Stefan sat up just as the owner of the Jeep, breath reeking of beer, pulled open the door. “Hey, what the hell you doing, pal?” The rest of the snowswept parking lot was still deserted. They were alone.
Laura would be dead in twenty-five minutes. The Jeep’s owner reached for him, and he allowed himself to be dragged from behind the steering wheel, plucking his pistol off the seat as he went, and in fact he threw himself into the other man’s grasp, using the momentum to send his adversary staggering backward on the slippery parking lot. They fell. As they hit the ground, he was on top, and he jammed the muzzle under the guy’s chin.
“Jesus, mister! Don’t kill me.”
“We’re getting up now. Easy, damn you, no sudden moves.” When they were on their feet Stefan moved behind the guy, quickly reversed his grip on the Walther, used it as a club, struck once, hard enough to knock the man unconscious without doing permanent damage. The owner of the Jeep went down again, stayed down, limp.
Stefan glanced at the tavern. No one else had come out. He could hear no traffic approaching on the road, but then again the howling wind might mask the sound of an engine.
As the snow began to fall harder, he put the pistol in the deep pocket of his peacoat and dragged the unconscious man to the nearest other vehicle, the Thunderbird. It was unlocked, and he heaved the guy into the rear seat, closed the door, and hurried back to the Jeep. The engine had died. He hot-wired it again.
As he put the Jeep in gear and swung it around toward the road, the wind shrieked at the window beside him. The falling snow grew denser, blizzard-thick, and clouds of yesterday’s snow were whipped up from the ground and spun in sparkling columns. The giant, shadow-swaddled pines swayed and shuddered under winter’s assault.
Laura had little more than twenty minutes to live.
They celebrated the publishing contract for Jericho Nights and the otherworldly harmony of their first year of marriage by spending their anniversary at a favorite place—Disneyland. The sky was blue, cloudless; the air was dry and hot. Virtually oblivious of the summer crowds, they rode the Pirates of the Caribbean, had their pictures taken with Mickey Mouse, got dizzy spinning in the Mad Hatter’s teacups, had their portraits drawn by a caricaturist, ate hot dogs and ice cream and chocolate-covered frozen bananas on sticks, and danced that evening to a Dixieland band in New Orleans Square.
The park became even more magical after nightfall, and they rode the Mark Twain paddlewheel steamboat around Tom Sawyer’s Island for the third time, standing at the railing on the top level, near the bow, with their arms around each other. Danny said, “You know why we like this place so much? ‘Cause it’s of the world yet untainted by the world. And that’s our marriage.”
Later, over strawberry sundaes at the Carnation Pavilion, at a table beneath trees strung with white Christmas lights, Laura said, “Fifteen thousand bucks for a year’s work . . . not exactly a fortune.”
“It isn’t slave wages either.” He pushed his sundae aside, leaned forward, slid her sundae aside, too, and took her hands across the table. “The money will come eventually because you’re brilliant, but money isn’t what I care about. What I care about is that you’ve got something special to share. No. That’s not exactly what I mean. You don’t just have something special, you are something special. In some way I understand but can’t explain, I know that what you are, when shared, will bring as much hope and joy to people in far places as it brings to me here at your side.”
Blinking away sudden tears, she said, “I love you.”
Jericho Nights was published ten months later, in May of 1979. Danny insisted she use her maiden name because he knew that through all the bad years in McIlroy Home and Caswell Hall, she had endured in part because she wanted to grow up and make something of herself as a testament to her father and perhaps, as well, to the mother she had never known. The book sold few copies, was not chosen by any book clubs, and was licensed by Viking to a paperback publisher for a small advance.