“If I went along,” she said, “it would be three against two, and that would have to improve the odds.”
“Rya needs you,” Sam said. He hugged her, kissed her on the cheek. “We’ll be okay, Jen. I know we will. You just watch after Rya while we’re gone. ”
“And if you don’t come back?”
“We will.”
“If you don’t,” she insisted.
“Then — you’re on your own,” Sam said, his voice almost breaking. If there were tears in the comers of his eyes, the darkness hid them. “There’s nothing more I can do for you.”
“Look,” Paul said, “even if Salsbury does know how much we’ve learned, he doesn’t know where we are. But we know exactly where he is. So we still have some advantage. ”
Rya clung to Paul. She didn’t want to let him go. She spoke in a quiet but fierce voice, and she virtually demanded that he not leave her in the tower.
He stroked her dark hair, held her tight, spoke softly to her, calmed and reassured her as best he could.
And at 10:20 he followed Sam down the tower stairs.
8
10:20 P.M
Phil Karkov, the proprietor of Black River’s only service station and garage, and his girl friend, Lolah Tayback, tried to leave town a few minutes past ten o’clock. As programmed, the deputies who manned the roadblock sent them to the municipal building to have a talk with Bob Thorp.
The mechanic was soft-spoken, courteous, and obviously liked to think of himself as a model citizen. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, red-haired man in his middle thirties. His good looks were marred only by a bulbous and somewhat misshapen nose that appeared to have been broken in more than one fight. He was an amicable man with a ready smile; and he was most anxious to help the chief of police in any way that he could.
After he opened the two of them with the code phrase and spent a minute interrogating them, Salsbury was satisfied that Karkov and Lolah Tayback were fully, properly programmed. They hadn’t been trying to escape. They hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary in town today. They had only been going to a bar in Bexford for beer and sandwiches.
He sent the mechanic home and told him to stay there for the rest of the night.
The woman was another matter altogether.
“Child-woman” was a better word for her, he thought. Her silvery-blond hair hung to her narrow shoulders and framed a face of childlike beauty: crystalline green eyes, a perfectly clear and milky complexion with a light, cinnamonlike dusting of freckles across her cheekbones, an upturned pixie nose, dimples, a blade-straight jawline and round little chin… Every feature was delicate and somehow bespoke naivete. She stood perhaps five feet two and weighed no more than one hundred pounds. She seemed fragile. Yet in her red-and-white-striped T-shirt (sans bra) and blue jean shorts, she presented a strikingly desirable, quite womanly figure. Her breasts were small, high set, accentuated by an extremely thin waistline, the nipples delectably silhouetted through the thin material of the T-shirt. Her legs were sleek, supple, shapely. As he stood in front of her, looking her up and down, she regarded him shyly. She was unable to meet his eyes. She fidgeted. If appearance could count for anything, she ought to have been one of the most malleable, vulnerable women he had ever met.
However, even if she were a fighter, a real hellcat, she was now vulnerable. As vulnerable as he wished her to be. Because he had the power…
“Lolah?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Are you engaged to Phil Karkov?”
“No.” Softly.
“Going steady with him?”
“More or less.”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
She blushed. Fidgeted.
Lovely little animal…
Screw you, Dawson.
You too, Ernst.
He giggled.
“Are you sleeping with him, Lolah?”
Almost inaudibly: “Do I have to say?”
“You must tell me the truth.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You’re sleeping with him?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Oh… Every week.”
“Speak up.”
“Every week.”
“Little minx.”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
He laughed. “Once a week? Twice?”
“Twice,” she said. “Sometimes three…”
Salsbury turned to Bob Thorp. “Get the hell out of here. Go down to the end of the hall and wait with the guard there until I call you.”
“Sure.” Thorp closed the door as he left.
“Lolah?”
“Yes?”
“What does Phil do to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“In bed.”
She stared at her sandaled feet.
The power filled him, pulsed within him, leaped across tens of thousands of terminals in his flesh: sparked, flashed, crackled. He was exhilarated. This was what the key-lock program was all about: this power, this mastery, this unlimited command of other people’s souls. No one could ever touch him again. No one could ever use him. He was the user now. Always would be. From here on out. Now and forever, amen. Amen, Dawson. Did you hear that? Amen. Thank you, God, for sending along this cute little piece of ass, amen. He was happy again for the first time since this morning, since he had touched Thorp’s wife.
“I’ll bet Phil does everything to you,” he said.
She said nothing. Shuffled her feet.
“Doesn’t he? Doesn’t he do everything to you, Lolah? Admit it. Say it. I want to hear you say it.”
“He does — everything.”
He put his hand under her chin, lifted her head.
She gazed at him. Timid, frightened.
“I’m going to do everything to you,” he said.
“Don’t hurt me.”
“Lovely, lovely little bitch,” he said. He was excited as he had never been in his life. Breathing hard. Yet everything so clear. So in control. Firmly in control. Her absolute master. Everyone’s absolute master. That was Howard Parker’s phrase, flashing back to him across the decades, much as a bizarre hallucination erupting in an
