My descent into that warm, velvety darkness had been quick and easy. Coming out of it, though, came in stages. First, the smell of old vomit and a stale, yeasty aroma that made me think of the discount beer my dad drank sometimes. Then, the awareness of a swollen ache on one side of my face, and under that ache, the stickiness of vinyl against my cheek. I peeled my face away from the vinyl, opened my jaw with a crack, and tasted blood. Then I bounced, settling back hard against the seat, and managed to open my eyes. I was in a car. Struggling to focus my eyes, I saw the crushed cans of Mountain Dew Code Red hanging from the rearview mirror, and the plaque with the laminated Jesus Christ baseball card (If they give you hell, knock their asses out of the park), and the acrylic plastic barrier to keep riffraff—in this case, me—locked in the back seat.
It was Deputy Fred Fort’s car. With all the familiar signs, I didn’t even need to see the bristly back of his head in the driver’s seat. I closed my eyes, fighting another wave of nausea, and focused on the voices.
Kaden’s voice had shifted; he spoke with a cringing servility that was somehow even worse than his usual cheery friendliness. “My uncle said he was going to meet us. I wasn’t supposed to—”
“Boy.” Fred Fort was back in his regular pattern of speech: sentences chopped up like firewood. “You’d. Better. Shut. The. Ever. Loving. Christ. Up.”
I opened my eyes. Kaden lifted himself in his seat and glanced through the acrylic plastic partition. His eyes met mine; I was too tired and too sick to glare at him, too tired and too sick to do anything but try to keep from adding my personal brand to the persistent odor of vomit in the back seat. Kaden didn’t look triumphant. He didn’t even look satisfied. He looked like a guy who’d driven full-speed off a cliff: scared shitless and, in some feral part of his brain, realizing he’d made a mistake back at that last turn. I waited for him to announce that I was awake, but all he did was stare at me for several seconds. I closed my eyes to fight off another wave of nausea, and when I opened them again, he had turned around in his seat.
I need to think, I told myself. So think. But that was easier said than done. My stomach felt like it had entered a hula-hooping contest and was damn near close to winning. My head ached so badly that I saw stars if I squeezed my eyes shut. I wasn’t sure what Deputy Fort had hit me with, but I knew I was lucky he hadn’t broken my skull. Compared to all that, I barely even felt the nicks and scratches Kaden had given me with the knife.
All right, all right, I told myself. So you feel like shit. So what’s new? I opened my inner sight, and for a moment I was sure I was going to empty my stomach: the inrush of texture and depth made me feel like I was watching a bad 3-D movie. But even when the sensation passed, I couldn’t make a connection with Deputy Fort or with Kaden. Ginny had royally screwed up my powers, but I wasn’t sure it mattered. I hadn’t been able to stop Kaden, and I was pretty sure Fred Fort was a psychopath. Whatever I did to him would wash off like a spring shower.
Kaden’s phone vibrated, and he held it up for inspection.
“What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You?” Deputy Fort said. “Are. You. Stupid?”
“It’s Colton.” Kaden’s whine had turned defensive. “He doesn’t know anything, but he saw me leaving school with Vie. I better talk to him.”
The blow was so quick and hard that I didn’t even see it. I did, however, see Kaden’s head rock sideways, and I heard it crunch against the glass. Deputy Fort rolled down his window, and a blast of freezing cold swept the car. Something small and dark flew out the window, spinning so that it resembled the flutter of wings, and then it was lost somewhere in the scraggly grasses of the high plains.
“Ow,” Kaden complained. He sounded on the verge of tears, and when he glanced through the plastic partition, a trickle of blood was running from his inflamed nose. His right ear, too, had swollen. “My uncle’s going to—”
Fred Fort didn’t answer. He just hit him again, and this time, I saw it: one of Fred Fort’s huge fists landed on the side of Kaden’s head, and Kaden’s face rippled with the shock of the blow. He dropped back, his face dazed and empty.
That was one way to get Kaden to stop talking. Some of my dizziness had faded, and so I concentrated on my situation. It was obvious that Kaden feared and, to some extent, didn’t trust Deputy Fort. It was obvious that Kaden, in some way, also felt obligated to help him—whether that was simply because of the fear or because of some other reason, I wasn’t sure. And, most importantly, it was obvious that Sheriff Hatcher knew about the arrangement. Twice, now, Kaden had implied that the sheriff was part of whatever was happening. Even though I had all but known that the sheriff was corrupt, especially after our nighttime encounter on the highway, I still felt a sinking sensation in my gut. If I was going to get out of this alive, I was going to have to do it on my own.
The next question, though, was the one I should have thought of first: why was I alive? Lawayne had told me that they would leave me alone if I stayed out of their way. He had also warned me to give them what they wanted—the flash drive. The sheriff had intimated something similar. I hadn’t stayed out of their way, though. I had, instead, continued to try to figure out their plans. I had, without realizing it, tipped my hand to their inside man by asking Kaden to help me. And Kaden had the flash drive.
Realization struck me, and I groaned. That was why River and Samantha had insisted that I ask Kaden to accompany me instead of Austin. They had known Kaden was working with Makayla and Mr. Big Empty. They hadn’t been able to tell me so directly, but they had assumed, correctly, that by inviting Kaden, I would force him to reveal his allegiance. They had been right. Unfortunately, they hadn’t realized that Kaden would kidnap me.
Then my stomach plummeted again. River and Samantha couldn’t have known what Kaden would do—or could they? It was no coincidence that Deputy Fort had been waiting behind the school; Kaden had known he would be there. That’s why Kaden had taken me to the back of the school instead of going to his car. And there hadn’t been time for Kaden to make a phone call, which meant that Deputy Fort had been waiting. Kaden had been planning this all along.
It probably would have happened in gym class. I wondered what the excuse would have been. Maybe Kaden would have asked me to talk to him in private. Maybe he would have lied and found a way to lure me to the back of the school. It would have been relatively easy; even if I hadn’t particularly liked Kaden, I had trusted him to a degree. If Fred Fort had been lurking behind the school, it was entirely possible that River and Samantha had known and had still insisted that I include Kaden in my plans.
I hoped—I hoped to God, or whoever He had managing things at this time of year in Wyoming—that River and Samantha had a good reason for this. I had a hard time, though, coming up with anything that seemed good enough. There was only one bright spot: as far as I could tell, Kaden hadn’t delivered the flash drive. That was why they were keeping me alive. Because they still believed I had it. Now I just had to find a way to turn that to my advantage.
We drove for a couple of hours at least, and neither Fred Fort nor Kaden spoke a word. Then the cruiser slowed, drifting onto the shoulder as the tires hopped across the rumble strip. Deputy Fort turned, and gravel crunched under the car, rocking me back and forth as we drove along the uneven surface. This seemed to go on forever, but eventually the car stopped.
No longer bothering to feign unconsciousness, I sat up and glanced around. In three directions, the high plains rolled to the horizon. No signs remained of civilization: no highway, no electrical lines, no pylons, no cell towers. Then I glanced through the cruiser’s rear window.
The ranch house itself was enormous: a structure of masonry and timber that looked at least a century old, but kept in excellent condition. Windows glinted under the peaks of its steep roof, and a curving drive of crushed brick—a sickly color of brick with too much orange—circled at the front door. It even had a tower on one side that reminded me of pictures I’d seen of old houses in England. There were outbuildings too, clearly of newer construction but built with the same sickly orange brick as the drive. The whole compound was surrounded by a split-rail fence that opened at the center under a wooden arch.
I started laughing as Fred Fort dragged me out of the car, and I kept laughing even after he delivered one of those thunder-clap blows to the side of my head. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was just too funny. Mertrice Stroup-Ogle had found one clue—just one, one goddamn clue—and it was staring me in the face. Flashing and buzzing in steady pulses of neon blue, the swirling letters of the wooden arch proclaimed the name of the ranch: Belshazzar’s Feast.