The Ridge

woman. I can’t stand here forever.”

“Your debt is settled,” Darmus said. “You already took a life. Jacqueline’s.”

“I don’t think Silas Vesey is one for crediting accounts,” Kimble said.

Audrey Clark looked at him and said, “You told me you weren’t worried about adding a few more years for burning that trestle down. Are you now?”

“No.”

“There’s a way,” Darmus said again. “We’ll find it. We were getting close. Wyatt was getting close. What did you tell me? He kept himself away from others in the dark. Kept himself alone with his lights. You could—”

“Sure,” Kimble said. “There might be a way. But you’ll have to find it, because I’ll be in prison. The rest of you should not be. As it stands now, you won’t be. Grant me this much, though—I don’t want to go to prison knowing that I left that trestle standing. I won’t.”

They made their way to the trestle as a group, Kimble walking out front. He’d already told Shipley not to hesitate to fire.

“I might feel something,” he said. “And if I do…”

Shipley nodded.

They hung back while Kimble walked out onto the bridge. Dawn was close but hadn’t broken yet, and the snow still fell from a black sky. The moon was behind the clouds now, out of sight as it receded to make way for the sun.

Kimble stepped onto the boards, his boots echoing hollowly against them, the smell of gasoline strong in the air. He stopped when he saw the fire.

It was tucked just beneath the easternmost upright of the trestle, and the base had to be fifteen feet in diameter. The flames were blue. They rose up and flapped at the trestle like waves on an angry sea, and milling around it were all those familiar faces. They’d stared at Kimble from ancient photographs, most of them.

Not all of them.

He looked down at Wyatt French, the old man’s face painted with flickering blue light, and then at Jacqueline, and he dropped to his knees on the bridge. She was watching him, though the blue flames would wave across her face and hide her from sight at times, only to ebb back and reveal her again.

Nathan Shipley said, “Chief?”

Kimble tore his eyes away from Jacqueline Mathis, looked back at the three who waited for him among the living, and got to his feet.

“See anything?” Darmus asked uneasily.

Kimble nodded. He couldn’t speak, not right then. He walked off the bridge and back to them, and then he asked Audrey Clark for the matches. She looked at Darmus, and then at Shipley, and neither of them spoke.

“I’ve got to try it,” Kimble said. “Anybody want to argue that?”

No one did. She passed him a book of matches, and Kimble thanked her.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll give it a shot, huh?”

“It will work,” Audrey Clark said. Roy Darmus nodded, and Shipley didn’t say anything at all. His face was pale.

“I’m sorry, chief,” he said.

“Shipley, that’s why you were there. Why you will always need to be there, in moments like that—to hear the right call and make the right shot. I’m sorry I doubted you. It was… it was a difficult thing, getting an understanding of this place.”

He put out his hand, and Shipley shook it. Then Kimble turned to Audrey Clark and said, “You’re something special, you know. The way you handled those cats…”

“I love them,” she said.

“I know it.”

Darmus said, “It may work, Kimble. It may work. And if it doesn’t? We can find something that will.”

“I know that,” Kimble said.

There was a pause, and then he said, “All right. I’d like you all to go up the hill a bit, get higher than I am. I don’t know what these flames will do.”

They listened, starting uphill, and Kimble turned from them at first, then looked back.

“Darmus?”

The reporter turned back to him, waiting.

“When you tell it,” Kimble said, “tell it right, okay? Tell it the way it happened, not the way people will want to hear it. Tell it the way it happened.”

Roy Darmus stared at him for a moment and then nodded. “I will, Kimble,” he said.

Kimble left them then and went back out onto the bridge. Crossed the length of it, not daring to look back at the fire, where faces of his own kind gathered over more than a century waited and watched. He got to the place on the western side of the trestle where he had emptied the gasoline, and then he removed the pack of matches from his pocket, folded it backward, tore a match free, and struck it.

The glow was small but warm and bright, and he cupped one hand to shield it from the wind and then he passed it to the planks that had once been handled by fevered men who were fading fast. It sparked, hesitated, then absorbed the glow. Began to burn, and he blew on it gently, and that fanned the small flame out and grew it and then it caught the first of the gasoline and went up fast and hot. He stepped away, backpedaling, heading toward the safety of the eastern shore, where the living waited for him with hopes, however faint.

“It’s going,” Audrey Clark said, and Roy nodded, watching as Kimble backed slowly toward the darkness, the fire riding the lines of fuel toward the rocky cliffs on the opposite shore, the crackle of flames audible now, the smell of smoke in the air.

“It will work,” Shipley said. “It will work.”

Roy didn’t answer.

Kimble got to the center of the bridge, still moving backward slowly, and then he turned and faced them. Held up a hand and waved, and Audrey and Shipley matched the gesture.

Roy held up his own hand and whispered, “Good luck, Kimble. Good luck, and God bless.”

When Kimble knelt on the eastern side of the bridge and struck another match, Shipley said, “What’s he doing? He’s going to trap himself. He’s going to—”

Shipley started forward then, and Roy grabbed his arm and held. The deputy was young and strong, but Roy knew that this hold mattered, and he did not let go, not even when Shipley had dragged them both to the ground and they lay in the snow and watched as the flames rose high at the eastern edge of the bridge and roared toward Kimble, who was backing up again, into the middle of the trestle, fire coming at him from both ends now, whipped by the wind and strengthening quickly.

“Why’s he doing that?” Audrey cried. “Why isn’t he trying to run?”

“Because,” Roy said, “this may work, but he’s not sure. He wants to be sure. He needs to be.”

Kimble retreated to the center of the bridge and watched his fire. Only when he was satisfied that it was going well enough did he chance a look back down to Vesey’s blaze, where the cold blue flames licked at the darkness, waiting for him.

You’ll get me, he thought, but you will not get anyone else. I’ll hand myself over before I hand you anyone else.

The ghost with the torch left the blue fire. He walked away from his blaze and stood looking up at Kimble, and there was abject disappointment to his posture, but no resignation. Then he turned and headed north along the river.

He’s leaving, Kimble realized with amazement. He is not done, but he is leaving. There will be another spot for him, and another fire. But not here.

Above the ghost, a shadow ran along the top of the ridge, tracking the blue torch.

It was the black cat. Following.

But not with him, Kimble thought. No, the cat was not a friend. He was keeping watch on him, and somehow Kimble knew that it was very good that the cat had found him. The reasons were beyond him in that moment as the fire encroached, but he understood that Silas Vesey was leaving and that it was