Part 30 (1/2)

”It was as peaceful as I've ever been. Like I was dead.”

She'd turned on a lamp, her hair down around her face as she watched me. I had no idea how long we'd been here: one hour, two, a day? While I was rapidly coming to terms with my fate, I could tell by the deep blue dread in Stephanie's eyes, she was not. Wouldn't. Couldn't.

Making love with Stephanie had been penny fun and pound foolish. Worse, it had been diabolic. After I joined her sister in the mental ether, the pain of Stephanie's consanguine betrayal would only be that much greater for her.

Ironic. Just as I was recognizing my own unhealthy need to inflict suffering on the women around me, I went out and did it again. The fact that it had been her idea didn't make it any easier to stomach.

We dressed in silence, kissed briefly at the door, and stepped out onto the walkway. It was almost eleven-thirty. Two doors down, a man and a woman, half-crocked from the sounds of their movement and slurred voices, quarreled over which of them had the room key. A moment later I realized we were listening to Wes and Lillian Tindale.

Our meeting surprised me, but it shocked shocked them. Mouths agape, they both turned and stared. them. Mouths agape, they both turned and stared.

For a few moments the four of us looked at one another and then, without a word, Stephanie pivoted around and began walking away. I followed. Downstairs, we climbed into the Lexus, while a dumbfounded Wesley and Lillian gawped down at us.

As we headed out of the lot, two men in a rental car headed in. ”Stop,” I said. The two men parked next to us and headed toward a room on the ground floor. ”I thought you two were leaving town,” I said, rolling the car window down.

The two balding men looked startled. Hillburn and Dobson from Jane's California Propulsion, Inc. I'd been suspicious of them for pulling out of town after our chat, but now I was even more suspicious because they hadn't pulled out of town at all.

”What are you two doing?” I asked, getting out of the Lexus.

They looked at each other and headed for their room without answering. I ran over to them and grabbed Dobson by the arm. ”No. I want to know what you two are doing. I thought you said your company couldn't possibly have had anything to do with our syndrome. If that's so, why are you hanging around?”

”Doesn't have anything to do with you,” said Hillburn, who had the key in the door.

”You two are up to something.” They just stared at me. Before I could say anything else, they opened the door, went in, and slammed it in my face.

”Did you see those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?” I said, getting back into the car.

”I don't like them, either, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Achara was going to look into rocket fuel products. Maybe she's found something.”

”I'm surprised we haven't heard from her. The library closed hours ago.”

We stopped at the fire station, where Stephanie retrieved some personal items out of Holly's Pontiac, which was still parked there.

It was hard for me to look at our fire station, a place I'd loved for so many years, a home away from home, a place I was destined never to inhabit again.

Just as we were about to leave, a black Suburban pulled around the corner, Scott Donovan at the wheel.

”I've been looking for you two,” Donovan said. He had a strange look on his face, as if surprised to see us.

”Here we are,” Stephanie said.

”Do you have some news for us?” I asked.

”You guys . . . I just want to meet with you in the morning. Before the news conference. That all right?”

Stephanie turned to me. ”Sure.”

”I just . . . I've been looking all over for you. Where were you?”

”Out and about,” Stephanie said cheerily.

”We ran into Hillburn and Dobson. From JCP? They're still in town. Doesn't that seem odd to you?”

Donovan rubbed his chin. ”It seems very odd. Where'd you see them?”

”The Sunset Motel.”

Donovan gave us a look. ”I'll go check it out. And don't look so glum. We're going to lick this.”

”I'm not glum,” I said.

”No? Is there a reason you have a room reserved over at Alpine Estates?”

It took a moment to realize what he was talking about. He seemed disappointed when Stephanie explained the room was my father's.

After we left, I said, ”He look like he's been drinking?”

”Maybe.”

”That newspaper guy in Tennessee hinted that he was quite a drinker.”

The street lamps on Ballarat complemented a gigantic moon dangling over the south corner of Mount Si.

My girls would be wondering where I was. Once again I'd fobbed them off onto a baby-sitter and was ashamed of myself. Tomorrow was little enough to give, but tomorrow was theirs. We were getting nowhere with this quest, and I wasn't going to waste my remaining hours struggling like a wild horse in quicksand. It seemed the more I fought, the more hopeless things looked. Tomorrow I would hold the news conference, gather my family around, and wait for somebody to throw a rope over my neck and save me.

If somebody produced information that altered my lot, so be it. If not, my destiny was in the hands of G.o.d.

If there was a G.o.d.

Spooky.

I didn't believe in him, so why was I invoking his will now?

I began deep breathing again.

In my mind there was no longer much hope that I would be cured. It was a weak trail, and we were moving slowly. The fact that I had someone to share this with meant a lot to me. It meant even more that it was a woman who'd once reviled me.

We were on Ballarat, just past the library, when Stephanie pulled to the curb. My ears were ringing, and for a moment I couldn't figure out why she'd stopped. Then a fire engine raced past, siren squalling, red lights whirling. The ground seemed to shake as it pa.s.sed. A moment later Jeb Parker raced past in his Volkswagen. I wasn't wearing my pager, so I had no idea what they were responding to. It must have been a fire call rather than an aid response, because moments later another volunteer sped past at seventy miles an hour. The engine could have handled an aid call by itself.

The moonlit road out of town took us north, then veered east directly toward the base of Mount Si, then north again paralleling Si toward my house, three legs, each about half a mile long. My place was in a small enclave of treed properties next to the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River.

Across the fields a plume of fast-rising black smoke rolled upward. The smoke, highlighted as it was by the moon's light, looked like an act of war.

”Step on it,” I said, irritated that I wasn't driving.

Stephanie followed my gaze and accelerated.

”A gra.s.s fire?” There had been two nuisance gra.s.s fires outside of town that afternoon.