Kara Lynn felt warm. She liked the cozy smell of the sweater. “Can I come visit you down there?”
“You bet. Fix up a nice big plate of sargassum. We’ll pig out.”
Kara Lynn watched him so closely that Keyes began to feel a little uncomfortable. She was zeroing in on something. The old Jenna antennae started to twitch.
“What do you think about me, Brian?”
“I like you,” he said. “I like you very much.”
“She really hurt you, didn’t she?”
Out of the blue. Just when he’d started to relax.
“Who?” he said inanely.
“Jenna. One look at the two of you together—”
“Forget the two of us together.”
“I’m sorry. No more soap opera, I promise.” She folded her arms and sat back. Her gray-green eyes captured him, froze him in one place. Nineteen years old, no one should have a look that good, Keyes thought.
“I can’t figure out what I like so much about you,” Kara Lynn said. “But I think it’s your attitude.”
“I’ve got a miserable attitude.”
“Yeah, you come on that way but it’s bullshit, isn’t it, Marlowe? Some of it’s an act.”
“Until I grow my turtle shell.”
“What I like,” said Kara Lynn, “is your attitude toward me. You’re the first man who hasn’t treated me like a porcelain doll. You don’t pamper, you don’t drool, and you don’t try to impress me.”
Keyes smiled wanly. “Somehow I knew there was no danger of that.”
“And I like the way you tell the truth,” she said. “For instance, I think you told the truth just now when you said you liked me. I think you really do.”
“Sure.”
“I think you wouldn’t mind if I kissed you.”
Keyes opened his mouth but nothing came out. He felt a little shaky. Like prom night, for God’s sake.
Kara Lynn reached over and took his arm. She pulled him gently. “Meet you halfway,” she said.
They kissed across the table. It was a long kiss, and Keyes nearly got lost in it. He also managed to plant his left elbow in the pizza.
“You’re nervous,” she said.
“You’re a client. That makes me nervous.”
“Naw. Pretty girls make you nervous.”
“Some of them, yeah.”
In the MG on the way home, she sat much closer.
“You’re worried about me,” Kara Lynn said.
“I don’t want you in this stupid parade.”
She held onto his right arm with both hands. “I’ve got to do it. It’s either me or some other girl.”
“Then let it be some other girl.”
“No, Brian.”
Things were changing—all of a sudden the stakes couldn’t be higher. The harrowing parameters of his nightmare had become perceptible; and locked inside them, Kara Lynn Shivers and Skip Wiley.
Keyes wondered if the maniac had phoned Cab Mulcahy, like he promised.
“You’re frightened, aren’t you?” Kara Lynn asked.
“Yup.”
“We’ll be all right,” she said. Like Jenna used to say.
The house was dark when Keyes pulled into the driveway. The shaggy-headed palms hung still in the crisp night. Crackles bickered high in the old ficus tree. From the flowerbed a disinterested calico cat watched them come up the walk.
Keyes waited on the second step while Kara Lynn unlocked the front door. He went in first, switched on a small lamp in the hall, checked around.
“Everything’s fine,” he said. And out of habit took a step toward the guest room where he slept.
“No,” Kara Lynn whispered, taking his hand. “Come upstairs.”
26
Wiley stormed into the warehouse shortly after noon on the twenty-ninth of December, the day after the bombing at police headquarters.
‘Where is Jesus?” Wiley demanded.
“Don’t know,” Viceroy Wilson said.
“He was gone when we got here,” said Tommy Tigertail.
Both men were shirtless, with leather carpentry belts strung from their waists. The Indian had a red bandanna around his neck, and his caramel chest was beaded with perspiration. Viceroy Wilson wore gray sweatpants and faded aqua wristbands, which kept his hands dry.
They had worked unceasingly since dawn, and the skeletal contraption had grown to fill the warehouse from floor to ceiling.
“It’s coming along,” Wiley said halfheartedly. “You’re doing fine.”
He paced with agitation, gnawing his lower lip, hands crammed in the pockets of his jeans. With each step his track shoes squeaked on the dusty concrete—a noise that only added to the tension. El Fuego was on the threshold of eruption; Viceroy Wilson and Tommy Tigertail could sense it.