The Jekyll Revelation by Robert Masello

Author:Robert Masello [Masello, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503951198
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2016-11-07T18:30:00+00:00

TOPANGA CANYON—CALIFORNIA

Present Day

Rafe hadn’t really wanted to delay their departure from the canyon, but despite her protestations, he could tell that Heidi’s ankle wasn’t completely healed. By the time he’d caught up to her fleeing from the meth lab, she was favoring one leg, and trying to disguise it. She needed a rest, and maybe, he’d reasoned, it would be better to travel after dark; if Axel and Roy had decided to come after them, they might have given up by now.

Now he was regretting it.

Heidi was still moving slowly, and the canyon was so dark that their flashlights hardly made a dent. More than once, he wondered if he’d be able to track down the jeep at all. The night air was cool and the sky cloudy, but he didn’t relish the thought of sleeping out in the canyon. He’d already returned Heidi from a training mission in terrible shape once; he didn’t want anything else to go wrong on this one.

Enough already had.

What was he going to do about the meth lab? It was his duty—absolutely—to report it to the proper authorities, but by the time they acted on the news, the evidence would be gone and all activity there ceased. Axel would make sure of that. What’s more, Rafe’s number would be up, if it wasn’t already, with the Spiritz. The Land Management office would have an excuse, too, to cut off his funding and transfer him, for his own safety, to some godforsaken spot where he would never know what had happened to Diego and Frida.

“How much farther is it?” Heidi asked, trying not to sound as weary as he knew she was.

“Not much.”

“You know where we’re going, right?”

“I’ll try to forget you asked me that.”

“Sorry.”

Not that she didn’t have a point. “Maybe we should rest for a minute or two,” he said, slinging his backpack to the ground. He’d put this kid through an awful lot, and he felt terrible about it. He’d have offered to give their boss a special commendation of her performance, but he was afraid that, coming from him, it would only backfire.

From the way she slumped down on the spot, he could tell she was at the end of her endurance. They squatted down on the hard ground, and instantly they were enveloped by the darkness and the silence. It was always that way—the moment you stopped hearing your own breathing and the rattle of your gear and the crunching of your boots, it seemed as if all of life was suspended. But then, after a minute or two, the sounds of the canyon came to you, as if on a frequency you had not been tuned to. He heard the distant call of night birds, the light breeze blowing through the chaparral, the chirping of crickets.

“Have you still got those muffins?” Heidi asked.

“You sure?”

“Why?”

“No reason,” he said, not wanting to prejudice her. He dug the homemade muffins out of his backpack, handed one to her—it felt like a Nerf ball—and waited.

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