hate to ask, but I'm dead on my feet.'
'I'd be glad to prescribe something, but all the pharmacies are closed.'
'You're kidding.'
'Nope. The last one shuts down at nine p.m.'
Alex hung her head, obviously dreading the coming ordeal.
'Wait, I think I may have something. Before I became his doctor, Ben had been diagnosed with ADD. He was taking Ritalin, and too much of it. I think we still have some in the house.'
'I thought Ritalin calms you down.'
'It has the opposite effect on adults. I figured you'd know that from handling drug cases.'
'I mostly worked the money side in Miami. Forensic accounting. Although I did go on a few raids.'
Chris walked to the door. 'You stay here with Ben, and I'll get the pills.'
She shook her head. 'We all need to go together.'
'Alex, you're about to leave town. What does a walk to the house matter?'
'You have a gun in the house, don't you?'
He nodded.
She handed him her automatic. 'You know how to use this?'
He hefted the pistol in his hand. It was a Glock, 40 caliber, but smaller than the ones he'd held in the sporting goods shop. 'Yes.'
'Take it with you. Bring your gun back with the pills. I'll watch Ben till you get back.'
'I will. If he wakes up-'
'I can handle it. Go.'
Chris closed his eyes long enough to dilate his pupils, then walked out into the darkness. He felt no fear, but even on normal nights he kept his eyes open during this walk. There were always deer in the yard, not to mention the occasional coyote, and he'd killed a six-foot rattlesnake on the patio only last spring. He covered the distance to the house in thirty seconds, then slipped through the back door and went to the master bedroom.
He had several rifles in his gun cabinet in the study, but his only handgun was a.38 kept locked in a small safe in his closet. He retrieved it, then pulled down an old box from the top shelf of the closet, where he kept old medicines and samples he'd brought home from the office. Sure enough, a bottle of Ritalin lay at the bottom, a drug that Ben should probably never have been taking. Chris slipped the bottle into his pocket, shoved Alex's gun into his waistband, then left the house and jogged back to the studio with his.38 in his right hand.
'Take one of these,' he told Alex. 'Take another later if you start to fade. I'll get you some water.'
'No need.' She dry-swallowed one of the pills, then put the bottle in her pocket.
'You're pretty good at that.'
A wry smile. 'Birth-control pills.'
'Ah.'
'Not that I've needed them lately.' She looked up, suddenly self-conscious. 'Too much information?'
'Not at all. You just focus on staying awake.'
She nodded thankfully, then took her gun back and went to the door. 'I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?'
'Tonight,' he said. 'Call me when you get to Jackson. Call before that if you can't stay awake.'
'I will. But I'll be all right.'
She lingered for a moment, as though she wanted to say more, but then she turned and walked away. In seconds she was swallowed by the blackness. Chris stood looking at the lights of the main house, wondering if he would ever truly leave it to move to Avalon with Thora. Even before Alex arrived in Natchez, the idea had not seemed quite right, but now it seemed truly tainted. He was thinking of the night he'd carried Thora over the threshold of this house when he heard an engine start in the distance. It revved a couple of times, then slowly faded away. He breathed in the night smell of spring leaves and sweet olive, then turned and went back into the studio.
CHAPTER 24
Alex turned left out of the driveway across from Chris's house and headed toward Highway 61. It was nearly a mile to the turn, with much of the narrow lane threading between high, wooded banks. Thankfully, she didn't see a single headlight on the road, nor any vehicles parked in the darkness on the few driveways she passed.
Turning north on 61, she soon passed St. Stephen's Prep, then half a mile farther the Days Inn. She felt an impulse to stop and get her computer, but since she already had fresh clothes in the bag from her earlier trip, she decided to go on without stopping. If her mother died tonight, she could use Uncle Will's computers for any necessary e-mail. If by some miracle Margaret survived the night, then Alex would probably be back in Natchez by noon tomorrow.
As she passed the fork where Highway 84 veered away toward the Mississippi River, she realized that a pair of headlights was pacing her from behind. Her first thought was 'cop,' because the car seemed to have come up suddenly, then remained at a uniform distance behind. He was probably radioing her tag in now. But after watching the lights for a while in her rearview mirror, Alex decided they were too high off the ground for a police cruiser. More probably a pickup truck or a van.
A Baptist church with a tall steeple drifted by on her right. Then the road narrowed to a single lane- construction where a new stretch of the Natchez Trace highway intersected Highway 61. Alex could see the Super Wal-Mart ahead on her left. She accelerated steadily, then whipped the Corolla across the oncoming lane of traffic and into the Wal-Mart lot.
The vehicle behind kept on at a constant rate of speed. As it passed the turn, she saw that it was indeed a van-a white van covered with patches of mud and primer. The driver's window appeared almost black. She didn't have the angle to see the license plate, but something told her that mud would be covering it.
She parked thirty yards from the store, the nose of the Corolla pointed toward the highway.
The idea that Grace's killer might be in that van was almost too much to hope for, but she cradled her Glock in her lap nevertheless. Occasional cars passed on the highway, and two turned into the parking lot, but she saw no further sign of the van.
'That's long enough,' she said aloud.
She put the car in gear and drove out to the highway, but there she turned right instead of left, which would carry her away from Jackson. She hadn't gone more than fifty yards when an approaching vehicle made a U-turn between orange-and-white traffic barriers immediately after passing her. She hadn't seen the make, but she made a quick right turn anyway, which put her on Liberty Road. If memory served correctly, this road would take her past a few of the town's premier mansions, then into the heart of downtown.
A set of headlights appeared behind her. They sat high enough to be a van. She took the first right turn she came to, this time into what appeared to be a residential subdivision: tract homes that looked as though they'd been built in the 1950s. She gunned the motor for five seconds, then waited to see if the headlights followed her into the neighborhood. They slowed, stopped, then rolled into the road behind her.
Alex wrenched her wheel left, sped up a low incline, then took another left into a lane that wound beneath a pitch-black canopy of trees. A mansion like something out of a Technicolor period piece materialized out of the darkness on her left. She could almost see gray-clad officers and ladies in hoop skirts strolling across the wide veranda. She idled past the broad front steps, then accelerated and found herself at another intersection. She sensed this was the same road she had been on before, looping around the estate at the center of this strange subdivision. As she pondered which way to go, the high headlights floated toward her from behind.
Sensing that a left turn would carry her back to Liberty Road, she jerked the wheel right and sped around a
