Clay's Ark Read Free Page A

also
    concealed her left hand.
    Keira's expression froze into something ugly and determined.
    "Kerry," Blake whispered.
    She blinked, glanced at him, finally brought her left hand out of the folds of her dress and handed him the large manual
    screwdriver she had been concealing. Blake could remember misplacing the old screwdriver and not having time to
    look for it. It looked too large for Keira's thin fingers. Blake doubted that she had the strength to do any harm with it.
    With a smaller, sharper instrument, however, she might have been dangerous. Anyone who could look the way she did
    now could be dangerous, sick or well.
    Blake took the screwdriver from her hand and held on to the hand for a moment. He wanted to reassure her, calm her,
    but he thought of Rane alone in the car ahead, and no words would come. There was no way everything was going to
    be all right. And he had always found it difficult to lie to his children.
    After a moment, Keira seemed to relax-or at least to give up. She leaned back bonelessly, let her gaze Hicker from Eli
    to the car ahead. Only her eyes seemed alive.
    "What do you want with us?" she whispered. "Why are you doing this?" Blake did not think Eli had heard her over the
    buffeting of the wind and the hissing patter of the rain. Eli obviously had all he could do to keep the car on the dirt road
    and the Mercedes in sight. He ignored completely the long, potentially deadly screwdriver Blake gripped briefly, then
    dropped. He was a young man, Blake realized-in his early thirties, perhaps. He looked older-or had looked older before
    Blake got a close look at him. His face was thin and prematurely lined beneath its coating of dust. His air of weary
    resignation suggested an older man. He looked older, Blake thought, in much the same way Keira looked older. Her
    disease had aged her, as apparently his had aged him-whatever his was.
    Eli glanced at Keira through the rearview mirror. "Girl," he said, "you won't believe me, but I wish to hell I could let
    you go."
    "Why can't you?" she asked.
    "Same reason you can't get rid of your leukemia just by wishing."
    Blake frowned. That answer couldn't have made any more sense to Keira than it did to him, but she responded to it. She
    gave Eli a long thoughtful look and moved slowly toward the middle of the seat away from her place of retreat behind
    Blake.
    "Do you hurt?" she asked.
    He turned to look back at her-actually slowed down and lost sight of the Mercedes for a moment. Then he was
    occupied with catching up and there was only the sound of the rain as it was whipped against the car.
    "In a way," Eli answered finally. "Sometimes. How about you?"
    Keira hesitated, nodded.
    Blake started to speak, then stopped himself. He did not like the understanding that seemed to be growing between his
    daughter and this man, but Eli, in his dispute with Ingraham, had already demonstrated his value.
    "Keira," Eli muttered. "Where did you ever get a name like that?"
    "Mom didn't want us to have names that sounded like everybody's."
    "She saw to that. Your mother living?"
    ". . .no."
    Eli gave Blake a surprisingly sympathetic look. "Didn't think so." There was another long pause. "How old are you?"
     
     
     
     
    "Sixteen."
    "That all? Are you the oldest or the youngest?"
    "Rane and I are twins."
    A startled glance. "Well, I guess you're not lying about it, but the two of you barely look like members of the same
    family -let alone twins."
    "I know."
    "You got a nickname?"
    "Kerry."
    "Oh yeah. That's better. Listen, Kerry, nobody at the ranch is going to hurt you; I promise you that. Anybody bothers
    you, you call me. Okay?"
    "What about my father and sister?"
    Eli shook his head. "I can't work no miracles, girl."
    Blake stared at him, but for once, Eli refused to notice. He kept his eyes on the road.
     
     
    PAST 3
     
     
    In a high valley surrounded by stark, naked granite weathered round and deceptively smooth-looking, he found a
    finished house of wood on a