he loved her. He didn't
But to Ben's surprise and dismay, the cops pulled out right after him, siren screaming. Maybe they had been so shocked by the sight of the Mercedes coming at them like a jet that they hadn't noticed the Cadillac farther back. Or maybe they'd seen the Caddy but had been so startled by the Mercedes that they hadn't realized the second car was approaching at almost the same high speed. Whatever their reasoning, they shot away from the curb and fell in behind him as he hung a right onto Palm Canyon Drive.
Ben made that turn with the reckless aplomb of a stunt driver who knows that his roll bars and special stabilizers and heavy duty hydraulic shock absorbers and other sophisticated equipment remove most of the danger from such risky maneuvers — except he didn't have roll bars and special stabilizers. He realized he'd miscalculated and was about to turn Rachael and Sarah and himself into canned meat, three lumps of imitation Spam encased in expensive German steel, Jesus, and the car tilted onto two tires, he smelled smoking rubber, it seemed an hour they teetered on edge, but by the grace of God and the brilliance of the Benz designers they came down again onto all fours with a jolt and crash that, by virtue of another miracle, did not blow out any tires, though Rachael hit her head on the ceiling and let out her breath in a whoosh that he felt on the back of his neck.
He saw the old man in the yellow Banlon shirt and the cocker spaniel even before the car stopped bouncing on its springs. They had been crossing the street in the middle of the block when he had come around the corner like a fugitive from a demolition derby. He was bearing down on them at a frightening speed, and they were frozen in surprise and fear, both dog and man, heads up, eyes wide. The guy looked ninety, and the dog seemed decrepit, too, so it didn't make sense for them to be out on the street at nearly two o'clock in the morning. They ought to have been home in bed, occupied with dreams of fire hydrants and well-fitted false teeth, but here they were.
“Benny!” Rachael shouted.
“I see, I see!”
He had no hope of stopping in time, so he not only jumped on the brakes but turned across Palm Canyon, a combination of forces that sent the Mercedes into a full spin combined with a slide, so they went around a full hundred and eighty degrees and wound up against the far curb. By the time he peeled rubber, roared back across the street, and was headed north again, the old man and the cocker had finally tottered for the safety of the sidewalk — and the police cruiser was no more than ten yards behind him.
In the mirror, he could see that the Caddy had also turned the corner and was still giving chase, undeterred by the presence of the police. Crazily the Caddy pulled out around the black-and-white, trying to pass it.
“They're lunatics,” Ben said.
“Worse,” Rachael said. “Far worse.”
In the passenger seat, Sarah Kiel was making urgent noises, but she did not appear to be frightened by the current danger. Instead, it seemed as if the violence of the chase had stirred the sediment of memory, recalling for her the other — and worse — violence that she had endured earlier in the night.
Picking up speed as he headed north on Palm Canyon, Ben glanced again at the mirror and saw that the Cadillac had pulled alongside the police cruiser. They appeared to be drag racing back there, just a couple of carloads of guys out for some fun. It was… well, it was downright silly was what it was. Then suddenly it wasn't silly at all because the intentions of the men in the Caddy became horribly clear with the repeated winking of muzzle flashes and the
“They shot the cops!” he said, as astonished as he had ever been in his life.
The black-and-white went out of control, jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk, and rammed through the plate-glass window of an elegant boutique, but still a guy in the back seat of the Cadillac continued to lean out the window, spraying bullets back at the cruiser until it was out of range.
In the seat beside Ben, Sarah said, “Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,” and she twitched and spasmed as if someone were raining blows on her. She seemed to be reliving the beating she had taken, oblivious of the immediate danger.
“Benny, you're slowing down,” Rachael said urgently.
Overcome by shock, he had relaxed his foot on the accelerator.
The Cadillac was closing on them as hungrily as any shark had ever closed on any swimmer.
Ben tried to press the gas pedal through the floorboards, and the Mercedes reacted as if it were a cat that had just been kicked in the butt. They exploded up Palm Canyon Drive, which was relatively straight for a long way, so he could even put some distance between them and the Cadillac before he made any turns. And he did make turns, one after the other, off into the west side of town now, up into the hills, back down, working steadily south, through older residential streets where trees arched overhead to form a tunnel, then through newer neighborhoods where the trees were small and the shrubbery too sparse to conceal the reality of the desert on which the town had been built. With every corner he rounded, he widened the gap between them and the killers in the Cadillac.
Stunned, Ben said, “They wasted two cops just because the poor bastards got in the way.”
“They want us real bad,” Rachael said. “That's what I've tried to tell you. They want us so very bad.”
The Caddy was two blocks behind now, and within five or six more turns, Ben would lose them because they wouldn't have him in sight and wouldn't know which way he had gone.
Hearing a tremor in his voice that surprised him, a quavering note that he didn't like, he said, “But, damn it, they never really had much of a chance of catching us. Not with us in this little beauty and them in a lumbering Caddy. They had to see that. They had to. One chance in a hundred. At best. One chance in a hundred, but they still wasted the cops.”
He half wheeled and half slid around another turn, onto a new street.
“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” Sarah said softly, frantically, drawing down in the seat as far as the safety harness would allow, crossing her arms over her breasts as she had done in the shower stall when she had been naked.
Behind Ben, sounding as shaky as he did, Rachael said, “They probably figured the police had gotten our license number — and theirs, too — and were about to call them in for identification.”
The Cadillac headlights turned the corner far back, losing ground more rapidly now. Ben took another turn and sped along another dark and slumbering street, past older houses that had gotten a bit seedy and no longer measured up to the Chamber of Commerce's fantasy image of Palm Springs.
“But you've implied that the guys in the Caddy would get their hands on you even quicker if you went to the police.”
“Yes.”
“So why wouldn't they want the police to nab us?”
Rachael said, “It's true that in police custody I'd be even easier to nail. I'd have no chance at all. But killing me then will be a lot messier, more public. The people in that Cadillac… and their associates… would prefer to keep this private if they can, even if that means they'll need more time to get their hands on me.”
Before the Cadillac headlights could appear again, Ben executed yet another turn. In a minute he would finally slip away from their pursuers for good. He said, “What the hell do they want from you?”
“Two things. For one… a secret they think I have.”
“But you don't have it?”
“No.”
“What's the second thing?”
“Another secret that I
“What is it?”
“If I told you, they'd have as much reason to kill you as me.”
“I think they
