Speaking in Tongues

prosecutor and one a phony defense lawyer and both of them now felons.
    •   •   •
    Aaron Matthews was driving, seventy, then eighty miles an hour.
    Anger had given way to sorrow. To the same piercing hollowness he’d felt in the months after Peter had died in prison. Sorrow at plans gone wrong, terribly wrong.
    Matthews had been at his rental house, off Route 29, waiting to see if he’d finally stopped Tate Collier. He believed he had. He’d given up on the subtlety, given up on the words, given up on the delicious art of persuasion. Stiff with anger, he’d dragged the Walker girl, screaming, from the trunk of his car. Said nothing, convinced her of nothing—he’d just slashed and slashed and slashed . . . All of his anger flowing from him as hot and sudden as the blood from her body. He’d called from a pay phone to report seeing a body then had sped home.
    There the phone had rung. He hadn’t answered but listened to the message as the officer left it. Some bullshit about traffic tickets. “Give us a call when you get home. Thank you.”
    It meant, of course, that they knew about him. Or suspected, at least.
    How had it happened? Why hadn’t they just tossed Collier into the lockup and ignored him? Maybe he had actually convinced them that he was innocent and that Matthews had kidnapped the girl. The fucking silver-tongued devil! An angry, sorrowful mood exploded within Matthews like napalm.
    It was only a matter of time now before they found Blue Ridge Facility. They knew his name, they’d find out his connection there, and they’d find Megan.
    He stared out the window for a moment. Then closed his eyes.
    In a perfect world, moods don’t burn you like torches, juries work pure justice and revenge befalls sinners in exact proportion to their crimes. In a perfect world Matthews would have kept Megan McCall as his child forever, a replacement for Peter. And Tate Collier would have lived in despair all his life, never knowing where she was—knowing only that she’d fled from him, propelled by undiluted hate.
    But there was no chance for such symmetry now. All his hopes had unraveled. And there was only one answer left. To kill the girl and leave. Flee to the West Coast, New England, maybe overseas.
    He’d lost his son, Tate Collier would lose his daughter.
    A kind of cure, a kind of justice, a kind of revenge . . .
    He spent a few minutes preparing some things in his house then hurried to his car. He sped out onto the highway, toward the distant humps of mountains, a sensuous dark line above which no stars became stars and the moon showed as a faint, white crescent of frown.
    •   •   •
    Cleaning the deep wounds was the hardest part.
    She’d found a cheap sewing kit in the bedroom and a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet.
    He took the stitches bravely (even though she cringed every time the needle pierced his skin). But when Megan poured a capful of alcohol on the wounds he shivered frantically at the pain.
    “Oh, I’m sorry.”
    “No, no,” came his garbled voice. “Keep at it, Ms. Beautiful . . .”
    Her eyes teared when she heard the nickname he’d used the night he picked her up.
    “Even if you get out, you’ll never get past ’em. The dogs. He’s got four or five of the big fuckers.”
    “You’re sure you can’t walk?”
    “I don’t think so,” he gurgled. “No.”
    “Okay, you stay here. I saw a door going to the basement. I think I can break it open. I’m going to see if there’s a door or window down there. Maybe it’ll lead outside.”
    He nodded, breathed, “I love . . .” and passed out.
    She stacked the cinder blocks around him so that if Matthews glanced this way he wouldn’t see the young man.
    She listened for a moment to his low, uneven breathing. Then, knife in one hand, she started down the corridor.
    Megan was almost to the intersection of the corridors when she heard the creak of a door opening. Then it slammed.
    Aaron Matthews had returned.

Chapter Twenty-six
    They drove in silence through destitute parts of Prince William County. They passed tilled fields, where the taproots of corn were reaching silently down into the dark, red-tinted earth. Barns long ago abandoned. Decaying tract bungalows, where postwar dreams had withered fast—tiny cubes of vinyl—and aluminum-sided homes. Shacks and cars on blocks.
    Through Manassas, where the fearsome Rebel yell was first heard, then through the outlying farms