Shadowfires

minimized the jolt of a few minor bumps, and perhaps the strange sound itself had distracted her from whatever little vibration there had been.

For a few miles, Rachael remained edgy, not exactly waiting for the entire drive train to drop out with a great crash or for the engine to explode, but half expecting some trouble that would delay her. However, when the car continued to perform with its usual quiet reliability, she relaxed, and her thoughts drifted back to Benny.

* * *

The green Chevy sedan had been damaged in the collision with the blue Ford — bent grille, smashed headlight, crumpled fender — but its function had not been impaired. Peake had driven down the dirt road to gravel to macadam to the state route that circled the lake, with Sharp sitting in the passenger seat, scanning the woods around them, the silencer-equipped pistol in his lap. Sharp had been confident (he said) that Shadway had gone in another direction, well away from the lake, but he had been vigilant nonetheless.

Peake had expected a shotgun blast to hit the side window and take him out at any moment. But he got down to the state route alive.

They had cruised back and forth on the main road until they had found a line of six cars and pickups parked along the berm. Those vehicles probably belonged to anglers who had gone down through the woods to the nearby lake, to a favorite but hard-to-reach fishing hole. Sharp had decided that Shadway would come off the mountain to the south of the cars and, perhaps recalling having passed them on his way to the cabin turnoff, would come north on the state route — maybe using one of the drainage ditches for cover or even staying in the forest parallel to the road — with the intention of hot-wiring new wheels for himself. Peake had slipped the sedan behind the last vehicle in the line of six, a dirty and battered Dodge station wagon, pulling over just a bit farther than the cars in front, so Shadway would not be able to see the Chevy clearly when he walked in from the south.

Now Peake and Sharp slumped low in the front seat, sitting just high enough to see through the windshield and through the windows of the station wagon in front of them. They were ready to move fast at the first sign of anyone messing with one of the cars. Or at least Sharp was ready. Peake was still in a quandary.

The trees rustled in the gusty breeze.

A wicked-looking dragonfly swooped past the windshield on softly thrumming, iridescent wings.

The dashboard clock ticked faintly, and Peake had the weird but perhaps explicable feeling that they were sitting on a time bomb.

“He'll show up in the next five minutes,” Sharp said.

I hope not, Peake thought.

“We'll waste the bastard, all right,” Sharp said.

Not me, Peake thought.

“He'll be expecting us to keep cruising the road, back and forth, looking for him. He won't expect us to anticipate him and be lying in wait here. He'll walk right into us.”

God, I hope not, Peake thought. I hope he heads south instead of north. Or maybe goes over the top of the mountain and down the other side and never comes near this road. Or God, please, how about just letting him cross this road and go down to the lake and walk across the water and off onto the other shore?

Peake said, “Looks to me as if he's got more firepower than we do. I mean, I saw a shotgun. That's something to think about.”

“He won't use it on us,” Sharp said.

“Why not?”

“Because he's a prissy-assed moralist, that's why. A sensitive type. Worries about his goddamn soul too much. His type can justify killing only in the middle of a war — and only a war he believes in — or in some other situation where he has absolutely no other choice but to kill in order to save himself.”

“Yeah, well, but if we start shooting at him, he won't have any choice except to shoot back. Right?”

“You just don't understand him. In a situation like this — which isn't a damn war — if there's any place to run, if he's not backed into a tight corner, then he'll always choose to run instead of fighting. It's the morally superior choice, you see, and he likes to think of himself as a morally superior guy. Out here in these woods, he's got plenty of places to run. So if we shoot and hit him, it's over. But if we miss, he won't shoot back — not that pussy-faced hypocrite — he'll run, and we'll have another chance to track him down and take another whack at him, and he'll keep giving us chances until, sooner or later, he either shakes loose of us for good or we blow him away. Just for God's sake don't ever back him into a corner; always leave him an out. When he's running, we have a chance of shooting him in the back, which is the wisest thing we could do, because the guy was in Marine Recon, and he was good, better than most, the best — I have to give him that much — the best. And he seems to've stayed in condition. So if he had to do it, he could take your head off with his bare hands.”

Peake was unable to decide which of these new revelations was most appalling: that, to settle a grudge of Sharp's, they were going to kill not only an innocent man but a man with an unusually complex and faithfully observed moral code; or that they were going to shoot him in the back if they had the chance; or that their target would put his own life at extreme risk rather than casually waste them, though they were prepared to casually waste him; or that, if given no other choice, the guy had the ability to utterly destroy them without working up a sweat. Peake had last been to bed yesterday afternoon, almost twenty-two hours ago, and he badly needed sleep, but his grainy eyes were open wide and his mind was alert as he contemplated the wealth of bad news that he had just received.

Sharp leaned forward suddenly, as if he'd spotted Shadway coming up from the south, but it must have been nothing, for he leaned back in his seat again and let out his pent-up breath.

He's as scared as he is angry, Peake thought.

Peake steeled himself to ask a question that would most likely anger or at least irritate Sharp. “You know him, sir?”

“Yeah,” Sharp said sourly, unwilling to elaborate.

“From where?”

“Another place.”

“When?”

“Way back,” Sharp said in a tone of voice that made it clear there were to be no more questions.

From the beginning of this investigation yesterday evening, Peake had been surprised that someone as high as the deputy director would plunge right into the fieldwork, shoulder to shoulder with junior agents, instead of coordinating things from an office. This was an important case. But Peake had been involved in other important cases, and he had never seen any of the agency's titled officers actually getting their hands dirty. Now he understood: Sharp had chosen to wade into the muddy center of this one because he had discovered that his old enemy, Shadway, was involved, and because only in the field would he have an opportunity to kill Shadway and stage the shooting to look legitimate.

“Way back,” Sharp said, more to himself this time than to Jerry Peake. “Way back.”

* * *

The roomy interior of the Mercedes-Benz trunk was warm because it was heated by the sun. But Eric Leben, curled on his side in the darkness, felt another and greater warmth: the peculiar and almost pleasant fire that burned in his blood, flesh, and bones, a fire that seemed to be melting him down into… something other than a man.

The inner and outer heat, the darkness, the motion of the car, and the hypnotic humming of the tires had lulled him into a trancelike state. For a time he had forgotten who he was, where he was, and why he had put himself in this place. Thoughts eddied lazily through his mind, like opalescent films of oil drifting, rippling, intertwining, and forming slow-motion whirlpools on the surface of a lake. At times his thoughts were light and pleasant: the sweet body curves and skin textures of Rachael, Sarah, and other women with whom he had made love; the favorite teddy bear he had slept with as a child; fragments of movies he had seen; lines of favorite songs. But sometimes the mental images grew dark and frightening: Uncle Barry grinning and beckoning; an unknown dead woman in a dumpster; another woman nailed to a wall — naked, dead, staring; the hooded figure of Death looming out of shadows; a deformed face in a mirror; strange and monstrous hands somehow attached to his own wrists…

Once, the car stopped, and the cessation of movement caused him to float up from the trance. He quickly reoriented himself, and that icy reptilian rage flooded back into him. He eagerly flexed and unflexed his strong,