Getting to his feet, shaking his head, Marty said, “No, it’s too risky.”
“If we both stay inside here, it’ll be like trying to defend a fort.”
“A fort sounds good to me.”
“Don’t you remember all those movies about the cavalry in the Old West,
defending the fort? Sooner or later, no matter how strong the place
was, the Indians overran it and got inside.”
“That’s just in the movies.”
“Yeah, but maybe he’s seen them too. Come here,” she insisted.
When he joined her at the window, she pointed to the rocks, which were
barely visible in the sable shadows under the pines. “It’s perfect.”
“I don’t like it.”
“It’ll work.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You know it’s right.”
“Okay, so maybe it’s right, but I still don’t have to like it,” he said
sharply.
“I’m going out.”
He searched her eyes, perhaps looking for signs of fear that he could
exploit to change her mind. “You think you’re an adventure story
heroine, don’t you?”
“You got my imagination working.”
“I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.” He stared for a long moment at the
shadow-blanketed jumble of rocks, then sighed and said, “All right, but
I’m the one who’ll go out there. You’ll stay in here with the girls.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, baby.”
“Don’t pull a feminist number on me.”
“I’m not. It’s just that . . . you’re the one he’s got a psychic bead
“He can sense where you are, and depending on how refined that talent
is, he might sense you’re in the rocks. You have to stay in the cabin
so he’ll feel you in here, come straight for you–and right past me.”
“Maybe he can sense you too.”
“Evidence so far indicates it’s only you.”
He was in an agony of fear for her, his feelings carved in every hollow
of his face. “I don’t like this.”
“You already said. I’m going out.”
5. 6.
By the time Oslett and Clocker left the Stillwater house and crossed the
street, Spicer was getting behind the wheel of the red surveillance van.
The wind accelerated. Snow was driven out of the sky at a severe angle
and harried along the street.
Oslett walked to the driver’s door of the surveillance van.
Spicer had his sunglasses on again even though the last hour or so of
daylight was upon them. His eyes, yellow or otherwise, were hidden.
He looked down at Oslett and said, “I’m going to drive this heap away
from here, clear across the county line and out of local jurisdiction
before I call the home office and get some help with body disposal.”
“What about the delivery man in the florist’s van?”
“Let them haul their own garbage,” Spicer said.
He handed Oslett a standard-size sheet of typing paper on which the
computer had printed a map, plotting the point from which Martin
Stillwater had telephoned his parents’ house. Only a few roads were
depicted on it. Oslett tucked it inside his ski jacket before either
the wind could snatch it out of his hand or the paper could become damp
from the snow.
“He’s only a few miles away,” Spicer said. “You take the Explorer.”
He started the engine, pulled the door shut, and drove off into the
storm.
Clocker was already behind the wheel of the Explorer. Clouds of exhaust
billowed from its tailpipe.
Oslett hurried to the passenger side, got in, slammed the door, and
fished the computer map out of his jacket. “Let’s go. We’re running
out of time.”
“Only on the human scale,” Clocker said. Pulling away from the curb and
switching on the wipers to deal with the wind-driven snow, he added,
“From a cosmic point of view, time may be the one thing of which there’s
an inexhaustible supply.”
Paige kissed the girls and made them promise to be brave and to do
exactly what their father told them to do. Leaving them for the
uncertainty of what lay ahead was one of the hardest things she had ever
done. Pretending not to be afraid, in order to help them with their own
quest for courage, was even harder.
When Paige stepped out the front door, Marty went with her onto the