Free Unknown by Rachel Caine

kidnapping,” he said. “Nothing the cops will respond to faster than an endangered, abducted child.”
    “And when they arrive,” I said softly, “they find a boy dead in the back of our van.”
    He understood, then, and leaned forward to press both hands to his face. He had a record with the police, the kind of thing that predisposed them to suspicion. His own niece had disappeared.
    This would not go well for him.
    I continued, only because I felt I had to drive the point home. “She intended this to slow us down, confuse us, delay us. Separate us. As you pointed out before, the police can be defeated, but they are many, and we can’t fight them on fair terms. We must run. And we must leave the boy behind.”
    “Wouldn’t do any good. Forensics and shit, don’t you watch any of those cop shows on television? They’ll link the kid to me sooner or later. Hell, the blanket around him is Isabel’s. And my DNA’s in the system.”
    I shrugged. “Those things, I can fix. We leave him, and I remove all traces and links to us, both physical and aetheric. But we must do it now, quickly. She won’t be waiting to put her plans in motion. All my skill won’t help if the police search the van and find him here. I can’t credibly hide him from their sight. It’s too small an area.”
    Luis waited a torturously long second, then wiped a palm over his hand and nodded. He looked ill. I didn’t hesitate; I picked up the boy, slid open the door of the van, and jumped down the embankment of the road in a shower of pale dirt, sliding out of sight of the road.
    “Wait,” Luis said. He’d lunged to the opening in the van, and his knuckles were white where he gripped the door frame. “Don’t just—don’t just dump him. He meant something to somebody. Like Ibby means something to us. Please. I’m asking you. Treat him—treat him like you care.”
    That said a great deal about what Luis presumed he knew about me.
    I stared at him for a few seconds, saying nothing, and then walked away.
    Desert stretched out on all sides, hot and sterile, dotted with the alien shapes of the only plants that could fight the harsh conditions. But the desert was far from empty; no, it throbbed with life, from the busy burrowing insects to the running rabbits to the cunning, coiled snakes.
    It was a hard place to leave a child.
    I let the sense of bruised hurt fade, and focused on my task. I balanced my burden—suddenly much heavier than its mere physical weight—and set off at a steady run, heading far from the road.
    I didn’t look back, but I heard Luis say, very quietly, “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know if he meant it for the boy, or for me.
     
    I made the boy a grave on a hillside, near an overhanging fragrant bush that offered a little shade. It overlooked a valley lush with the rainbow of the desert—russets, ochers, and tans, dotted with vivid greens and the occasional struggling flower. It had a kind of empty, wild beauty. It was all I could offer as apology, as acknowledgment of what Luis had said—that somewhere in the world, someone was missing this boy.
    I stripped away the blanket and carefully, using bursts of Luis’s power, removed any traces that might link the boy back to us before wrapping it tightly around him again, in an obscure wish to give comfort. Conscious of the press of time, I knew I couldn’t hesitate, yet something made me do just that.
    I looked down on the boy’s silent, empty face before covering it, and said, “Be at peace, child. I will stop those who hurt you.”
    Then I leaped out of the grave and triggered a heavy landslide of dirt to cover him. The earth flowed and shifted, thumping heavily down, and I felt myself flinch from the sound. Not a Djinn reaction, a human one, a primal recognition of what it meant to be beneath the ground. To be gone from the world.
    I sent out a thought that might have, in a human, been a prayer, as the earth settled in place above him.
    I felt the Mother stir