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trucks out on the highway just north of town. She sent
her feelers out, but got nothing back but vibrations
and the sound of birds. Perhaps she picked up a radio
signal or two, but nothing she could understand.
Finally, when she was sure that the coast was clear
and the daylight was just coming up, she crawled out
of the hole, and managed to stand up, slightly
stooped from the aches of sleeping in such an
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uncomfortable position. She loped out to the trees,
and there, beneath several thin eucalyptus branches,
lay the man.
He was beautiful, not like her at all. He was the
way people were supposed to be, and she would've
begun crying, except she was afraid she might be
heard. She was self-conscious of the vestiges of her
vocal cords, the windy, raspy sound they produced,
and although her feelers couldn't detect anybody,
who knew? Perhaps someone was waiting nearby just
for such a sound. Who knew what they would do to
her if they had her now? Who knew where they would
sell her? How they would cut into her? She wept the
tears of decades of the small shiny knives they had
used on her, the hours of lying on an operating table,
strapped down because they offered no anesthesia, of
screaming so much that finally they had operated on
her neck to keep her quiet as if by not screaming
there was also no pain; how she had to train herself to
stare up at his face, his face, and hypnotize herself
into believing that she was somewhere else, some-
place where it didn't hurt, where he wasn't doing
those things to her, he wasn't making her into Poppy
Freek.
She wiped her muddy fingers across her eyes. As
the sun rose, she began picking up signals — a car
was coming up the Mission Road, and the birds were
calling one to one another as if a predator were
loose among them. She lifted the man's arms and
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dragged him back to her hideway, back to the place
where she'd buried all the young children that she
had taken for hers, and had blessed as they'd died.
She'd given them a place where their bones, at least,
might rest.
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chapter 55
At dawn
"'Trust'! Don't ever say that to me again," Kate
snarled, and Ben felt as if he were watching some wild
animal sniff the air for danger. She held the gun
loosely; it wasn't a threat anymore, but he wasn't sure
he trusted her. Not now. Not after what she'd done to
Shadow. They had walked back to the Greenwater
Motor Lodge, and he had almost relaxed.
Almost.
And then he had suggested that she should trust
him, and suddenly the expression on her face had
changed from fear and exhaustion to unbridled rage.
A few minutes later she had calmed.
Now she undressed down to her slip, still holding
the Smith & Wesson. He had already put the Uni
aside, on the dresser by the bed. "I don't need help
from men. Never again. Men like Robert, men like
that man I killed. They all want to hurt my little girl in
some way, and I will not stand for it." She was working
hard not to break down and sob. He wondered how
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she could still be standing there, how anyone could,
after the ordeal she'd been put through — through
most of her life.
"I'm not Robert," he said quietly.
He closed his eyes. God, he was tired. And hungry.
But mostly, tired. Dead tired.
When he opened his eyes again, Kate stood there,
and even then, even with her snapping at him, even
having watched her gun the man down, even with her
exhaustion and fear and anger, he knew he loved her.
He had wasted so much of his life standing back:
standing back while she had gone off, so mysteriously,
with Robert so many years ago, standing back even
now, when all he wanted to do was hold her, feel her
close to him.
Perhaps it was what he had just said, but something
in her eyes had calmed. She reached up and pushed
the stray hair from her forehead. It was beaded with
sweat. "I know you're not Robert. I know you wouldn't
hurt Hope. I just don't know what to believe, Ben."
She went around to the side of the bed and picked
the phone up. She began dialing, hung the phone
up, tried again, but again pressed the receiver back
down into the cradle. "Phone's dead. The lines went
down last night during the rain. Damn boondocker.
God, I'm tired." Now the tears came, but he sensed
not to move toward her. It was not what she wanted. "I
am so goddamned tired, and I don't know who to
turn to. I've spent my whole life needing help I
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couldn't even get, and now that Hope needs it, I can't
seem to help her. I can't seem to do — " Her voice
became shrill, and then she stopped in mid-sentence.
Again she calmed, catching her breath. "I don't know
how Robert did it, but I know he put pictures in my
head.. . thoughts. All those pills he gave me. It's like
he spent half our life together rewiring my head, as
if he was just waiting for . . ." She clutched the sides of
her head with her hands as if the confusion were too
much to bear. "Who in God's name are these people
who took her? What do they want with her? What
does Robert want with her?"
Ben said, "It's hard to believe he'd put his own
daughter through this."
And then, with a voice drained of blood and
warmth, she whispered, "Hope is not his daughter."
"Does that surprise you?" she asked a few seconds
later.
"No."
"Do you understand?"
"Part of it. Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I couldn't. You were going to write your great
American novel, travel to foreign wars, fight the good
fight through journalism, remember? You went on
police raids, and you almost got killed at that protest
down on Market, remember? What was I going to be,
to you? What would a baby have done to you, Ben? I
knew you. I knew what you'd tell me then. You'd want
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me to get an abortion. We talked about family,
remember? You told me that you didn't really want
children. Not for a while. They'd get in the way. What
should I have done? You tell me."
"You could've at least told me."
"I guess I could've. But I was going through a lot. It
seems silly now. I knew it was wrong then, but I did it
anyway."
"And you ran off with Robert."
"He was there. He was different then. He wanted
this baby. He . . . was different. He wanted a family
more than anything."
Ben was silent, almost brooding, as if he'd been
thrown back to that time. Not the best of times, when
Kate had left him. Not the best of times. Something
was wrong with her story. He hadn't wanted a family,
not right then, but he had talked to her about chil-
dren and babies, and how much he enjoyed them.
He would never have suggested that she have an
abortion. Not back then, at least. Not when he was
sentimental, and the world seemed a brighter place
to a young journalist who had yet to learn of death
squads and cults and Special Projects. "You're lying,
Kate," he said, finally. He moved closer to her, as if to
put his arms around her, to embrace her, but instead
he grabbed her shoulders and held her almost
roughly. "Tell me the truth, damn it, Katy. Tell me
why you left me!"
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She began crying and tugged herself free of his
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