TWENTY-THREE

Pierce opened the door of his temporary housing. He held a cup of coffee in his hand. Bad coffee. He missed Outside. This country was so controlled, his cell phone couldn’t access Outside, nor could he get an Internet connection. It was an information vacuum here. With bad coffee.

The sheriff stood in the hallway. Clean, pressed uniform. Straight posture. Nothing on Carney’s face betrayed any indication of what he was thinking. Nor did it show the least signs of exhaustion.

Impressive, Pierce thought. The guy had to be in his fifties. The night before, he’d been knocked out and dragged from a fire. Then he spent an hour at the blaze helping firefighters and another half hour supervising the removal of a charred body from the feed room. Plus another hour reviewing surveillance tapes of the scene. The only thing about Carney that hinted at the previous night’s events was the smell of smoke, probably from his hair. Pierce had been there too; showering and shampooing three times hadn’t done much to get rid of the smell.

“I’ve sent an alert out to every town,” Carney said. “Right after dawn, each sheriff will be sending people down all the roads. There’s a vidpod warrant out on my deputy. A mandatory alert, which every person in Appalachia will see. The reward offered is big enough that he won’t be able to move anywhere.”

“Where’s Lee?” Pierce asked. Pierce gestured for Carney to step inside, but the sheriff stayed where he was in the hallway, hands relaxed at his side.

“Stopped by my office this morning and told me he was done. He gathered his men and dogs and left town an hour ago.”

“From what I heard, Mason Lee never quits. Told me himself, more than five times a day.” Pierce’s coffee was getting cold, but he drank it anyway, then hid his grimace at the taste. Starbucks had been a monopoly as long as anyone could remember. Appalachia wouldn’t even let them inside the divide.

“He said his broken arm made it impossible to be part of this.”

“Suddenly the pain is too much? Everyone talked about how he had it set without anesthetics.”

“Maybe it wasn’t the pain. Maybe it was how it got broken.” Carney lifted an eyebrow, clearly waiting for how Pierce would respond.

Pierce expected that the waitress at the diner had watched his encounter with Lee from a hidden viewpoint. The noise of the crashing table had only scared her from sight, he imagined.

“A man like him needs to be careful,” Pierce answered.

“So does a man like you,” Carney said. “A man like him is apt to appear out of nowhere and strike like a snake. Don’t like it much that I owe him my life. Nor that I might have to protect yours.”

“I’ll be fine on my own, Sheriff.”

“You won’t be on your own.” Carney pulled his vidpod out of his shirt pocket and gestured to indicate that it was recording. “You and I will be working together more closely until you leave Appalachia.”

Under the scrutiny of Bar Elohim, Pierce understood.

“Make sure to be at my office as soon as you’re ready,” Carney continued. “I’ll expect you there.”

Carney gently set the vidpod on the floor, stepped inside Pierce’s apartment, and shut the door with a loud click. He walked past the couch where the fugitive had died earlier, moved into the bathroom, turned on the shower, walked back to the doorway of the bath, and waited for Pierce to come closer.

“I’m your baby-sitter.” Carney spoke in a low voice. “I don’t expect you to like it, but that’s the way it is. The sooner I can get you out of Appalachia, the better it will be for the both of us.”

“Fine with me.” Pierce held his coffee mug tighter. “What have you got on your deputy and the horses? What about that kid with the girl? Any ID? You guys have face recognition software, right? Database of everyone in Appalachia?”

“Not so fast. I’d like to know about the canister. Mason had it when he came into the livery with the girl. Showed up clear on the surveillance footage.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Pierce said. “I’m not your resource. You’re mine. Go ahead and confirm it with Bar Elohim.”

“It does work that way.” Carney’s hands and arms weren’t relaxed any more. His hairline shifted as his face tightened. Slightly. A man had to be watching close to see it. Pierce filed the poker tell away. “We might as well make that clear. I’m not afraid of Bar Elohim. There’s more to all of this than meets the eye, and I want to know what’s happening. You don’t like it, I’ll book you on murder charges, and you’ll be in the jail cell waiting for me to return from collecting the deputy. You might think you have the juice to get released, and you do. But how many days do think it will take for the international politics to work themselves out?”

“Who’d I kill?” Pierce wasn’t sure whether to be amused or irritated by the older man’s plan.

“No one. I just lay charges.”

“Not much evidence for a murder charge.”

“None,” Carney said. “But it’ll still take time to clear your name after an accusation from the sheriff. Then, too bad, it will appear like I made a big mistake. Nothing I won’t survive. And about the time the murder charge gets cleared, I’ll put in a couple of heresy indictments, and Appalachian politics will force Bar Elohim to take my side until that’s sorted out. You’d spend a week in jail. Maybe two. Understand?”

Pierce nodded. He would have made the same threats himself. “I understand you won’t be treated like hired help. Fair enough.”

“The canister.”

“You want the deputy,” Pierce said. “I want the girl. I’ll help you with what you need. But the canister is off the table. And really, you don’t want to know.”

Carney’s hairline dropped fractionally. Pierce took this as a good sign, and he started with a basic question. “Who was the boy with her? His face showed up on the footage clearly too.”

“Had him on an electronic warrant. He’s a factory runaway. Best guess is she found him somewhere in the woods.”

“And your deputy?” Pierce said. “I’d like to know how she convinced him to help.”

“Me too,” Carney answered. “All I can tell you right now is where he threw his vidpod. About a mile away. Don’t expect to find his body with it, but had to send someone to look.”

“And the horses from the livery?”

“All except one are accounted for. GPS shows it’s stationary, a few miles outside of Cumberland Gap. Want to walk there? Or do you know how to ride a horse?”

“I saw an official vehicle parked by the courthouse. Each town has one, right? We could be there in a few minutes. Mason Lee told me the procedure. You get the engine computer unlocked via satellite.”

“Just so you know, if we take the car, it also unlocks the live video and audio monitors inside.”

Pierce gulped the last of his coffee. “Horse sounds good.”