Gone to Ground by Cheryl Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

closed the door behind him, shutting out the soft night sounds of crickets and frogs. Again he surveyed the room. Keeping the pair in sight he moved around the living space, turning as he went so that they were never behind his back. As he reached each of the four doors at the back of the main room, he opened them, and using a small pocket flashlight, quickly surveyed the interiors.
    These rooms, closer to the actual wall of the canyon and tucked further back underneath the overhang, were windowless, side walls made of the same material as the outer wall of the house, but with a solid rock back wall and ceiling. The first three rooms were bedrooms, two evidently occupied and one used as a storage room, with bundles piled on the two double bunk beds. The fourth door hid a pantry which was pitifully empty, testifying to the hard work the pair was required to go through just to keep themselves fed.
    As he moved around the room, the woman and her son swivelled in their seats, keeping him in sight, but they remained silent, the woman’s hand still resting on her son’s shoulder. Finally he returned to his original position near the door and looked directly at them again.
    In the wordless stretch while he explored the house the woman had evidently regained some measure of her composure. Her body was still tense, but she met his stare directly. Her face was still ghostly pale but her gaze held a degree of challenge which surprised him. Her hand moved down from her son’s shoulder to the table in front of her. Beside her the boy still looked terrified, his face so much like his mother’s. The same honey gold hair, the same wide bottle green eyes, the same smooth, tanned skin. But where the mother had an oval face, and a long thin neck, the boy showed evidence of a more masculine structure to come with age. His chin was more squarely shaped, neck stockier, his shoulders already beginning to take on the broadness that would come with his future growth.
    The pair sat still while the man studied them, tolerating his examination without protest though he could see a rising anger in the woman’s eyes. He was impressed at how quickly she regained command of herself after the surprise of his entrance. She must have thought she was well beyond the reach of the Enforcers, and to have him show up on her doorstep had to have rocked her carefully tended belief that they had escaped.
    Finally, when the suspense, fed to ripeness by the silence and menacing appearance of the man, was no longer bearable, the woman spoke.
    “I asked who you are.” Soft voice, a little husky. Tremors of fear under control.
    “O’Reilly,” said the man, “James O’Reilly,” and he felt an unexpected frisson run though his body at the sound of his own name on his lips. It had been many weeks since he’d thought of himself as “O’Reilly” and even longer since he’d thought of himself by his full name. In many ways his journey to Hideaway had been much more than physical.
    He’d thought that Jim O’Reilly had died with Sarah and Kay-Tee, back before the influenza, before the APZs and the secret. That O’Reilly had died in a car crash one night in January, four years ago, when a drunk driver lost control of his car and ran the silver Toyota Camry off the road where it plunged over a cliff to explode in flames at the bottom. That O’Reilly hadn’t stood a chance, although he’d been sixty miles away at the time of the accident.
    At least he’d thought that Jim O’Reilly died. But then there was that band of ghosts up by Oatman.
    He’d believed in the governmental line that ghosts were traitors and they needed to be rounded up or terminated. But that band of ghosts was just a couple of families, trying to make it on their own. One was a little girl of ten or so. The squad destroyed them nonetheless. That night haunted him.
    Then, before he had a chance to repair the cracks in his emotional fortress, he met that girl, Christina, at the Laughlin APZ,