The Caleb Collection Page 33

  “Why didn’t God heal your gunshot wound?” Leiah asked.

  Caleb shrugged. “Maybe I need it as a reminder. It’s okay.”

  That seemed the end of it.

  “Well, we really need to change the bandage. But I guess getting him to a hospital isn’t the first priority. That settles that question.” She turned to Jason. “So what do we do?”

  “We sit tight,” Jason said.

  “For how long? We have no food; we have nothing.”

  “I’ll have to get some food. But if we go back, Caleb will be taken back to Nikolous, and we’ll be taken into custody. I’m not sure I’m ready for either.”

  “Yes,” Caleb said. “I would not like to go back to Father Nikolous.”

  Leiah stood. “Couldn’t we just tell the media what’s going on? Or tell the police?”

  “Tell them what? That we believe there’s a conspiracy to assassinate Caleb? One maybe led by Charles Crandal, the presidential candidate? That although we have no evidence of it, we know the boy’s been poisoned? Without hard evidence, we’ll sound like two kidnappers who’ve done some fast thinking to cover their tracks.”

  “We have hard evidence. His wound.”

  “Something they might accuse us of,” he said. “And even if there’s evidence at the Old Theater, I doubt very much it points to Crandal. And there’s still the real possibility that whoever shot Caleb isn’t finished with us. Going public could be the worst move now. No, we need to let this cool down a little.”

  She put a hand on Caleb’s head and smoothed his hair. He liked it when she did that. Their discussion about media and police required a better understanding of this country than he had, but it was clear that they didn’t know what to do.

  “We should ask the Father for his help,” he said.

  “I agree,” Leiah said. “God knows we need it.”

  Jason nodded. “You’re right.” There was still a shadow of doubt that darkened his face, Caleb thought. Maybe he could help him see.

  33

  BANKS HAD FOLLOWED THE BRONCO onto the dirt road before losing it in a cloud of dust that was itself lost to the night. Jason and company had disappeared into the wooded hills. That could be good and that could be bad, depending. But in this case it had been good.

  According to the map, Banks had doubled back to the Texaco, for the road Jason had headed down forked three miles up, and both forks were dead ends—one within five miles, the other in seven. Unless that Bronco could climb trees, it was going nowhere but back. Which is why Banks spent the night parked on the road, at the fork, with his .308 on his lap. If they planned on retracing their way tonight, they would have to ram their way through.

  But there had been no ramming. There had been nothing but black silence. Enough for him to sleep. And now it was morning.

  Banks started the Monte Carlo, pulled it off the road, and stepped out. He walked up to where the road forked and opened the map. The fork to the right had the name Canyon Crossing scrawled in italics beside a wiggly line that ended in the hills five miles up. The other followed a dry creek for a few miles before heading into the same forested area under the name Canyon End.

  He slid the map into his belt, plucked a stalk of grass, and walked across both forks, studying the gravel. These were not well-traveled roads, but there was no way to tell which had been used last night. Dried potholes spotted both; some molded mud or splashed water would have been the most obvious indication, but the roads were powder dry.

  Banks stuck the grass in his mouth and looked south. The kid was probably dead. He should’ve taken another shot, for the head. Junior might have walked in on him with the delay, but at least he wouldn’t be in this mess.

  On the other hand, this mess was going to pay well. And in truth he could hardly ask for a better setup. Jason might be more resourceful than the average pinhead, but he was stranded up one of these two deserted roads with a woman and a wounded child. They would have to come out sooner or later. It was either that or shrivel up and die in the hills, and Jason didn’t strike him as the shriveling-up type.

  Banks walked back to the car and backed it into the bush beside the road. If he knew which road they’d taken, he would drive in and pop ’em. But as it was, he couldn’t risk being up one while they doubled back on the other. No, this would be a simple waiting game.

  Good enough.

  He took out his rifle and his binoculars, locked the car, and climbed the twenty-foot rock outcropping that rose to the north of the fork. He settled behind a large boulder and studied the road below. He could see half a mile either way on each fork.

  He rested his rifle on the rock and sighted down the road. Pop! He could take the driver of a car out at three hundred yards with this thing.

  And that would be that.

  Donna watched the sea of bodies march down Figueroa Street, waving their banners of protest overhead. The mob was well over a thousand now, and growing by the minute. The eclectic group wielded signs that read everything from His blood will be on your hands to the slogan from Charles Crandal’s presidential bid Power to the People. But they all seemed to agree on one thing: the boy’s abduction was part of some conspiracy involving the authorities, and they wanted him back.

  Donna slapped the side of the news van. “Let’s go. We have an exclusive with Nikolous in an hour.”

  Her cameraman, Bill, jumped behind the wheel and fired the engine. A large white man with a red beard and bright blue eyes walked by with a girl who looked to be about seven or eight. They held signs that read simply, We love Caleb, not Uncle Sam. Donna smiled. She’d already sent the studio enough live footage to fill a dozen newscasts, and this was no longer her gig.

  She climbed into the front of the van, and Bill pulled into the street, honking to clear a path. “This is nuts,” he said, inching the van onto a side street. “Plain nuts.”

  “They’re not as crazy as they look,” Donna said. “If you had a daughter with Down’s syndrome you might be out there with a sign too.”

  “I wouldn’t be marching in a parade with a sign that accused Uncle Sam. I can’t believe they organized this thing so quickly.”

  “It’s nearly ten. Floor it, will you?”

  “Am I ever late?”

  She smiled. Bill might be surprised at how the people were reacting to Caleb’s disappearance, but she wasn’t. If they were in a different country, a predominately Muslim or Hindu one, for example, the crowds would be ten times the size. As it was, their own phone lines were burning up with overseas calls for information. At last count, over five hundred overseas networks had called NBC alone. Half of those had asked for her by name. She had broken the story and they figured she knew more than most, which in some way she did. She knew that Jason was no criminal.

  Teheran had issued a public statement condemning the United States for allowing such harm to come to what they called “a chosen instrument of God’s grace.” Evidently they figured that if God had seen fit to deposit the boy in Iran, they would have never been so flippant as to allow such an absurd thing as a kidnapping to occur.

  Pakistan had issued a similar statement, blasting the president of the United States for not protecting the boy. In all honesty, Donna was sure the outrage expressed by the international community was taking the administration off guard. Separation of church and state might be a good thing, but it did not play well into the current situation. The White House had remained quiet about Caleb over the last four weeks, clearly uneasy about political fallout, regardless of their statement. Well, now the matter was in their lap, whether the administration liked it or not. Kidnapping was a federal offense.

  Some were saying that it was already the largest manhunt in L.A. County in a hundred years. If you included the Feds, they might be right. They were sweeping the cities by category. Hospitals first, hotels and motels next, and so on. City police and highway patrol had cruisers on the streets of course, checking the roads and alleys for a white Ford Bronco.

 
; The boy would resurface, and when he did she intended on being there. Jason couldn’t keep him hidden forever. She understood why he’d taken Caleb—if her own child were being manipulated by the Greek, she might do the same. And Jason was seeing Caleb more as a son these days, she thought.

  But there might have been better ways to deal with the matter. Why go into hiding? He should be coming out into the public with this protest. She would be the first to paste his face on a few million screens. Heck, she could probably get a worldwide audience for him if he wanted it.

  There was always the possibility Caleb was as ill as Nikolous said he was. But if so, why had the Greek allowed the boy onstage in the first place? To restore his reputation. Either way, it looked like the Greek was whipping up public opinion against Jason for the event any such question was asked once the boy was found. The Father was no idiot, and he saw opportunity even in this. If it was determined the boy was ill, Nikolous would easily pin the blame on Jason. In fact, no matter what the boy’s condition when he was found, Nikolous had Jason in the cross hairs.

  “Jason, Jason,” she muttered. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  “What?” Bill asked.

  “Nothing. When was the last time we saw a day like this?” she asked.

  “Not for a while. Oklahoma City bombing?”

  “Maybe all the way back to Kennedy’s assassination,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t know. I wasn’t around at the time,” Bill said, smiling. He maneuvered the van onto 405, heading north.

  “And you think I look like I was?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “Sure.”

  Her phone tweeped and she unfolded it. “Donna.”

  “Donna, thank goodness.” It was Beck from the studio. “I just got off the phone with Sergeant Macky at the downtown precinct. You’ll never guess what they found.”

  “What?”

  “A gun.”

  “They found a gun. Where? On a demonstrator?”

  “No. They found a gun in the Old Theater. Upper seats, left side. A rifle. And they believe that someone might have taken a shot at the boy.”

  Donna jerked upright. “What?! Did he actually say that?”

  “Not in so many words. But they did find a silenced rifle that he thought had been discharged—”

  “How’d he know that?”

  “Shell casing on the ground. They found blood on the ground where the boy fell.”

  “I know. Any signs of a bullet anywhere?”

  “Wouldn’t tell me. The FBI are down there now. It’s yours if you want it. We have enough of Nikolous.”

  Donna turned to Bill. “Change of plans. Get us back to the theater.”

  He swerved for the nearest exit.

  “They have any ideas who might have done it?” Donna asked into her phone.

  “Off the record, they have some ideas, but they’re not saying.” Beck paused. “You can bet the antichrist crowd is on the top of their list.”

  “Is Macky down there now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something.”

  Donna snapped the phone closed. So the boy had been shot! This changed everything! For starters, it cast a whole new light on Jason’s flight.

  “Move it,” she said.

  “I’m moving it.”

  34

  JASON LEANED ON THE DOORPOST of the old shack and watched Leiah with Caleb. The boy sat cross-legged, talking to her in sweet tones. It was the most Caleb had talked since they’d first met him. He seemed to have broken out of his distant seclusion and found common ground with them. Or at least with Leiah. She sat with her legs folded to one side, listening to him intently.

  The meadow had remained perfectly still through the morning. It was amazing how many jets and helicopters took to the air around the L.A. basin. There was hardly a minute when their sound could not be identified with a careful listen. But none of them came swooping in over the treetops with megaphones blaring. If they were doing a search, they were sticking primarily to the city, which made sense, considering the fact that they were probably operating under the assumption that Caleb was sick and required medical attention.

  Caleb had spent most of the morning sitting on the grass overlooking the forest that fell away below them, content in the solitude. Leiah had changed his bandage twice. From what she saw, the bullet had struck his belt buckle and been deflected. The resulting superficial cut ran from his bellybutton to his right side.

  Despite their growing hunger, Leiah had agreed that they should at least wait out the day before making a move. Jason would go into the Texaco for information and food if nothing happened before five. How to get in and out without being recognized was still under consideration. For all they knew, their pictures were plastered all over the newspapers and television. He couldn’t very well walk up and make conversation with the store clerk.

  Jason walked up and eased himself into the grass beside Caleb. A bird chirped noisily on the edge of the meadow.

  Caleb turned and smiled and then continued his discussion with Leiah.

  “It’s not like really stepping into a kingdom with your feet, but with your heart. So this is why it’s done with faith. Because faith’s like the feet of your heart. That’s what Dadda used to say.”

  “And by kingdom you mean the realm? Like it’s a different dimension?” Leiah asked.

  “Dimension?” Caleb stumbled over the word. “It’s a place, but a place your heart goes to. Where God rules. A kingdom.”

  “But it’s real? I mean real like this world.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you walk into it with faith, like just opening a door and walking in?”

  Caleb chuckled. “I think you’re already in this place, Leiah. You entered it on Sunday. Dadda used to call it being born into the kingdom. But to walk in the kingdom . . .” He scissored his fingers on his knee in a walking motion. “To walk in the Spirit—that’s a different thing. Dadda called it stepping past the skin of this world. You find a new world.”

  Jason listened, leaning back on his hands. The distant midday smog hung over Los Angeles in gray streaks, but here a pure breeze rustled through the trees, uncaring. Two worlds: the distant one where Nikolous was undoubtedly climbing the walls in search of them, and this one where the meadow lay peacefully under the sun. Like Caleb’s two kingdoms.

  “And what about me, Caleb?” Jason asked, facing the boy. He doubted Caleb’s theology could be easily reduced to a book, but in a simple, childlike way it had the ring of truth. Dr. Thompson had a sharper understanding of proper theology than most, and what had he said about Caleb? “He knows the reality of the kingdom of God like he knows his hands each have five fingers.” More importantly, Caleb was clearly walking places few Christians Jason had ever known walked. Places Christ walked.

  “I was a Christian a long time ago, I think. At least I made a profession of faith—when Stephen was sick. You think I was in this kingdom you speak about then?”

  Caleb looked at him with round aqua eyes. “I don’t know. Did you love God? Did you follow his Son? Then you were his child, but only you really know.”

  “So you’re saying that maybe I was born into the kingdom, but didn’t have enough faith to walk where the real power exists? If I would’ve walked there, my son would have been healed?”

  “The real power? Do you think that real power is found in the miracles? God does them, of course, but other things like loving are much more powerful than healing. That’s what Dadda taught me, and I’ve seen it too. God can form a world and straighten a crooked hand with a whisper, but to lure a black heart—that’s the amazing thing. Did I tell you about the brine and the oil?”

  “No. You sound like Dr. Thompson now. And where are all the black hearts you’ve lured?”

  “God lures.”

  “Either way, the fact of the matter is that if my son were here under the influence of your faith, he would be heale
d. But under my faith, or whatever you want to call it, he wasn’t healed. That’s a fact.”

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know exactly how it works. I don’t know why he didn’t heal your son’s body. But that’s a small thing; the small things that happen in this life aren’t really so important.” Caleb smiled wide. “We all die, Dadda used to say. Some a moment sooner than others. The moment works out to fifty years here on earth, but it’s really only a blink of an eye and it comes for everyone.” Caleb looked down the valley. “I think that one of us will die soon.”

  Jason blinked. Die? Leiah was staring at the boy. “What do you mean? You can’t mean that! Why do you say that?”

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. It’s just a feeling I have.”

  For a long time they sat in silence, staring at the horizon over Los Angeles.

  Jason was the first to speak again. “My son was everything to me.”

  “I think you’re missing his point,” Leiah said. She leaned forward and studied him. “He’s saying that the things we think are so important in this world aren’t really that important at all! It’s the heart that matters. The healing of the heart, not the body.”

  Caleb didn’t agree or disagree. He just looked down-valley.

  Leiah was saying it, but watching her swallow, Jason knew that she was struggling. “And I think that makes sense,” she said. “What happens to this silly body of ours isn’t the point. A person may be beautiful in this life—they may be given shiny hair and silky smooth skin—but it all means very little. It’s gone in a flash. Like Dr. Thompson said: ‘Whoever said that a straightened hand was more dramatic than a healed heart anyway?’”

  She was talking about her scars, which it seemed God had seen fit to leave her with. The comment brought another stillness to the knoll. Jason felt the impulse to rise and sit by her, but he sat still, awkward.