Free Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) by Nevada Barr Page A

while Leah spent her life in a lab. Working with living creatures was far more angst-ridden than working with metal and plastic.
    The fire died to a stinking smoldering heap of melted nylon and blackened tin, the occasional gout of flame darting up as proof of life. Heath wondered if Anna’s red metal fuel bottle, the one in which she traditionally carried a nice Cabernet, had been found and tossed on the fire. She really could have used a drink. For a moment, she fantasized about getting the men drunk, then sidling up to them in good old succubus style and slitting their throats with Sean’s great big knife.
    Leah continued to sit motionless in the wheelchair, the toolbox at her feet, her eyes on the dwindling fire. Heath began to lose hope that she was absorbed in the problem at hand and worry that she had gone catatonic. Either way, she envied Leah her absorption. The only respite she herself had from worrying was the endless fussy complaints of her legs. Every minute or so she had to shift her weight to keep the pressure from cutting off the blood flow in any one part of her butt more than another. Fatigue and tension were causing more spasms than usual, her feet kicking out. It was a cruelty she’d not been warned of, that legs, deaf to her commands, would, of themselves, flip about with such vigor.
    Through the distortion of the heat, she could see Katie. The altruistic Sean had finally let her go. He’d even given her one of the remaining sleeping bags. She lay on her side, her hands beneath her cheek, her eyes closed. Heath hoped she slept.
    “Try to get some sleep,” Heath murmured to Elizabeth. “I have a feeling you’ll need it.”
    “Why don’t you lie down and let me keep watch?” E returned.
    Until then, Heath hadn’t realized that that was what she was doing. She was keeping the watch. She could not overhaul a wheelchair; she could not keep Sean’s eyes from Katie, or the dude’s fist from Elizabeth, or a bullet or knife from Wily. Witnessing was the only act she could do, so she would witness.
    Sunrise was five hours away.
    Heath tried to enter into Leah’s world, or the world she imagined the engineer had retreated to, a place of sprockets, cogs, and fighting friction. Leah had created the wheelchair for rugged sports. The seat was a single unit, a molded cup of hard plastic that could be snapped off the lightweight titanium frame and used with other devices. The twenty-inch quick-release wheels were wider than those customarily used in civilized settings and had a deeper tread.
    Clamped to the side of the chair was one of Heath’s indispensible items. The manufacturer called it a Tilt ’n’ Turner. Elizabeth dubbed it “Jack,” as in jack-of-all-trades. It was a custom-designed mechanism that could support up to a hundred and forty pounds and could lock in any setting at any angle. Heath used it to support everything from her cell phone to a 1949 Harley engine she was rebuilding. The Harley engine transport had not been a success. Jack had not failed; the engine just weighed more than Heath and tipped over the chair.
    “Two sleep, two watch. Two-and-a-half-hour shifts,” the dude announced. “Sean, Reg, you’re up first.”
    The dude and Jimmy retired to lie on two of the sleeping bags. Reg squatted near enough to Leah that he could shoot her before she could run him over. Sean paced, rifle in hand, looking out as Reg looked in.
    Each time Sean passed by where Katie lay, his eyeballs stayed on her inert form a little longer, eyeing her the way a rat would eye a piece of cheese in a trap, trying to get up the courage to go for it. Heath dragged Elizabeth’s bound hands onto her lap and held them tightly.
    “I’ll be okay, Mom,” Elizabeth whispered. “I think I’m too old for him.”
    Heath thought she might be right. Katie was thirteen, but she looked no more than eleven. Heath told herself it wasn’t bad to be happy a monster selected a child other than hers.
    Sean’s passes