The Ridge

she twisted, nestling against him, and thought, It will not be that long. Her parole is not far away. She will be back with me if I am patient, and I have been patient for so long, I certainly can be again. For this feeling, this moment, I can be as patient as any man alive.

“Kevin?” Her voice was soft.

“Yes.”

“There’s nothing to do about him. The ghost at the fire. There’s nothing to do.”

“There will be something. I’ll find it.”

She did not respond to that. They lay in the dark and he found himself counting her breaths against his neck.

Have to leave, he thought, have to take her back, this has to end, and you know nothing more than before.

“Do you believe that taking the trestle down would help?” he asked.

“In this spot,” she said. “But Vesey? He was there before the trestle, Kevin. He’ll be there after it’s gone.”

The wind buffeted the lighthouse, and up the stairs there was the whisper of sleet striking the glass, the night’s snowfall beginning in earnest.

“I’m cold,” Jacqueline said. “I want your jacket.”

“Right. Sure.” Kimble wasn’t cold at all, not here with her.

When she spoke again, her voice was muffled as she turned away from him, found the jacket, and slipped her arms into it.

“I understand how I can stay away from that fire.”

“How?”

She zipped the jacket up, and then the old bed creaked as she leaned forward, searching for the rest of her clothes.

“It won’t be something you’ll like,” she said, turning back to him, leaning down, and kissing his throat. Her lips were so warm. “And I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean, Jacqueline?”

The gun, when she pressed it to his throat where her lips had been a heartbeat earlier, was very cold.

“Just what I said, Kevin. That I’m sorry.”

40

TWO THINGS BECAME READILY APPARENT to Roy as he woke with a jerk and a muffled shout, rising as if from a nightmare: he was no detective, and he was getting old.

His task had been so damn simple. Watch the road and call Kimble if he saw Nathan Shipley’s truck leave. It required two eyeballs and consciousness. He hadn’t been able to offer both.

The clock said he’d dozed for only ten minutes, but ten minutes was more than enough time for someone to have driven past.

“Shit,” he whispered, looking up the dark road and seeing no glimmer of taillights, wondering what had woken him other than the uncomfortable sense that something bad was happening, something was going very wrong, very fast.

Guilt, nothing more. His body had wanted sleep; his mind had been lecturing him for taking it. That was all.

Still, the bad feeling lingered.

Go check, he told himself. Just take a drive down there and make sure his truck is still in the driveway.

It was. The same lights were on in the same rooms, and the truck was parked in the same place and at the same angle. Fog hung in the trees that ringed the yard, and beyond it the mountains were no longer visible and the moon hung mostly obscured by cloud.

All was as it should be.

Except for that feeling.

Call him, Roy thought. Call Kimble and just check in, let him know that everything is good out here, and make sure that it’s good out there, too.

But Kimble had told him not to call unless Shipley was on the move.

Back to the old Esso station he went. He’d just pulled in, backing up so that he had a clear view of the road, when he saw headlights approaching from the direction of Nathan Shipley’s home.

It couldn’t be him. Just someone else passing by in the night, nothing to worry about.

The headlights were set high, though, and as they came near he saw the squared-off grille of a truck not unlike Shipley’s at all. It came closer, moving fast, and Roy reached to turn off his own headlights, had just flicked them off when he realized how stupid that was, because they’d surely been visible already, and then he did the only possible thing that was stupider still, and turned them back on.

Brilliant, Darmus. Your only job is to sit here and not be noticed and you flash your damned headlights? Should have asked Kimble for a siren or an air horn to help you sneak around. Quick, set off the car alarm!

The truck blew by him then, as he sat there in the empty gas station parking lot with his headlights aimed directly ahead, and he saw the blue side of Nathan Shipley’s pickup truck and caught a glimpse of the deputy’s face as he turned a curious eye toward Roy’s car. Then the truck was gone, and not slowing.

Nathan Shipley was on the move.

Roy reached for his phone and couldn’t find it, felt momentary panic as he patted empty pockets before remembering that he’d carefully placed it in the center console to be reached quickly.

How do people do this every day? he thought as he dialed. It sounds so simple. And I’m not even required to follow the guy…

Kimble’s phone rang. And rang. And went to voicemail.

“Damn it!” Roy shouted, and then he called back and got the same response, and now he was faced with a decision. Did he just sit there and let time pass? Or did he follow? The road ahead was a long, winding path toward the highway or town. Shipley wouldn’t turn off it for a while. Roy could catch up.

“Go for it,” he decided, and he dropped the phone into the console and put the car into gear, pulling out of the lot and onto the road. If he drove hard and fast he could catch up, and then, if Kimble would just answer the damn phone, he’d be able to tell him—

He’d made it a quarter of a mile down the road when he saw the truck pulled off on the shoulder, its lights off, sitting in shadows. He registered that first, and then he saw the man standing in the middle of the road, holding a badge up with one hand and a gun with the other.

Roy put on the brakes and rolled to a stop. For one wild moment he considered pounding the gas instead, driving around the deputy or, hell, right over him. Anything seemed preferable. But he was a rational man even on an irrational night, and he trusted in his ability to bullshit. Shipley didn’t know him. Roy would give him some song and dance about car trouble and then be on his way.

As Shipley approached, though, there was something in his face that suggested bullshit might not work. The gun was not being held casually. His finger was on the trigger.

Roy slipped his hand down to the console, punched redial on his phone, and then turned it over so the illuminated screen was hidden. If Kimble picked up, great. If he didn’t, at least he’d get to hear a voicemail preserving whatever was about to happen.

Shipley rapped on the window with his knuckles, and Roy slid it down.

“Why are you standing in the road?” Roy said, trying to look indignant, the concerned citizen, the intrepid reporter, the man who was not scared of police because he trusted police.

Shipley leaned in, his face lit by the glow from the instrument panel, and said, “I would like to know why you’re watching my house.”

“What? Who are you?”

Shipley smiled. His face was very pale in the glow, and his eyes were hooded. He brought the gun up and laid it on the doorframe, pointed right at Roy’s head.