Breathless

the pistol. From the upper compartment of the pack, he took one of the six bottles of tequila, each of which was wrapped in its own stuffsack.
    Two cars appeared in the south, but the thugs were not returning with reinforcements. A sedan and a pickup swept past without slowing.
    Tom twisted the cap, broke the tax stamp, opened the pint. He brought it to his nose and inhaled.
    The aroma made his mouth water and his stomach flutter with anticipation. The shakes took him, so he held the tequila with both hands.
    After he stood there for a while, perhaps for five minutes, he screwed the cap back on the bottle. He took no satisfaction in his self-control. He knew his willpower would not long endure.
    Cursing himself for his sudden temperance, he threw the bottleoff the bridge. He heard it shatter on the stones in the waterless waterway.
    He zipped shut the storm flap, shouldered the backpack once more, and adjusted the hip belt.
    Soon twelve hours would have passed since the sobering incident in the bluff-top rest area, above his cave home. He’d been awake for twenty hours, and he’d walked a long way in the past four. He should have been asleep on his feet, but he was awake, alert, and grimly focused.
    He knew where he must go. A long, long walk remained ahead of him.
    He knew what he must do. The task would not be easy. He might not have the courage to complete it.
    As Tom Bigger walked north into the last few hours of the night, he was overcome again by the feeling that he was not alone, that he was followed step by step, and not merely by coyotes. And he was afraid.

Thirty-nine

F or a walk in the suburban Seattle woods, Liddon Wallace wore Brioni loafers protected by rubber overshoes, gray wool slacks by Ermenegildo Zegna, a Mark Cross belt, a Geoffrey Beene shirt, an Armani sweater, a black leather jacket by Andrew Marc, and a Patek Philippe wristwatch.
    The hard-packed dirt footpath proved easy to follow in spite of the mottling shadows and the mist. Dawn had come nearly an hour earlier. But fog veiled the face of the sun and allowed only this indirect light.
    In the morning murk, the towering Douglas firs and hemlocks appeared to be black, and the ferns were more blue than green. Even the clusters of Pacific dogwoods, with their flurries of scarlet and gold leaves, blazed less than smoldered in the dripping gloom, and their enormous white flowers, which usually resembled clematis, now looked like dead birds in their branches.
    After little more than three hundred yards, the footpath led outof the forest. Beyond lay the putting green at the eighteenth hole of the golf course.
    An electric cart, used by groundskeepers, stood on the green. Even as Liddon Wallace came out of the trees, Rudy Neems, chief of the landscape-maintenance crew, took the eighteenth-hole flag from the cart and stood it in the cup.
    Half surrounding the green and beyond it were three sand traps and then a fairway that sloped down to a water hazard. The first half of the fairway, beyond the water, faded into the mist, and the tee was far beyond sight. A narrow rough lay along each flank of the fairway, and behind both roughs the forest continued.
    Rudy Neems stood by the grounds cart, watching Liddon approach. The landscaper was thirty-eight, stocky, with a blond mustache and thick hair that grew naturally in ringlets. Ironically, as a boy, he was often picked to play an angel in Christmas pageants.
    “This weather sucks,” Liddon said.
    Neems was soft-spoken to such a degree that even in the morning stillness, his voice didn’t carry far: “Good for the skin.”
    Indeed, the groundskeeper had a superb complexion.
    Liddon said, “So you reviewed the package.”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have any questions?”
    “No.”
    “You see how it can be done?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you’ll do it?”
    “The money?”
    Liddon handed him a manila envelope containing forty thousand in hundred-dollar bills. “Forty thousand more when it’s done.”
    Neems didn’t bother to count the deposit. He dropped it in the cart and returned to Liddon another envelope that contained numerous photographs of his house in California, the floor plan, and detailed information about the security system.
    “Plus expenses,” Neems reminded him.
    “Yes, of course. Forty thousand more plus expenses. When are you flying there?”
    “This afternoon.”
    “As I told you, I’m only in Seattle on business until Wednesday noon. When will you do the