Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 120 of 150

Ben walked north through pines he did not know. The chest rode on his hip. The creature slept inside it. His arms shook. Every step he pictured Adam turning right toward the beach and pointing a finger. If Adam sold him before dawn, the hunters would sweep this ground by noon. He had hours, not days. He stopped at a stream and drank. Ima crouched beside him. "He'll talk," she said. "His daughter is sick. He'll talk." "I know." "So we can't just run. He knows we went north." Ben set the chest down. She was right. Running only worked if the trail behind him was dead. Adam was alive and walking and knew which pines Ben had stepped into. The trail was not dead. It was a mouth about to open. He had to close the mouth before it did. Not kill Adam. He was not going to kill Adam. But he had to give Adam a different story to tell. A girl stood on the far bank. Brown hair, blue jacket, a notebook clipped under one arm. She was writing when Ben saw her. She looked up and did not run. "You came from the coast road," she said. It was not a question. "You passed the wreck at four. I saw two men count coin there at five. One had a horn." Ben stared. "Who are you." "Annette. I write down what I see. I was waiting for someone from the Greywood. He didn't come out." She flipped the notebook. "I have the hunters logged. Times. Faces. Directions. Nobody around here wants it." Ben took the offer she had not made yet. "I need a man to hear a story and believe it. An old man at a yellow house down by the pines. If he hears it from the right mouth, he tells it to hunters and it sends them the wrong way." "What story." "That I went east along the ridge. That I dumped the chest in the tidepool below the wreck. That I was bleeding." She wrote it as he spoke. "I can put a time on it. Six-forty. I saw you from the marker. You were limping east." She looked up. "That's a lie I can sign." "Why would you." "Because the people who won't help me are the same people paying him." She closed the notebook. "Tell me the old man's face." Ben told her. Gray beard, crowbar, limp on the left. She nodded once and went south along the bank at a steady walk, notebook under her arm. Ben sat with the chest between his knees. He had not stopped Adam. He had given Adam a different truth to sell, one written down by a witness with times on it. If it held, the trail north died at the tidepool by dawn. If it did not hold, he had bought an hour, maybe two. He stood up and went further into trees he still did not know.