“Come and see,” the other Constance D’Arcy repeated and walked out to the roadway, disappearing into the darkness like an apparition from a Shakespearean drama that had said all it would say.
Con followed, as they both knew she would.
A car pulled up, silent as Charon’s ferry. The two Cons got in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They drove in darkness along deserted country roads with no names. First north to Lynchburg, where the car turned west along the James River. As they climbed the Blue Ridge Mountains, dawn broke through a low halo of clouds that clung to the trees like a tattered shawl. Leaving the highway, the car began to wind along a series of mountain roads. Trees pressed in on both sides, all but blotting out the sky, as if the road were a crack in the earth that the forest yearned to seal up. No homes were visible from the road, only unpaved turnoffs marked by mailboxes and signs warning “Private Property.” If that didn’t make the owners’ attitude toward uninvited guests clear enough, many turnoffs were also barred by heavy chains that hung between tree stumps. Con had been lost now for miles. It didn’t bother her. This had felt like a one-way trip for a while now, and she was at peace with that. She was tired but not sad—the end of a long journey that had begun without a clear destination. It was a relief to have one at last.
When the other Constance D’Arcy sat up and looked expectantly out the window, Con guessed they must be getting close. The car slowed and turned off at a nondescript dirt road. No mailbox or signs of any kind, just an overgrown gash in the forest that someone could pass every day for a year without noticing. Tree branches scraped both sides of the car, urging them to turn back before it was too late. They kept on, bumping slowly up the rutted dirt road like an old-timey roller coaster dragging its victims to the top of the big drop.
A quarter mile up the road, the car stopped at a tall security fence topped with razor wire. The fence had been painted forest green and was all but invisible until you were almost on top of it. A caution sign announced that the fence was electrified, and Con saw a dozen cameras and sensors—someone was profoundly serious about their privacy. When the gate didn’t automatically open, the other Constance D’Arcy sighed irritably and left the car. She approached the gate and addressed one of the cameras.
“I know you’re listening. You have no right to keep me out,” she said and gestured back at the car triumphantly. “I have her, so you’ve got to deal with me eventually. Quit being obstinate.”
The gate unlocked and swung inward with an audible shudder.
“Someone’s in a mood,” the other Constance D’Arcy said, getting back into the car. Beneath her dismissive tone, though, Con heard apprehension. Not that it made the least difference now. She should have been afraid, but what she felt was closer to a giddy, childlike excitement. Excitement and impatience. The answers were waiting on the other side, and she just needed everyone to pick up the pace.
Another quarter of a mile up the road, they entered a sunny clearing at the base of a rock face of ancient greenstone. Water cascaded into a small pond that fed into a stream that snaked away down the mountain. Set flush against the rock was a small peach house. One story with a modest front porch. Two weather-beaten Adirondack chairs waited invitingly on either side of a wooden crate turned makeshift table. It was picturesque and quaint, and about the last thing Con expected to find behind all that carefully designed security. The equivalent of opening a bank vault to find a penny. She would have felt disappointed if not for the solar array on the far side of the house reminding her that there was much more to the cottage than a nice view and a cozy place to read a book. It looked large enough to power a city block, let alone one remote mountain cottage. Exactly how much voltage was being pumped through that fence?
As the car parked itself outside a detached garage, four headless sentry rDogs loped into view, metal skins a woodland camouflage. Apart from four legs, they didn’t actually look anything like a flesh-and-blood dog, but their patrol and hunting algorithms were modeled after the pack behaviors of North American gray wolves. Con had seen demonstration videos of rDogs herding and subduing trespassers. Even online, their ruthless efficiency always shocked her. She remembered that there were both military and civilian models but couldn’t tell which these were. She hoped not to find out.
The rDogs surrounded the car, two on each side. The other Constance D’Arcy cracked a window and ordered them to heel. Immediately, the four machines flattened themselves to the ground in an alert crouch. The other Constance D’Arcy seemed surprised that they’d obeyed her and didn’t seem in any great hurry to get out of the car.