The road took a curve, and suddenly a fork was ahead of him. Ryan stopped the bike and killed the engine, trying not to breathe so he could hear. But nothing was discernible except the chirp of the cicadas in the tall weeds, an owl hooting, a cougar’s scream claiming the whole valley as its personal territory.
“Come on, you bastard, curse the horse,” Ryan muttered to himself. Silence ruled the darkening Virginia forest, and the autumn sun was already touching the tall treetops.
Squinting, Ryan studied the ground, but the light was waning. He dared not turn on the bike’s headlight, if it still worked, as that would announce his presence more than the roar of the blasted engine. Unfortunately, a galloping horse and running men churned the dirt equally, so he glanced around for horse droppings, or blood from Overton’s wound. But there was nothing, not a clue.
The right branch headed for Shersville, the left roughly south toward the limestone hills of a predark battlefield. There were caves, but those were the abode of a deadly group of blood-drinking muties. Much farther south, the road led straight to a glowing blast crater, one of the many misses from skydark. The rad count was so high there that even driving by the glass-lined hole in a speeding wag gave a person a fatal dose of rad poisoning. Right was the logical choice, but would Overton go south exactly because it had no clear destination? The choice was fifty-fifty. Time for a gamble.
It took a few tries to restart the bike, and Ryan was dismayed to see how much fuel he had used in so short a trip. The ramshackle machine would be drained in another half hour.
Charging up the right fork, Ryan pushed the motorcycle hard, watching the tachometer climb dangerously as he dodged rocks and potholes. The noise of the bike would give Overton a chance to get off the road and hide. Only speed would let him catch the man, but the faster he went, the more fuel he used. It was all a wild gamble at that point, so Ryan settled it, concentrating on keeping the rattling piece of junk from falling over as he sped through the growing twilight.
Then it occurred to him that he wasn’t being covert anymore. He could use the headlight to gain himself dozens of yards of visibility. He tapped the switch, and the big light flared on in supernatural brilliance, the beam a stark blue, illuminating the roadway ahead for a good hundred yards.
Halogen lamps, he realized, his first lucky break.
The speedometer climbed to the fifty mark and stayed in the vicinity, as the miles flew beneath the clattering two-wheeler. Ryan’s suspicions grew as did the distance, and finally he was forced to accept the fact that either Overton had outmaneuvered him or taken the other fork.
Braking to a stop as quickly as possible, Ryan dragged the rear wheel about in a fast turn and started back down the road at breakneck speed. Zooming past the fork, he reached a flat section of ground and opened the throttle completely. The hungry engine thundered between his thighs, making his bones throb. The needle on the gas gauge was dropping visibly, the engine temperature at redline, ready to blow. Ryan was going seventy when he spotted the galloping horse.
Coaxing a few extra miles per hour from the struggling machine, he roared past the racing animal, leaving a contrail of blue smoke in his wake. The horse screamed in terror and reared on its hind legs, toppling and crashing to the ground.
Braking to a shuddering halt, Ryan wheeled about and returned much slower, the silenced SIG-Sauer tight in his grip. The animal galloped into the bushes at his approach, tripping on fallen trees in its haste to get away. Instantly, Ryan knew Overton was nowhere nearby. The man had killed other horses in front of this one, so the animal wouldn’t be running toward the murderer. Horses were extremely smart and very proud. They remembered riders by their smells and faces, and they recalled every indignity they suffered. If Overton was in the area, the animal would have a definite direction it would run from. This was merely chaotic charging. The would-be baron had to have abandoned the animal earlier down the road and gone into the woods.
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