open it. Inside were two thirty-eight pistols. He put one on the seat
between them.
Peake said, “What’s that?”
“Your gun for this operation.”
“I’ve got my service revolver.”
“It’s not hunting season. Can’t have a lot of noisy gunfire, Jerry.
That might bring neighbors poking around or even alert some sheriff’s
deputy whojust happens to be in the area.” Sharp withdrew a silencer
from the attache’ case and began to screw it onto his own pistol. You
can’t use a silencer on a revolver, and we sure don’t want anybody
interrupting us until it’s over and we’ve had, plenty of time to adjust
the bodies to fit our scenario.
What the hell am I going to do? Peake wondered as he piloted the sedan
north along the lake, looking for a red-and-white iron rooster.
On another road, State Rute 138, Rachae! had left Lake Arrowhead
behind. She was approaching Silverwood Lake, where the scenery of the
high San Bernardinos was even more breathtakingthough she had no eye for
scenery in her current state of mind.
From Silverwood, 138 led out of the mountains and almost due west until
it connected with Interstate 15.
There, she intended to stop for gasoline, then follow 15 north and east,
all the way across the desert to Las Vegas. That was a drive of more
than two hundred miles over some of the most starkly beautiful and
utterly desolate land on the continent, and even under the best of
circumstances, it could be a lonely journey.
Benny, she thought, I wish you were here.
She passed a lightning-blasted tree that reached toward the sky with
dead black limbs.
The white clouds that had recently appeared were getting thicker. A few
of them were not white.
or that would leave a black mark of any kind on my agency record.”
Sharp smiled, reading total capitulation in that statement.
Ben moved slowly around the kitchen, peering closely at the floor, where
traces of broth from the discarded soup and stew cans glistened on the
tile. He and Rachael had taken care to step over and around the spills
when they had gone through the kitchen, and Ben had not previously
noticed any of Eric’s footprints in the mess, which was something he was
certain he would have seen.
Now he found what had not been there earlier, almost a full footprint in
a patch of thick gravy from the Dinty Moore can, and a heelprint in a
gob of peanut butter. A man’s boots, large ones, by the look of the
tread.
Two more prints shone dully on the tile near the refrigerator, where
Eric had tracked the gravy and peanut butter when he had gone over there
to put down the ax and, of course, to hide. To hide. Jesus.
When Ben and Rachael had entered the kitchen from the garage and had
stepped into the living room to gather up the scattered pages of the
Wildcard file, Eric had been crouched at the far side of the
refrigerator, hiding.
Heart racing, Ben turned away from the prints and hurried to the door
that connected with the garage.
LAKE ARROWHEAD.
They had arrived.
The slow-moving camper pulled into the parking lot of a sporting-goods
store, getting out of their way, and Peake accelerated.
Having consulted the directions that The Stone had written on a slip of
paper, Sharp said, “You’re headed the right way. Just follow the state
route north around the lake. In four miles or so, look for a branch
road on the right, with a cluster of ten mailboxes, one of them In the
empty garage, Ben saw a two-inch-by-four-inch patch of boot-tread
pattern imprinted on the concrete floor in some oily fluid that
glistened in the beams of intruding sunlight. He knelt and put his nose
to the spot. He was certain that the vague smell of beef gravy was not
an imaginary scent.
The tread mark must have been here when he and Rachael returned to the
car with the Wildcard pages, but he had not noticed it.
He got up and moved farther into the garage, studying the floor closely,
and in only a few seconds he saw a small moist brown glob about half the