Shadowfires

Stop looking at my shoes, damn you, Peake thought. He said, “Doctor, I understand your concern for the patient, but this is an urgent matter of national security.”

Finally raising his gaze from Peake's shoes, Werfell frowned skeptically and said, “What on earth could a sixteen-year-old girl have to do with national security?”

“That's classified, strictly classified,” Peake said, trying to pull his baby face into a suitably serious and imposing expression that would convince Werfell of the gravity of the situation and gain his cooperation.

“No point waking her, anyway,” Werfell said. “She'd still be under the influence of the sedative, not in any condition to give accurate answers to your questions.”

“Couldn't you give her something to counteract the drug?”

With only a frown, Werfell registered severe disapproval. “Mr. Peake, this is a hospital. We exist to help people get well. We wouldn't be helping Miss Kiel to get well if we pumped her full of drugs for no other purpose than to counteract other drugs and please an impatient government agent.”

Peake felt his face flush. “I wasn't suggesting you violate medical principles.”

“Good.” Werfell's patrician face and manner were not conducive to debate. “Then you'll wait until she wakes naturally.”

Frustrated, still trying to think why Werfell looked familiar, Peake said, “But we think she can tell us where to find someone whom we desperately must find.”

“Well, I'm sure she'll cooperate when she's awake and alert.”

“And when will that be, Doctor?”

“Oh, I imagine… another four hours, maybe longer.”

“What? Why that long?”

“The night physician gave her a very mild sedative, which didn't suit her, and when he refused to give her anything stronger, she took one of her own.”

“One of her own?”

“We didn't realize until later that she had drugs in her purse: a few Benzedrine tablets wrapped in one small packet of foil—”

“Bennies, uppers?”

“Yes. And a few tranquilizers in another packet, and a couple of sedatives. Hers was much stronger than the one we gave her, so she's pretty deep under at the moment. We've confiscated her remaining drugs, of course.”

Peake said, “I'll wait in her room.”

“No,” Werfell said.

“Then I'll wait just outside her room.”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Then I'll wait right here.”

“You'll be in the way here,” Werfell said. “You'll wait in the visitors' lounge, and we'll call you when Miss Kiel is awake.”

“I'll wait here,” Peake insisted, scrunching his baby face into the sternest, toughest, most hard-boiled look he could manage.

“The visitors' lounge,” Werfell said ominously. “And if you do not proceed there immediately, I'll have hospital security men escort you.”

Peake hesitated, wishing to God he could be more aggressive. “All right, but you damn well better call me the minute she wakes up.”

Furious, he turned from Werfell and stalked down the hall in search of the visitors' lounge, too embarrassed to ask where it was. When he glanced back at Werfell, who was now in deep conversation with another physician, he realized the doctor was a dead ringer for Dashiell Hammett, the formidable Pinkerton detective and mystery novelist, which was why he had looked familiar to a dedicated reader like Peake. No wonder Werfell had such a tremendous air of authority. Dashiell Hammett, for God's sake. Peake felt a little better about having deferred to him.

* * *

They slept another two hours, woke within moments of each other, and made love again in the motel bed. For Rachael, it was even better this time than it had been before: slower, sweeter, with an even more graceful and fulfilling rhythm. She was sinewy, supple, taut, and she took enormous and intense pleasure in her superb physical condition, drew satisfaction from each flexing and gentle thrusting and soft lazy grinding of her body, not merely the usual pleasure of male and female organs mating, but the more subtle thrill of muscle and tendon and bone functioning with the perfect oiled smoothness that, like nothing else, made her feel young, healthy, alive.

With her special gift for fully experiencing the moment, she let her hands roam over Benny's body, marveling over his leanness, testing the rock-hard muscles of his shoulders and arms, kneading the bunched muscles of his back, glorying in the silken smoothness of his skin, the rocking motion of his hips against hers, pelvis to pelvis, the hot touch of his hands, the branding heat of his lips upon her cheeks, her mouth, her throat, her breasts.

Until this interlude with Benny, Rachael had not made love in almost fifteen months. And never in her life had she made love like this: never this good, this tender or exciting, never this satisfying. She felt as if she had been half dead heretofore and this was the hour of her resurrection.

Finally spent, they lay in each other's arms for a while, silent, at peace, but the soft afterglow of lovemaking slowly gave way to a curious disquiet. At first she was not certain what disturbed her, but soon she recognized it as that rare and peculiar feeling that someone had just walked over her grave, an irrational but convincingly instinctive sensation that brought a vague chill to her bare flesh and a colder shiver to her spine.

She looked at Benny's gentle smile, studied every much-loved line of his face, stared into his eyes — and had the shocking, unshakable feeling that she was going to lose him.

She tried to tell herself that her sudden apprehension was¹ the understandable reaction of a thirty-year-old woman who, having made one bad marriage, had at last miraculously found the right man. Call it the I-don't-deserve-to-be-this-happy syndrome. When life finally hands us a beautiful bouquet of flowers, we usually peer cautiously among the petals in expectation of a bee. Superstition — evinced especially in a distrust of good fortune — was perhaps the very core of human nature, and it was natural for her to fear losing him.

That was what she tried to tell herself, but she knew her sudden terror was something more than superstition, something darker. The chill along her spine deepened until she felt as if each vertebra had been transformed into a lump of ice. The cool breath that had touched her skin now penetrated deeper, down toward her bones.

She turned from him, swung her legs out of the bed, stood up, naked and shivering.

Benny said, “Rachael?”

“Let's get moving,” she said anxiously, heading toward the bathroom through the golden light and palm shadows that came through the single, undraped window.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“We're sitting ducks here. Or might be. We've got to keep moving. We've got to keep on the offensive. We've got to find him before he finds us — or before anyone else finds us.”

Benny got out of bed, stepped between her and the bathroom door, put his hands on her shoulders. “Everything's going to be all right.”

“Don't say that.”

“But it will.”

“Don't tempt fate.”

“We're strong together,” he said. “Nothing's stronger.”

“Don't,” she insisted, putting a hand to his lips to silence him. “Please. I… I couldn't bear losing you.”

“You won't lose me,” he said.

But when she looked at him, she had the terrible feeling that he was already lost, that death was very near to him, inevitable.

The I-don't-deserve-to-be-this-happy syndrome.

Or maybe a genuine premonition.

She had no way of knowing which it was.