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  Carey kicked her borrowed horse into a gallop, Connor at her side. When they pounded down the last slope, the smell of smoke had both pulling to a stop, before Carey nudged her snorting horse forward. As they approached, Connor sagged in his saddle, choking and retching. “Pain…too much…” Carey turned in time to see him sway forward, face white. Pulling her horse alongside, she shook her brother’s free arm. He forced his eyes open and nodded. “I’m…okay.”

  Somehow she kept her voice from breaking into a scream for Harry. She couldn’t fall apart now, or she’d curl up into a ball. Except she’d never give up. Connor knew that. Harry knew that. She’d damn well better know that too. She swallowed the fear that made her feel weak and focused on handing her reins to Connor. “We don’t know…who might still be there. Do you think you can get into the trees and hold onto the horses while I check…the barn.” Carey knew her voice was shaking, but she forced each word past numb lips.

  Her brother was pale, but he managed to nod, choking on the words, “Carey. I felt them die. So many. It hurts.” She hugged him briefly, and was gone.

  From the front, the barn looked eerily normal, as though a bright light was left on in the upper window to the hayloft. Trying to reach the barn door despite the heat, Carey was thrown back as an explosion thundered within. Billowing, snarling flames devoured the structure in a gluttony of roars and detonations, blowing showers of sparks toward the sky, and obliterating the familiar structure.

  She tried again to make it to the barn. Heat drove her back, but not before she glimpsed the inferno within. The outer siding was gone as posts and beams blazed into a glowing skeleton, the flames dancing ghouls leading an unstoppable army of demons. She backed away in horror. The barn and anyone in it were beyond saving.

  She spun away from the barn before she could start picturing Simeon, her sparring partners Paul and Remy, the horses or puppies among the hungry flames. There were tears in her eyes as she ran for the house, the heat and the pain in her chest making her stumble over familiar terrain. Turning the corner she saw a blur of red. It was Harry’s convertible.

  “No,” she moaned, breaking into a run. “Please, no.” As she reached the steps, she tripped. A battered guitar case lay abandoned, blotched with red stains. A trail of drying blood led to the porch. She palmed the two shuriken holding her twisted hair, and softly climbed the steps. Dimly she recognized that shock and terror should have been crippling her, but somehow the years of training took over. She knew there was bloodthirsty rage too, battering at the edges of her mind and demanding to be unleashed. She pushed past both panic and fury to an icy calm she’d never known she had inside of her.

  Something was blocking the door from the inside. She eased through to peer down at the body of a black-clad stranger. Harry hadn’t made it easy for them. Carey was almost surprised by the ease with which she examined and dismissed the destruction. Training in weapons and tracking with Harry and the Leftfeet, plus hours of reviewing strategy with Marley let her read the story of the struggle. With the wide hallway backlit by flickering flames, she could almost see three figures fighting, the hall table smashing as one body was thrown into it, the oriental rugs tangling into a twisted mass as another was tackled and bodies rolled over the floor.

  The living room beyond looked untouched, with couches and bright rugs in their usual positions before the huge fireplace wall. Harry. She had to find Harry. Carey entered the living room, automatically checking the shadows for assassins. Another flaring explosion from the barn behind her lit the bodies piled just beyond the entrance to the living room. Firelight caught a glinting lock of golden hair. She thought some corner of her brain was screaming, but somehow the rest of her was leaping toward that gold she knew so well. With no more care than if they were couch cushions, ignoring the gun that banged against the tiled floor, she pulled the top two bodies off the one lying face down.

  “Harry?” So much blood. She needed to wipe it out of his hair, off the ripped leather of his jacket. But first…her shaking fingers touched his throat. Still a little warm, but no flutter of breath. No! As she was reaching for him, she heard Connor screaming her name, telling her hurry. Harry’s death was beyond her comprehension, but the need to grieve was buried under that strange frozen center. Connor needed her. Okay. Sweeping up the gun that had fallen from Harry’s hand, she peered through the doorway.

  Connor was pale, but racing for the house. “Carey! It’s Marley. I can feel her. Hurt. We have to find her.” He led the way at a stumbling run around the kitchen wing and back toward Marley’s little house. Carey followed, knowing it was too late for Harry, dreading what she’d have to tell Connor. But maybe the grief, the guilt at failing to save anyone, the shameful relief at still being alive, would be lessened if they could save Marley.

  At the corner they saw the white jeep, its front smashed against a dark car. Marley was slumped over the steering wheel draped in its deflated airbag, blood on her head and face.

  “Connor,” Carey started to say. What? We’re in the middle of a battlefield? We don’t know if any of the enemy survived? Connor could be risking his life here; she couldn’t lose him too. She wanted to forbid him, but she knew from the determined look on his face that she couldn’t stop him. He had grown closer to Marley than she had, she knew. That new cold and clinical part of her mind calculated that having an adult around would keep them safe and together, because Harry…Harry was gone. They needed Marley.

  “No!” Connor shoved her aside. “I feel her. She’s still there. I have to try.” Carey looked at him, and nodded. “What can I do?”

  He hesitated. “If I’m in too deep, you might have to knock me out. Or else I might…go with her.”

  She nodded again and stepped back. He moved to the passenger seat and leaned over Marley. Without moving her, he gently put his hands on either side of her head and closed his eyes.

  At first, Carey didn’t think anything was happening. Then Connor began to sweat, his skin taking on a bluish tinge. He started to shake and a line of drool snaked out of his mouth. She moved toward him. Without opening his eyes, he growled at her. “No. Not yet. I’m still here and…almost…got her.”

  Another minute, and his whole body was shaking. So it took her a few moments to realize that Marley’s head was trembling, and not just from Connor’s shaking. Carey heard soft moaning, and then louder. And Marley screamed.

  “Connor!” Carey’s voice was urgent. “You have to pull back.” She reversed the gun to use as a club but hesitated, not at all sure she could bring herself to knock him out. “Connor Parker!” He shuddered and dropped his hands. She reached for Marley, who was gasping, still draped over the steering wheel. But when Marley raised her head and wiped off the blood, Carey could only stare. Marley’s face was pale and she shook, but her eyes were open and she was breathing in panting gulps.

  Marley raised her hand and stared at the blood. Her eyes were wide and glassy as she turned to Connor. Was she surprised to be alive? Stunned that Connor had been able to bring her back from the edge of death?

  “Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I think you just graduated.” She looked over at Carey. “Harry?”

  Carey couldn’t say the words, so she just shook her head. Connor was still shaking, but he managed to gasp, “Should I try…?” Carey shook her head again.

  Marley stepped from the car and swayed. Connor came around from the other side, and put her arm over his shoulders. They walked her over to the steps to her house, and she sank down. Connor kept an arm around Marley, but Carey heard a voice coming from that new cold place inside. “Who were they? What did they want?”

  Marley’s face was dead white, and she was still panting. “It was a small team, five I think. I had…message…I thought from Harry. After they smashed into my car, they thought I was dead. But I heard the last two talking. Simeon managed to wound one of them before they trapped him in the barn with the others. They laughed as they torched the barn. They shot Paul
and Remy as they tried to run out.”

  Marley coughed, and wiped a trickle of blood from her mouth. “Then Harry got here and fought his way into the house. The three who went in after Harry didn’t come out. That left them with only one who wasn’t wounded. He told the other one they needed to get out before the fire engines and cops showed up, so they decided to try to catch you two on the road to the ranch.”

  “We came on horses, and cut across the fields.”

  “You both have to get out of here,” Marley said. “You’re the ones they came for. They’ll be back.”

  Who is looking for us? How many? And how does Marley know they will return? Carey knew the important thing now was getting away. But she filed the questions away for later.

  “Harry.” Carey felt like her own voice was coming from a distance, but she made herself speak. “We can’t just leave him…lying there…”

  Marley looked sick, but she shook her head. “No time. You have to go now. Leave me. I’ll take care of Harry.”

  Carey looked at Connor. Tears made paths through the ashes and dirt on his face, but he was still the twin who knew her best, often knew what she was thinking before she did. She just hoped he never learned about the cold and clinical decision-weighing part of herself she had just discovered. The part that said both of them were too young, that they’d need Marley. Instead she looked into his eyes and pointed to the hills behind them. We’ve practiced for this emergency, Twin. We know what to do and where to go. He nodded, and she turned back to Marley.

  “Can you ride if you’re holding onto me?” She put Marley’s other arm over her shoulder.

  “If I have to.”

  Carey helped Connor walk Marley to the rear steps of the ranch house. “Is there anything you need desperately from your house?”

  Marley shook her head. “They already took the maps.”

  Carey looked at Connor and then to the ranch house, the same question in her raised eyebrows. He shook his head. She leaned Marley back against him and took a breath. “I’ll be right out. Can you get Marley to the horses?”

  He closed his eyes briefly, then nodded. Sweeping an arm behind her knees and lifting the still-trembling Marley, Connor strode toward the waiting horses. He didn’t look back.

  Entering through the inner courtyard door to her bedroom because she couldn’t just walk past Harry’s body, Carey quickly swapped her shoes for soft-soled boots and slipped knives into each boot’s hidden sheath. She added her throwing stars, shrugged her sheathed sword across her back, and grabbed her down jacket.

  Retrieving her Ruger LC9 from its locked box in her closet, she had to fold arms around herself in the breath-stopping agony of remembering Harry laughing at the little gun’s purple frame when he gave it to her. She managed to open her safe with shaking fingers and pull out the box of ammunition and Gaby’s kaleidoscope. A few seconds later, she had pulled the Halloween photo and drawing of Gaby from their frames and stashed all of it in a hastily removed pillowcase.

  As she returned to the living room, an impulse had her carrying the purple quilt Harry had given her. She curled his fingers around the kaleidoscope. “Keep it safe for me, Harry,” she whispered. She laid the quilt over him as if he was sleeping, and kissed his forehead. It was cold. It didn’t feel like Harry anymore.

  At the distant siren of a fire rig, Carey blinked the tears from her eyes. She headed down the hallway, frowned at the stranger’s body lying there, and felt…nothing. It was in her way; it had to go. She pulled the rug under the body, dragging it until she could open the closet containing three loaded backpacks.

  Harry insisted they always keep them ready, but for a moment she could almost believe that they’d just been packed and that it wasn’t for a catastrophe, but another training run. Any minute now Harry was going to yell that it was time to go and he would leave without them if they didn’t get their butts down there. He’d be giving her grief about remembering where the stash of emergency cash was buried, and which routes to take. Shoving her pillowcase into one, she hefted the packs, grunting at their weight. She didn’t let herself look behind at the golden-haired body under the purple quilt, the small kaleidoscope tucked in one blood-soaked hand.

  Stepping through the front door, she closed her eyes for a heartbeat. Then she took a breath and scanned the area in front of the house. The air coated her throat with greasy smoke, and another timber from the barn crashed down. The plume of smoke and flame vied with the glow of the setting sun, and the approaching siren from the volunteer fire department’s rig sounded closer. As she headed down the steps, she didn’t look back. It wasn’t home any more.

  Chapter Five

  2003: St. Helens Ranch, Eastern Washington State

  Carey squinted at the sliver of remaining sun as she joined Connor and Marley back at their horses. Only minutes had passed since their arrival at the burning ranch. How could their life and their world be gone? Simeon and the other Leftfeet, Paul and Remy? The puppies? All the horses… How could Harry… No. Think about Harry later. She handed Connor his leather jacket and his parka for Marley, plus the three loaded backpacks. Connor lifted Marley up behind Carey and swung onto the other horse.

  Harry had drilled them in emergency plans, so neither spoke as they pointed the horses away from the road and up into the hills beyond. As they neared the outside border of the ranch, they stopped before an unremarkable boulder. While Carey held the horses, Connor moved to the back of the rock and dug a foot down to uncover three plastic-wrapped shoe boxes. Without opening them, he added one box to each backpack. Five minutes later, they crossed the border of St. Helens Ranch.

  »»•««

  “Connor.” He was ahead of her, his horse carefully picking its way along the trail. Unlike the experienced trail horses from the St. Helens, their borrowed mounts were snorting, tossing nervous heads as they wound through brown hills following barely visible paths. It had only been a few hours and every instinct screamed the need to put more miles between them and hunters. But with the sun’s disappearance, the trail they followed was only a shadow.

  “It’s too dark. And Marley needs to rest. Do you see the triple rocks yet?” The three boulders were the signal to head uphill. “I don’t know how much longer Marley can hang on, and it’ll be too dark to see where we’re going soon.” Although both she and Marley were small, she also knew her borrowed horse would be tiring under their combined weights. She couldn’t see the look on Connor’s face, but she could tell he was tired and afraid.

  The good news was that their trail would be virtually impossible to follow in the darkness. The bad news was that if they missed their one marker, they’d have to backtrack. His voice floated back. “If we don’t see the rocks soon, we have to turn around.”

  Two minutes later, she heard the relief in his voice as he dismounted and kneeled to peer through the brush. “This way.” Carey slid down too and held both sets of reins while Connor checked on Marley. “Can you stay on just a bit longer?” She was swaying, but nodded. He took back his own reins, nodded to Carey, and they led the horses up the shadowed hill.

  There were no natural caves in these hills, but Harry had enlarged a hillside shelter used in the past by local sheep ranchers, and then covered it completely with dirt and rocks so it was almost invisible.

  While her brother carried Marley into the manmade cave, Carey led the horses to the small meadow just beyond, shielded by the hill and surrounded by trees. She was thankful to see that the trough at one end held captured rainwater, and she allowed them a small initial drink before leading them away. Pulling off their saddles and blankets, she used her hand to brush off the debris that had lodged under the saddles, and then wiped them down with handfuls of grass.

  Moving on autopilot, she ran hands down their legs to look for swelling before taking a small stick to each hoof to check for stones. Leaning her head against each of their flanks, she heard the reassuring gut sounds of healthy digestion. With the water and fresh grass, she w
as relieved that they would be ready to move quickly if needed. As was common practice with local ranchers, both borrowed saddles held spare ropes which she used to fashion halters. Removing their bridles, she slipped on the makeshift halters, throwing the loose ends up over hanging branches before tying them off, allowing each horse enough room to graze and get to the water without getting tangled.

  She paused at the edge of the little meadow to look back. The moon had risen, picking out the dark outlines of the horses against the blackness of the hill at their backs. She listened for the peaceful night sounds of insects and occasionally shuffling hooves. Closing her eyes, Carey thought about just staying right there, piling grass into a bed and pulling the horse blankets over her head. But a memory flash of gold hair streaked with blood had her straightening, turning toward the cave and the nightmare that was now her life.

  Inside, she saw Connor had spread out the supplies from the three packs, and stashed the boxes of cash against the inside wall. He’d opened all three sleeping bags and put Marley in the middle, with Carey’s down coat as a blanket. The fire he’d started from the branches piled next to the fireplace vented through the small hole in the ceiling, its smoke a thin trail that disappeared against the hillside. Carey stepped back outside to check that the flames were hidden within the little structure. The only glimmer edged the hills behind them. St. Helens ranch was still burning. By the time she got back, Connor had three cups of instant soup ready, and Marley was stirring.