fingers of the other hand into her mouth, as far down her throat as he could force them. She struggled, moaned, gagged. When he felt her convulse, he pulled his fingers out just in time to avoid the spew of vomit.
Partially dissolved pills, gin, and not much else. Not good; her stomach was mostly empty and that meant the drug had gotten into her bloodstream more quickly. He used toilet paper to wipe her mouth inside and out, then induced her to puke again. The third time he did it, nothing came up except a thin whitish foam.
She was half awake by then, groaning and muttering words that Fallon didn’t listen to. He got her on her feet, but she couldn’t stand or walk; he dragged her out into the hallway.
Kevin was standing in the door to his room, staring wide-eyed. “What’re you doing? What’s the matter with her?”
“She’s sick, but she’ll be all right. Go back to bed. Stay in there until help comes.”
The boy was used to obeying orders. He retreated immediately, hobbling, and shut the door.
Casey stumbled in Fallon’s grasp, babbled something incoherent. He tightened his hold, feeling the bitter anger rise again.
“It was never really about Kevin, was it?” he said to her. “Only you- your need, your pain. All about
She didn’t hear the words. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had.
Fallon walked her up and down the hall, dragging her until her legs began an automatic shuffling response, stopping every now and then to deliver more slaps. Time seemed to have slowed down to a crawl. Seconds were like minutes, minutes like hours.
Come on, come on, hurry up!
He was still walking her, still slapping color into her cheeks, when the county law and an ambulance finally arrived.
The ER doctors at the hospital in Indio flushed her system, put her on IV to rebalance the fluids and minerals in her body. Touch-and-go for a time, but they pulled her through. One of them told Fallon that the emergency procedures he’d learned in the army were the main reason she survived.
So his relationship with Casey Dunbar had come full circle, to end as it had begun-with the preservation of the life she’d tried to throw away. Or it would, if the Riverside County sheriff’s people believed the truth as he told it, with only the self-incriminating details omitted.
It took a while, but they believed it.
And he was free again.
EPILOGUE
DEATH VALLEY
OCTOBER AGAIN, ANOTHER OCTOBER. Still the best month in the Valley.
He stood on the rim of the Ubehebe Crater, looking across at the orange tints the oxidizing ores gave to the dark volcanic ash of the eastern walls. The afternoon temperature was in the high eighties, just right for hiking and exploring. No tourists in the vicinity, no cars visible on the nearby roads. The only sound was the murmur of a light breeze.
Hard to believe, he was thinking, that almost a full year had passed since that night on the Indio date ranch. An eventful year in many ways. Casey had been held for psychiatric observation, charged with second-degree manslaughter in Vernon Young’s death; pled no contest through her public defender, and been remanded to a state mental facility. So far, neither drugs nor psychotherapy had done much to help her overcome her severe depression and suicidal impulses. It would be a long time before she was deemed well enough for release, if she ever was. He felt sorry for her-in some ways more sorry, in some ways less, than he might have if the circumstances had been different.
For him it had been a good year. Very good. None of the small felonies he’d committed in Laughlin and Vegas and San Diego had come back to haunt him. He was still living on the other side of silence, still working for Unidyne, but he didn’t mind it so much now because it was only temporary.
Will Rodriguez was helping him look for another security job in one of the desert communities east and north of the L.A. basin; a position would open up eventually. And eventually, too, he’d have enough saved to buy a piece of California or Nevada desert property surrounded by nothing but open space and inhabited by creatures no larger or more dangerous than a javelina. All things considered, he was a lucky man. A damn lucky man.
He shifted his gaze to the fair-haired boy standing beside him. Kevin. His reward for all he’d done and tried to do last October, his redemption for the mistakes he’d made. His son now, by consent of the mother and by recent legal decree.
Casey had offered no objection to his petition for adoption. She had no family; and Vernon Young’s widow wanted no part of her dead husband’s bastard child, wouldn’t even acknowledge his paternity. So either the boy grew up with Richard Fallon, a known quantity, the man who’d twice rescued her from the brink of death, or in a foster home among strangers. She was mentally competent enough to understand and accept the fact that he was the best option for Kevin’s future. The children’s court judge in San Diego had agreed.
He had Casey and the judge to thank, yes; but if you wanted to look at it another way, it was the Valley that had brought the boy to him. As if their relationship was the end product of a plan hatched deep inside this ancient rock and set in motion that day last October when he’d found Casey alive in the Butte Valley wash. As if all along the person he was meant to save, to be responsible for, was Kevin Andrew Spicer Fallon…
Kevin moved forward a pace, peering downward into the crater, and Fallon put out a restraining hand. “Don’t get too close to the edge, Son.”
“I won’t. Wow, it sure is deep.”
“Five hundred feet. And half a mile wide.”
“What made it?”
“A volcanic explosion thousands of years ago. There’s another, smaller crater half a mile south of here. Little Hebe.”
“Can we go look at that?”
“Sure we can.”
The boy grinned up at him. The grin was like Timmy’s had been, an inner light that illuminated his features; it enhanced the superficial resemblance, but there was no sadness in the fact. Kevin was neither a replacement nor a substitute for his dead son. He was simply a boy in need of all that Fal- lon had been unable to give to Timmy-a new and different son, the second child he and Geena had never had.
It had taken a long time and a lot of patience to earn Kevin’s trust, but he had it now. The terrified, bewildered eight-and-a-half-year-old hiding in the date groves had evolved into an inquisitive, more secure nine-year-old who seemed to be genuinely happy with his new life. It showed in his enthusiasm and his appetite; he’d begun to fill out, gain strength and endurance. He still hadn’t forgiven his mother, refused to visit her, but he’d come around eventually. Fallon would make sure of it. No child should ever grow up hating anybody, least of all a parent.
Kevin had taken to the desert as well, all the marvels it had to offer-to Fallon’s great relief. Kids who’d grown up in a dysfunctional urban environment either hated the stark landscapes and the solitude, or like him found comfort and refuge in them. The hot, dry climate was good for his asthma, too; the more he hiked out here, the better his breath control and the less he needed to use his inhaler.
Every chance Fallon had, he took Kevin exploring in the Mojave, the high desert country along the California- Nevada border, and twice now in the Valley. Kevin had been eager for this second trip-a camp-out last night near Death Valley Junction, a tour of Scotty’s Castle this morning, Ubehebe Crater and points west this afternoon. You looked at the wonder in his face and you knew that he, too, felt and responded to the Monument’s powerful draw.
And maybe that, too, was part of a plan that had brought them together. Kindred souls, matched by a sentience beyond human comprehension. It seemed possible. Here, with the Valley spread out all around them,
