Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

lap. Gina flashed a grin to let Pavel and Petre know they were forgiven, then returned to her enjoyment of the passing scenery.

She was thankful for this time away from the city. She had her chestnut hair pulled back in a clasp, and wore a thin spring dress that could double as an Easter outfit or the comfortable garb of a weekend visitor. On this, her first overnight excursion with the orphanage, they were headed to the tourist town of Sinaia.

Rhymes with Shania, as in Twain. That’s what she told her friends back in the U.S.

They’d left Tomorrow’s Hope at dawn, herded onboard by a surly driver with hunched shoulders, a drooping mustache, and a cap that looked like something a communist border guard might’ve worn years ago. He slid his belongings under the driver’s seat and grunted.

Gina had seen the type before. The man put on such an act of annoyance that she suspected, behind his reflective sunglasses, his eyes were skipping with amusement.

Head now pressed to the window, she let her thoughts wander.

In February, she had written letters to both her husband and her mother. Jed’s reply was courteous but guarded, with basic details of his uncle’s place in Oregon, of the job he’d found at a local dairy, and of fishing with Uncle Vince—or Sarge, as Jed seemed to prefer. He described Sarge as overweight, down-to-earth, and decent. She got the feeling her husband was in good hands.

As for Nikki, she had not yet responded.

Gina wondered if her world seemed as unreal to the two of them as their worlds now seemed to her.

During the past few months, Gina and Teodor had kept in casual contact. They’d gone out for coffee a few mornings. Teo never pushed. He was a pleasant, familiar face—and yes, she had some lingering romantic feelings—but she wasn’t sure love was her lot in life. There was no self-pity in the thought, only acceptance of other tasks.

She had a child to protect. This time, she had to get that right.

Gina still railed in her mind against Cal the Provocateur. She’d seen enough evidence to believe many of the things he’d told her. She had no other explanation for the Lettered foreheads or the bomb that targeted her firstborn.

Yet he’d failed her in the way that mattered most. He had not been there, as promised.

Had he been guarding Dov Amit instead, during that time?

Was it Cal’s goal to train future Nistarim and to fight the Collectors?

Well, he’d been quick to abandon her and her own offspring as soon as she showed any signs of resistance. Forget him. If he was willing to sacrifice others’ lives because of some fairly reasonable doubts on her part, then she wanted nothing to do with him.

Gina switched her thoughts back to Teo. Last week, her childhood beau had taken her to a display at the Cultural Palace so that she could see for herself the story of Romania’s martyrs, those who had put their lives on the line eleven years ago to challenge ruthless tyrants.

That theme resonated with her.

She saw it in the sacrificial moves on a chessboard, in the lines of the national anthem, and here in the local traditions leading up to Easter.

Thunk-thunk . . .

After the toaka, the hammering of the wood, there would be silence from the church steeples until twelve a.m. Sunday. Then bells would ring in celebration across the land. Friends and strangers would greet each other for the next week or two with “Hristos a inviat!” Christ is risen. They would crack red-dyed eggs as symbols of death and new life, and they—

Thunkity-thunk . . .

Gina Lazarescu sat straight in her seat. What was that? She looked around, saw that most of the bus riders were beginning to snooze in the long shadows cast by a sun slipping behind distant ridges.

“Did you hear that?” Dov said.

“Yeah. That was different, wasn’t it?”

He snapped his chess set shut, sending magnetic pieces tumbling. He said, “They’re coming to find me.”

“Don’t talk like that. It won’t help either of us, okay?”

“Ask him.”

Gina followed the pointing finger toward the mustached man in the sunglasses. “The driver?” she said.

“He knows.”

“You sit tight, Dov. I’ll be right back.”

Though unsure of what was going on, she had learned not to dis-count her young ward’s cryptic claims. To date, everything he’d said had lined up with her own experiences and investigation.

Gina, who had once been Lettered . . .

Dov, who now carried the same symbol beneath scraggly bangs . . .

In the middle of this great big world, by mysteries greater than Gina could fathom, the two of them had been brought together. This was her shot at regaining a measure of peace and redemption, his shot at replacing a portion of the family that had been torn from him.

Thu-THUNK-ity, THUNK-thunk . . .

Gina grabbed at the seats on either side of the aisle, felt the floor rise and buck beneath her. She heard drowsy cries and a child’s scream behind her, as the brakes squealed with rubber-shredding alarm. The driver, in his border-guard hat and sunglasses, spun the wheel to correct the vehicle’s slide toward a guardrail.

Muncitors were barking out orders now to the children. A few over-night bags lurched from the luggage racks and plopped into the aisle, one of them careening off Gina’s shoulder.

She stumbled forward, felt her bare knees buckle and touch the floor. She pulled herself up and said, “It’s going to be all right,” to a bug-eyed girl in the front row beside her.

The driver was calm but intent, his hands moving over the steering wheel. He corrected again, away from the precipice, easing off the brakes and punching the accelerator so that the bus straightened and charged ahead into the arched mouth of a tunnel.

“Stop this bus,” a male muncitor ordered from the back.

The driver pressed onward.

“We have children aboard. We need to check that everyone’s okay.”

The driver was unperturbed, his glasses reflecting the headlights’ dull beams as they bounced between the tunnel’s