Lessek's Key Read online

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Meg says. ‘It’ll be better here than at home. The store’s finally empty, so you’re spending too much time at the house. Just take a few more days to regroup.’

  They don’t understand.

  ‘There’s no place,’ Jennifer begins falling apart again. ‘There’s no place to hide. There’s no safe place. I can’t get away from her. She’s everywhere. Don’t you see? I can’t stand it. One minute she was there on her bike. I made her put her helmet on as if she was a ten-year-old, and then she was gone. I can’t just sit around waiting until spring for some hiker to—’ Jennifer collapses to the floor; Bryan kneels to take her in his arms.

  ‘Just a few more days,’ he whispers. ‘I’ll go back with you on Sunday, and we can take care of a few things there.’

  ‘No!’ Jennifer shouts. ‘We won’t. I won’t clean out her room. I won’t do it. She is not… she’s not gone, Bryan.’

  ‘Jenny, please.’

  ‘No,’ she shakes her head too hard, causing her vision to tunnel. ‘You tell me how they got to the trailhead, Bryan. How did they get there? All three cars were at the house. Hannah’s climbing gear was at our house. She wore running shoes up there that night. She knew it had snowed.’

  Standing, Jennifer breathes deeply in an effort to calm down; it doesn’t help. ‘I’m sorry, but you climbed with her, Bryan, she wouldn’t go up there in running shoes. She isn’t on that mountain. I won’t believe it, and I won’t clean out her room. I won’t cancel her insurance. I won’t take her fucking messages off the answering machine. I’m sorry, but there is nothing like this. This would have been easier if they had just told me she was—’ Jennifer wails, a cry that breaks her brother’s heart.

  ‘Please don’t apologise,’ says Meg. Uncertain what to do with her hands, she alternates between clutching at the crew neck of her sweater and rubbing her palms along the outer seams of her jeans. Feeling useless, she moves into the kitchen for some water.

  Bryan takes his sister by the shoulders as the Prince Marek hoists her broken transom to the Falkan night and begins sinking into the harbour. He takes a breath, bracing himself just enough to say, ‘A few more days, okay?’

  Defeated, Jennifer finally nods. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Great.’ He makes an attempt at levity. ‘What shall we cook? Grilled elephant balls?’

  ‘Sounds lovely,’ Jenny can’t stifle a giggle. ‘I’ll rent Casablanca, and we’ll make an evening of it.’ She sees the relief in his face; her heart lightens. Bryan will always be her little brother.

  ‘Make it Victor Victoria; I’m in the mood for a cross-dressing soprano,’ he grins at her.

  ‘I’m afraid Meg will have to help you there, Bryan.’

  ‘Nah, she’s an alto,’ he whispers, and together the siblings laugh, holding one another, waiting for the comforting predictability of everyday life, absent since Hannah’s disappearance, to return.

  BOOK I

  The Keystone

  THE JOURNEY WEST

  The silver charter bus cast a tapered shadow across the concrete wall of the Morrison K-Mart. The sun was coming up behind them, and Steven turned to look out the back window in an effort to see how far above the prairie it had risen. He must have fallen asleep. It had been dark when they left the bus station downtown.

  Morrison. The milk run was all he could get out of Denver at this hour. They had one more stop in town, then on to Golden; there was a stop outside City Hall, one near the brewery and then finally out Interstate 70 to Idaho Springs. He would be home in less than an hour.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Steven turned to the man sitting across the aisle, a thin, reedy character with a series of piercings in his ears, chin, tongue and nose. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  The emaciated stranger slid his left sleeve halfway up his forearm, exposing a tattoo of a naked woman with gargantuan breasts, no waist, and a tremendous backside. About her flying tresses were the words Born to, scripted in traditional olive drab. Steven didn’t know what the woman was born to do, because the operative verb in the phrase was covered by the heavy face of the young man’s wristwatch.

  ‘It’s six-thirty.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He needed a watch. Mark and Gilmour would have closed the portal over an hour ago. Steven hoped to get home, find Lessek’s key and to be back in Eldarn by evening: ten and a half hours. Assuming all went well, that would be plenty of time; he couldn’t check in on his parents, or on Myrna and Howard at the bank, but Hannah – he had to know; it was the only way. He would dial her house, let her answer the phone, and then hang up. No one could know he was in Colorado: they would delay him too long, maybe try to keep him here, talk him out of going back. He might peek through a window to see if his mother was there, look to see how worried she might be, or if she had moved on by now. He hoped she had; he hoped they all had.

  He sighed. He and Mark hadn’t discussed how they would explain their sudden disappearance back in October. So, he would call to hear her voice, just to confirm that Malagon had been lying, that night in the Blackstones, and that Hannah had been here, safe at home all along.

  The three days since the explosion at the airport were a bit of a blur; now Steven closed his eyes in an effort to forget the devastation on the tarmac. The distant hum of the bus tyres and the soothing rhythm of the highway lulled him, a momentary respite from the horrors he had faced, but all too soon his thoughts returned to Express Airlines flight 182 and his desperate race across the country.

  He had known, somehow, that the young woman carrying the baby on the plane was Nerak. Maybe it was the staff’s power keeping him safe, or maybe it was just luck, but the moment he caught the woman staring dead at him despite the fact that her baby was screaming, Steven knew he had to get off that aeroplane.

  He would remember her, and that baby, for the rest of his life. She had carried the infant like she was heading for a touchdown. Steven guessed that she kept her hand in her pocket to cover the dark circular wound Gilmour had told them marked Nerak’s victims. And she had not pre-boarded the plane and that was strange: a young mother with a child, travelling alone, who waited to board with the mass of fleshy businessmen and pushy suburbanites heading to DC for the weekend. Jesus, that baby was dead now.

  When the plane exploded, Steven was already running up the jetway. The force of the blast threw him across the concourse and headlong into the check-in desk at the opposite gate. He suffered a serious gash across his right shoulder, and a large purple bruise welled up on his cheek. His clothes were on fire, and he had to roll around for a few seconds to smother the flames; his ears rang, and his hearing had not returned until later that evening, but otherwise, miraculously, he had been spared serious injury.

  Although the airports reopened the following day, he couldn’t risk purchasing another ticket: his name would appear on their this-guy-is-supposed-to-be-dead list. The FBI would spend six weeks asking him where he had been for the past several months and why, when he had finally returned, aeroplanes had started exploding all around him.

  So he drove Arthur Mikelson’s car, a Lexus with leather interior – the nicest car he had ever been in – and he cried as he listened to radio reports of faulty ignition systems and gas fumes from the fuel truck, and he burned with an intense desire to tear Nerak’s decomposing black heart out and feel the dark prince’s demonic blood drip from his fingers.

  The Charleston Airport parking lot had been mayhem, too, but he had his first stroke of luck when he reached the booth beside the parking garage, for there was no one inside to collect his fee. The toll collectors were standing on top of a grassy rise, watching the burning terminal. Steven squeezed the Lexus between the toll gate and the row of hedges marking the edge of the soft shoulder, scratching the rear panel. No matter; it was a day for ignoring minor injuries.

  His second stroke of luck was managing to bypass any roadblocks: he had no idea where the city police were, other than a few cruisers, lights ablaze, which escorted ambulances an
d fire trucks into the airport. Maybe it took the locals a while to respond in the wake of such a disaster, but whatever the reason, he thanked God.

  He didn’t stop again until Knoxville. The Lexus was running on empty, and Steven needed food and a few minutes’ rest. He used some of Arthur Mikelson’s money to buy new clothes: jeans, underwear and socks, a heavy cotton shirt, and a sweater, beige, so as not to stand out as Mark had when they had first arrived in Estrad Village. He wanted a lined Gore-tex jacket, but he was nervous about using his credit card, and he wanted to conserve as much of Mikelson’s $400 cash as possible. As he planned to be in the car until he reached home, Steven decided against the jacket; he could collect his own before returning to Eldarn. He flipped the car’s dashboard heater to ‘full’, turned west and pressed on.

  If he drove five or ten miles above the speed limit, Steven estimated the trip would take around thirty hours, but soon he began to worry that Nerak would somehow find a way to reach Idaho Springs before him. Outside Nashville, he pulled over to buy a box of crackers, a half gallon of orange juice, and a crescent wrench. Sitting in the parking lot, he broke down – despite his promise to himself to be strong – and sobbed like a frightened child. We might not make it. Then he gritted his teeth, wiped his face and drove on.

  Early the following morning Steven detoured six hours to St Louis and used the wrench to steal a set of Missouri licence plates from an old pick-up truck parked behind a motel. The truck didn’t look like it was used often; he hoped to be in Colorado before anyone noticed the tags were missing. He was back on the highway before the sun broke the horizon.

  In Boonville, he threw Arthur Mikelson’s South Carolina licence plates into the Missouri River, purchased a box of doughnuts, a couple of apples, a very large cup of coffee and a padded envelope. In Blue Springs, he tried to sleep for a bit, but nightmares of the baby – was it a boy or a girl? – haunted him after only a few minutes’ rest. Waking with a start, Steven rubbed his eyes, ate an apple and several doughnuts, and started driving again.

  His second night out from Charleston found him in central Kansas, the prairie rolling past in a seamless dirge of muted winter colour, and he had nearly driven off the highway twice in a losing battle to stay awake. Trying to keep himself alert, he began singing in the numbingly repetitive tradition of ‘Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall’,

  Put up a sign, put up a sign, put up a goddamned sign … oh … put up a sign, put up a sign, Governor, won’t you put up a fucking sign when you’re halfway across this boring state.

  Finally, too tired to continue, he gave up, parked the Lexus across the street from a motel and, using more of Mikelson’s cash, registered for a room.

  Two cheeseburgers with extra tomato, onion and mayo, two orders of crispy French fries with extra ketchup and a large vanilla milkshake later, Steven walked across the street to the motel and punched in a 3.30 a.m. wake-up call. With any luck, he would be in Denver by late the following morning. He turned on his television and ran through the cable channels until he found a 24-hour news programme, then emptied his pockets onto the bedside table: $123.00 and some change, a black leather wallet that had been soaked and dried out so many times it was barely recognisable, his Visa card, receipts and the crescent wrench.

  He was half-listening to the report of the on-going investigation into the Charleston tragedy—

  Medical examiner reports more than 215 lost—

  He pulls off the sweater and cotton T-shirt; he is too thin.

  —still making contact with victims’ families—

  The cheeseburgers roll in his stomach, summer thunder.

  —FBI is cross-checking manifests for evidence of—

  Steven freezes. His Visa card rests in the stark light of a cheap high wattage bulb in the bedside lamp. The FBI.

  Slowly, he reaches for the remote and turns off the television. ‘They will know I wasn’t on the plane. They will know where I used this card.’

  For a few moments Steven paced around the room in a desultory fashion. The bathroom. No help there. The door. Nothing outside. The FBI could be out there right now. The TV. No, leave it off. What to do now, goddamnit, what to do? He turned a complete circle, reached for the phone, then the remote, and finally for the Visa card. Sitting heavily on the bed he held the card up close to his face, as if directions how to proceed might be scribbled there in exceedingly small type.

  ‘I can’t use this anymore,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll be looking for me. I’m a fugitive. At least, I will be when the medical examiner confirms I wasn’t on that plane. Shit.’

  He rubbed his temples and glanced at the bedside clock. 8.17 p.m. ‘They’ll think I was away all that time preparing the attack. They’ll think I’m a terrorist.’ For a moment he reconsidered making contact with his parents, then, shaking his head, discounted the notion. ‘Time to get going,’ he murmured and pulled the T-shirt and sweater back over his head.

  Outside, it had begun to snow.

  Driving through a winter storm in Kansas made Steven feel as though snow fell horizontally, and that all the news reports showing flakes falling from above had been fabricated in a great communications conspiracy. Westerly winds off the Rocky Mountains caught up with clouds of dry billowy snow and blew them in wild torrents until they slammed headlong into the Appalachian Mountains a thousand miles away. By the time the snow reached central Kansas, it appeared to be travelling at just shy of the speed of sound. At any minute Steven felt his car would be lifted, nose-first, and thrown backwards into rural Missouri.

  An hour west of Salina, Steven calmed enough to think through his options. He was driving a stolen car that had probably been photographed leaving the scene of a devastating aeroplane tragedy. He had been issued a boarding pass and would be assumed dead, but before long, an especially thorough forensic pathologist would realise he had not been on the plane. How long might that be? Five days? Six? At that moment, every FBI agent, state trooper, town cop and tenacious Boy Scout in America would be searching for him. Thankfully, he had not used his credit card since purchasing the plane ticket, but that would have been enough. Buying the ticket ensured that the FBI, perhaps even the local Idaho Springs cops, would confirm that Steven Taylor of #147 Tenth Street, missing since last October, had surfaced again, just in time to participate in a terrorist attack on a passenger jet. Again, great shit.

  In Hays, Steven pulled into an all-night Wal-Mart and used more of Arthur Mikelson’s cash to buy a book of stamps, a wool cap, a heavy-knit scarf and a black magic marker. In a motel car park just off the exit ramp, he used the crescent wrench to remove licence plates from an Illinois SUV loaded with ski equipment. He placed those tags on a pick-up truck from Michigan. The Michigan plates he traded with a Pontiac from New Jersey with a guitar in the back seat and gave the Jersey plates to an old Cadillac from Nebraska, then put the Nebraska tags on the Lexus and tossed the Missouri plates into a nearby dumpster. He hoped the morning confusion over who had whose licence plates would buy him an additional few hours’ travel time and perhaps even be discounted as a group of local boys having late night fun.

  Outside Colby he pulled off the highway, gassed up the Lexus for the final time, placed the entire book of stamps on the padded envelope and, with the car running, fell asleep in a brambly draw between two corn fields.

  Steven cried when the Denver skyline came into view late the following afternoon. With the sun drifting west over Mt Evans, it was hard to look at the city without hurting his eyes, but he didn’t care. Whether the tears came for joy at finding his way home, for the tragedy in South Carolina, or for the grim, seething hatred he held for Nerak, it didn’t make any difference. Overwhelmed, he forced himself to keep both hands on the wheel, letting go only once to flip to his favourite radio station. Second nature, even after all these months. Bruce Springsteen was singing about red-heads, and Steven Taylor rolled down the window, despite the cold, and sang along.

  Later that evening, he drove north alon
g Broadway, past Meyers Antiques. The store was boarded up, with large This Space Available for Purchase or Lease signs posted on the showroom windows. Turning east, then taking a left, he rolled slowly past Hannah Sorenson’s house. He had no intention of making contact with her, but hoped she might wander past a window, or even be outside shovelling snow. Get lucky.

  But he had been lucky so far on this trip. Maybe he would find one last measure of good fortune before stepping on the far portal again. He slowed to a crawl, passed the house at less than five miles an hour, and willed Hannah to appear. The Sorenson home, a 1920s row house with a small porch and a bay window, was a red-brick clone of every other house in Grant Street. A naked light bulb illuminated the front lawn in a pallid smear, and a haphazard collection of unread newspapers dotted the stairs, the stoop, and the snowy grass. Steven sighed. No one had been home for some time – he counted the papers – at least twelve days. No sign of Hannah.

  Driving through town, he was slowed by rush-hour traffic, and in his distraction at failing to spot Hannah he almost missed the afternoon DJ crying out, ‘Hey Denver, it’s finally five o’clock on this chilly Thursday. So, if you haven’t left work yet, get going! Go ahead, just leave! Here’s a classic from Zeppelin to help blow you out the door.’

  Five o’clock already. Mark would be opening the far portal right now. He hoped they still had it – although since Nerak was hot on his heels, there was no reason why they wouldn’t. Gilmour would keep them safe, and as long as Nerak was on this side of the Fold, there would be little to threaten the company of Ronan partisans.

  Right now he had to decide whether or not to drive the Lexus into Idaho Springs. If he did, he might be able to find Lessek’s key, open the portal and be back in Eldarn by five-fifteen the following morning. But if he ditched the car in Denver, he could take an early bus and be in Idaho Springs by late morning, giving him the time to hide his tracks a little. If he left the car in Denver, they might not trace it to him.