By the light of the moon

already he was drunk with it. 'Well, like you said, if this
isn't the last link, you'll find the next one, and the one after
that.'
    'All the way to the last link,' Dylan agreed, recalling the
relentlessness of the compulsion that had driven him to Eucalyptus
Avenue. 'But—'
    'You'll find my girl, I know you will, I know.' Tanner didn't
seem to be the type who could flip from despair to joy in a manic
moment, but perhaps the prospect of resolving fifty years of regret
and remorse was sufficiently exhilarating to effect an immediate
emotional transformation even in a stoic heart. 'You're an answer
to prayers.'
    In truth, Dylan might have been at least mildly enthusiastic
about playing hero twice in one night, but his enthusiasm curdled
when he realized how devastated Ben Tanner would be if this chase
didn't have a storybook ending.
    Gently, he broke the old man's grip on his arm and continued
toward the restaurant. Since there was no turning back, he wanted
to finish this as quickly as possible and put an end to the
suspense.
    Jinking bats, now three in number, frolicked in their aerial
feast, and the paper-fragile exoskeleton of each doomed moth made a
faint but audible crunch when snapped in those rodent teeth: entire
death announcements in crisp strokes of exclamatory
punctuation.
    If Dylan had believed in omens, these lamplit bats would have
warranted a pause for consideration. And if they were an omen, they
certainly didn't portend success in the search for Ben Tanner's
girl.
    Dead man's trail.
    The words returned to him, but he still didn't know what he
ought to infer from them.
    If a chance existed that the old man's long-lost daughter would
be found inside the restaurant, then perhaps it was equally likely
that she was dead and that who waited to be discovered instead at
the end of this particular chain was the physician who had attended
her during her final hours or the priest who'd given her last
rites. No less possible: She might not merely have died; she might
have been murdered, and at dinner this evening might be the
policeman who had found her body. Or the man who had murdered
her.
    With the buoyant Ben at his side, Dylan paused when he reached
Jilly and Shep, but made no introductions, offered no explanations.
He handed his keys to Jilly, leaned close, and said, 'Get Shep
belted in. Get out of the parking lot. Wait for me half a block
that way.' He pointed. 'Keep the engine running.'
    Events in the restaurant, whether they proved to be good or bad,
might cause sufficient commotion to ensure that the employees and
the customers would be interested enough in Dylan to watch him
through the big front windows when he left. The SUV must not be
near enough for anyone to read the license plates or to discern
clearly the make and model of the vehicle.
    To her credit, Jilly asked no questions. She understood that in
his stuff -driven condition, Dylan couldn't do other than
what he was impelled to do. She accepted the keys, and she said to
Shep, 'Come on, sweetie, let's go.'
    'Listen to her,' Dylan told his brother. 'Do what she says,' and
he led Ben Tanner into the restaurant.
    The hostess said, 'I'm sorry, but we're no longer seating for
dinner.' Then she recognized them. 'Oh. Forget something?'
    'Saw an old friend,' Dylan lied, and headed into the dining area
with the confidence that although he didn't know where he was
going, he would arrive at where he needed to be.
    The couple sat at a corner table. They appeared to be in their
middle to late twenties.
    Too young to be Ben Tanner's daughter, the woman looked up as
Dylan approached her without hesitation. A pretty, fresh-faced,
sun-browned brunette, she had eyes that were a singular shade of
blue.
    'Excuse me for interrupting,' Dylan said, 'but do the words dead man's trail mean anything to you?'
    Smiling uncertainly but as though prepared to be delighted, the
woman glanced at her companion. 'What's this, Tom?'
    Tom shrugged. 'A setup for some joke, I guess, but it's not my
joke, I swear.'
    Turning her attention to Dylan once more, the woman said, 'Dead
Man's Trail is a desert back road 'tween here and San Simon. Just
dirt and tire-snapped rattlesnakes. It's where me and Tom first
met.'
    'Lynette was changing a flat tire when I saw her,' Tom said.
'Helped her tighten the lugs, and the next thing I knew, she used
some hoodoo or other to make me propose marriage.'
    Smiling affectionately at Tom, Lynette said, 'I cast a spell on
you, all right, but the purpose