Firestarter

“C'mon,” he said.

Charlie went with him.

8

That day was cool and beautiful. At twelve-thirty Rainbird strolled slowly across the still-green lawn to the low, L-shaped stable with its dark-red paint-the color of drying blood-and its brisk white piping. Overhead, great fair-weather clouds marched slowly across the sky. A breeze tugged at his shirt. If dying was required, this was a fine day for it. Inside the stable, he located the head groom’s office and went in. He showed his ID with its A-rating stamp.

“Yes, sir?” Drabble said.

“Clear this place,” Rainbird said. “Everyone out. Five minutes.”

The groom did not argue or bumble, and if he paled a bit, his tan covered it. “The horses too?”

“Just the people. Out the back.”

Rainbird had changed into fatigues-what they had sometimes called gookshooters in Nam. The pants pockets were large, deep, and flapped. From one of these he now took a large handgun. The head groom looked at it with wise, unsurprised eyes. Rainbird held it loosely, pointed at the floor.

“Is there going to be trouble, sir?”

“There may be,” Rainbird said quietly. “I don’t really know. Go on, now, old man.”

“I hope no harm will come to the horses,” Drabble said.

Rainbird smiled then. He thought, So will she. He had seen her eyes when she was with the horses. And this p?ace, with its bays of loose hay and its lofts of baled hay, with its dry wood all about, was a tinderbox with NO SMOKING signs posted everywhere.

It was a thin edge. But, as the years had drawn on and he had become more and more careless of his life, he had walked thinner ones.

He walked back to the big double doors and looked out. No sign of anyone just yet. He turned away and began to walk between the stall doors, smelling the sweet, pungent, nostalgic aroma of horse.

He made sure all of the stalls were latched and locked.

He went back to the double doors again. Now someone was coming. Two figures. They were still on the far side of the duckpond, five minutes” walk away. Not Cap and Andy McGee. It was Don Jules and Charlie.

Come to me, Charlie, he thought tenderly. Come to me now.

He glanced around at the shadowed upper lofts for a moment and then went to the ladder-simple wooden rungs nailed to a support beam-and began to climb with lithe ease.

Three minutes later, Charlie and Don Jules stepped into the shadowed, empty coolness of the stable. They stood just inside the doors for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the dimness. The.357 Mag in Rainbird’s hand had been modified to hold a silencer of Rainbird’s own construction; it crouched over the muzzle like a strange black spider. It was not, as a matter of fact, a very silent silencer: it is nearly impossible to completely quiet a big handgun. When-if-he pulled the trigger, it would utter a husky bark the first time, a low report the second time, and then it would be mostly useless. Rainbird hoped not to have to use the gun at all, but now he brought it down with both hands and leveled it so that the silencer covered a small circle on Don Jules’s chest.

Jules was looking around carefully.

“You can go now,” Charlie said.

“Hey!” Jules said, raising his voice and paying no attention to Charlie. Rainbird knew Jules. A book man. Follow each order to the letter and nobody could put you in hack. Keep your ass covered at all times. “Hey, groom! Somebody! I got the kid here!”

“You can go now,” Charlie said again, and once more Jules ignored her.

“Come now,” he said, clamping a hand over Charlie’s wrist. “We got to find somebody.”

A bit regretfully, Rainbird prepared to shoot Don Jules. It could be worse; at least Jules would die by the book, and with his ass covered. “I said you could go now,” Charlie said, and suddenly Jules let go of her wrist. He didn’t just let go; he pulled his hand away, the way you do when you’ve grabbed hold of something hot.

Rainbird watched this interesting development closely.

Jules had turned and was looking at Charlie. He was rubbing his wrist, but Rainbird was unable to see if there was a mark there or not.

“You get out of here,” Charlie said softly.

Jules reached under his coat and Rainbird once more prepared to shoot him. He wouldn’t do it until the gun was clear of Jules’s jacket and his intention to march her back to the house was obvious.

But the gun was only partway out when he dropped it to the barnboard floor with a cry. He took two steps backward, away from the girl, his eyes wide.

Charlie made a half turn away, as if Jules no longer interested her. There was a faucet protruding from the wall halfway up the long side of the L, and beneath it was a bucket half full of water.

Steam began to rise lazily from the bucket.

Rainbird didn’t think Jules noticed that; his eyes were riveted on Charlie.

“Get out of here, you bastard,” she said, “or I’ll burn you up. I’ll fry you.”

John Rainbird raised Charlie a silent cheer.

Jules stood looking at her, indecisive. At this moment, with his head down and slightly cocked, his eyes moving restlessly from side to side, he looked ratlike and dangerous. Rainbird was ready to back her play if she had to make one, but he hoped Jules would be sensible. The power had a way of getting out of control.

“Get out right now,” Charlie said. “Go back where you came from. I’ll be watching to see that you do. Move! Get out of here!”

The shrill anger in her voice decided him. “Take is easy,” he said. “Okay. But you got nowhere to go, girl. You got nothing but a hard way to go.”

As he spoke he was easing past her, then backing toward the door.

“I’ll be watching,” Charlie said grimly. “Don’t you even turn around, you… you turd.”

Jules went out. He said something else, but Rainbird didn’t catch it.

“Just go!” Charlie cried.

She stood in the double doorway, back to Rainbird, in a shower of drowsy afternoon sunlight, a small silhouette. Again his love for her came over him. This was the place of their appointment, then.

“Charlie,” he called down softly.

She stiffened and took a single step backward. She didn’t turn around, but he could feel the sudden recognition and fury flooding through her, although it was visible only in the slow way that her shoulders came up.

“Charlie,” he called again. “Hey, Charlie.”

“You!” she whispered. He barely caught it. Somewhere below him, a horse nickered softly. ”

It’s me,” he agreed. “Charlie, it’s been me all along.”

Now she did turn and swept the long side of the stable with her eyes. Rainbird saw her do this, but she didn’t see him; he was behind a stack of bales, well out of sight in the shadowy second loft.

“Where are you?” she rasped. “You tricked me! It was you! My daddy says it was you that time at Granther’s!” Her hand had gone unconsciously to her throat, where he had laid in the dart. “Where are you?”

Ah, Charlie, wouldn’t you like to know?

A horse whinnied; no quiet sound of contentment this, but one of sudden sharp fear. The cry was taken up by another horse. There was a heavy double thud as one of the thoroughbreds kicked at the latched door of his stall.

“Where are you?” she screamed again, and Rainbird felt the temperature suddenly begin to rise. Directly below him, one of the horses- Necromancer, perhapswhinnied loudly, and it sounded like a woman screaming.

9

The door buzzer made its curt, rasping cry, and Cap Hollister stepped into Andy’s apartment below the north plantation house. He was not the man he had been a year before. That man had been elderly but tough and hale and shrewd; that man had possessed a face you might expect to see crouching over the edge of a duck blind in November and holding a shotgun with easy authority. This man walked in a kind of distracted shamble. His hair, a strong iron gray a year ago, was now nearly white and babyfine. His mouth twitched infirmly. But the greatest change was in his eyes, which seemed puzzled and somehow childlike; this expression would occasionally be broken by a shooting sideways glance that was suspicious and fearful and almost cringing. His hands hung loosely by his sides and the fingers twitched aimlessly. The echo had become a ricochet that was now bouncing around his brain with crazy, whistling, deadly velocity.

Andy McGee stood to meet him. He was dressed exactly as he had been on that day when he and Charlie had fled up Third Avenue in New York with the Shop sedan trailing behind them. The cord jacket was torn at the seam of the left shoulder now, and the brown twill pants were faded and seatshiny,

The wait had been good for him. He felt that he had been able to make his peace with all of this. Not understanding, no. He felt he would never have that, even if he and Charlie somehow managed to beat the fantastic odds and get away and go on living. He could find no fatal flaw in his own character on which to blame this royal balls-up, no sin of the father that needed to be expiated upon his daughter. It wasn’t wrong to need two hundred dollars or to participate in a controlled experiment, anymore than it was wrong to want to be free. If I could get clear, he thought, I’d tell them this: teach your children, teach your babies, teach them well, they say they know what they are doing, and sometimes they do, but mostly they lie.

But it was what it was, n'est-ce pas? One way or another they would at least have a run for their money. But that brought him no feeling of