Sole Survivor

not tonight. I need more time to think, to plan. And I'm in a hurry to see a young girl, a child, who is at the centre of what is happening.”
         Nina , Joe thought, and his heart shuddered like the shadows of the wind-shaken trees.
        Rose moved to the Asian man and touched him too. “I can tell you this much… we stand on the threshold you foresaw. We will go through that door, maybe not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or next week, but in the years ahead.”
        She went to Joshua. “Together we will see the world change forever, bring the light of knowledge into the great dark loneliness of human existence. In our time .”
        And finally she approached Mark. “I assume you brought two cars because you were prepared to give one to Joe and me.”
        “Yes. But we hoped-”
        She put a hand on his arm. “Soon but not tonight. I've got urgent business, Mark. Everything we hope to achieve hangs in the balance right now, hangs so precariously-until I can reach the little girl I mentioned.”
        “Wherever she is, we can take you to her.”
        “No. Joe and I must do this alone-and quickly.”
        “You can take the Ford.”
        “Thank you.”
        Mark withdrew a folded one-dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to Rose. “There are just eight digits in the serial number on this bill. Ignore the fourth digit, and the other seven are a phone number in the three-one-oh area code.”
        Rose tucked the bill into her jeans.
        “When you're ready to join us,” Mark said, “or if you're ever in trouble you can't get out of, ask for me at that number. We'll come for you no matter where you are.”
        She kissed him on the cheek. “We've got to go.” She turned to Joe, “Will you drive?”
        “Yes.”
        To Joshua, she said, “May I take your cell phone?”
        He gave it to her.
        Wings of furious wind beat around them as they got into the Ford. The keys were in the ignition.
        As Rose pulled the car door shut, she said, “Oh, Jesus,” and leaned forward, gasping for breath.
        “You are hurt.”
        “Told you. I got knocked around.”
        “Where's it hurt?”
        “We've got to get across the city,” Rose said, “but I don't want to go back past Mahalia's.”
        “You could have a broken rib or two.”
        Ignoring him, she sat up straight, and her breathing improved as she said, “The creeps won't want to risk setting up a roadblock and a traffic check without cooperation from the local authorities, and they don't have time to get that. But you can bet your ass they'll be watching passing cars.”
        “If you've got a broken rib, it could puncture a lung.”
        “Joe, damn it, we don't have time . We've got to move if we're going to keep our girl alive.”
        He stared at her. “Nina?”
        She met his eyes. She said, “Nina,” but then a fearful look came into her face, and she turned from him.
        “We can head north from here on PCH,” he said, “then inland on Kanan-Dume Road. That's a county route up to Augora Hills. There we can get the one-oh-one east to the two-ten.”
        “Go for it.”
        Faces powdered by moonlight, hair wind-tossed, the four who would leave in the Mercedes stood watching, back dropped by leaping stone dolphins and thrashing trees.
        This tableau struck Joe as both exhilarating and ominous-and he could not identify the basis of either perception, other than to admit that the night was charged with an uncanny power that was beyond his understanding. Everything his gaze fell upon seemed to have monumental significance, as if he were in a state of heightened consciousness, and even the moon appeared different from any moon that he had ever seen before.
        As Joe put the Ford in gear and began to pull away from the fountain, the young woman came forward to place her hand against the window beside Rose Tucker's face. On this side of the glass, Rose matched her palm to the other. The young woman was crying, her lovely face glimmering with moon-bright tears, and she moved with the car along the driveway, hurrying as it picked up speed, matching her hand to Rose's all the way to the gate before at last pulling back.
        Joe felt almost as if somewhere earlier in the night he had stood before a mirror of madness and, closing his eyes, had passed through his own reflection into lunacy. Yet he did not want to return