Panic!

the affair—but that was all he knew. He was a fine agent, a good friend, but she had just never been able to talk to him on a personal level—and the things which had been on her mind of late were such that she would have found it almost impossible to discuss them with a priest, much less a man of Harold’s uncomplicated nature.

But that did not alter the fact that her failure to call him had been a mistake. He was undoubtedly worried, and with good cause; he had done a lot for her, after all, had been responsible for a large percentage of her current success. He had a stake in her future—was a prospectively important part of her future— and to continue to shun him would be, ultimately, to shun whatever prospects for renewed normalcy lay ahead of her.

She had been thinking about rectifying her mistake all morning, and now she knew that she would not be able to get back to her outline until she had done so. She picked up the phone and asked the desk clerk to dial Klein’s personal office number in New York, nervously tapping short, manicured nails on the glass top of the table as she waited. What would she tell him? How would she—?

A soft click. “Harold Klein,” his voice said distantly, metallically.

She drew a quiet, tremulous breath. “Hello, Harold, this is Jana.”

Momentary silence—and then Klein said with deceptive calm, “Well, hello, Jana. How nice of you to call.”

“Harold, I—”

“For God’s sake,” Klein interrupted, anger replacing the subtle sarcasm, “where have you been the past week? You just disappeared, without a word, without a trace. We’ve been so damned worried we were about ready to call in the police.”

“I’ve been ... traveling,” she told him vaguely.

“Traveling where?”

“Cross country.”

“Well, where are you now?”

She explained, briefly.

“What are you doing there?”

“Getting ready to write Desert Adventure.”

“You mean you haven’t even started it yet?”

“No,” she said.

“You’re a week past deadline now,” Klein said with exasperation. “I’ve gotten at least one phone call a day from Ross Phalen—”

“Ross Phalen is a pain in the ass,” Jana said bluntly.

“That may be true, but his word is law at Nabob Press. Do you want to lose them, Jana? They’re paying a hell of a lot more money than I can get you from any of the other juvenile publishers.”

“I know that, Harold, and I’m sorry. But I’ve had some ... problems the past month. I tried to work and I couldn’t, and so I decided to come out here and see if the location would stimulate me.”

“Problems? What sort of problems?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

Klein exhaled audibly. “Don Harper, I suppose. Well, all right. How long will it take you to finish the book? I’ve got to have something to tell Phalen when he calls again.”

“About a week,” Jana said.

“And the illustrations?”

“Another week.”

“Is that definite?”

“I think so, yes.”

Klein sighed a second time. “When you get back to New York, girl, you and I are going to have a nice long talk about the facts of life. You’ve got to understand that running off unannounced this way—”

“Harold, I’m not coming back to New York.”

“What?”

“I’m not coming back,” Jana repeated.

Silence hummed over the wire for a moment, and then Klein said half-incredulously, “You’re not serious.”

“I’m very serious.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“I’ve had it with New York, that’s all, I’m sick to my soul of New York. I feel as if I’m ... suffocating there.”

“Where do you expect to go? What do you expect to do, a young girl alone?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll travel, I’ll go to Canada, to Mexico, I’ll see some of the great wide world.” She tried to make her tone light, but she had the feeling that her voice was strained and uncertain.

“Jana, I think you’re making a rash and foolish decision. Your place is here, with people you know, with people you can equate with.”

“Don’t try to talk me out of it, Harold, I’ve made up my mind. Now I don’t want to discuss it any more. I’ve got to get to work on Desert Adventure if you want a manuscript in a week.”

“All right, we won’t discuss it any more,” Klein said, and Jana detected an irritating note of patronage in his voice. “What’s the name of the place where you’re staying? The telephone number?”

She told him.

“I’ll call you in a day or so, to see how you’re coming along. Sooner, if anything urgent comes up.”

“Fine.”

“You won’t go running off again, now?”

“No, I’ll stay right here.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

They said parting words, and Jana put the receiver down quickly. The telephone conversation had gone about as she had expected it to, but it had upset her nonetheless. Harold meant well, but he was a prober, a man who tried to burrow his way into your soul, to examine each cell of your being in an effort to determine its relationship with every other cell. And that was exactly the kind of thing which frightened her, which she wanted desperately to avoid.

Harold must never know.

No one must ever know.

Hers was a private hell, and it could be shared by no one—no one at all.

Four

The roadside oasis was situated just outside the crest of a long curve in the main interstate highway, like a detached nipple on some gigantic contour drawing of a woman’s breast.

It was set something over two hundred yards from the highway, umbilically connected to it by a narrow, unpaved access road that blended into a rough-gravel parking area in front. There were, in actuality, three buildings: the main structure, old and sprawling, unpainted, with two weathered gas pumps under a short wooden awning; at the right edge of the parking area, a lattice-fronted, considerably smaller construction that obviously housed rest rooms; and a cabinlike dwelling set directly behind the main building—living quarters for the owner or owners. A large wooden sign, mounted on rusted steel rods on the roof of the main building, read Del’s Oasis in heat-eroded blue letters.

Lennox saw all of this through dulled eyes as the bus turned off the black glass of the highway, onto the access road. It bounced jarringly, raising heavy clouds of dust, and he clutched at the armrests with both hands, his teeth clamped tightly together at the intensification of the pain which still burned deep within his belly. The bus slowed as it swung onto the surface of the parking lot, and the driver maneuvered it to parallel the gas pumps directly in front, switching off the diesel immediately. The doors whispered open, and heat-shrouded silence crept in.

Lennox got sluggishly out of his seat and followed the other passengers and the driver onto the gravel beneath the wooden awning. He saw that a screen door was set into the front of the structure, above which was a