When She Was Bad

his side. “He wasn’t going to say anything-he gave me his word.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he replied, his voice high-pitched and almost cheerful as he stuffed the pistol into the waistband of his jeans, then reached down and helped her to her feet.

“But-but he was my friend.”

“News flash, baby: we don’t have any friends anymore, except each other.” He glanced from the body lying facedown in the dirt, to the cabin window from which he’d fired, and back again, estimating the distance. “You have to admit, that was one hell of a shot.” Then, offhandedly: “He didn’t have any family, did he? Or a girlfriend, somebody who’s going to notice he’s among the missing?”

Momentarily stunned by a sudden, heart-sinking realization, Lily could only shake her head no. It wasn’t his voice that had clued her in-the voice was perfect, the voice was Lyssy-but rather the casualness of the afterthought, the utter lack of compassion, even humanity, that told her what she’d rather not have known.

“Great. Let’s get him out of the open before somebody else comes bopping a-What’re you looking at me like that for? I only did what had to be done, what you were too chicken to…Hey, what the…?”

She had tried to keep the fear from showing in her eyes; it was her feet that betrayed her, taking a backward baby step, then another.

“It’s only me, Lyssy. Just Lyssy-no reason to be scared.”

Still shaking her head-no, no, no-she retreated across the clearing, her eyes wide and her heart pounding. He limped after her, swinging his artificial leg out wide for more speed. She fumbled for the pistol sticking out of the waistband of her jeans-and dropped it onto the carpet of fallen needles at the edge of the firebreak.

9

Pender tried to avoid gunning the Barracuda’s engine while they were still in town-the low-pitched rumbling had a tendency to set off car alarms. But the ’Cuda was in her element once they hit the highway, and so was Pender, leaning back like a low-rider, one hand on the wheel and the other on the stick, his Hush Puppies tap- dancing gracefully on the pedals.

Soon sheer cliffs rose to the left, and fell away so sharply to the right that driving down Highway 1 was like driving along the edge of the world. The only distinction between the dense blackness of the Pacific Ocean below and the velvety blackness of the sky above was that there weren’t any stars in the ocean.

“I once came down here with a friend who was a CalTrans engineer,” Irene shouted to Pender, over the shriek of the engine and the rush of the wind. “When I asked him why they hadn’t installed guardrails on some of these curves, he said it would only make the drivers overconfident.”

Pender cranked up his window and signaled for Irene to do the same. With the windows closed, the ambient noise inside the car dropped so suddenly and profoundly that it felt to Irene as if they had driven into the eye of a hurricane-the ’Cuda was that tight. “Speaking of overconfidence,” he said, “we ought to get some ground rules established.”

“What sort of ground rules?”

“To begin with, once we get there, if I look things over and decide it’s too risky to go ahead, that’s it, we’re out of there.”

“Mmm-hmm?” said Irene, noncommittally.

“And if I do decide this thing has a chance, you have to let me call the shots. If I say stay behind me, you stay behind me. If I say wait here, you wait there. And above all, once we’re in earshot, you can’t say anything unless I give you the green light. If this goes south, having Maxwell believe I’m alone could be-” Your best shot at getting out of there alive, he was about to say, but changed his mind for fear she’d dismiss it as too melodramatic. “Could be the only advantage we have.”

“That sounds reasonable enough,” Irene said, and if technically her reply fell short of a promise, it was only because she understood, as a highly trained mental health professional (don’t try this at home, kids), that in the absence of power, passive-aggressiveness could be a viable life strategy. “But I still think you’re exaggerating the danger. Which could be dangerous in itself-we already know Lyssy’s only a threat when he feels threatened.”

And Max is only a threat when he’s breathing, thought Pender, downshifting into a reverse-banked curve. Better to be overcautious with Lyssy than undercautious with Max. Or, since they share the same brain, why not put a couple rounds through it and let God sort them out?

When they reached the bridge over Little Bear Creek, the smooth hum of tires on concrete changed to a noisy, metallic chattering on the steel-reinforced grid. “Okay, start slowing down,” said Irene; from the urgency in her voice she might have been talking Pender through landing a crippled jetliner on a too-short runway. “Better put on your left turn signal…slower, slower…get ready to turn at the other end…now! Here!”

“Hang on, Sloopy!” said Pender, downshifting and cutting the steering wheel to the left, then accelerating hard, sending the Barracuda darting across the northbound lane of the highway. He jammed on the brakes as a three-railed wooden gate suddenly materialized in the headlights; the ’Cuda came to a shuddering stop with its front bumper only inches from a PRIVATE ROAD, NO ADMITTANCE sign nailed to the top rail of the gate and dotted with reflective disks.

A bicycle lock secured the gate to the gatepost. Irene got out and felt around between the sign and the rail for the key that was usually wedged there. But not tonight; she spread her hands wide, squinting into the glare of the headlights. “They must have taken it with them,” she called to Pender.

“Either that, or you were dead wrong about them coming here.” Pender yanked the emergency brake and left the car juddering in neutral while he climbed out and examined the lock, then rocked the gate back and forth, testing its strength. “We might be able to force it.”

“I’m not sure it would worth the trouble,” Irene told him. “It’s only a mile from here to the cabin, maybe a mile and a half. If we don’t want them to hear us coming, we’d be better off leaving the car here and hiking in anyway.”

Pender thought it over, shrugged. “I’m game if you are,” he said. “Of course, you might have to carry me the last half-mile or so.”

When he returned from jockeying the ’Cuda to the side of the driveway and locking it up, Irene had pulled her black knit watch-cap over her damp, fair hair and was tucking in the stray ends. In her dark clothes and high-tops, she reminded Pender of a kid dressed up as a night commando for Halloween-all she lacked was eye-black and a toy Uzi.

Pender too had dressed for a night march before leaving Pacific Grove, trading in his plaid shorts for a pair of big-ass corduroys, his logan green Hush Puppies for the black pair he wore on formal occasions, and donning a black Members Only windbreaker he’d bought in 1985 over his gaudy Hawaiian shirt and calfskin shoulder holster; a stiff new baseball cap, black with a Green Iguana logo, covered his expansive scalp.

Before leaving, he ducked under the fence and walked down the dirt road a few yards, then ejected the clip from the Colt Mama Rose had given him, and made sure the chamber was clear before dry-firing to test the trigger pull. He held the gun two-handed, arms extended, elbows slightly bent. The hickory grip was smooth against his palms, but not slippery. He squeezed the trigger-pyeww! went his lips. He squeezed it twice more-pyeww! pyeww!

The pull was far too light-in the old days Pender had used a thirteen-pound trigger in lieu of a safety. So he’d have to keep his finger off the trigger until he was ready to fire, he reminded himself, as he reinserted the clip and slipped the Colt back into the too-snug holster, which had been custom-fitted both for his old SIG-Sauer and his old figure. When he looked up, Irene was watching him over the fence and shaking her head with tolerant affection.

“Pow, pow?” she said.

“Think of it as a visualization,” he told her-Pender had only been in California a few months, but he was already starting to learn the lingo.