Shadowfires

Rachael stared at the black Mercedes, which stood like a great sleeping beast. She looked up at the webs in the rafters. She stared at the sun-splashed dirt road that led away from the garage. The stillness of the mountain redoubt seemed less ominous than it had since their arrival; not peaceful and serene by any means, certainly not welcoming, either, but it was somewhat less threatening.

“Where would he go?” she asked.

Benny shrugged. “I don't know. But if I do a thorough search of the cabin, maybe I'll find something that'll point me in the right direction.”

“Do we have time for a search? I mean, when we left 'Sarah Kiel at the hospital last night, I didn't know the feds might be on this same trail. I told her not to talk about what had happened and not to tell anyone about this place. At worst, I thought maybe Eric's business partners would start sniffing around, trying to get something out of her, and I figured she'd be able to handle them. But she won't be able to stall the government. And if she believes we're traitors, she'll even think she's doing the right thing when she tells them about this place. So they'll be here sooner or later.”

“I agree,” Benny said, staring thoughtfully at the Mercedes.

“Then we've no time to worry about where Eric went. Besides, that's a copy of the Wildcard file in there on the living-room floor. All we have to do is pick it up and get out of here, and we'll have all the proof we need.”

He shook his head. “Having the file is important, maybe even crucial, but I'm not so sure it's enough.”

She paced agitatedly, the thirty-two pistol held with the muzzle pointed at the ceiling rather than down, for an accidentally triggered shot would ricochet off the concrete floor. “Listen, the whole story's right there in black and white. We just give it to the press—”

“For one thing,” Benny said, “the file is, I assume, a lot of highly technical stuff — lab results, formulae — and no reporter's going to understand it. He'll have to take it to a first-rate geneticist for review, for translation.”

“So?”

“So maybe the geneticist will be incompetent or just conservative in his assumption of what's possible in his field, and in either case he might disbelieve the whole thing; he might tell the reporter it's a fraud, a hoax.”

“We can deal with that kind of setback. We can keep looking until we find a geneticist who—”

Interrupting, Benny said, “Worse: Maybe the reporter will take it to a geneticist who does his own research for the government, for the Pentagon. And isn't it logical that federal agents have contacted a lot of scientists specializing in recombinant DNA research, warning them that media types might be bringing them certain stolen files of a highly classified nature, seeking analysis of the contents?”

“The feds can't know that's my intention.”

“But if they've got a file on you — and they do — then they know you well enough to suspect that'd be your plan.”

“All right, yes,” she admitted unhappily.

“So any Pentagon-supported scientist is going to be real eager to please the government and keep his own fat research grants, and he's sure as hell going to alert them the moment such a file comes into his hands. Certainly he's not going to risk losing his grants or being prosecuted for compromising defense secrets, so at best he'll tell the reporter to take his damn file and get lost, and he'll keep his mouth shut. At best. Most likely he'll give the reporter to the feds, and the reporter will give us to the feds. The file will be destroyed, and very likely we'll be destroyed, too.”

Rachael didn't want to believe what he said, but she knew there was truth in it.

Out in the woods, the cicadas were singing again!

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

Evidently Benny had been thinking hard about that question as they had gone through room after room of the cabin without finding Eric, for his answer was well prepared. “With both Eric and the file in our possession, we're in a lot stronger position. We wouldn't have just a bunch of cryptic research papers that only a handful of people could understand; we'd also have a walking dead man, his skull staved in, and by God, that's dramatic enough to guarantee that virtually any newspaper or television network will run an all- stops-pulled story before getting expert opinions on the file itself. Then there'll be no reason for the government or anyone else trying to shut us up. Once Eric's seen on TV news, his picture'll show up on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and the National Enquirer will have enough material for a decade, and David Letterman will be making zombie jokes every night, so silencing us won't achieve anything.”

He took a deep breath, and she had a hunch that he 'was going to propose something she would not like in the least.

When he continued, he confirmed her hunch. “All right, like I said, I need to search this place thoroughly to see if I can come up with any clue that'll tell us where Eric's gone. But the authorities may show up here soon. Now that we've got a copy of the Wildcard file, we can't risk having it taken away from us, so you've got to leave with the file while I—”

“You mean, split up?” she said. “Oh, no.”

“It's the only way, Rachael. We—”

“No.”

The thought of leaving him alone here was chilling.

The thought of being alone herself was almost too much to bear, and she realized with terrible poignancy how tight the bonds between them had become in just the past twenty-four hours.

She loved him. God, how she loved him.

He fixed her with his gentle, reassuring brown eyes. In a voice neither patronizing nor abrasively commanding but nevertheless full of authority and reason, a voice which brooked no debate — probably the tone he had learned to use in Vietnam, in crises, with soldiers of inferior rank — he said, “You'll take the Wildcard file out of here, get copies made, send some off to friends in widely separated places, and secrete a few others where you can get your hands on them with short notice. Then we won't have to worry about losing our only copy or having it taken away from us. We'll have real good insurance. Meanwhile, I'll thoroughly search the cabin here, see what I can turn up. If I find something that points us toward Eric, I'll meet up with you at a prearranged place, and we'll go after him together. If I don't get a lead on him, we'll meet up and hide out together, until we can decide what to do next.”

She did not want to split up and leave him alone here. Eric might still be around. Or the feds might show up. Either way Benny might be killed. But his arguments for splitting up were convincing; damn it, he was right.

Nevertheless, she said, “If I go alone and take the car, how will you get out of here?”

He glanced at his wristwatch not because he needed to know the time (she thought) but to impress upon her that time was running out. “You'll leave the rental Ford for me,” he said. “That's got to be ditched soon, anyway, because the cops might be onto it. You'll take this Mercedes, and I'll take the Ford just far enough to swap it for something else.”

“They'll be on the lookout for the Mercedes, too.”

“Oh, sure. But the APB will specify a black 560 SEL with this particular license number, driven by a man fitting Eric's description. You'll be driving, not Eric, and we'll switch license plates with one of those cars parked along the gravel road farther down the mountain, which ought to take care of things.”

“I'm not so sure.”

“I am.”

Hugging herself as if this were a day in November rather than a day in June, Rachael said, “But where would we meet up later?”

“Las Vegas,” he said.

The answer startled her. “Why there?”

“Southern California's too hot for us. I'm not confident we can hide out here. But if we hop over to Vegas, I have a place.”

“What place?”

“I own a motel on Tropicana Boulevard, west of the Strip.”

“You're a Vegas wheeler-dealer? Old-fashioned, conservative Benny Shadway is a Vegas wheeler- dealer?”