“I’m fine,” she said sharply. “Get back in the car. You need to get them out of here.”

“Has he given you anything about Control?”

“No,” she said. “Not yet. Please, Pope. Get going. You don’t have time to wait.”

Pope walked to the Toyota and got back inside.

Beatrix went to the Freelander and opened the rear door.

“That’s your ride south,” she said to them all, but she was looking at Mysha.

West and Faulkner got out.

“Thank you,” Mysha said. “Again.”

“Hurry,” Beatrix said. “You need to get going.”

The girl slid out of the car.

“Look after her,” Beatrix told Faik.

“I will.”

“You’ll be alright.”

“I know,” he said. He offered her his hand, and she took it. “Thank you.”

“Go.”

Mysha came around the car and fell into her arms for the second time that day. Beatrix hugged her close, her face buried in her neck, and for just a moment, she thought she could smell the scent of Isabella’s hair. Her heart felt swollen and her eyes stung. She disentangled herself, stood and laid a hand on the girl’s cheek.

“Good luck, Mysha.”

The girl smiled up at her through a curtain of grateful tears. Beatrix withdrew her hand, smiled a sad smile back at her and turned away.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Two

Beatrix sat in the back, and Faulkner drove them farther out into the desert. They followed Pope for a few miles before reaching a turn in the road and branching away from them. She watched the red glow of the tail lights in the darkness of the early morning, fainter and fainter as the cars sped away from one another. Beatrix thought of Faik and Mysha in the back of the car. They would be safe now. Pope would get them over the border and deliver them to their family. She had done all she could for them.

She took out the burner phone and called the Manage Risk facility at Energy City. She explained to the operator that Mrs Sascha Duffy, the wife of Bryan Duffy, could be found locked in the walk-in refrigerator in the canteen of a foundry on the edge of town. She gave the woman the exact location, made her recite it back to her and then ended the call. She ejected the micro-sim, snapped it in two, and then tossed it and the phone out of the window.

Faulkner was quiet, his attention on the road.

Beatrix sat quietly, too, thinking about her list and what she still needed to do.

The cough, when it came, took her by surprise. It started as a tickle in her throat and then worsened, a whooping bark that took thirty seconds to subside.

Faulkner slowed the car.

Beatrix waved him off, and after examining her in the mirror, he gently accelerated again.

“Jesus,” he said. “What was that?”

“Sand in my lungs. I’m fine.”