Shadowfires

Heart pounding, wanting to believe that she could be loved by a man as good and sweet as Benny, but afraid to believe it, she tried to look away from his eyes because the longer she stared into them the closer she came to losing the control and cool detachment with which she armored herself. But she could not look away. She tried not to say anything that would make her vulnerable, but with a curious mixture of dismay, delight, and wild exhilaration, she said, “Is this what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?”

“A proposal.”

“Hardly the time or place for a proposal, is it?” he said.

“Hardly.”

“Yet… that's what it is. I wish the circumstances were more romantic.”

“Well…”

“Champagne, candlelight, violins.”

She smiled.

“But,” he said, “when Baresco was holding that revolver on us, and when we were being chased down Palm Canyon Drive last night, the thing that scared me most wasn't that I might be killed… but that I might be killed before I'd let you know how I felt about you. So I'm letting you know. I want to be with you always, Rachael, always.”

More easily than she would have believed possible, the words came to her own lips. “I want to spend my life with you, too, Benny.”

He put a hand to her face.

She leaned forward and kissed him lightly.

“I love you,” he said.

“God, I love you.”

“If we get through this alive, you'll marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, seized by a sudden chill. “But damn it, Benny, why'd you have to bring the if part into it?”

“Forget I said it.”

But she could not forget. Earlier in the day, in the motel room in Palm Springs, just after they had made love the second time, she'd experienced a presentiment of death that had shaken her and had filled her with the need to move, as if a deadly weight would fall on them if they stayed in the same place any longer. That uncanny feeling returned. The mountain scenery, which had been fresh and alluring, acquired a somber and threatening aspect that chilled her even though she knew it was entirely a subjective change. The trees seemed to stretch into mutant shapes, their limbs bonier, their shadows darker.

“Let's go,” she said.

He nodded, apparently understanding her thoughts and perceiving the same change of mood that she felt.

He started the car, pulled onto the road. When they had rounded the next bend, they saw another sign: lake arrowhead—15 miles.

* * *

Eric looked over the other tools in the garage, seeking another instrument for his arsenal. He saw nothing useful.

He returned to the house. In the kitchen, he put the ax on the table and pulled open a few drawers until he located a set of knives. He chose two — a butcher's knife and a smaller, pointier blade.

With an ax and two knives, he was prepared for both arm's-length combat and close-in fighting. He still wished he had a gun, but at least he was no longer defenseless. If someone came looking for him, he would be able to take care of himself. He would do them serious damage before they brought him down, a prospect that gave him some satisfaction and that, somewhat to his surprise, brought a sudden grin to his face.

The mice, the mice, the biting, frenzied mice…

Damn. He shook his head.

The mice, mice, mice, maniacal, clawing, spitting…

That crazy thought, like a fragment of a demented nursery rhyme, spun through his mind again, frightening him, and when he tried to focus on it, tried to understand it, his thoughts grew muddy once more, and he simply could not grasp the meaning of the mice.

The mice, mice, bloody-eyed, bashing against cage walls…

When he continued to strain for the elusive memory of the mice, a throbbing white pain filled his head from crown to temples and burned across the bridge of his nose, but when he stopped trying to remember and attempted, instead, to put the mice out of his mind, the pain grew even worse, a sledgehammer striking rhythmically behind his eyes. He had to grit his teeth to endure it, broke out in a sweat, and with the sweat came anger duller than the pain but growing even as the pain grew, unfocused anger at first but not for long. He said, “Rachael, Rachael,” and clenched the butcher's knife. “Rachael…”

19 SHARP AND THE STONE

On arriving at the hospital in Palm Springs, Anson Sharp had done easily what Jerry Peake had been unable to do with mighty striving. In ten minutes, he turned Nurse Alma Dunn's stonefaced implacability to dust, and he shattered Dr. Werfell's authoritarian calm, reducing both of them to nervous, uncertain, respectful, cooperative citizens. Theirs was grudging cooperation, but it was cooperation nonetheless, and Peake was deeply impressed. Though Sarah Kiel was still under the influence of the sedatives that she had taken in the middle of the night, Werfell agreed to wake her by whatever means necessary.

As always, Peake watched Sharp closely, trying to learn how the deputy director achieved his effects, much as a young magician might study a master prestidigitator's every move upon the stage. For one thing, Sharp used his formidable size to intimidate; he stood close, towering over his adversaries, staring down ominously, huge shoulders drawn up, full of pent-up violence, a volatile man. Yet the threat never became overt, and in fact Sharp frequently smiled. Of course, the smile was a weapon, too, for it was too wide, too full of teeth, utterly humorless, and strange.

More important than Sharp's size was his use of every trick available to a highly placed government agent. Before leaving the Geneplan labs in Riverside, he had employed his Defense Security Agency authority to make several telephone calls to various federal regulatory agencies in Washington, from whose computer files he had obtained what information he could on Desert General Hospital and Dr. Hans Werfell, information that could be used to strong-arm them.

Desert General's record was virtually spotless. The very highest standards for staff physicians, nurses, and technicians were strictly enforced; nine years had passed since a malpractice suit had been filed against the hospital, and no suit had ever been successful; the patient-recovery rate for every illness and surgical procedure was higher than the normal average. In twenty years, the only stain on Desert General had been the Case of the Purloined Pills. That was what Peake named the affair when Sharp quickly briefed him on arrival, before confronting Dunn and Werfell; it was a name Peake did not share with Sharp, since Sharp was not a reader of mysteries as Peake was and did not have Peake's sense of adventure. Anyway, just last year, three nurses at Desert General had been caught altering purchase and dispensation records in the pharmacy, and upon investigation it was discovered they had been stealing drugs for years. Out of spite, the three had falsely implicated six of their superiors, including Nurse Dunn, though the police had eventually cleared Dunn and the others. Desert General was put on the Drug Enforcement Agency's “watch list” of medical institutions, and Alma Dunn, though cleared, was shaken by the experience and still felt her reputation endangered.

Sharp took advantage of that weak spot. In a discreet session with Alma Dunn in the nurses' lounge, with only Peake as a witness, Sharp subtly threatened the woman with a very public reopening of the original investigation, this time at the federal level, and not only solicited her cooperation but brought her almost to tears, a feat that Peake — who likened Alma Dunn to Agatha Christie's indomitable Miss Jane Marple — had thought