We made a sorry little band, working our way down the mountain, sometimes dropping to our hands and knees where the track was too steep or the rock too rotten. There were places where the path was level and wide, carpeted with pine needles and smelling like Christmas. And there were other places where it plunged straight down like it had a death wish, nothing but slippery scree you could almost surf. And sometimes it disappeared altogether and we had to guess the best route, occasionally causing us to backtrack for a mile or so to choose a different way.
There were a few streams, running fast and clean from winter snow melting off the mountaintops. We stopped at each, drinking deeply. Helen rooted around in the pockets of her habit until she found some jerky she’d stashed. She shared it out, but it didn’t do much to fill us up. Of course, as Mary Alice pointed out more than once, we had a chicken if things got desperate, but that was just bravado talking. I knew fromthe way she’d gone back for the chicken, she’d never harm a feather on its head. Nat had brought the bird on board, and since she was gone, Mary Alice had taken on its care like a sacred trust.
That night stretched on, forever it seemed. We’d gone off the train before midnight, and it was a long, cold slog until the first rays of the sun crept over the mountain above us. It would be hours before the light made its way down into the valley where we were headed, but knowing it was there, rising up the other side of that relentless mountain, somehow made it bearable. We walked on, one stumbling footstep at a time, until we emerged from the last black pine thicket into the valley floor. A narrow road wound between wooded patches, and we turned to walk along it. The level grass was a miracle after hours of falling and sliding. The pills had worn off a few hours in, and we pushed through on sheer willpower after that. I was hungry, thirsty again, and numb from pushing away thoughts of Natalie. I didn’t think about her any more than I thought about my broken ribs. Sometimes pain just gets in the way of what you have to do. So you put it down until you can stand to carry it again.
After a mile or so of trudging along the road, we heard a distant rumble of engines slowly approaching. We stopped, taking stock of our situation and weighing our options.
“Hitchhike?” Helen asked.
“Who’d pick us up?” I asked. We were filthy and tattered, to say nothing of bloodstained and sporting various injuries.
“I don’t care,” Mary Alice said. “I will give them this chicken if they will give us a ride. I will give them all the moneyin my pockets. I will give them any sexual favors they might require. Just as long as they let us get off this road.”
I looked her over from her torn vacation Bible school sweatshirt to her face, both streaked with blood, and shook my head. “I’m not sure you could give it away, looking like that,” I told her.
“I’ll do it,” Helen said. “As long as I can just lie there.”
Before I could point out to her that she looked even worse—and was dressed like a nun—the rumble of the engines increased to a roar. There was a bend in the road, and one second they were hidden, the next they were in front of us, rolling to a stop. A group of motorcycles, the riders all dressed in heavy leathers, faces hidden by helmets.
They braked, and for just a moment, nothing happened. We looked at them, and they looked at us. The lead motorcycle had someone riding pillion, and the passenger climbed down, tugging at the helmet strap. The helmet popped off, freeing a familiar tangle of wild curls. Behind her the morning sun shone like a nimbus, haloing her head in gold. She had a face full of bruises and one arm was strapped up in a sling. She grinned in spite of her busted lip.
“You girls want a ride?” Nat asked.
Chapter Thirty-One
Mary Alice flung herself atNat, nearly knocking her off her feet.
Nat winced. “Easy, girl. I’ve got a dislocated shoulder and about seventeen other injuries.”
“We thought you were dead,” Mary Alice said through snotty tears.
“Hell, I almost was. That bitch knocked me straight into a metal panel on the edge of the viaduct. If it hadn’t held, I’d have gone all the way over.” The rest of us hugged her tight, ignoring her protests. We were all hurting, and I felt old as something from the Pleistocene. But Nat was there, bruised and bothered and alive.
“You saved Nula!” she exclaimed, cuddling her chicken with her good arm.
“You are not getting that thing home,” Mary Alice warned her.
“Watch me.”
They fell to bickering gently as somebody behind us cleared her throat.
“Naomi! What the hell are you doing in Montenegro?” I demanded.
“Following my mole,” she said. She was dressed in a moto suit of padded black leather, sleek and chic, like she meant business.
I gestured towards her outfit. “You should wear that to the office. Biker Fridays.”
“Office nothing. I’m keeping this to wear at home,” she said. “Dennis won’t know what hit him.” She pointed up the mountain to the nearest railway bridge, so small it looked like a toy. “You came from up there?”
“After we bailed out of a moving train,” Mary Alice told her.
“Galina?”
“Handled,” I told her. “Along with her bodyguard.”
“Good,” Naomi said. “Now I just have to find our mole.” She reached for her phone and pulled up a picture of a dark-haired young woman wearing a seafoam green taffeta dress and an expression that said she’d rather be anywhere else. “Lyndsay really was at her sister’s wedding. I felt so bad for suspecting her, I had to give her a raise. And a better benefits package.”
Maybe I wouldn’t send her a muffin basket, after all. Some extra PTO was a lot better than pastries.