“I’ll go there, if I can.”

Espejo sighed and shook his head. Another lengthy moment passed while he looked down at his desk, thinking. “There was a place he mentioned—mentioned only once. When he was a teenager, he told me one evening during a bad storm, he’d had to purify himself of the taint of some kind of evil. He told me that it was clinging to him, clinging with a grip like death, and that only a spiritual journey would rid him of it. Now I know he must have meant that bomb. Anyway, he told me he’d gone out into the wilderness, wandered around until he found his power place—Ojo Escondido, he called it—and spent five days there, fasting. He said he experienced a powerful vision. But he wouldn’t describe it to me and told me never to bring it up again.”

“And he didn’t say anything more about that experience?”

“No. He implied it had given him some unique insight into the world—but that it was too potent, maybe too dangerous, to be passed on to a boy.”

“But you believe this place of power was where he went back to when he disappeared?”

“I always figured that’s where he returned.”

“You said he called it Ojo Escondido. Do you know of any place with that name?”

Espejo shook his head again. “I remember a few of the elders mentioning it in passing, a long time ago. Supposedly, it was a place near Sierra Blanca, way up at the northern end of the rez. But the way they spoke of it, I could never be sure whether it was real—or mythical.”

“Ojo Escondido,” Nora said slowly, almost to herself. “Hidden Eye.”

“In New Mexico Spanish,” said Espejo, “Ojo also means ‘spring.’”

Nora took a deep breath. “Can you take me there? Or at least, to where you think it might be?”

A long silence followed this question—long enough to make Nora feel uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe I’ve overstepped my bounds.”

“I’d like to help you,” Espejo said. “But I can’t. I made a promise.”

“Even knowing what you do now?”

The young man looked down at his hands. “That knowledge doesn’t change anything.”

For a moment, Nora remained still. Then she picked up her backpack, unzipped it, took out the evidence case, and placed it on the desk.

Espejo looked up. “What’s that?”

Nora unlatched the box and took out the medicine bundle. As she did so, Espejo jerked abruptly, as if he’d been hit by an electric current. “Where did you get that?”

“It’s Nantan’s medicine bundle.”

But it was clear Espejo had already guessed this. “Where did you get that?” he repeated.

“He left it at their campsite in High Lonesome.”

Espejo let out a long, slow exhalation. “That one night he spoke to me about his vision quest, he said something strange. He said he had once been ‘spiritually orphaned.’ I never knew what he meant. I wasn’t even sure I’d understood his words.” He looked at the medicine bundle. “I wonder why he never went back to get it.”

“He was too frightened by the atomic explosion he’d witnessed.”

“But from what you told me, he wasn’t too frightened to stay with his dying friend. And he wasn’t too frightened to bury him in the required manner.” He paused. “It wasn’t fear. I don’t understand. Nobody would leave that behind.”

Again he fell silent for a long moment. Then he said slowly: “One of the things Nantan taught me was that everything has a reason. Nothing is random. So you being here, carrying that medicine bundle—there’s a reason for that.” He straightened in his chair. “Very well. I’ll take you there. Or rather, I’ll take you as far as I can without breaking my promise. If we find him—dead or alive—you’ll have to go the last mile alone.”

44

CORRIE LAY IN bed, staring at the ceiling. Although she was weary, she could not manage to go to sleep. She was too restless. Restless and frustrated.

She’d barely gotten any sleep after Morwood sent her home last night. She’d spent the day listlessly, getting little done. And now, here she was—staring at the ceiling again. It was no more of a soporific than it had been the night before.

She reached for her phone and turned off the background music she’d put on to make her drowsy: Deep Frieze, by Sleep Research Facility. If she was going to lie awake, she might as well think.

There was no mystery to her restlessness—it stemmed from her last trip to Jesse Gower’s. Was she feeling guilty for treating him brusquely over the phone? Maybe a little, but he’d certainly warranted such treatment. Was it the grim, brutal, pointless finality of what she’d found? She didn’t think so: it wasn’t fear or trauma that she felt. She’d seen a lot of awful stuff at Quantico, and besides, nothing could compare to that terrifying figure that had appeared in her Medicine Creek trailer doorway: that huge, white-moon face spattered with blood, the one good arm

reaching for her …

She closed the box on that memory and started over.

Jesse had been tortured and killed for a reason. Everyone agreed: someone wanted something from him. But cash, drugs … what?