“How come this didn’t just fly away in the breeze?”
“Pure luck. It blew against a big rock and then sand covered the bottom half. Like with the doll. If he’d dropped it six inches to the right or left, it’d prob’ly be halfway toMexico by now.”
“What makes you think he dropped it?”
“Don’t you?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to say he really didn’t think any-thing, at least not yet, and then forgot all about it.
He was seeing a glint out in the desert, probably the same one Cynthia had seen while they were coming up on the RV, only they weren’t moving now, so the glint was staying steady. And it wasn’t just mica chips embedded in rock, he would bet on that. For the first time he was really, painfully afraid. He was running out into the desert, running toward the glint, before he was even aware he meant to do it.
“Hey, don’t go so fast!” She sounded startled. “Wait up!”
“No, stay there!” he called back.
He sprinted the first hundred yards, keeping that star point of sun directly in front of him (except now the star point had begun to spread to take on a shape he found dreadfully familiar), and then a wave of dizziness hit and stopped him. He bent over with his hands grasping his legs just above the knees, convinced that every cigar he had smoked in the last eighteen years had come back to haunt him.
When the vertigo passed a little and the padded jackhammer sound of his heartbeat began to diminish in his ears, he heard a distinct but somehow ladylike puffing from behind him. He turned and saw Cynthia approaching at a jog, sweating hard but otherwise fine and dandy. Her gaudy curls had flattened a little, that was all.
“You stick… like a booger on… the end of a finger, he panted as she pulled up beside him.
“I think that’s the sweetest thing a guy ever said to me. Put it in your fucking haiku book, why don’t you? And don’t have a heart attack. How old are you, anyway?”
He straightened up with an effort. “Too old to be interested in your giblets, Chicken Little, and I’m fine.
Thanks for your concern.” On the highway a car blipped by with-out slowing. They both looked. Out here, each passing car was a noticed event.
“Well, can I suggest we walk the rest of the way9 Whatever that thing is, it’s not going anywhere.”
“I know what it is,” he said, and trotted the last twenty yards. He knelt before it like a primitive tribesman before an effigy. The boss’s Harley had been hurriedly and indifferently buried. The wind had already freed one handlebar and part of another.
The girl’s shadow fell over him and he looked up at her wanting to say something that would make her
believe he wasn’t completely freaked out by this, but nothing came He wasn’t sure she would have heard him, anyway. Her eyes were wide and scared, riveted on the bike. She fell to her knees beside him, held out her hands as if measuring then dug a little distance to the right of the handlebars The first thing she found was the boss’s helmet. She pulled it free, poured the sand out of it, and set it aside then she brushed delicately beneath where it had been. Steve watched her. He wasn’t sure his legs would support him if he wanted to get up. He kept thinking of the stories you saw in the paper from time to time, stories about bodies being discovered in gravel pits and pulled out of the ever-popular shallow grave.
Along the scooped declivity she had made, he now saw painted metal bright against the gray-brown sand. The colors were red and cream. And letters. HARL.
“That’s it,” she said. Her words were indistinct, be-cause she was rubbing one hand compulsively back and forth across her mouth. “That’s the one I saw, all right.”
Steve grabbed the handlebars and tugged. Nothing. He wasn’t surprised; it was a pretty feeble tug. He suddenly realized something that was interesting, in a horrible sort of way.
It wasn’t just the boss he was worried about any-more. No sir. His concerns had widened, it seemed.
And he had this feeling, this weird feeling, as if— “Steve, my nice new friend,” Cynthia said in a little voice, looking up at him from the little bit of fuel nacelle she had uncovered, “you’re probably going to think this is primo stupid, the sort of thing dumb broads are always saying in lousy movies, but I feel like we’re being watched.”
“I don’t think you’re being stupid,” he said, and scooped a little more sand away from the nacelle. No blood. Thank God for that. Which wasn’t to say that there wasn’t blood on the damned thing somewhere. Or a body buried beneath it. “I feel that way, too.”
“Can we get out of here?” she asked—almost pleaded. She wiped sweat off her brow with one arm.
“Please?”
He stood up and they started back. When she stuck her hand out, he was glad to take it.
“God, the feeling’s strong.” she said. “Is it strong for you?”
“Yeah. I don’t think it means anything but being really scared, but yeah—it’s strong.
Like—”
A howl rose in the distance, wavering. Cynthia’s grip on his hand tightened enough for Steve to be grateful that she bit her nails.
“What’s that?” she whimpered. “Oh my God, what is it?”
“Coyote,” he said. “Just like in the Western movies.
They won’t hurt us. Let up a little, Cynthia, you’re kuhn me.”
She started to, then clamped down again when a second howl came, wrapping itself lazily around the first like a good barbershop tenor doing harmony.
“They’re nowhere close,” he said, now having to work in order to keep himself from pulling his hand out of hers She was a lot stronger than she looked, and she was hurting.
“Really, kiddo, they’re probably in the next county—relax.”
She eased up on his hand, but when she turned her shiny face to him, it was almost pitifully frightened
“Okay, they’re nowhere close, they’re probably in the next county, they’re probably phonin’ it in from across theCalifornia state line, in fact, but I don’t like things that bite. I’m scared of things that bite. Can we get back to your truck ?“
She walked with her hip brushing his, but when the next howl came, she didn’t squeeze his hand quite so hard—that one clearly was at some distance, and it wasn’t immediately repeated. They reached the truck. Cynthia got in on the passenger side, giving him one quick, nervous smile over her shoulder as she hauled herself up Steve walked around the truck’s hood, realizing as he went that the sensation of being
watched had slipped away. He was still scared, but now it was primarily for the boss again—if John Edward Marinville was dead, the headlines would be worldwide, and Steven Ames would undoubtedly be part of the story. Not a good part. Steven Ames would be the fail-safe that failed, the safety net that hadn’t been there when Big Daddy finally fell off the trapeze.
“That feeling of being watched. . . probably it was the coyotes,” she said. “You think?”
“Maybe.”
“What now?” Cynthia asked.
He took a deep breath and reached for the cellular phone. “Time for the cops,” he said, and dialled 911.
What he heard in his ear was what he had pretty much expected: one of those cell-net recorded voices telling him it was sorry, but his call could not be completed at this time.
The boss had gotten through—briefly, anyway—but that had been a fluke. Steve snapped the mouthpiece closed with a savage flick of his wrist, threw the phone back onto the dash, and started the Ryder’s engine. He was dismayed to see that the desert floor had taken on a distinctly purplish cast. Shit.
They’d spent more time in the deserted RV and kneeling in front of the boss’s half-buried scoot than he had thought.
“No, huh?” She was looking at him sympathetically.
“No. Let’s find this town you mentioned. What was it?”
“Desperation. It’s east of here.”
He dropped the gearshift lever into Drive. “Navigate for me, will you?”
“Sure,” she said, and then touched his arm. “We’ll get help. Even in a town that small, there’s got to be at least one cop.
He drove up to the abandoned RV before turning east again, and saw the door was still flapping.
Neither of them had thought to hatch it. He stopped the truck, ran the transmission up into Park, and opened his own door.
Cynthia grabbed his shoulder before he could swing more than one leg out. “Hey, where you going?”
Not panicked, but not exactly serene, either.
“Easy, girl. Just give me a see.”
He got out and latched the door of the RV, which was something called a Wayfarer, according to the chrome on its flank. Then he came back to the idling Ryder truck.