The Ridge

“I’m sure.”

For a while it was silent. The wind pushed down off the peaks and rustled the trees along the ridge and wormed the cold of the night into Kimble.

“The one who called himself Silas Vesey is the problem,” he said.

“He didn’t call himself anything with me. The one I saw, though? The man who made me the offer? Yes, he’s there. He’s watching.”

The words put a ripple through Kimble. Watching. Somewhere out there in the dark a man unseen by Kimble was watching. A man who’d caused death for more than a century, a man who’d put the blackness into Jacqueline, who’d then put a bullet into Kimble.

“Does he know you?” he said. “Remember you?”

“Yes.”

“Still want my blood?”

She didn’t answer.

“Jacqueline,” he said, and now his finger was racing alongside the trigger, “I’m not going to stand here in the dark with you forever. I can’t. You’ve got to tell me something that helps.”

“And what would that be?” she said. She wasn’t even glancing at him, was totally focused on whatever patch of shadow was home to the nocturnal activity.

“How do I know? Just answer my damn questions.”

“I have been,” she said.

“So there’s no fixing them—that’s what you’re telling me?”

There was a long silence. It was so cold that Kimble could see his breath, but there were beads of sweat along his spine and across his brow. Just when he’d given up on any hope of an answer, just when he was ready to say, Okay, enough is enough, let’s put an end to this circus and get you back behind bars where you belong, she spoke again.

“I don’t think,” she said, “that he has much range.”

“What?”

“You’re not going to fix him. If that’s what you’re hoping, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. No man with a gun is going to fix him, Kevin. No man is going to do anything to him, period. He isn’t bound by any of the things you want him to be bound by, not even time. But I think the place matters.”

“The place.”

“That’s right. He wouldn’t have found me if I hadn’t passed this way. He needs people to pass this way.”

“I understand that. He also needs the darkness. The lighthouse has hampered him. For years, it has. But there’s got to be more I can do.”

“You can guide some people away, maybe. That might be all.”

You can guide some people away. Instead, he’d brought one here. He’d brought her here.

She’s close, though, he thought, damn it, she is close, she’s seeing this place and understanding it.

“He’s got a weakness,” he said. “He has to, Jacqueline.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do. Find it. Please.”

She was silent for a long time, and then she said, “In the story you told me, he promised to bind people to the trestle. Right? First came the fever, and then came Vesey, and then the bridge.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she said, “you could burn it down. See if he goes with it.”

“I can’t burn down a bridge, Jacqueline. And he likes fire.”

“He likes his own fire. It’s very different from ours.” She shifted, looked back at him, and said, “We need to go.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She stepped away, toward him, and in that moment he remembered her in the dark living room, and he lifted the gun and leveled it at her throat.

“Stand where you are.”

She looked at the gun as if amused by it and said, “Scared of me, Kevin?”

“No.”

“Here? You should be.”

He didn’t say anything. He was trying hard not to let the gun tremble in his hand, trying damn hard. It looked steady. He was pretty certain it was steady, pretty certain that—

She lifted her hand, and he said, “Jacqueline, no,” and then she reached out and cupped the back of his wrist, gently.

Shoot! a voice screamed from within him, the voice of the long-departed version of him that carried no gunshot scars and did not believe in ghosts. Do it now, shoot!

Jacqueline applied pressure, soft but firm, pushing his hand down, and he let her. The gun swung away from her throat and down until it was pointing at the tracks. She stepped in to fill the void between them, her body meeting his, the curve of her right breast resting on his bicep, her thigh pressed against his. Her face was upturned, lips and eyes dark against her skin. For a moment, he thought she might kiss him again.

She didn’t.

“I think we’d better leave.”

He couldn’t speak. His mouth was as useless as his trigger finger.

“You’re strong,” she whispered, and he could feel the warmth of her breath on his neck. “But Kevin? He’s not weak.”

“He doesn’t like the lighthouse,” Kimble said.

“Then we should go there,” she said. “Fast.”

39

AUDREY WAS IN THE BEDROOM, trying to get some sleep but not optimistic about the possibilities, when she saw the headlights coming east. Kimble was back in the car.

She put her hands to her temples, closed her eyes, and let out a long, relieved breath.

She didn’t need to worry about him anymore. He was back in the car, and no one was in the woods tonight.

Down the hall it was silent, Dustin, hopefully, asleep on the couch, getting some rest for another day that would be long and arduous with just the two of them.

Can you hold out? Joe Taft had asked.

She wished he hadn’t phrased it like that. As if she were under siege.

Are you not, Audrey? What would you call it?

She opened her eyes again, well aware that sleep would not come. Outside the bedroom window, the cats were quiet and the trees were dark. Once they would have been lit by that constant, pulsing glow. Now you had to remind yourself that the lighthouse was there.

As they neared the lighthouse, Jacqueline stared in fascination, bending down so she could see the top, where glass glittered in moonlight. She was in the passenger seat now—Kimble saw no point to putting her in the back this far along in the journey—and she leaned across him to get a better view, her hair falling forward and brushing his arm, her hand on his leg.

“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “He had to have cleared so many of these trees to build it.”

“He cleared the trees to build his home. The lighthouse came later.”

“I want to go in,” she said. “I want to see it.”

“We will.”

He shut off the lights and they stepped out of the car and went to the gate. She waited, arms folded across