Firebreak

seemed I wasn't the only one Brad was screwing. He wasn't really doing it for the money, he had money, he was doing it to prove he was smarter than everybody else, and that meant everybody else, including the government. Embezzling from his own company to avoid taxes on profits, filing false income tax returns, all kinds of shit like that. So, it turned out, maybe Brad was the genius, and I was just the— He was the grasshopper and I was the ant, but when it came to game theory I thought of it first.'

There was another little silence. Again Parker waited him out, and this time Lloyd, sounding defiant and embarrassed, said, 'He who flips first wins.'

'You went state's evidence.'

'I traded my best friend Brad for a reduction of sentence.' Lloyd giggled, a strange sound. 'He won't be out for a few more years.'

'Okay,' Parker said.

Now the silence returned in the slowly moving Cherokee. Parker was satisfied, felt there was nothing more to say, but a minute later Lloyd asked, 'Does that worry you?'

'Does what worry me?'

'That I ratted out Brad.'

'You did what you had to do.'

'I just don't want you to think, uh ...'

Parker said, 'Don't worry about it.'

'All right.'

'You won't be in that situation, with me,' Parker said.

* * *

Parker gradually became aware of light, off to his right. It was pinkish gray, dim, diffuse, like a false dawn, but narrower. Lloyd said, 'Isn't that—?'

'Maybe it's where we're going,' Parker said, and up front Wiss cried, 'God damn! At last!' He spurted the Cherokee forward a few feet, then stopped, his red brake lights shining from behind Parker, brighter than the faint illumination downslope to the right.

They'd earlier switched off the Cherokee's interior lights, so it stayed dark when Elkins climbed in, saying, 'Well, we found it. Too far south, though.'

'Doesn't matter,' Wiss said.

Parker said, 'What doesn't matter?'

Elkins told him, 'I wanted to come in above the shed, just to look it over, but we can do that on the way back. Marino's got a shed, like a little cabin, up at the top of the road, in case anybody wants to take a leak, have a shower, drink a beer.'

'Small, for him,' commented Wiss.

'I figured,' Elkins said, 'if we went there first, we'd get some idea what's changed around here.'

Wiss said, 'Should we go up there now?'

'No,' Parker said. 'We're here. I want to see what those lights are.'

'So do I,' Elkins said.

'Done,' Wiss said, and put the Cherokee in gear.

Elkins had taken his goggles off now, but at first Wiss kept them on as he drove, so he could find the road. Soon, though, the light out ahead got stronger, more amber now than either pink or gray, and he took the goggles off.

It was strange, almost an underwater feeling, to drive into the aura of the light, the pine forest becoming more solid, the sky now like a roof, black where the soft light didn't reach.

Just as Parker saw the first floodlight out ahead of them, Lloyd sharply said, 'Stop! Stop here.'

They stopped, and all four got out onto the road, a narrow ribbon of gray concrete barely two lanes wide, curving up the slope through the forest, angling around the larger trees. Ahead of them were two floodlights, mounted atop twenty-foot-high metal posts. One was about ten feet from the road to the right, the other an equal distance to the left. Both lights were aimed away from them, downslope, through clear plastic mountings that dimmed and diffused them. There was no glare at any point in among the trees, just a steady low illumination, as though Marino had given the entire forest a night-light.

Lloyd said, 'This is the new perimeter. These fixtures will circle the house.'

'Hell of a big perimeter,' Wiss said.

'But this is the way to do it,' Lloyd told him. 'Mounted up there with those lights will be motion sensors and cameras. If a deer walks through here—'

'Or an elk,' Wiss said.

'Anything,' Lloyd agreed. 'If anything bigger than a chipmunk goes into the part that's lit up, it'll sound an alarm down in their security station, in the staff house. They look at it, they see it's a bear or a fox, they don't worry about it. They see it's a man, they send somebody.'

Elkins said, 'This is gonna go all around the place? From way out here?'

'Of course,' Lloyd told him. 'Comes on automatically at dusk, goes off at daybreak. Just the lights go off. The cameras and sensors stay on.'