but they didn’t look friendly.
“Your bosses won’t promote you,” Renn told him coolly. “You’re too ambitious. They like employees who are grateful.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Beardman returned. “Try harder.”
As G came toward us, Max actually leaned forward and threw a punch. I was shocked-I’d never seen him react in a physical way to anything and, what with the guns and all, it didn’t even make sense. He wasn’t much good at it either-he completely missed, succeeding only at knocking the goggles out of G’s hands. Beardman kicked Max’s legs out from under him and, as soon as he hit the ground, shoved the Glock to his temple. “Okay, if that’s how you want it,” he said. “Tie him first,” he told the younger man, who put the ties around Max’s wrists and pulled them really tight. Then he lifted him up again and propped him against me while he turned to get another plastic tie for me off the ground.
I felt the vibrations coming off of Max as soon as he leaned against me. I could feel the hum sweeping from his shoulders and feet into the trunk of his body, intensifying and deepening until he somehow was a tone, a deep bass note that overwhelmed all other sound as long as he was touching me.
“Okay,” he called out as the vibration built-I could feel the effort it took for him to talk, “how about this? You’ve got a spot on your lung. Cancer. You need to have it looked at. It’s not big; if they act quickly-”
“Shut up!” Beardman shouted. “I need a diagnosis, I’ll call a doctor!” He turned to his companion. “What are you waiting for?”
“Are you going to hold his arms?” the kid asked, nervous, looking at me.
“I‘m busy pointing a gun at the dangerous one, okay? That one should be easy.” I guess it was kind of an insult at me, but I’d lost all interest by that point in anything anybody was saying.
Because I could see, all at once, what Renn was up to.
Behind Beardman and G stood the pile of stone-twelve or thirteen feet high, held in place by a web of steel cable. While they were talking, the threads of the cable were unraveling themselves. I could hear Renn humming next to me, his body radiating a tone so powerful, I couldn’t believe the Glock boys didn’t hear it. The steel threads were separating faster and faster, until all at once, as G grabbed the second plastic tie off the ground, the netting right behind him groaned and split fifty little fissures and then tore open in five or six places, sending twelve or thirteen feet of stone rushing suddenly down the incline at him-at all of us.
Because I saw it coming, I gained a few precious steps head start and that’s what saved us. At my first step, I felt Max slump, helpless, behind me-his eyes were open but he was lost in some kind of trance, pumping out his bass note. I grabbed him under the arms and dragged him up the slope in front of us. G was hit by the first couple stones that flew out of the pile-they knocked him down and he was buried in seconds. Beardman yelled after me, pointing his gun at my head but he was two seconds worth of indecisive pulling the trigger and that was one second more than he had. He was hit several times around the legs and feet and then a huge shard hit him full on the side of the head and he went down under the deluge. By the time we reached the rim, the entire trench was a dust- billowing pile of rock. I can’t account in any way for how we got out. I heard Max’s voice in my head saying Head for the house on the left and I dragged him in that direction.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Not this one-to the left,” he muttered. “I’ll be okay.” He was starting to use his own legs, still wobbly but beginning to support himself a bit while I steered.
I heard shouting down the hill-some of the stone had improvised its way down the roadbed to where it apparently met some of our other pursuers. As I headed for the house on the left, more blue jumpsuits appeared between the other houses on the block, staring down on the avalanche and calling into their earpieces for instructions. How the hell many people were after us?
We scrambled through the back yard, past a shed, several thick trees, lounge chairs and a portable bar. “Around the house,” Max ordered and I obeyed. He was limping and stumbling but at least he was talking normally now-I was ticking off milestones. I needed him full-strength-surely, we had a big fight just ahead. I could see a street just beyond the house but if they had that many guys, how far could we get before they caught us? If this was a movie, we’d hotwire a car but I had no clue how to do that and Max wasn’t in shape to do much of anything. Shouts from down below were being answered by others close by-they’d be on us in a minute. What if he needed a doctor?
“You’ll drive,” he told me. “Not fast, normal speed, don’t attract attention.”
“Drive what?” I asked. Shit, now he’s delirious. His car was sitting across the woods, in front of Miriam Fine’s house, unless it was magical and could find us on its own.
As we reached the front of the house, I felt him lean into my shoulder, pushing me toward the driveway. Where a retirement-aged man stood favoring his paunch, holding open the door of a very pretty Audi coupe. “You drive,” Max repeated and detached himself from me. He stumbled to the passenger door and collapsed onto the seat. The car’s owner handed me the keys and said apologetically “It’s just half a tank.” I took the keys and stood staring at him.
“Say ‘thank you,’” Renn muttered, pulling on his seat belt.
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
“Now get in the car, dammit!”
I dropped into the driver’s seat. It was really beautiful, chrome and carbon-fiber and all that stuff they talk about in the car magazines. As I closed my door, a middle-aged woman came out of the house, locking up behind her. She had an overnight bag in hand.
“Time to go, Herb,” she called and they climbed into a Winnebago parked outside the garage.
“Don’t stare-move!” Renn gasped, smacking me on the shoulder. “That way!” He pointed to a sidestreet a few yards away. I pulled out of the driveway. As we made the turn, I saw the Winnebago head off in the opposite direction.
Max laid way back in his seat now and talked me down the long hill, panting little breaths as though he’d just carried someone up a hillside and around a house. We went nowhere and took the most complicated route to get there-right here, left there, his eyes closed the same as when we’d found Tauber and Miriam Fine’s house. This time, he was finding a way for us to get lost and stay that way. We kept turning and doubling back on ourselves as we moved progressively through the vast development. More than once I saw a black SUV turning onto a street we’d just turned off of or going down a one-way street we’d just passed.
This cat-and-mouse took more than fifteen minutes but at the end, we were all the way to the other end of the project, having never gotten near a main street. When we finally did turn onto one, we were a hundred yards from the highway entrance.
“There!” he pointed but I didn’t need prompting. We were on the ramp before I could ask a single question, before he could fail to answer even one.
“Ruben Crowell, Gettysburg Pennsylvania,” I said after we’d driven about an hour.
He’d been sitting up properly for a while, his color-never very far from pale-returning. “Ruben who?”
“Ruben Crowell, Gettysburg Pennsylvania. That’s the next nearest. You would have asked eventually.”
He sat taking me in for a moment. “You’re taking ownership of it,” he said, nodding. “That’s good. And the words are coming back, aren’t they?”
It was what I’d been thinking. I certainly wasn’t what I’d been-the kid who thought he was going to be Peter Jennings was long gone-but more than words were coming back. I was seeing the story-I was beginning to pull the threads together, to see a bigger picture. It was more than a little creepy, knowing he was inside my head, but at least I believed it now-that uncertainty was gone. Whatever satisfaction I got from that knowledge lasted half a second.
“How the hell many guys are after us?!!” I yelled suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? There were at least six, seven guys following us out of her house, the two with the serious guns-you sure attract a whole lot of serious guns-by the rockpile and two or three more on the ridge where the houses were. How many fucking guys are after you? How did they get there so fast? Who are these people?”
“Good questions. Those are all good questions,” he acknowledged with a nod.
“Fuck you! Good questions! You’re the mindbender extraordinaire — why am I asking the good fucking
