Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

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

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