of white sand, striated rock, seared desert scrub, Joshua trees and
other cactuses. During the hundred and sixty miles between Barstow and
Las Vegas, there would be virtually only two outpostsCalico, the ghost
town (with a cluster of attendant restaurants, service stations, and a
motel or two), and Baker, which was the gateway to Death Valley National
Monument and which was little more than a pit stop that flashed by in a
few seconds, gone so quickly that it almost seemed like a mirage.
Halloran Springs, Cal Neva, and Stateline were out there, too, but none
of them really qualified as a town, and in one case the population was
fewer than fifty souls. Here, where the great Mojave Desert began,
humankind had tested the wasteland’s dominion, but after Barstow its
rule remained undisputed.
If Rachael had not been so worried about Benny, she would have enjoyed
the endless vistas, the power and responsiveness of the big Mercedes,
and the sense of escape and release that always buoyed her during a trip
across the Mojave. But she could not stop thinking about him, and she
wished she had not left him alone, even though he had made a good
argument for his plan and had given her little choice. She considered
turning around and going back, but he might have left by the time she
reached the cabin. She might even drive straight into the arms of the
police if she returned to Arrowhead, so she kept the Mercedes moving at
a steady sixty miles an hour toward Barstow.
Five miles south of Victorville, she was startled by a strange hollow
thumping that seemed to come from underneath the car, four or five sharp
knocks, then silence. She swore under her breath at the prospect of a
breakdown. Letting the speed fall to fifty and then slowly to forty,
she listened closely to the Mercedes for more than half a mile.
The hum of the tires on the pavement.
The purr of the engine.
The soft whisper of the air-conditioning.
No knocking.
When the unsettling sound did not recur, she accelerated to sixty again
and continued to listen expectantly, figuring that the unknown trouble
was something that occurred only at higher speeds. But when, after
another mile, there was no noise, she decided she must have run over
potholes in the pavement. She had not seen any potholes, and she could
not recall that the car had been jolted simultaneously with the thumping
sound, but she could think of no other explanation. The Mercedes’s
suspension system and heavy-duty shocks were superb, which would have
minimized the jolt of a few minor bumps, and perhaps the strange sound
itself had distracted her from whatever little vibration there had been.
For a few miles, Rachaci remained edgy, not exactly waiting for the
entire drive train to drop out with a great crash or for the engine to
explode, but half expecting some trouble that would delay her.
However, when the car continued to perform with its usual quiet
reliability, she relaxed, and her thoughts drifted back to Benny.
The green Chevy sedan had been damaged in the collision with the blue
Ford-bent grille, smashed headlight, crumpled fender-but its function
had not been impaired.
Peake had driven down the dirt road to gravel to macadam to the state
route that circled the lake, with Sharp sitting in the passenger seat,
scanning the woods around them, the silencer-equipped pistol in his lap.
Sharp had been confident (he said) that Shadway had gone in another
direction, well away from the lake, but he had been vigilant
nonetheless.
Peake had expected a shotgun blast to hit the side window and take him
out at any moment. But he got down to the state route alive.
They had cruised back and forth on the main road until they had found a
liiie of six cars and pickups parked along the berm. Those vehicles
probably belonged to anglers who had gone down through the woods to the
nearby lake, to a favorite but hard-to-reach fishing hole. Sharp had
decided that Shadway would come off the mountain to the south of the
cars and, perhaps recalling having passed them on his way to the cabin