They were traveling north, passing through an area where massive cinderblock walls had been placed on both sides of the freeway. Maya guessed that the walls were there to block the sound from the traffic, but the design made her feel like she was trapped in a corridor with surveillance cameras attached to every road sign.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I’m taking you to the safest place I know,” Josetta said. “There aren’t any cameras in the area, and nobody is going to check your ID. You can spend the night there. Tomorrow morning, I’ll bring you a car with a clean registration.”
“What about a handgun or shotgun?”
“The Prophet wrote that the Righteous should not touch the Machinery of Death and-”
Maya interrupted her. “Gabriel is a Traveler and the Tabula are trying to kill him. A Harlequin died trying to protect your prophet. I thought that some of you believed in ‘Debt Not Paid.’”
“The debt
At the north end of the San Fernando Valley, they turned off the freeway and drove into low foothills dotted with coastal oak trees. The two-lane road followed a serpentine route up a canyon as signs began to appear:
“I’m a loan officer,” Josetta explained. “Pacific Vista was going to be a new subdivision, but the builder lost his financing. Now my bank owns the property, and I’m in charge until the lawyers stop yelling at each other.”
Josetta pulled up to a gate house where a young security guard sat listening to a baseball game on a radio. He recognized her face, raised a gate, and the car turned onto a private road.
“Does the guard know that we’re staying here?” Maya asked.
“He doesn’t need to know anything. He’s off in twenty minutes. When I drive back down the hill, a church deacon will be on the night shift.”
Rancho Vista was supposed to occupy a series of terraces cut into the foothills, but only one building had been finished completely. It was a ranch-style house with a three-car garage and welcome signs posted on the front lawn. Farther up the street were two houses with no lawns, and then the wooden frames of a half-dozen abandoned structures. Past that point, Jimson weed and manzanita bushes had reclaimed the hillside.
“This is the model house,” Josetta said as they pulled into the driveway. “The builder set this up so that people could see themselves living up here in the hills.”
She got out of the car, opened up the trunk, and removed a nylon sack and a grocery bag filled with food. Then she led them up the brick walkway and unlocked the front door. Maya thought the model home would be empty, but it was filled with dust-covered furniture. Cocktail glasses and liquor bottles were on a sideboard, and a big bouquet of tulips was in the middle of a coffee table. It took Maya a few seconds to realize that the bottles were empty and the flowers were colored silk and twisted strands of wire.
“There’s no electricity,” Josetta said. “But they’ve left the water on.”
They followed her into the kitchen. It had a central serving island with a granite countertop and expensive-looking appliances. Wax apples and pears filled a copper bowl; a plastic cake was on a serving plate in the middle of the breakfast table.
Josetta dropped the nylon sack on the floor and set the groceries on the counter. She ignored Maya and directed all of her comments to Gabriel. “I bought you some sandwiches for dinner and blueberry muffins for breakfast. A flashlight and two sleeping bags are in the sack. It gets cold up here at night.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “We really appreciate this.”
“When my daughter called me from New York, she always spoke very highly of you, Mr. Corrigan.”
“Vicki was a wonderful person,” Gabriel said. “She had a pure heart.”
Josetta grimaced as if someone had jabbed her with a knife and began to cry. “I knew she was special even before she was born. That’s why I named her Victory Over Sin Fraser. I just wrote a little pamphlet about her with the help of Reverend Morganfield. People want to read about her. Victory is not just my daughter anymore. She’s one of the angels.”
The Traveler nodded sympathetically. Maya wondered if they were going to have to sit around the breakfast table and watch Josetta cry. But Vicki’s mother was stronger than that; she picked up her purse and headed for the door.
“I’ll come back around eight in the morning. Be ready to go.”
They stood in the living room and watched Josetta drive back down the hill to the gate house. “They’re turning Vicki into a saint,” Maya said.
“It sounds like that might happen.”
