for our side. Maybe he’d even come after us in that same reckless, frenzied way. Come ahead, Fagan, I thought— come and get it. I willed him to come and I waited in the grass like a scorpion. But he wasn’t there.
I felt a great sense of calm now. He had tried and missed—tough luck for him. He had taken his shot but I was still here, huddled in the cop mode with my gun in my hand. I heard something move behind me. Trish was out of the car, coming on her hands and knees. I shushed her again, took her in my arm, and pulled her down against me. I told her it was all right now, it was going to be fine. I was goddamned invincible and I wanted her to know it, to help quiet the desperate fear I thought must be eating her alive. Then she whispered, “What do you want me to do?” in a voice so wonderfully calm it pushed me up another notch, past the cop mode to a place I’d never been.
It wasn’t just me anymore, protecting some helpless woman. She was my partner again and I drew on her strength.
“Janeway.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Well, knock it off.”
I made a little laughing sound through my nose and hugged her tight.
Don’t get too cocky, I was thinking: don’t try to be Doc Savage or Conan the Barbarian. You don’t need to be now, she’s here with you.
Gotta plan, I thought. Gotta be more than strong, gotta be smart.
Draw him out. Use the environment, whatever the hell it is out there. Bloom where you’re planted, in the country of the blind.
See him first and you’ve got him. Draw him to the place where he thinks you are, then be somewhere else.
H. G. Wells had it right when he lifted that proverb.
Light might do it.
Noise might.
I put my mouth against her ear and said, “I’m going back to the car. Keep alert.”
I crawled to the door and up to the front seat. Static poured out of the radio, through the open door, and blended into the rain. I wasn’t sure yet what I was doing: the first bit of business was to find out what was possible. I needed to see. I took off my jacket to make a shield against the light, then I reached over and turned the light switch back so the dash would light up. A voice came through the radio—“Desk to car six”—and I jumped back against the seat, startled. But the voice broke up and disappeared in the static. I opened the glove compartment. There wasn’t much inside—a few papers, the registration, an ownership manual, a screwdriver, some road maps, and a roll of electrical tape. What could I make of that?
The radio said “six” and faded, and I had an idea. I leaned out and hissed. Irish crawled over and I told her what I was going to do. The static on the radio was now a jumble of voices, low enough that it couldn’t be heard much beyond the open door, but the noise was constant. It wouldn’t matter, I thought: he wouldn’t hear it. I tore one of the road maps apart, wadded up a quarter section, added some spit, and made it into a gummy mass, a spitball about half the size of my fist. It would fit well enough into the slight recesses of the steering wheel spokes where the horn buttons were. I picked up the electrical tape and leaned out into the rain. “Here we go,” I said.
I blew the horn. Twice…three times.
“Scream,” I said, and she screamed my name at the black sky.
I mashed the wadded paper into the horn button and the steady wail began. I whipped the tape tight around it, three, four, five times, and left it dangling. The horn blared away: it would drive a sane man crazy and a crazy man wild. He’d have to come now, I thought: he’d have to.
I took her hand and we moved away from the car.
Carefully…one step at a time.
Eight steps…ten…
Underbrush rose up around us.
“Get down here,” I said. “Lie flat under those bushes and don’t move.”
She dropped to the ground and was gone. I stood still and waited.
I tried to remember what little I had seen of the terrain. The car had tilted right as it clattered down the slope. We had gone a hundred yards, I guessed, which would put the cabin somewhere to the left and above us.
