I paused and he looked in my general direction. If I remained hidden he wouldn't know I was hurt and he would hesitate to approach me, especially since he had to climb uphill, out in the open, to do it.
I continued, 'If party A pays party B to kill party C, does that make party A a coward?'
'I know where you are,' Stan said, but he didn't move in my direction.
He took off his backpack and pulled out a gun. I had been afraid of that.
'You can't use a gun here,' I said, partly to let him know I could see him.
Stan continued to search with his eyes, but he didn't spot me. He walked slowly toward the base of my rocks. I couldn't let him get too close. I picked up a loose stone. I stood up quickly and lobbed it at him, almost screaming at the pain in my back.
The stone bounced harmlessly a few feet from him, but he fired twice at where I had been. The shots reverberated off the cliff walls. Stan retreated several steps while I kept silent. Somebody would hear the shots and show up soon. I just had to wait him out.
He must have realized that his time to shut me up was limited because he started toward my position again and reached the bottom of my rock pile. If he killed me he might be able to declare self-defense or even get away. I showed myself briefly and lobbed another rock at him, audibly grunting. It missed again. He fired at the air.
Stan started to climb toward me, keeping his gun pointed in my direction. He was too close and too alert for me to show myself again. I had moved so I could only see his legs through the crack. If I couldn't see his eyes he couldn't see me. I hoped.
But I had to do something fast. I stuck my hand out through the crack, waved it quickly and pulled it back in. He didn't fire but I could tell he had seen it by listening to the noises his feet made. What he couldn't see was the actual entrance I had used to get into my sanctuary because it was around to the side.
I picked up a good-sized rock and crawled painfully toward that opening. I could tell by Stan's noises that he was almost to the crack. It was now or never. I stood up, suppressing my desire to cry out at the pain.
Stan's side was toward me now and his head was partially hidden. He stuck his gun into the crack in the rocks. I drew a deep but silent breath to help me stand the pain and then took two giant steps toward Stan. I raised the rock over my head with both hands.
My war cry was more of a scream as I launched the rock at his head. He moved slightly and it caught him mostly in the shoulder. I covered the rest of the distance between us in one painful bound.
I managed to knock his head into the rock face, but the effort hurt so much that I lost my breath again. I sat down heavily. Stan appeared to be stunned. His eyes looked toward me, but I'm not sure he saw me.
We sat there a few feet apart, two injured combatants, too hurt to fight. Stan slowly pulled his arm out of the crack in the rocks, not appearing to notice that he was doing it. I kept my eyes glued to it, waiting for the gun to appear. There was nothing more I could do to stop him.
After an eternity his hand came into sight. The gun wasn't in it. He must have dropped it when I hit him. I would have breathed a sigh of relief but it hurt to breathe. The only way to retrieve the gun was to go in the entrance to my former hideaway, and neither of us could get that far. We sat for another five minutes, not speaking, hardly moving.
A voice from below called, 'Are you two all right?'
It sounded like Jed. I said, as loudly as I could, 'We're hurt. We need help.'
I turned my head and watched Jed climb up the rocks toward us. When he got to us I said, 'Stan killed Ned Mackay and he tried to kill me.'
Chapter 35 JAMES
As I lay on a gurney in the emergency room I tried to remember whether I was already covered by the Tartan medical plan or whether there was a waiting period for new employees. That's one of the things you don't usually worry about when you're young and healthy and starting a new job and I hadn't, until now. Jed had told the admissions people I was covered in order to get me admitted, but still I wondered.
My brain had short-circuited and was running in circles, partly as a result of the painkiller the nurse had given me after it had been determined from X-rays that the only thing wrong with me was a cracked vertebra. When I wasn't trying to sort out the insurance problem I was replaying the last few minutes I had spent with Stan and wondering how I had survived.
I should feel fortunate that I had. All I needed to do was to wear a body caste for a few weeks. It would be applied as soon as the doctor was freed up from taking care of a heart-attack victim who apparently had priority over me. Certainly, he was in worse shape than I was. With luck, I would be out of here in an hour.
Jed had driven me all the way back to San Francisco because I had made light of my injury and said I could stand it. During the trip, when we had bounced over bumps I had rued not asking to be taken to the nearest hospital, but now I was glad I wasn't stuck in Salinas.
The others had placed Stan under a form of house arrest and brought him back, also, after tying him up with one of the climbing ropes. It was felt that his crimes could more adequately be dealt with here in the city than out in the sticks.
Somebody came into my room. Hoping it was the doctor, I turned my head to look. The flashy sport shirt immediately told me it wasn't and the limp looked familiar. I blinked to clear the haze from in front of my eyes and verified that it was indeed James.
'What are you doing here?' I asked. It must be around midnight.
'I came to make sure you weren't going to kill yourself to get out of working for me,' James said, patting my shoulder. 'You know, most young men would give their eye teeth to work for Tartan, but you've played hard to get. That's one reason I like you.'
'I broke my back for you.'
James looked concerned, the first time I had ever seen that look on his face since we had tried to find Ned. 'They told me that you'll be fine in a few weeks.'
'I'll be fine.' But not Stan. How much had the guys told him about Stan?
'I'm sick about Stan,' James said, reading my mind. 'I'm beginning to understand why you thought I was involved in Ned's murder. If Stan commissioned it, I must be behind it. But Ned was my best friend, even though we had our differences. I've done some things I'm not proud of, but I'm not a murderer. But Stan…'
James shook his head, at a loss for words. I'm sure he couldn't understand how a brain like Stan's worked. I couldn't, either. I felt I should say something to console him. He and Stan had been… Whatever it was, it had gone beyond the usual employer-employee relationship. Otherwise, why would Stan go off the cliff, so to speak?
There was an awkward silence, during which I tried to think of words that wouldn't come. James broke it, saying, 'To show you I'm not such a bad guy, I'm going to let you off the hook. You don't have to work for me and I'm going to cancel your obligation on the baseball card. I've caused you enough trouble by not being alert to what Stan was up to.'
My first inclination was to say, 'You don't have to do that,' but I was afraid if I did he might take it back. I should learn a lesson from him. When somebody owes you, collect. And James obviously felt he owed me.
'I'll tell you what,' I said, talking slowly to buy time as the idea formulated itself in my head. 'I'll keep the job and I'll pay you for the card if you stop trying to take over Dionysus. Don't solicit proxies, and divest Tartan of the Dionysus stock it holds, in an orderly manner so as not to upset the market.'
James smiled as if I had said something funny. 'You're a smart young man,' he said, 'and I'm sure you already know what I'm about to tell you, but I'm going to do it anyway, to give you a chance to change your mind. Number one, if I can't get Elma's proxy, the chances of Tartan taking over Dionysus are slim, and at the moment she doesn't appear to be in my corner. And I have a feeling that when she hears a Tartan employee murdered her husband the news will not endear her to us.
“Number two, being a part of Tartan might actually be good for Dionysus, for several reasons. It would certainly put your father on easy street, financially, and I have a feeling some of that would dribble down to you.”
'My father can take care of his own financial interests,' I said. Why did I feel I had to defend him? 'I've seen you in action enough to know that you usually get what you aim for so I'm not sure Elma is enough to stop you. But
