Out at Night

OUT AT NIGHT

SUSAN ARNOUT SMITH

For my father

Ernest Weschenfelder

who taught me to love mountains

and my mother

Florence Weschenfelder Johnson

who showed me how to move them

Rest in peace, Dad

The use of recombinant DNA could potentially alter man and his environment, for better or worse, by intention or accidentally. Therein lies the promise and danger of this new technology.

—Testimony at HEW hearings on

recombinant DNA (1978)

All the predators come out at night.

—TOUR GUIDE, Palm Springs wind farm

Table of Contents

Cover page

Title page

Dedication

Epigraph

One Wednesday

Two Thursday

Three Friday

Four

Five Saturday

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen Sunday

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two Monday

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

ONE Wednesday

“She’ll call the police if I don’t come home.”

Professor Thaddeus Bartholomew kept his hands on the wheel the way he’d been directed, his eyes straight ahead. Actually it was a desperate gamble, his last. His wife had been dead over two years.

“Shut up and drive.” The man in the seat next to him pressed the snout of the revolver against Bartholomew’s thigh and he tensed involuntarily and felt the gun nose him hard.

In the headlights, giant windmills whirred against the night sky. They’d been driving toward Palm Springs for almost half an hour and they were getting close.

Bartholomew had spent the entire time searching his mind for a way out and finding none. He was a scholar, at home in the tranquil world of old wars and settled battles; the voices that called to him were the ones that lived on the page and in polite debates on the History Channel. He realized in that instant he could speak so confidently about history because it was done.

It wasn’t sitting next to him reeking with sweat, crazed with some plan to maim and kill a substantial part of the world’s population.

A plan Bartholomew feared had every chance of working.

Bartholomew rubbed his hands on the wheel and tried again. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you could talk to me about it again. Make me see.” His voice held a tremor he didn’t like.

“Turn left here.” The gun jabbed him again.

“Careful with the gun.” Bartholomew instinctively jerked the wheel toward the dark dirt road leading between the high fields of soy. He slowed to avoid a sudden dip in the road.

He thought despairingly of how he’d almost made it to the car when the man had emerged from the shadows of the parking garage. He could admit it now; why lie, what was the point? He’d been flattered, more than happy to stand there a few moments listening. Relieved to postpone going home to an empty house and his solitary meal.

They’d talked before; or more precisely, he’d listened to him rant. Bartholomew wasn’t a man given to snap criticisms, but this man scared him.

At least he did now.

There’d been enough signs.

Documented. Why hadn’t he ever documented what the man was saying?

Ironic, when he thought about it. His lifework had been spent painstakingly resurrecting those marginalized, forgotten ones history had relegated to footnotes: the dispossessed, disenfranchised, the lost. Yet here was one of that very number whose words Bartholomew hadn’t thought to record. And the ingenious plan the man proposed had made him recoil in horror. The very next instant, it seemed, he’d found a gun pressing into his side.

Fast. It had happened so fast.

He wasn’t going to make it out of this.

Not alive.

“Stop right here.”

They were in a small dirt parking lot next to a four-acre plot of soy contained by a barbwire fence. On the fence was a sign:

USDA EXPERIMENTAL SOY PROJECT 3627

DO NOT ENTER

VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

“Turn off the engine.”

Bartholomew shivered, his head bowed. The man reached over and switched the engine off, yanking out the keys.

“Move.”

“Where?” His lips were numb.

He’d left the headlights on and in the wash of light, barbwire hung in strands where it had been cut, revealing a hole large enough for a man to crawl into the dark rows of soy.

“I’m giving you to the count of ten.” His voice was flat.

Bartholomew lurched off the seat and scrambled toward the gaping hole, his heart hammering.

“One.”

He clawed through the fence break, his jacket catching on the barbwire, and plunged into the soy. A cloying, sweet smell bit his nostrils. The ground was uneven and the darkness almost impenetrable. He stumbled and went down hard on his knee, feeling the dark cold earth and the familiar odor of mulch. Pain shot through his knee.

“Two.”

The voice was coming from the outside perimeter of the fence.

Bartholomew whimpered and immediately cut it off, swallowing the metallic taste of fear that was flooding his mouth. He grasped a sturdy plank of soy and heaved himself up. The stalks upended under his weight, the roots leaking clots of dirt. He took a staggering step and regained his balance. The pain was volcanic, roaring up his thigh into his groin.

“Three.”

He thrashed farther into the thicket and felt the stalks give way, sending him sprawling into a cultivated field. He panted shallowly, getting his bearings. In the dim moonlight, he could see the soy laid out in neat, bristling rows. He scanned the field and spotted another place along the fence where the soy seemed to be growing wild. He limped toward it, gripping his thigh above his injured knee to brace himself.

Dimly, he’d been hearing numbers.

“Eight,” his attacker said, his voice still distant.

Bartholomew wormed his way as far as possible back into the dense undergrowth and slid down, gripping his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible.

His cell phone.

“Nine. I lied. Any last words?”

The voice was dead-sounding, clearly coming now from somewhere inside the fence, and most alarming, seemed to be turned straight toward him.

His attacker couldn’t possibly see him. Bartholomew yanked the cell phone free and dialed the familiar number, his hands shaking so badly he balanced the phone on his good knee to find the numbers. His phone was an old model, the kind nobody made anymore. The keys sounded unnaturally loud. He waited for the voicemail to kick in.

He had to focus now, figure out what to say and how to say it. He peered at the small electronic keyboard in his hand, lit with the comforting green light. His fingers moved carefully across the keys.

“Okay, then.” The man’s voice was closer.

The air seemed to shiver and in the next instant, a piercing pain slammed into Bartholomew’s chest. The velocity of it crashed him backward and sent the cell phone flying from his grasp.

At first all he felt was stunned disbelief coupled with a roaring pain, and then he realized something was lodged in his chest. A stick.

An arrow.

He couldn’t breathe. No, he could breathe, but not deeply; he couldn’t move, he was pinned to the ground. It was getting warm under him now, and that was a comfort. He touched the arrow and wondered if he could risk yanking it up. The soy above him parted and he stared up at his attacker’s face. It was blank as an insect’s. The man was holding aloft the cell phone.

Goggles, Bartholomew thought wonderingly. Why was he wearing goggles?

Wordlessly, the attacker shifted the crossbow in his grasp. He reached down and grasped the arrow and—God no!—yanked it with all his might and then tipped it back and forth as if trying to work it free and a fresh wave of pain engulfed Bartholomew.

He cried out in terror and pain, his voice an incoherent tumble of words pleading and thank God it stopped, stopped and his attacker pulled a water bottle from his jacket.

Bartholomew’s field of vision was narrowing, the edges fuzzy and gray. He fought to stay conscious. His attacker unscrewed the bottle and tipped it over him and for a brief instant, Bartholomew thought, Water, he’s going to grant me that, at least. He caught the sudden sharp odor of gasoline. Through an agony of pain, he peered up and saw the attacker light a match, the sharp tiny prick of flame a bright cold thing, the burning match falling, falling like a small meteorite through the black night.

Flames boiled up his body and the last thing he heard was a crackling noise, close to his face, and the attacker retreating into a haze of orange. And then the orange window narrowed to a pinhole and Bartholomew eased into it and was gone.

TWO Thursday

“Let me get this straight.” Mac McGuire shifted on the blanket, digging his feet into the sand. “You’ve come all the way from San Diego, down through Florida, on to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, so you can take our five-year-old swimming on a beach that’s covered with razor-sharp coral.”

“First of all, it’s not covered with coral, just that one side.” Grace Descanso squirted a dollop of sunscreen directly onto his back and smoothed it in. “And secondly, she’s wearing beach shoes. She’s fine.”

A warm wind gusted across the waves, creating a froth of white that enveloped Katie in foam. She twisted her arms out like a windmill, the turquoise water sparkling around her chest, floating the ruffles of her hot pink swimsuit. Her hair was wet, the golden curls darker than usual.

Katie saw them watching and beamed. “Hi, Daddy Daddy Daddy.”

And Mommy Mommy Mommy, Grace thought sourly.

“Hi, sweetheart, I’ll be back out in a minute.”

Grace could tell by the sound of Mac’s voice that he had a sappy look on his face.

He kept talking, his voice dropping down into the reasoned, considered tone he used on air. He was a CNN health reporter, responsible for filing two stories each week and available for live reports. He was also the face of the unit, on air every weeknight introducing stories researched and prepared by producers behind the scenes. When viewers turned on CNN, they often thought of Mac. At least that’s the way they spun it in promos.

“I know she’s fine, I just thought it might be nice to take her someplace amazing. Both of you,” he amended.

Grace worked the sunscreen into his muscles a little too vigorously. He smelled like a tropical fruit drink. She’d already slathered Katie again, until her daughter was slippery as a baby seal and just as quickly had slid out of Grace’s grasp into the water. Then it had been Mac’s turn with Grace, his fingers strong, his touch lingering. The mating dance of the tropics.

Now his skin glowed hot under her fingers; he’d arrived in the Bahamas the day before, and the sun had already streaked his hair with gold. Grace shifted position and kept working. Over his shoulder she could see part of his dark green swimming trunks. A fine pink scar ran up his left arm, still new. She felt a twinge. She’d put that scar there, and if it had happened the other way around, she doubted she’d be letting Mac anywhere near her body, no matter how good his fingers felt.

“I mean, it’s interesting the place you rented,” Mac continued. “But I would have opted at least for a real bathroom.”

“It’s ecofriendly.”

“It’s a compost heap, Grace, with a wooden throne that sits behind a curtain. How in the world did you find that place?”

“A Portuguese cousin in the travel business. Remind me to kill her when I get home.”

In truth, the bed-and-breakfast was a little more primitive than she’d expected; the promised gourmet lunches had turned out to be leftover mac and cheese wrapped in crinkled aluminum foil and cut into cold wedges, served with hamburger buns studded with raisins accompanied by a vat of peanut butter; and the beach billed as remote was an inaccessible clamber down spiny-ridged limestone. Luckily, she’d rented a car, and after adapting to the harrowingly narrow roads filled with traffic hurtling straight at them, they’d found the beach not far from where they were staying.

The main thing had been to get away. Everything else had been secondary. Life for Grace Descanso had changed in an instant on a sunny October day in San Diego when a monster had reached into her world and grabbed her daughter, and by the time Grace had gotten her back, nothing was ordinary ever again.

Mac was back, for starters.

She’d contacted him in the middle of the kidnapping, when she was desperate and cornered. He’d represented the best hope of getting Katie back. The only hope. And now Grace couldn’t say, Gee thanks, for saving my life and helping find our daughter, but you can leave now.

Katie Marie had no memory of the kidnapping, but Grace relived it beat by beat, startling at sudden noises, tensing at the sound of alarms, always looking for the shadow with the long arm that could snag into the shot and blur out of frame, loping away with Katie in its jaws.

The price of getting her back was constant vigilance. Even worse was the guilt, and Grace feared that would never go away. She had lied to Katie growing up, telling her daughter that her father was dead, and now here he sat, sucking down a canned mai tai and criticizing her parenting skills.

“You know this isn’t healthy.” His voice was mild. “You need to take a breath. Relax. The bad guy’s gone.”

She snapped her eyes back to his shoulders. She’d been watching Katie with the intensity reserved for photos on a post office wall. Mac had the kind of skin that never burned, turning golden and ripe as a peach and then browning. Katie had that skin, and his hair color too, but she’d inherited Grace’s dark Portuguese eyes and a dimple that appeared whenever she smiled, and Grace had to admit she’d been seeing a lot more of it lately, ever since Katie had learned her father was still alive.

“And you know the bad guy’s gone because?”

“I have the money and resources to figure things like this out, that’s the because. He’s not getting back into the States, don’t worry.”

“We’re not in the States.” She glanced around the quiet beach and saw a sand crab busily dragging the corpse of a small sea anemone across the sand.

“Still.”

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Katie crooned. She clasped her small hands together as if she were holding a Mr. Microphone in a karaoke bar. “I just want my daddy.”

“I’m coming, princess.”

Pet names. He’d met Katie face-to-face for the first time exactly twenty-four hours before, and already he had a raft of them. Little dimple toes. Miss periwinkle flippy hair. Sunshine happy girl.

He clambered to his feet and reached for a towel.

“Do you remember that old movie, A Man and a Woman?” Grace twisted the cap back on and tossed the suntan lotion aside.

“I wonder if I should take off my sunglasses.”

“Remember, Anouk Aimée, and she loses her husband, and then she meets this race car driver, and they both have adorable kids and then they all go out to dinner? Or maybe she lost her race car driver husband, and met somebody else, I can’t remember.”

“She’ll probably splash all over them, right?”

“Well, it’s not like that here.”

“What are you talking about?” Without the sunglasses, his eyes were a brilliant green against his skin. He dropped the sunglasses onto the blanket.

“The kids. In that movie. They were there. But somehow in the background. They were present, but didn’t take over the whole thing. The grown-ups still had a nice, normal dinner and they were flirting to beat the band and—”

“So.” Mac shot Grace a swift, evaluating look. “Are you thinking about the dinner or the flirting part?”

“I am hungry.”

He smiled, his teeth very white, and she felt her body flush.

“Daddy.” Katie flung her arms wide.

“I’m coming, sweetie girl,” he called, his eyes still on Grace. “Ten minutes. Then I take you and your mom back to your place so you can get changed for dinner.”

They’d already agreed to that; it was just that he said it with such authority, and she thought about that as she gathered up the blanket and stowed it in the car. What she didn’t want was Mac upsetting the balance she had with her daughter, and it was already too late for that.

He had come over in the morning in his rental—a classier, cleaner car than the cheap one she’d rented before he got there—and picked them up, and now he was driving them back, and it seemed, incrementally, that he was in the driver’s seat a lot. She still wasn’t certain how she felt about that.

From the moment yesterday when Mac had flown in and found them, the life she’d shared for five years with Katie had been over. She’d stepped over a threshold into another world, and it scared her.

What was worse, she had no idea what it was doing to Katie.

Katie had been subdued—shocked—when she’d met him, stealing quick looks up at his face before moving out of reach. Mac had taken it slowly, never pressing, and that, too—his restraint—pressed a guilty place in her heart and made Grace want to run.

That first night, they’d eaten dinner in a small local café, the only outsiders. The wife of the cook served them steaming plates of rice and fish and when Katie yawned as the plates were cleared, the server said in a musical voice over her shoulder as she swayed back to the kitchen, “Looks like it’s time to get your little one home.”

Home.

They were so far from that, all of them. Far from the safety of home. From the idea of it. And Grace feared she’d never find her way back, and that even if she could, she might be returning empty-handed. Losing the one thing that mattered most.

She watched as Mac and Katie came up the beach toward the car, wrapped in damp sandy towels, Katie chattering. There was a warm gusty wind but suddenly Grace felt chilled, the growing tug of distance, separation.

She gripped the side of the window as Mac bumped the car down the narrow rutted road that led to her bed-and-breakfast. They turned a corner and a haphazardly built octagon painted a startling shade of Creamsicle purple appeared, set back in a tangle of undergrowth.

A truck idled in the drive. The back looked like a flimsy covered wagon held together with duct tape. A sunburned man with a nest of red dreadlocks sat hunched in the driver’s seat, talking on an iPhone. He clicked it shut and sat up and eased out of the truck as Grace and Mac got out of the car. Mac was taller and bigger through the shoulders but the other guy was younger. He smiled.

Grace made a sound. “He’s back. That’s my landlady’s son. Clint. He likes to stop by unannounced.” She reached into the backseat to help Katie out.

“Swell,” Mac said. “And he has the key, right?”

“Actually the door doesn’t lock.” Grace unsnapped Katie’s seat belt and she scrambled free.

“Ah.” Mac nodded.

Clint plodded over and pulled a crinkled envelope out of the pocket of his board shorts. The flap had been opened and resealed with a piece of cloudy Scotch tape.

“Here.”

She ripped the envelope open and pulled out the single sheet, scanning it.

“Is that who I think it is?” His voice had a lilt to it, as if he’d had a couple extra beers and couldn’t quite shape the hard vowels anymore.

She glanced up.

Clint was staring at Mac.

“No, Clint, you’re getting them mixed up.” She refolded the letter and put it in the pocket of her cover-up. “The other guy’s better-looking and works for Fox.”

Clint frowned and brightened. “Oh, I get it. A joke. Very funny.”

Mac touched her arm. “Okay?”

She knew he was talking about the letter. She shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him, he’s already read it.”

Clint ignored her, hitched up his board shorts and padded over to a twisted tree that stood in the yard.

“It’s from my uncle Pete,” she said to Mac. “Wants me to call him. Said it’s business. He works for the FBI in Palm Springs. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

“I didn’t know you had an uncle in the FBI.”

“He’s not even a blip on my radar, Mac. We haven’t talked in years.”

“Forgot to tell you, Grace, about this tree.” Clint cleared his throat importantly. “Katie, this is important for you, too.”

Katie started to trot forward and Mac shot out an easy hand and stopped her.

Black sap oozed from creases in the bark. Clint scooped a finger of sap and held it out. “See this sap? Don’t touch it. It’s called a poisonwood tree, because that’s what it is.”

“Poison?” Katie cried. Grace instinctively reached for her but Mac was there first. He rested his palm on Katie’s curls.

“Yes, Katie, it can kill you.” Clint leaned on the word kill like it was a horn. “Some people are immune, like me.” He wiped the sap onto his board shorts and left a trail. “But no worries! It stands next to this tree.” He patted an ashy colored tree with flaking bark. “It’s the antidote. I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, but it’s here, if you need it.”

“Ah,” Mac said again.

A black snout poked through the slats of the truck, followed by a second, more massive head.

“Oh, and don’t worry about those guys.” Clint gestured grandly to the dogs. He walked down the path toward the front door of the B-and-B. “They only attack if they smell fear.”

He pushed open the door. “Got anything to drink?”

“Okay,” Mac said. “We’re done.”

Half an hour later, Mac moved them. He turned in both cars, took them by water taxi to Harbor Island five minutes away, and relocated them to the Pink Sands Hotel, owned by the man who started Island Records. Now they stood in the living room of a villa.

Katie dropped her backpack, her eyes wide. “Wow. It’s got flatscreen.”

“And movies, Katie. I can rent whatever you want.”

Katie flung her arms around Mac’s legs and Grace looked away. The windows and French doors opened onto a patio that faced a three-mile pink-sand beach dotted with lavender beach umbrellas, sand as soft as corn silk, the water a turquoise that slid into mauve at the horizon.