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Didi had taken to the twins, a boy and girl she’d quickly dubbed Adam and Ariel, but still she’d kept her secret, and Remmi had been advised to do the same. There had been the unspoken threat of some kind of illegality, possibly no official birth record for either child, and Didi had warned her daughter that the babies could be “taken away” and “put into foster care” or “put up for adoption,” all of which was probably BS, but Remmi had dutifully held her tongue.
And now this. A secret run through the desert in the Caddy, while dressed in her flashiest costume? It didn’t make any sense. Not only that, Remmi knew, somehow it wasn’t right, almost seemed sinister. But what was her mother’s plan? Remmi didn’t doubt that Didi had one, and she almost banged on the panel separating this tiny cranny from the back seat, but didn’t. If Didi realized her eldest daughter was stowed away and now a part of whatever plot she’d hatched, Didi would flip out and possibly even slap her again, so Remmi bit her tongue and tried to ignore the headache throbbing to the pulsing beat of some song Didi was listening to, the guitars and drums pounding through speakers mounted in the cargo space.
But as the beat thundered and the smell of cigarette smoke filled her space, the heat intense, Remmi almost gave up and pounded her fist on the panels. She was poised to do it when the music stopped suddenly and the car shifted, turning widely, still bouncing on the uneven terrain, slowing slightly. Whatever Didi was involved in, it was about to go down.
Remmi bit her lip, worried. And Didi was clearly nervous. She never smoked unless she was stressed to the max, at least not around the babies. Whatever this was, it was bad, bad, bad.
Maybe she should reveal herself.
What if something really bad was about to happen?
She’d told herself that Didi wouldn’t do anything to put her babies, her specially equipped monster of a car, and her own self at risk, but what did Remmi know? Didi was nothing if not theatrical, and though she seemed very inclined to save her own skin, she’d been acting weird lately, ever since the birth of the twins. And now she was lighting up again, a sure sign that she was anxious. Yeah, Didi smoked, but not one after another, and the set of her jaw, the little worry lines near the corners of her glossy lips, visible in the mirror, were indications of just how serious this all was.
Remmi started hyperventilating and told herself to calm down, that everything was going to be fine, that Didi had been in more than her share of scrapes and had always landed on her feet. Hopefully this time would be the same.
* * *
On the ridge overlooking a wide span of the Mojave, the Marksman waited.
Patiently.
Double-checking the holographic sight on his rifle, making certain it was aimed perfectly, he felt the dying sun on his back. The Remington was held in place by a hog saddle on a short tripod and aimed at the desert floor, where trails from motorbikes, ATVs, and SUVs crisscrossed through the sparse vegetation. The evening was still hot, only a whisper of wind sliding over him.
Nearly g
o time.
A glance at the dead body lying face down, blood staining the sand, confirmed the fact that everything was in motion.
He turned back to his sniper’s nest, once more checking for scorpions and Mojave Greens, rattlers common to this part of the desert. He scanned the dips and ridges of his hiding spot but found it clean. Settling in, he ignored the little trail of blood that ran down a bit of a slope toward him and didn’t listen to the sounds of the coming night, the insects, and the occasional cry of a coyote. He needed to focus, and as he did, a song came into his mind.
As always.
Whenever absolute concentration was necessary, the prayers and rhymes and songs of his youth would seep into his brain, the rhythms and tunes soothing, though some people might think it hypocrisy or heresy or even worse for the religious or patriotic ditties and phrases to be part of his plan of action. He didn’t care, though. He needed a clear mind, a focused eye, and a steady hand. He didn’t choose the mantra, it chose him, day by day, different as the seasons, constant as the rising sun. Once the Lord’s Prayer had sifted through his gray matter:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name . . .
Another time a song he barely remembered from vacation Bible school:
Jesus loves me
This I know
For the Bible
Tells me so . . .
But today there was another one, the refrain simple, the earworm incessant, which was just perfect:
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine . . .
This little light of mine . . .
His entire family would have been horrified that these inspirational songs and catchphrases and prayers were what he used as a calming bath for his brain, a steadying force, but did it matter? Sometimes he even invoked prayers in Latin, a dead language he’d been forced to learn at the insistence of his ultrareligious grandmother, who had been raised Roman Catholic before she found her born-again faith. Despite her conversion to a strict evangelical sect, she retained some of the trappings of her Catholic roots, her affinity for Latin being one of them. Granny. May she rest in peace. “Requiescat in pace,” he said aloud, softly, not for the dead person here, in the desert, but for that pale-lipped, curly-haired woman with skin the color and texture of beef jerky, who had alternately wagged her finger at him and laughed uproariously, from her gut, mouth opened wide, gold caps glinting in the firelight. A miserable, God-fearing, and hilarious old bitch. “Requiescat in pace,” he repeated, then spat into the dirt, sending a camel spider scurrying to hide under a nearby rock.
It shouldn’t be long now.
