Dark Rivers of the Heart

and would he put them all at risk of exposure?
        Yesterday, when Roy had stood in Eve's bunker, listening to the laserdisc recording, he'd been more baffled than enlightened by what he'd heard. Judging by the questions and the few comments that Grant managed to insert into Davidowitzs monologue, he knew little about "Hannah Rainey," but for mysterious reasons, he was busily learning everything he could. Until then, Roy had assumed that Grant and the woman already had some kind of close relationship; so the task had been to determine the nature of that relationship and to figure how much sensitive information the woman had shared with Grant. But if the guy didn't already know her, why had he been at her bungalow that rainy night, and why had he made it his personal crusade to find her?
        Roy didn't want to believe that the woman had shown up here in the arroyo, because to believe it was to be even more confused. "So you're saying what-that he called someone on his cellular and she came right out to get him?"
        Tavelov was not raided by Roy's sarcasm. "Could've been some desert rat, likes living out where there aren't phones, electricity.
        There are some.
        Though none I know about for twenty miles. Or it could've been an offroader, just having himself some fun."
        "In a storm."
        "Storm was over. Anyway, the world's full of fools."
        "And whoever it is just happens to stumble across the Explorer.
        In this whole vast desert."
        Tavelov shrugged. "We found the truck. It's your job, making sense of it."
        Walking back to the entrance of the rock-walled sluiceway, staring at the far riverbank, Roy said, "Whoever she was, she drove into the arroyo from the south, then also drove out to the south. Can we follow those tire tracks?"
        They're clear for maybe four hundred yards then spotty for another two hundred. Then they vanish. The wind wiped 'em out in some places.
        Other places, ground's too hard to take tracks."
        "Well, let's search farther out, see if the tracks reappear."
        "Already tried. While we were waiting."
        Tavelov gave an edge to the word "waiting."
        Roy said, "My damn pager was broken, and I didn't know it."
        "By foot and chopper, we pretty much had a good look-around in every direction to the south bank of the wash. Went three miles east, three south, three west."
        "Well," Roy said, "Extend the search. Go out six miles and see if you can pick up the trail again."
        "Just going to be a waste of time."
        Roy thought of Eve as she had been last night, and that memory gave him the strength to remain calm, to smile, and to say, with characteristic pleasantness, "Probably is a waste of time, probably is.
        But I guess we've got to try anyway."
        "Wind's picking up."
        "Maybe it is."
        "Definitely picking up. Going to erase everything."
        Per,lection on black rubber Roy said, "Then let's try to stay ahead of it. Bring in more men, another chopper, push out ten miles in each direction."
        Spencer was not awake. But he wasn't asleep, either. He was taking a drunkard's walk along the thin line between.
        He heard himself mumbling. He couldn't make much sense of what he was saying. Yet he was ever in the grip of a feverish urgency, certain there was something important that he must tell someone-although what that vital information was, and to whom he must impart it, eluded him.
        Occasionally he opened his eyes. Blurry vision. He blinked.
        Squinted.
        Couldn't see well enough to be sure even if it was daytime or if the light came from the Coleman lantern.
        Always, Valerie was there. Close enough for him to know, even with his vision so poor, that it was her. Sometimes she was wiping his face with a damp cloth, sometimes changing a cool compress on his forehead.
        Sometimes she was just watching, and he sensed that she was worried, though he couldn't clearly see her expression.
        Once, when he swam up from his personal darkness and stared out through the distortin ools that shimmered in his e sockets, Valerie was turned half away from him, busy at a hidden task. Behind him, far there back under the camouflage tarp, the Rover's engine was idling.
        He heard another familiar sound: the soft but unmistakable tick-tickety-tick ()f' well-practiced fingers flying over a