The Ridge

He smiled. “I’m twenty-four, Audrey.”

Of course. He was a graduate student, working toward his doctorate in biology, just as David once had. Audrey was only nine years older than he was. How was that possible?

“Well, then, we’ll have a drink,” she said.

She went into the kitchen, trying not to concentrate on the fact that Kimble’s car had not returned up the road, that he was indeed making his night patrol on foot in the woods.

Surveillance looked a hell of a lot more exciting in the movies. This was no stunning revelation, but the understanding of just how tedious it was came as a painful surprise to Roy.

He’d been parked in the abandoned gas station parking lot for hours now, his back and legs stiffening as he stared out at a dark country road where few cars passed at all. At first he’d been worried about missing Shipley’s truck because of traffic. Now he was worried about missing Shipley’s truck because of falling asleep.

He made a pass down the road just to see how things looked at the home, found no sign of activity, and returned to his position. Within ten minutes, he wanted to make another pass. It was hard to just sit in the dark and stare at nothing.

He ran the Honda’s engine for a while, keeping the lights off, to let the heater fill the car with warm air again, then used the radio to get a little rock ’n’ roll going to help him wake up. He wished he’d thought to bring a thermos of coffee. Rookie mistake.

The heater pushed the chill from the car, but the warm air made him drowsier. He leaned back in the seat, yawned, and fought the heavy eyelids.

He hoped Kimble was making progress.

38

THEY WALKED IN SILENCE, and Kimble kept his hand on his gun, well aware of the black cat. The woods were quiet, but did that mean anything? He’d seen enough of these cats now to know that when so inclined, they could move with all the advance warning of a gust of wind.

When they reached the edge of the trestle, fog draped around them and the moonlight painted the steep stone cliffs a sparkling white. He stood beside Jacqueline, cold now that he’d given her his jacket, and watched her face as she swiveled her head slowly, taking it all in.

“Do you see anything?”

She didn’t answer, just took a few hesitant steps forward, then ducked and slipped through the torn-up stretch of chain link that had once—many years and many vandals before—kept people from reaching the trestle.

“I’d like to go out onto the bridge.”

He didn’t particularly like that idea, not after the tale Darmus had recounted earlier today—those last nails were driven by dead men—but he didn’t argue. Just followed her, one hand on his gun.

They walked out ten paces, the old boards creaking beneath their feet.

“All right,” he said, and his voice seemed too loud. “Stop here. Let’s have a look.”

He turned and stared off to the south, following the river’s path. This is madness, he thought. You’ll lose your badge for it and you should; no one who would do a thing like this has any right to a badge, has any right—

Jacqueline said, “You’re looking the wrong way.”

She’d been at his side just a blink ago, had moved away in swift silence. She was five paces from him and at the other side of the bridge, facing north, looking into the rocks below the trestle. Kimble watched her stare out into the darkness and the mist and he felt afraid in a way he never had before. Or at least in a way that he hadn’t been in years. Not since he was down on the farmhouse floor with his blood all around him and she was moving in the shadows.

“What do you see?” he said.

She shifted, arching her back as if for a better view, watching that spot in the rocks like a fan in the nosebleed seats of a football stadium craning to see the action. Kimble followed the path of her stare, tried to see something, anything, and could not. He still hadn’t taken his hand from his gun.

“Jacqueline, what do you—”

“They’re nothing to you,” she said. Her voice was a whisper.

He glanced up the tracks in the direction from which they’d come, thinking of the cruiser, thinking that he wanted to run for it, slam the door and punch down the locks and speed away from this place, from her. Instead he said, “No. So tell me about them.”

“They’re at the fire,” she said simply.

There was no fire. Kimble was aging fast, but not so fast that he was capable of missing a campfire on a dark night.

“Keep going,” he said.

“You don’t see it. But they see you. They see us. They’re all around the fire.”

“More than one? I thought there was only one.”

“No,” she said. “There are several.”

She was staring, entranced, into the blackness. Kimble thought of the man with the blue light, the torch that Ryan O’Patrick and Nathan Shipley had reported causing their accidents, that Audrey Clark had seen just the night before, and said, “Why can’t I see that blue flame? Others can.”

“I think he shows it when he wants to,” she said. “You never see him until you’re dying. Until that point, all he will show you is his light. It’s a lure, a distraction, a false guide. Right now, I don’t think he wants to be seen. I feel like there’s something holding him down there.”

Kimble looked up at the lighthouse and thought, I’ll be damned, it does work. Wyatt’s infrared lights are enough. Vesey needs total darkness to wander the ridge, and he doesn’t have it.

“If all of that is true,” he said, “then why can you still see them?”

“Because I belong with them now.”

Just as Wyatt had told O’Patrick.

She was quiet, watching whatever scene was playing out below, and Kimble was growing frustrated, scared and frustrated, because he could not see a thing.

“What can I do about them?” he said. “There’s got to be something.”

“There’s only one you’ve got to worry about. I don’t know what you can do. I can only tell you what he wants.”

“What’s that?”

“Blood,” she said. And then, turning to him, her face white, her dark eyes stark against the pale skin, “Right now? He wants you.”

A breeze rode off the ridge and across the river and fanned her hair out, and Kimble looked into her face and wrapped his hand tight around his gun.

“Does he?”

She nodded.

“I need to know,” he said slowly, “what to do. Do you understand that? I need to put an end to this.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You can figure it out, Jacqueline. You can put an end to this.” He was sliding his index finger back and forth along the side of the trigger, a sensory reminder: I can end her, I can end her, I am protected because I can end her.

“I don’t think that’s an option.”

“Who are the others?” he said.

When she spoke again, her voice was very small. “They’re the ones from the pictures,” she said. “And Wyatt French.”

“You can see Wyatt French?”

She nodded. “I can see them all. They’re all down there with him. All the ones like me.”

“You’re sure,” he said.