'Oh, God,' she said.
She turned from him and walked a step or two away.
Across the way, she could see the Potomac and the dark far shore that was Virginia. Above it, a tapestry of stars unscrolled, dense and deep.
'Donny,' she finally said, 'there's only one answer.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'Go back. Do it. That's what you have to do to save yourself.'
'But it's not like I know he's guilty. Maybe he doesn't deserve to get his life ruined just because--' 'Donny. Just do it. You said yourself, this Crowe is not worth a single thing.'
'You're right,' Donny finally said.
'I'll go back, I'll do it, I'll get it over. I'm eleven and days, I'll get out inside a year with an early out, and we can have our life. That's all there is to it. That's fine, that's cool. I've made up my mind.'
'No, you haven't,' she said.
'I can tell when you're lying. You're not lying to me, you never have. But you're lying to yourself.'
'I should talk to someone. I need help on this one.'
'And I'm not good enough?'
'If you love me, and I hope and pray you do, then your judgment is clouded.'
'All right, who, then?'
Who,indeed?
There was only one answer, really. Not the chaplain or a JAG lawyer, not Platoon Sergeant Case or the first sergeant or the sergeant major or the colonel or even the Commandant, USMC.
'Trig. Trig will know. We'll go see Trig.'
Bitterly, from afar, Peter watched them. They embraced, they talked, they appeared to fight. She broke away. He went after her. It killed him to sense the intimacy they shared. It was everything he hated in the world--the strong, the handsome, the blond, the confident, just taking what was theirs and leaving nothing behind.
He watched them, finally, go toward Donny's old car and climb in, his mind raging with anger and counterplots, his energy unbearably high.
Without willing it, he raced to the VW Larry Frankel had lent him. He turned the key, jacked the car into gear and sped after them. He didn't know why, he didn't think it would matter, but he also knew he could not help but follow them.
CHAPTER seven.
Peter almost missed them. He had just cleared a crest when he saw the lights of the other car illuminate a hill and a dirt road beyond a gate, then flash off. His own lights were off, but there was enough moonlight to make out the road ahead. He pulled up to the gate and saw nothing that bore any signal of meaning, except a mailbox, painted white with the name wilson scribbled on it in black. He was on Route
35, about five miles north of Germantown.
What the hell were they up to? What did they know?
What was going on?
He decided to pull back a hundred yards, and just wait for a while. Suppose they ran in there, and turned around and collided with him on the road? That would be a total humiliation.
Instead, he decided just to watch and wait.
At the top of the hill, they turned the engine off. Below lay a farm of no particular distinction, a nondescript house, a yard, a barn. Propane tanks and old tractors, rusted out, lay in the yard, there was no sound of animals.
The farm, in fact, looked like a Dust Bowl relic.
Yet something was going on.
Twin beams illuminated the yard, and Donny, with his unusually good eyesight, could make out a van with its lights on, a shroud of dust, and two men who were in the process of moving heavy packages of some sort out from the barn into the van by the light of the headlamps.
'I think that's Trig,' Donny said.
'I don't know who the other guy is.'
'Shall we go down?'
Donny was suddenly unsure.
'I don't know,' he said.
'I can't figure out what the hell is going on.'
'He's helping his friend load up.'
'At this hour?'
'Well, he's an irregular guy. The clock doesn't mean much to him.'
