porch, wondering if Eric was watching him.
Ben had told Rachael that Eric had left, gone to some other hiding
place. Perhaps that was true. Indeed, the odds were high that it was
true. But a chance remained, however slim, that the dead man was still
here, perhaps observing from some lookout in the forest.
Reeeeee, reeeeee.
He tucked the revolver into his belt, at his back, and entered the cabin
cautiously by the front door, the shotgun ready. He went through the
rooms again, looking for something that might tell him where Eric had
established another hidey-hole comparable to the cabin.
He had not lied to Rachael, it really was necessary to conduct such a
search, but he did not require an hour to do it, as he’d claimed. If he
did not find anything useful in fifteen minutes, he would leave the
cabin and prowl the perimeter of the lawn for some sign of a place where
Eric had entered the woods-trampled brush, footprints in soft soil. If
he found what he was looking for, he would pursue his quarry into the
forest.
He had not told Rachael about that part of his plan because, if he had,
she would never have gone to Vegas.
But he could not enter those woods and track down his man with Rachael
at his side. He had realized as much on the way up through the forest,
on their first approach to the cabin. She was not as sure of herself in
the wilds as Ben was, not as quick. If she went with him, he would
worry about her, be distracted by her, which would give the advantage to
Eric if the dead man was, in fact, out there somewhere.
Earlier, he had told Rachael that the odd sounds they had heard in the
woods were caused by animals. Maybe.
But when they had found the cabin abandoned, he had let those forest
noises sound again in his memory, and he had begun to feel that he had
been too quick to dismiss the possibility that Eric had been stalking
them through the shadows, trees, and brush.
All the way down the narrow lane, from gravel to blacktop, until she
reached the state route that rounded Lake Arrowhead, Rachael was more
than half convinced that Eric was going to rush the car from the
surrounding woods and fling himself at the door. With superhuman
strength born of a demonic rage, he might even be able to put a fist
through the closed.window. But he did not appear.
On the state route, circling the lake. she worried less about Eric and
more about police and federal agents.
Every vehicle she encountered looked, at first sight, like a patrol car.
Las Vegas seemed a thousand miles away.
And she felt as if she had deserted Benny.
When Peake and Sharp had arrived at the Palm Springs airport, directly
from their meeting with The Stone, they had discovered that the
helicopter, a Bell Jet Ranger, had developed engine trouble. The deputy
director, full of pent-up anger that he had been unable to vent on The
Stone, nearly took off the chopper pilot’s head, as if the poor man not
only flew the craft but was also responsible for its design,
construction, and maintenance.
Peake winked at the pilot behind Sharp’s back.
No other helicopter had been for hire, and the two choppers belonging to
the county sheriff’s substation had been engaged and unavailable for
quick reassignment. Reluctantly Sharp had decided they had no choice
but to drive from Palm Springs to Lake Arrowhead. The dark green
government sedan came with a red emergency beacon that was usually kept
in the trunk but which could be mounted to the roof beading with a
thumbscrew clamp in less than a minute. They had a siren, too. They
had used both the flashing beacon and the siren to clear traffic out of
their way, hurtling north on Highway 11″ then virtually flying west on
I- 10 toward the Redland exit.
They had topped ninety miles an hour nearly all the way, the Chevy’s
engine roaring, the frame shimmying under them. Jerry Peake, behind the
wheel, had worried about a blowout because if a tire blew at that speed