the deck. He continued whistling as he descended the ladder, looped the weighty bag over his shoulder, and headed out to the dock.

Jade ran off the path and sprinted through the rough terrain, cutting through the forest in the direction of Maingate. An incredible pounding started in his head as he ran along the top of a small ridge in the forest, carefully avoiding the forty-foot drop that sloped dangerously to a creek.

He felt as if he was going into the twelfth round of a boxing match. The tender burn across his face, the bruise on his cheek from Travers's blow, and the raised b.u.mp on his head took his attention in turns, each greater pain momentarily distracting him from the others.

But he recognized his headache and knew it could not be blamed on recent injuries. The systematic thudding through his temples welled from something not entirely physical. He gritted his teeth and kept running, trying to ignore the needles of pain that his footsteps sent up the back of his neck. And as he ran, the furious pumping of his legs brought him back again to the terrible day of his frenzied childhood run.

Moving swiftly through the foxtails and ignoring the blood streaming down his left cheek, the boy heard his name cried again: Jade. It was a doleful, wavering sound, and he ran more quickly, until his breath burned in his throat.

The four boys had surrounded his brother in the clearing by Mr. Hollow, and one had already knocked him down. They tore into him, kicking him about the face, the head, the arms.

Eenie meenie minie moe There was no sign of Allander and Jade moved faster, his run edged with panic as his feet expertly gripped the uneven ground, propelling him forward. He finally caught sight of a broken sapling just on the brink of the ridge and he ran past it, barely glancing down.

Saliva drooled from his brother's chin as he struggled to his feet.

Catch a r.e.t.a.r.d by the toe One hand went to the straw by Mr. Hollow's cuff (a hand, I swear he thought it was a hand) and the other reached out toward the sun setting atop the rolling hills, showering the foxtails with orange. His mouth was awash with blood and spit and he opened it and screamed a word, one word, his last word: Jade-a sound that would echo in Jade's memory for years.

Make him holler blow by blow A fist closed the mouth as it yelled and Jade burst into the clearing as his brother toppled backward, his hands moving dumbly in the air, one holding tightly to a few loose strands of straw. He saw the panic in his brother's eyes as he reeled backward and heard the crack as his head struck one of the jagged stones framing the site, and heard a grunt-a low grunt, like an animal's-and then that was all, and he knew he had lost him. Then he was a whirlwind of knees and fists and elbows and he had lost his hat on the ground and he didn't even know what was moving his body, but when he reached his brother there were four boys lying around him coughing blood and whimpering.

Jade ducked and dodged reflexively, his eyes straining in the faint light to spot broken branches and trampled bushes. He rounded a tree at full speed and a jagged limb caught him across the left cheek, slicing along the line of his scar. Once again, he felt the hot blood oozing down his cheek.

His focus on the path ahead was so intense that the cut barely registered. He came to a clearing and halted, unsure in which direction to continue. In the dim glow, he spotted a broken branch, and he sprinted past it, back on course.

The boys were clutching their legs and stomachs, and tears streamed down their bruised faces. The boy who was Jade knelt down in the clearing and looked into the blank eyes of his brother. He felt the hole across the back of his head when he put his hand there to hold him against his chest, and as he sat with his dead brother under the brilliant sun, he felt the blood spreading stickily through his clothes and across his stomach.

Eenie meenie minie moe.

Jade pounded through the brush. He felt exhausted, but also somehow purged. It had finally come flooding through him, and he realized for the first time that his brother's panicked cries had long ago blended with the cries of other victims. Though Jade couldn't save them all, he had spent his life making sure that they didn't die on his shift, on his time.

Fear had propelled him, whipping him: What if you're not there, Jade? What if you can't stop another life from slipping away? He had to oversee all things dark and dreadful-he had to reign over it all. Fear was his bedmate and his lover. Fear was his anger and his hatred. Fear was the burden he had carried ever since childhood, just as it was Allander's.

He felt as if he was stirring from sleep, lost in the aftermath of a dream. A few lingering cries still rang in his ears. He heard them behind him now, and he picked up his pace, feeling adrenaline pumping again and thinking of Claude Rivers and the guard ahead. He was sprinting so fast he couldn't really see where he was going.

Bursting into a small clearing, Jade whirled around, searching for signs of Allander's path, desperately trying to remember in which direction the Tower waited. It was silent here except for the noise of his own labored breathing.

He sensed that the ridge he was running was parallel to the Maingate entrance. He looked at the trees ahead, then turned and faced down the slope. From his angle, it looked almost impossibly steep. The creek running below wasn't moving very fast, but it looked rocky. He glanced back up along the ridge, and suddenly realized he had to change direction.

"The quickest distance," he said in a low, growling voice as he stepped off the ridge.

He tried to keep his feet ahead of his torso as the slope carried his body to a full sprint, but about halfway down, his shoulders pa.s.sed his center of gravity and he tumbled over, hurtling out of control down to the river below. The thick weeds that ran along the creek slowed his fall before he crashed into the icy water, but since he couldn't see it coming, he gasped at the shock. He pulled himself up, feeling heavy in his wet clothes, and sloshed through the creek to the other side. The pain of a thousand different bruises stung him, but as far as he could tell, he hadn't sustained a serious injury. It took him a few steps before he could feel his legs under him again, and then he ran into the forest, leaving the creek and the ridge behind.

Twenty feet later, he broke through the trees, and the steel gates of Maingate lay open before him. He saw a shadow flash, deep within the prison. He had been right-after all the struggle, Allander had returned to his starting point.

Jade sprinted through the gates.

Allander threw the bag of supplies in the speedboat, untied the rope mooring it to the dock, and revved the motor, edging the boat out into the turbulent water. As he pulled away, the rope slid from the dock to the water, where it trailed the boat like a slippery eel.

Loud, hammering footsteps sounded on the dock, and as Allander turned to look, he saw a shadowed figure take flight after the boat. He screamed and jerked the throttle all the way down.

A sudden peace washed over Jade as he broke the water's surface. He had aimed his jump at the retreating rope, so he was not surprised to feel its coa.r.s.e fibers against his palm. It jerked suddenly away and slid through his hand, tearing the skin along his palm. Despite the pain, Jade squeezed down tight on the rope. His body lurched forward, and he was off in a spray of bubbles.

Bound together, even through the jagged waters of the inlet, Allander and Jade headed for the Tower.

58.

A S he steered the boat, Allander noticed the drag of Jade's weight, and he could see a figure outlined beneath the surface of the water. He thought of the inevitable pain spreading through Jade's arms, tightening his shoulders and tensing his stomach. And the burn, Allander thought. The burn in his lungs must be divine.

As the boat approached the base of the Tower, Allander steered a tight semicircle. Jade, who had been struggling to get his feet in front of his body, hoping to pull himself into a skiing position, felt his feet sinking as the sudden turn yanked his body forward. His torso half-broke the surface as he was flung into a new trajectory. Although the water slowed him, he was almost airborne as he saw the stone wall of the Tower rushing directly at him.

Bringing his knees to his chest, Jade struck the wall sideways, his body in the fetal position. A loud crunch in his hip and he knew the bone was shattered. He slid down the wall into the water's embrace.

Allander brought the boat forward, crashing hard into the side of the steel ladder that crept up the side of the Tower. It was low tide, so the lowest rung was above water. Straining, he pulled the bag up across his shoulders and seized the ladder's side rail. Laughing now with excitement at being so near his goal, he began the steady climb up. The strap from the bag dug into his shoulder, but he was too wired to pay attention to the pain. As he climbed, he stared up at the full moon, his face splitting in a grin.

Below him, a hand reached out of the water and gripped the bottom rung. Climbing hand over hand, Jade pulled his body from the sea. He was unable to use his legs, and they dangled uselessly below him. The rope burn on his palm stung horrifically, first with the salt.w.a.ter and now with the pressure of his own weight. The ladder shifted under him, loose on the bolts from the speedboat collision. If he slipped, he knew he'd never be able to keep himself afloat in the water.

When Allander reached the top, he turned and looked back, noticing Jade struggling after him. In the dim light of the moon, their eyes locked for a moment. Allander smiled, then blew a kiss. He drew himself up from his crouch, his head momentarily framed by the full moon. Intoxicated by his sense of complete power, Allander threw back his head and laughed. Then he doubled over, shaking with childish laughter.

He noticed that the speedboat was drifting out to sea a little bit. He'd have to hurry through his plan before it floated farther away. Hearing a sc.r.a.ping noise, he turned and saw the guard lying near the Hole, gasping, his hands cupped around his throat. The bullet had nicked the side of his neck-a deep wound, but not lethal. The man's whole body heaved as he drew air, his limbs jerking almost mechanically. His hands were speckled with blood to the wrists, and his submachine gun lay on the ground a few feet from him.

Allander stormed over and kicked the gun down the Hole, then drew Jade's Glock and pressed the muzzle to the top of the guard's head. His eyes looked up at Allander, wild with terror, but he couldn't speak or even move away from the gun. He wheezed and sputtered, trying to hold his blood in his throat.

"Well, that wouldn't be very sporting, would it?" Allander said. He lifted the gun from the guard's head. "I've got better plans for you."

He walked to the edge of the Hole and peered down. "And for you, you fat wretch." He could see Claude's hands around the bars of Unit 11A, his face a fleshy white orb staring up at him. "You didn't do it, not as I'm going to. What's the fun of fornicating with a corpse? It's about cognizance-it's about looking into the eyes of the one who conceived you, holding sway over her, over life itself. It's in her knowing, you unworthy simian, not just the deed." The anger in his voice surprised him. "It's in the knowledge of what you're doing!"

He ran to the edge of the Tower to check on Jade again. He was still barely above the water's surface, hanging on and gasping for breath. Allander had time. He had plenty of time.

He walked over to a large diesel drum, hauling the heavy supply bag; he had watched them haul the drum up earlier in the week to refuel the water pump. He removed the large plug and noticed that the drum was almost empty. Pulling a tube from his bag, he siphoned some diesel fuel from the water-pump tank, sucking on the end of the tube to start the flow and spitting out a mouthful of the bitter liquid. After a certain amount of diesel fuel had poured into the drum, he yanked the tube out, letting the fuel wash over the top of the Tower. Then he removed three bags of fertilizer from his bag, raking them open with a knife. He dumped them into the drum, one after another, aiming the spill through the large plug hole.

Of course, he wasn't able to measure precisely, but he knew ANFO mixture well enough-7 percent fuel oil to 93 percent ammonium nitrate, found in common fertilizer.

Still clinging to the ladder, Jade shook his head, attempting to clear it. The water and the Tower were spinning crazily around him, and he tightened his hands around the rails, gathering the courage to raise his head. The ladder seemed to stretch up forever. He bit down on his lip and began the climb, the ladder, loose from being struck by the speedboat, shaking with his movements. He crawled willfully, steadily, pulling his straining hands closer to Allander's throat.

For the first time, he noticed how much he really hurt. He counted his injuries with each rung. The gun to my head, the cut in my cheek, the fall down the slope, the Tower up my a.s.s. He felt for his pistol, but it was gone. He was not surprised.

Aware of the need to act quickly, Allander sprinted over to check on Jade once more. He was down about forty rungs, moving slowly, but moving nonetheless. Allander knocked the drum on its side and rolled it a few times, mixing the diesel and ammonium nitrate as best he could.

He'd taken a stick of dynamite from the site at Maingate because the only blasting caps he could find were eights, which weren't too reliable when used alone with an ANFO mixture. The his and hers cell phones he'd stolen were lying side by side in the bottom of the bag, and he picked them up, sliding one of them into his pocket. The back panel was already removed from the other one, and he had pulled out and stripped the two wires that ran to the ringer. He intertwined each one now with a wire from the blasting cap, then wound the phone, the primer, and the dynamite in electrical tape and dropped the whole thing into the drum. It landed on the ANFO mixture with a wet thud. He hammered the large metal plug back into the drum, then rolled it over to the edge of the Hole.

He crouched over the choking guard, gently peeling back the guard's blood-drenched jacket and removing the elevator control from his inner pocket.

With a click of the b.u.t.ton, he lowered the elevator platform to roof level, then pushed the big drum onto it. He walked back and kicked the guard once in the side as hard as he could. The guard gasped as he rolled onto the platform, his head clanging against the drum.

Jade still inched up the ladder, rung by rung, ignoring the pain through his cramped arms. He had to make it. He had to get his hands on Allander, but he was still a good twenty yards away.

Allander pushed the red b.u.t.ton and the platform started to descend into the Hole. They'd done an admirable job of repairing the elevator, he thought with a snicker.

Claude watched the bomb and the wheezing guard descend past him, his expression unchanged. He scratched himself, then looked up at Allander with unfrightened interest. The guard's rasps echoed inside the Tower, bouncing off the hard stone walls.

The platform clicked to a halt when it hit Level One. Now it was all set. Once he was a safe distance away, Allander would call in with the cell phone in his pocket, and the current would trip the primer, which would trip the dynamite. With the diesel drum containing the initial explosion, the whole thing would go. The shock wave should blast the walls right off the Tower. And Claude and the guard along with them.

A squeal rose in his throat, and he ran back to the edge, looking down at Jade.

"The dance ends here, Marlow!" he shouted. "We bring this show to a close upon the same stage on which it began." He screamed his words to be heard over the crash of the waves. "There are three things I have on you right now, Marlow," he yelled. "Just three."

Jade looked up at him, but couldn't muster the strength to speak.

"A bomb . . . a detonator"-Allander held his arms up to the moon, the cell phone glinting in his hand-"and your gun." He pulled out the Glock and waved it in the air.

Jade clenched his eyes until he saw white dots dancing across the darkness. Of course. Blasting caps and dynamite to blow out the rock from the cranes back at Maingate. Fuel from the water pump. The fertilizer scattered by the stairs back at the house. A Timothy McVeigh special. How could he have missed it?

They had practically given Allander all the pieces of the bomb right here. Right at the prison.

He glanced down and saw the speedboat knocking against the base of the Tower. Allander could dive in, swim to the boat, and dial in to detonate once he was a safe distance away. And Jade was too weak to do anything but watch him.

Allander stepped from the parapet to the top rung of the ladder, fanning his arms to balance himself. "I am Allander Atlasia!" he yelled. He lowered the pistol so it was pointing at Jade's forehead, taking a long, last look into Jade's eyes. "Hope you said your prayers."

A wave of terror flooded Jade's body for the first time since he had begun the case. Allander was going to shoot Jade and escape. He'd be free, leaving nothing behind but a watery blast. Jade looked up into the bore of the pistol, tightening his hands around the steel railings until his biceps felt as if they were going to burst. Shoving with his legs and arms, he jerked back on the loose ladder with all his might. It shifted, rolling under Allander's feet.

Allander screamed, his arms flailing madly. The pistol fired once up into the air, kicking from his grasp and falling away. He tottered on the rung, trying desperately to throw his weight back toward the Tower. When he'd resigned himself to the fall, a calm washed over him. He tapped the bulge of the cell phone in his pocket, smiled, and leaned forward in a dive.

Jade roared as the body flew toward him, Allander's eyes open, a serene smile curling his lips. Jade could tell he would pa.s.s inches out of his reach from the ladder and would land in the water mere yards from the boat.

Seeing Allander escape was too much agony for Jade to bear, and before he was aware of what he was doing, he had wedged his leg against the stone behind a steel rung and had pushed his torso away from the Tower.

Allander's eyes went wild with fear as he saw the impossibly outstretched arms and clutching fingers shoot at him as he neared. He let out a high-pitched scream as Jade caught him, his fingers grasping Allander's shirt and pants. Jade's torso was extended horizontally from the Tower wall, his leg the only thing keeping him from dropping to death by water below.

Jade held Allander weightlessly for a moment, savoring the feel of the fabric between his fingers. Then, as the force of Allander's fall pulled them downward, Jade tightened his leg with all his might and rotated both their bodies around the point of his wedged knee. Bellowing, he let Allander's momentum carry him down and into the stone wall.

Allander's face met the stone of the Tower and came apart instantly, his nose driven back through its hole, his cheekbones shattering, his forehead giving way to the cracking lines of his skull.

The moment Allander's face struck the Tower, Jade's leg snapped. He heard it before he felt it, heard it even over the dull thud of Allander's head imploding, and the pain was unlike anything he had ever felt. He released his grip on Allander's body and it drifted away from him, down to the ocean.

For a moment, the ocean buoyed Allander on its breast, his shirt flapping in the wind like a wounded bird. A pool of crimson flowered from his head. Then, with excruciating slowness, the body sank from view until, from his upside-down perch near the top of the Tower, Jade could no longer discern where its outline ended and the ocean began. Dangling from one grotesquely bent limb, he watched even the body's wake disappear into the swells.

He was suddenly struck with an overwhelming exhaustion that left him too weak to consider moving. He prayed that his leg would not give way entirely. Every time his body swayed in the wet wind, a pain beyond description tightened its grasp on his insides.

He hung from one thin steel rung for over ten minutes before, through the thick haze clouding his mind, he heard the chopping approach of a helicopter.

59.

D A R B Y woke up alone in bed for one of the first times in thirty-eight years. She instinctively turned to her left to extend her arm across Thomas's chest before she remembered he wasn't there.

She rose from her bed with the routinized motions of a woman living alone, and pulled on a robe. She went to the kitchen, put coffee on, and called the hospital, just as she had done every day this week.

"Good morning, love. How are you feeling?"

Thomas's voice was not quite right. It would never be right again, never the voice that had wooed her and carried her in sickness and in health. But that seemed a small price to pay to have her husband alive, so she buried her sorrow beneath her grat.i.tude.

His larynx had been severely injured, and it had taken a delicate surgery to get him to the point where he could speak at all. But he had remained optimistic all the way through, rea.s.suring her with his eyes when he couldn't with his words.

"Oh, great. Or should I say, stable?" Thomas laughed a dry, croaking laugh. "Just three more weeks in, love."

Darby smiled. "And one more operation."

Thomas tried to laugh, but it came out a dull wheeze. "Oh yeah. Nose job, right?"

Darby laughed softly and tears moistened her eyes. "I'm leaving in five."