Dark Rivers of the Heart

of their shortcomings or personalities. But he flatly despised Dr. Sabrina Palma.
        When he found time in his busy schedule, he would give her a comeuppance that would make what he'd done to Harris Descoteaux seem merciful.
        "Even if you can't find some compassion for the Steven Ackblom who killed those people," Roy said, rising from his chair, "I would think you could find some for the Steven Ackblom who has been so generous to you.
        "He is evil." She was unrelenting. "He deserves no compassion.
        Just use him however you must, then return him."
        "Well, maybe you do know a thing or two about evil, Doctor."
        "The advantage I've taken of the arrangement here," she said coolly, is a sin, Mr. Cotter. I know that. And one way or another, I'll pay for the sin. But there's a difference between a sinful act, which springs from weakness. I am able to reconcire that difference."
        "How handy for you," he said, and began to gather up the papers from her desk.
        They sat on the motel bed, chowing down on Burger King burgers, french fries, and chocolate-chip cookies. Rocky ate off a torn paper bag on the floor. hours behind them, That morning in the desert, now hardly twelve seemed to be an eternity in the past. Ellie and Spencer had learned so much about each other that they could eat in silence, enjoying the food, without feeling the least awkward together. He surprised her, however, when, toward the end of their meal, he expressed the desire to stop at the ranch outside Vail, on their way to Denver.
        And "surprised" was not the word for it when he told her that he still owned the place.
        "Maybe I've always known that I'd have to go back eventually," he said, unable to look at her.
        He put the last of his dinner aside, appetite lost. Sitting lotus-fashion on the bed, he folded his hands on his right knee and stared at them as if they were more mysterious than artifacts from lost Atlantes.
        "In the beginning," he continued, "my grandparents held on to the place because they didn't want anyone to buy it and maybe make some godawful tourist attraction out of it. Or let the news media into those underground rooms for more morbid stories. The bodies had been removed, everything cleaned out, but it was still the place, could still attract media interest. After I went into therapy, which I stayed with for about a year, the therapist felt we should keep the property until I was ready to go back."
        "Why?" Ellie wondered. "Why ever go back?"
        He hesitated. Then: "Because part of that night is a blank to me.
        I've never been able to remember what happened toward the end, after I shot him…
        "What do you mean? You shot him, and you ran for help, and that was the end of it."
        "No."
        "What?"
        He shook his head. Still staring at his hands. Very still hands. like hands of carved marble, resting on his knee.
        Finally he said, "That's what I've got to find out. I've got to go back there, back down there, and find out. Because if I don't, I'm never going "You can't go back there, not with the agency after you."
        "They wouldn't look for us there. They can't have found out who I was.
        Who I really am. Michael. They can't know that."
        "They might," she said.
        She went to the duffel bag and got the envelope of photographs that she had found on the deck of the JetRanger, half under her seat.
        She presented them to him.
        "They found these in a shoe box in my cabin," he said. "They probably just took them for reference. You wouldn't recognize… my father.
        No one would. Not from this shot."
        "You can't be sure."
        "Anyway, I don't own the property under any identity they would associate with me, even if somehow they got into sealed court records and found out I'd changed my name from Ackblom. I hold it through an offshore corporation."
        "The agency is damned resourceful, Spencer."
        Looking up from his hands, he met her eyes. "All right, I'm willing to believe they're resourceful enough to uncover all of it-given enough time. But surely not this quickly. That just means I've got more reason than ever to go there tonight. When am I going to have a chance again, after we go to Denver and to wherever we'll go after that? By the time I can return to Vail again, maybe they will have discovered I still own the ranch.