THIRTEEN

Mrs. Shelton is dead and the books are gone.” Carney spoke to Billy in his usual monotone, staring hard at him.

“She’s dead!”

“Dr. Ross did all he could.” There was nothing gentle in Carney’s voice. “We needed her to tell us who she’d been teaching to read. Where she’d gotten the books. We needed those books to send to Bar Elohim so he could understand what was getting loose in Cumberland Gap and tell us how best to protect the flock.”

Billy kept his eyes on the ground. Yes, he’d failed. When he set the old woman on the ground, she was already unconscious. Must have been from the pills on the bathroom floor. And the fire was too big to contain. Everyone in town knew it was his fault. Most would blame it on how he was raised. Without parents to properly guide him.

“I’ve got to send an audio file on this to Bar Elohim,” Carney said. “I’m going to make sure that I take part of the blame. Had I foreseen that she was evil enough and unrepentant enough to take her life and destroy her house, I wouldn’t have sent you on your own. You’ll keep your deputy badge.”

Billy didn’t lift his gaze from the ground. Carney might see his disappointment that he was to remain deputy. Billy hated himself that Mrs. Shelton was dead, and he didn’t want to be burdened with any more responsibilities of a deputy. Other things would go bad too.

“Still,” Carney said, “I can’t pretend you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re going to be spending nights in the office, watching the livery for me.”

“Sir?” Billy said.

“Surveillance camera. Anything happens after curfew, you call me right away. Can you handle that?”

Billy gave it thought. He could tell Carney didn’t like that, but Billy didn’t want to say he could handle it if there was something about it that would make it difficult for him.

“Will you let me know where I can call you?”

“Of course I’ll let you know where I am,” Carney snapped. “That goes without saying.”

Billy wished, as usual, that he knew what went without saying and what didn’t.

“All night?” Billy asked.

“Unless you think there’s a particular time that the building doesn’t need watching.”

That perplexed Billy.

Carney sighed. “Of course, all night.”

“By myself?”

“It only takes one person to watch a computer screen.”

“Um, sir,” Billy paused again in thought. At church, when the sermon was boring or confusing, Billy usually fought off sleep. Not always successfully. He didn’t want to promise he could stay up all night if he’d end up breaking his word. “I don’t know if I can stay awake that long.”

Carney started to form furrows in his forehead, the way he did whenever he broke out of his monotone in anger. Then, strangely, he smiled.

“Sometimes,” Carney said, “I guess it pays to think things through. There’s a cot in one of the empty jail cells. Get some sleep. All afternoon if you need it.”

“That would help a lot, sir.”

“All right then.” Carney put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Do this right and we’ll forget about your trouble with Mrs. Shelton.”

“We’ve gone far enough,” Caitlyn told Theo. “You must be ready to drop.”

“No,” Theo said. “I’m going to make sure you’re safe. Besides, you’re not nearly as heavy as I expected.”

Caitlyn hadn’t heard a peep from Theo over the last mile as he hiked through the streambed and then a hundred yards across an open grassy area. Caitlyn liked the silence. The skunk smell was still hard to get used to though. She guessed that at that point, she probably smelled like skunk too.

She was riding him piggyback, to avoid leaving a scent for the bloodhounds. When the hounds crossed Theo’s pungent scent, they’d ignore it.

Although she weighed very little, she was still impressed with Theo’s strength and ruggedness. He’d carried her on his back. Theo had gamely splashed through water and across rocks and over logs. Anything so that Caitlyn’s body would not brush against anything and leave a scent for the bloodhounds. He had even, at one point, set her down in rapid water and let her hobble forward, because the current would dissipate her scent. Caitlyn could tell he was also thankful for the moment of rest, knowing that he would carry her again. The tricky part came as they had approached the lines of hounds, but they had used Theo’s keen sense of hearing to wait until the hounds had traversed away from the stream before hurrying through the gap.

Caitlyn had also depended on Theo’s endurance and developed a grudging admiration for him. He hadn’t complained, just stuck with his duty like a mule.

“Thank you,” Caitlyn said. She said nothing more until they reached the trees at the far edge of the grass. “Here, this big oak is what we need.” She relished the relative coolness of the shade. “Stand close.”

Chances were extremely remote that the bloodhounds would find this exact tree. Still, to keep her scent from the ground, Caitlyn reached up and pulled herself onto a low limb without letting any of her body brush against the trunk. She straddled the limb and reached downward for Theo’s hands, then helped him up.

“You’ll need to climb higher,” she said. “Up where no one would think of looking.”

“I’m afraid,” Theo said. “I can’t see where I’m going.”

“I’ll stay below you,” Caitlyn answered. She noticed his arm was bleeding through the place where it was wrapped with cloth. Again, her admiration grew. Her legs must have been putting pressure on the wound, but he hadn’t once complained.

She helped him climb halfway up the tree.

“Now what?” Theo asked.

“We wait until tonight.” She’d already learned to trust Theo’s hearing. Because of it, they’d have enough warning to slip down the tree and run if anyone approached. “Sleep as much as we can.”

“Sleep? I’ll fall!” Her stoic rescuer was suddenly a boy again.

“Not if we are tied in.”

She reached for the coil of thin nylon rope in her backpack. She put it through his belt loops and around the tree trunk and made sure he was secure. She did the same for herself with the other half of the rope.

The bark of the tree was warm and felt almost pleasant in the dappled shade of the leaves. She felt comfortable, except for the distant baying of the hounds, an acute reminder of the fate they could expect if they were captured.

“What was that?” Theo’s whisper sounded frightened. “I heard something. Not the dogs…more like footsteps.”

His fear was contagious. Caitlyn craned her head.

“There it is again.” He pointed. “Can you see anything over there?”

In the direction of Theo’s gesture, shadows were moving and Caitlyn’s heart hammered, her skin prickling with adrenaline. But as she carefully gazed ahead, she realized the shape was a deer, followed by two fawns.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Deer.”

The adrenaline faded. She glumly consoled herself that if anyone had followed them, they would have already arrived at the base of the tree.

“Wish I had something to shoot it with. Ever eaten deer before?”

“Go to sleep.”

“I know you don’t want me with you,” Theo said. “I’m all right with that.”

“Sleep.”

“No, really. If I were you, I would lie to me too. I’d tell me that you were going to help me Outside, but then find a time to run away from me. People don’t like me. I talk too much.”

“Sleep.” Caitlyn wanted to deny his accusation, but it would have compounded her guilt to blatantly lie. About the need to leave him. And about his ability to irritate.

“I understand,” Theo said. “It’s because I’m weird. A freak. It’s not only because I talk too much. I can’t help my weird thoughts either. Like with double numbers.”

She couldn’t resist. And it was a better direction than the subject of abandoning him when it was necessary. “Double numbers?”

“Like four and nine and sixteen. See, two times two is four. Three times three is nine. Double twos and double threes and double fours and so on. It helps me go to sleep at night, trying to imagine the highest double number I can. Like 123 times 123. That’s how far I got last night. 15,129. And sometimes I figure backwards. Start with a number and see what double number makes it.”

“Square roots,” Caitlyn said.

“This tree?”

Despite herself, Caitlyn laughed. “No. It’s not called a double number. Three is the square root of nine.”

“Other people think about this too?” Theo sounded excited.

“Papa taught me.” He had spent hours and hours teaching her mathematics. Papa. To her, that single word had always meant love. Now, it meant betrayal.

“What about numbers that can’t be taken apart by other numbers?” Theo asked. “Like seven. Or seventeen. A number that can only be divided by itself and by one. The biggest that I can figure out so far is 937. That was last night too. It’s hard work, but it keeps me from feeling sorry for myself.”

“Those are called prime numbers.”

“You know this?”

“I learned it.”

“So other people do think about this stuff! Maybe I’m not so weird. Can you teach me more?”

“Maybe,” Caitlyn said.

“It’d be nice if you did. And I’d like stay with you, but I really don’t expect you to help me get Outside.”

“How did you hurt your arm?” Caitlyn asked, remembering the fresh blood that gleamed at the edges of the wrap around his arm.

“It feels hot under the bandage,” Theo said. “Not like from the sun. I hope it doesn’t get worse. But even if it gets worse, I won’t regret it. I would rather be dead than live in the factory anymore. Not much difference as they just want you to work to death anyway. And you can’t even think there or talk. But I have to think. I have to talk. I have to talk about what I think.”

“I’m beginning to understand that,” Caitlyn said, letting out a small laugh despite herself.

“If you leave me, just don’t do it when I’m asleep in this tree.” Theo’s voice sounded drowsy. “I don’t know if I can climb down without falling.”

Caitlyn didn’t answer. She’d have to leave him, sooner than later. But she didn’t want to think about it.

He yawned. “Oh, and I didn’t explain…it’s where the radio chip was—”

“Chip?” Caitlyn said. It was hard to follow Theo’s train of thought.

“You asked me how I hurt my arm. Factory kids have radio chips embedded in our muscles to keep track of us. I had to dig it out with a knife, otherwise I never would have escaped.”

Caitlyn looked up at Theo as if seeing him for the first time. He’d cut through his own skin and muscle? She didn’t know what to say.

“You’re a girl, right? You’re too soft and your voice is beautiful. How old are you? Where were you born?”

Unwanted, haunting words from Papa’s letter came back to her. “But in the motel room that was our home, the woman I loved died while giving birth. You were a tiny bundle of silent and alert vulnerability and all that remained to remind me of the woman.”

A girl? She turned her face away from Theo. She was a freak, with men hunting her for reasons she didn’t know. Self-pity and anger threatened to wash over her, but stronger was the image of Theo so determined to escape that he’d cut into his arm with a knife, of Theo falling asleep afraid and doing numbers in his head to keep from feeling sorry for himself.

“I was born Outside,” Caitlyn answered. She expected this would lead to a deluge of questions.

But when she looked up to catch his expression, she saw Theo had leaned into the tree trunk and his eyes were closed. Asleep. She watched him stir briefly, and he mumbled one last thing. “Nine hundred and forty-one…”

After a moment, she allowed herself a slight smile. The next prime number after 937: 941.