Cold Springs(119)

“Mallory.” Chadwick spoke her name in a tone she hadn't heard for a long time—since nine years ago, when he used to talk to Katherine. “Your father loved you. He was doing everything he could to protect you. If he were here, he would tell you he's sorry. He did the wrong things for the right reasons. Please believe me, that's what he would say.”

Kindra raised her gun.

Mallory's heart shifted like a gyroscope.

She rose to her feet and rushed Jones like she was the obstacle course wall—closing five yards, the gun turning in her direction, the snap of a bullet ripping past her ear, but nothing mattered except clearing the obstacle. Mallory's shoulder slammed into Jones' chest so hard she felt ribs crack. Jones staggered backwards, collapsing into the frozen cornstalks, and Mallory gripped the knife in her hand, putting herself between Jones and Chadwick.

“Don't protect me,” Chadwick groaned. “Run.”

But Mallory had finally outgrown Chadwick's advice.

Wincing, Jones rose to a crouch, a dozen feet away. She looked dazed, but pleasantly surprised that Mallory had shown herself. “Katherine loves you, too, honey. Believe me, that's what she's saying.”

The gun was still in Jones' hand. Her eyes were amber, just like her brother's.

She raised the gun toward Mallory, and with every ounce of strength, as if with willpower alone could drive steel through the trunk of a tree, Mallory threw the knife.

37

The next week was Christmas at Cold Springs, and a front blew up from the Rio Grande, bringing dry Mexican air that smelled of sage and brush fires. Sunshine soaked the hills until rattlesnakes came out to warm themselves on the granite and the deer became nocturnal.

Chadwick spent his days proctoring White Level study halls on the main deck, learning to walk with a boot cast, and coming to terms with the fact that he'd been yanked back from the edge of the precipice. He tried to convince himself that the danger had passed, that there was nothing else he needed to do.

On Christmas Eve, Olsen was released from the hospital in San Antonio. She arrived at the lodge to find most of the staff waiting for her, holding a welcome banner the tan levels had made in art therapy class. She insisted on getting out of her wheelchair and walking the twenty feet from the parking space to the door, Asa Hunter holding her arm. She smiled as the counselors applauded, but her face was clammy white, slick with sweat from the effort.

The doctors had told her how lucky she was. The shot to the leg had missed both artery and bone. The shot meant for her gut had instead drilled a hole through the muscles of her flank, narrowly missing her intestines. The surgeon speculated that the bulkiness of Olsen's winter jacket had saved her life, obscuring her form so that Jones' shot had been off-center.

Chadwick had a different theory. Jones wanted pain. She wanted Olsen's death to be as slow as possible, so she could return when she was done with her bloody work in the cornfields and sit next to the dying counselor, memorize Olsen's voice, add it to the chorus raging inside her head.

Chadwick skipped the staff Christmas party. He stayed in his apartment that night, listening to Nat King Cole drifting up from downstairs. He lay on his bed and held Katherine's picture in his hands—the little girl in the morning glories.

In a few weeks, Mallory Zedman would turn sixteen, Katherine's age. But her eyes, as she turned to him in the cornfield, her face speckled with blood, told him Mallory had grown older than Katherine ever was.

His sheets still smelled faintly of Ann. He thought of the afternoon he'd told her goodbye, Ann struggling for comprehension as Dr. Hunter broke the news that her daughter—who'd just killed a woman in self-defense, had also splinted Chadwick's broken leg and stopped the bleeding in Olsen's thigh, all with the numb, mechanical efficiency of a sleepwalker—couldn't face the idea of seeing her mother.

Ann could've raised hell, could've insisted. It would've been the only bright point in Sheriff Kreech's day to help her battle the school, after he'd been deprived the pleasure of arresting anyone. Even Chadwick's assault on the officer had been explained away as accidental, thanks to Damarodas, and after the media got involved, making Chadwick into a hero on horseback, Kreech arresting him over a little thing like flattening a deputy would've looked downright trivial. But Ann hadn't asked for Kreech's help. She had complied with Mallory's wishes, hiding her hurt behind resentful silence, and one of the instructors, a stranger, had driven her to the airport.

Chadwick set Katherine's picture on the nightstand, tracing the arc of blue flowers around her head. He drifted to sleep, thinking about Mallory's hard new eyes, the sound of “Adeste Fidelis” coming from the Christmas party below.

Christmas Day dawned no different than any other. White levels assembled on the deck to work on their SATs. Tan levels cleaned the lodge fireplace and swept the floors. From the cafeteria, Chadwick could hear trainers' whistles and yelling down at Clearing One—a new team of black levels being broken in, drilled into the program.

After breakfast, he met Hunter and Olsen outside, and together they walked down the long dirt road toward the stables. Chadwick's broken calf-bone ached, despite the boot cast and enough Tylenol coursing through his system to kill a warthog. He didn't complain though, because Olsen didn't complain. She would grab his shoulder every few feet to steady herself, her other hand clamped on Hunter's forearm. She wore her old escort clothes—the denim jacket concealing the bulky bandages on her side. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. She walked with the slow determination of a nursing home patient.