the first she had spent in—She lurched forward, against the railing, hearing a tearing sound, the breaking of wood, the straining of metal. Behind her, the anchor rope had broken. She stared dumbly at where it had been, then down at the water.
There was a current. There hadn't been a current.
She ran into the main cabin. Finding her saddlebags and snatching the binoculars from them, she ran back on deck and focused the binoculars toward the dam at the far end of the lake.
'Jesus!! No!' She screamed the words. The dam had burst. The deck under her rocked; the horses inside the cabin whinnied, screaming, too, if animals could scream.
Annie's voice rang out to her. 'Mommie!'
The houseboat, the warmth, the safety, the possibility of transportation it had offered, was being swept toward the dam in a rapidly increasing current.
Sarah Rourke stared skyward a moment at the gray clouds moving on a stiffening wind. She shouted, 'Enough, God—enough!'
Rourke reached down and picked up a can of peaches. It was one of six cans left on the grocery-store shelf, the cans pushed forward, the empty portion of the shelf to the rear and out of casual sight. He was beginning to understand. The peaches, the cereal boxes—even the gasoline he had purchased for the Harley—all 'pushed to the front.'
As they walked outside—Martha had purchased a can of coffee inside—Rourke said to her, 'I think I see it. Leave everything perfectly normal as long as possible, and then—'
'That'll take care of itself.' She smiled. 'Walk me to the library.'
'All right,' he nodded. He glanced at his wrist watch as they walked.
Seeing children strolling down the street with books in packs on their backs or stuffed under rheir arms, he thought of Michael and Annie. She would have been— It was three-fifteen in the afternoon. 'School's out for today?'
'Yes.' She smiled, saying nothing more.
Rourke kept walking with her, in silence, his leather jacket warm to him, but necessary to hide the shoulder
rig with the twin Detonics .s. His Harley was,relpcked in ihe garage, his other weapons w.ith it except for the Black Chrome Sting IA which was in its sheath inside the waistband of his Levi's on his left side.
'You don't need your guns,' she said, as if she'd been reading his mind.
'No one would hurt you. You're my brother.'
'But I'm not your brother,' he murmured, leaning down to her, smiling, as a group of children passed and waved, calling her 'Mrs. Bogen.'
'But that doesn't matter.' Martha Bogen smiled, then looked at the children. 'Hey Tommy, Bobby, Ellen— hey.' And she kept walking.
Rourke slopped before they reached the library—the post office down the street from it. An American flag flew from the staff in front of it; a small garden was planted at the base of the staff.
'That's a pretty sight, isn't it—John?' She smiled.
'Yes,' Rourke said. It was all he could say.
He felt something bump against him and looked down. A liltle child, a black mask covering the upper portion of his face, a white straw cowboy hat partially covering carrot red hair. 'Sorry, mister,' the little boy called out, running past him.
A woman, perhaps twenty-five, was walking after the little boy. She nodded to Martha Bogen and called after the child, 'Harry—you take that mask off until tonight. You can't see where you're going!'
Rourke looked after the little boy, saying absently, 'I grew up on that guy, him and his friend. Listened to him on the radio, then television.'
Martha Bogen said, 'Remember—it's Halloween.'
'Halloween,' Rourke repeated. 'Right.'
He followed her inside the library. As he had by now expected, there were teen-agers in the library, working on reports, it appeared; volumes of encyclopedias and other reference books were spread messily on several of the library tables. An older woman, white-haired, worked at the card catalog.
It was a library—perfectly normal.
'I have a few things to do. If you want you might like to look through the newspaper files,' she offered, stopping beside a glass-fronted office.
'What—and read about Memorial Day and Valentine's Day?'
'I'll only be a little bit—I'll get some coffee going, then answer all of your questions.'
'I have to leave—very soon,' Rourke told her. 'And you promised those trails.'
'The library closes at five—there'll be plenty of light,' she told him, then turned away and started into her office.
Shaking his head, he scanned the library shelves; his eyes stopped on a book that was appropriate—-at least part of the title. War and Peace. He smiled, murmuring half to himself, 'We've had the war part.' The white- haired woman at the card catalog looked at him strangely, and Rourke only smiled at her.
At five o'clock, trails or not, he was leaving the town. And if it meant shooting his way past policemen to do it, then he would. If it was Halloween here, he didn't want to find out what the locals meant by trick or
