desert hellhole halfway around the world. Everything quiet, smooth-running since before the holidays, nobody bothering him so he could go on about his business unmolested, and then … bam!
Started to get weird when he found that guy dead in the Porsche down the coast—shot in the head and left on that overlook by somebody else—and had to beat it out of there quick before one of the police patrols came along. But that was nothing compared to all the heavy-duty crap that’d gone down tonight. First the deputy showing up, then the woman, then that drunken bastard up on the lane—one, two, three, out of the storm, out of nowhere, all in less than a couple of hours. It was like being ambushed by mongrel-dog snipers, the ones that came at you from doorways and basements and collapsed buildings when you least expected it.
He’d handled it all so far, the way he’d handled the snipers in Iraq. You did what you had to do to protect yourself, stay alive. You blew them away.
Except that he didn’t want to do that to the woman and the deputy. The guy up on the lane hadn’t given him any choice, ranting like a buck-wild recruit and then pulling a sidearm, for Chrissake, forcing him to use the Glock, get in the first kill shot. React or die. Justifiable self-defense. But these two weren’t armed and they weren’t his enemies. Blow them away and he’d be guilty of murder, and he wasn’t a murderer. Soldier on a mission. Preservationist. But a cold-blooded psychopath? No freaking way.
Oh, he could try to rationalize it. Threats to his safety … popping them was just another kind of self-defense. Like that afternoon in Baghdad when he and Charley Stevenson had been on patrol in what was supposed to be a secure neighborhood; were about to recon an abandoned store, watchful as always but not watchful enough because all of a sudden Charley’s head exploded. Standing right there next to him, blood and brains and bone splinters flying everywhere. He didn’t remember going into the store, just being in there and flushing the two civilians, middle-aged guy and a kid in his teens, no weapon in evidence but no question one of them had fired the burst that killed Charley, so when the pair started to run he’d burned them both. React or die, the officers drummed that into you from the get-go and you never forgot it. Only that time, in his dead-check afterward, he’d found an empty Tabuk assault rifle that made his kills righteous. Mongrel-dog snipers, two and out.
The pair of insurgent soldiers he’d shot in the firefight weeks later had been righteous kills, too. For a reason, for a purpose. Same here with the kid polluters in the sleeping bag and the drunk molesting the three sea lions and the clear-cutting caretaker and the abalone poacher. And with the loony up on the lane a few minutes ago. Justified.
The woman and the deputy wouldn’t be. Not righteous no matter how much of a spin he tried to put on it.
Still, what else could he do?
He couldn’t just leave them here trussed up and hit the road. Somebody’d find them, or the woman would find a way to work herself loose. They’d both seen his face, they could identify him. And the deputy had seen the car, could identify that, too. He wouldn’t get far even if he picked up a different set of wheels.
Besides, there was still work to be done. Not along this part of the coast anymore, he’d have to move on no matter what and that was a damn shame because he loved it here, really loved it, it was the first place that’d ever felt like a real home. But there was more pristine coastline up north—the Lost Coast, the whole length of Oregon— and just as many spoilers to be dealt with up there.
The woman was saying something to him again. He looked over at her sitting on the edge of the lumpy brown sofa in her torn raincoat, hands and face scratched and blood-marked, legs pressed together and fingers gripping her knees. She looked wet and miserable and she had to be scared, but she didn’t show her fear. He felt sorry for her. It wasn’t her fault she’d got herself snagged up in this craziness tonight, any more than it was his.
“I’m not lying to you,” she said for the second or third time. She’d started talking to him in a low, steady voice as soon as he sat her down and had kept it up ever since, saying pretty much the same things over and over —that she was from the cottage next door and she’d been out alone in the storm because her husband had had some kind of attack and she couldn’t drive out for help because a tree had blown down and was blocking the road. “If he doesn’t get medical attention soon, he could die.”
Medical attention.
Flashback. Sudden and bright white the way they always came to him, like when a rocket exploded and lit up the night sky:
The scene flared out. He rubbed his eyes, and he was seeing the woman and the room again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “there’s nothing I can do for your husband.”
“So what, then? What’re you going to do to me?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Kill me?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She was quiet again, but not for long. “How long have you been here?”
“On the coast? Six months.”
“Not living in this cabin the whole time?”
“No. The last two and a half weeks. Campgrounds, mostly, before that. But I needed a place for when the weather turned bad.”
“Whose cabin is it?”
“Caretaker. Old man who was clear-cutting trees so the owners could have whitewater views. I hate that kind of crap.”
“Where’s the caretaker now?”
“He’s dead.” And buried in the woods behind the cabin. Always clean up your messes.
“Did you kill him?”
He didn’t say anything.
“You killed the man on the lane tonight.”
“That wasn’t my fault. He was acting crazy. Waving a gun, yelling something about his wife. Didn’t leave me any choice.”
“Brian Lomax,” she said.
“Who?”
“He owned the house at the far end.”
Another neighbor. He hadn’t even known he had neighbors until tonight. Well, once he’d gone out on the platform behind the estate house and he’d seen lights in the big place up there, but he’d never seen the people. Never given them any thought. He’d spent most of the past two and a half weeks forted up right here. Pretty spot even with all the old-growth trees along the crease clear-cut down to stumps; that was why he’d decided to squat here for a while, and most of the necessary provisions had already been laid in by the old man he’d buried in the woods. He’d only left the property a few times, for long drives along Highway 1 and once to buy some stuff he needed in the store in Seacrest.
“You shot all those other people, too,” she said. “The Coastline Killer.”
“I don’t like that name. I’m not a murderer.”
“You’re going to murder me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then let me go so I can get help for my husband.”
“I can’t do that.”
On the floor the deputy twitched a little, moaned, but didn’t wake up. When he was quiet again, the woman said, “What happened with him? Why is he here?”
What happened. Come snooping around, that was what happened. Pushed his way in through the locked gates and walked down here through the rain with a flashlight and an umbrella, looking for the caretaker because somebody in Seacrest had mentioned not seeing the old man for a while. He’d claimed to be the old man’s nephew, but the deputy wouldn’t buy it. Suspicious looks, suspicious questions, then a sudden move for his sidearm. Not quick enough, though, not a well-trained soldier like he was. Easy enough to get the jump on him. He’d come close to putting a bullet in the deputy instead of cracking his head with the Glock. Why hadn’t he? The uniform, maybe— the army taught you to respect a uniform, military or civilian. He wished now that he had popped the deputy, because at the time it would’ve been justified, another case of self-defense.
Couldn’t shoot him after he was down, unconscious. Couldn’t make himself do it. Tied him up instead, then
