Dark Rivers of the Heart

post without shattering the windshield. "I'd say forty yards."
        She typed. On the screen appeared a yellow line to the right of the driveway. It was twelve meters long, angling over an open field toward the Bronco, but it stopped a meter or two from the edge of the pavement.
        "Don't want to score the driveway," she said. "Tires would dissolve when we tried to get across the molten ground."
        "Can I press ENTER?" he asked.
        "Be my guest."
        He pressed it and sat up, squinting, as the breath of Godzilla streamed down through the night again, scoring the land. 'The ground shook, and an apocalyptic thunder rose under them as if the planet was coming apart.
        The night air hummed deafeningly, and the merciless beam dazzled along the course that she'd assigned to it.
        Before Godzilla had turned the earth into white-hot sludge along even half those twelve meters, the pair of sharpshooters dropped their weapons and leaped for the vehicle behind them. As they hung on to the sides of the Bronco, the driver careened off the blacktop, churned across a frozen field beyond, smashed through a white board fence, crossed a paddock, rammed through another fence, and passed the first of the stables. When Godzilla stopped short of the driveway and the night was suddenly dark and quiet again, the Bronco was still going, fast dwindling into the gloom, as though the driver might head overland until he ran out of gasoline.
        Spencer drove to the county road. He stopped and looked both ways.
        No traffic. He turned right, toward Denver.
        For a few miles, neither of them spoke.
        Rocky stood with his forepaws on the back of the front seat, gazing ahead at the highway. In the two years that Spencer had known him, the dog had never liked to look back.
        Ellie sat with her hand clamped to her wound. Spencer hoped that the people she knew in Denver could get her medical attention. The medications that she had finessed, by computer, out of various drug companies had been lost with the Range Rover.
        Eventually, she said, "We'd better stop in Copper Mountain, see if we can find new wheels. This truck's too recognizable."
        "Okay."
        She switched off the computer. Unplugged it.
        The mountains were dark with evergreens and pale with snow.
        The moon was setting behind the truck, and the night sky ahead was ablaze with stars.
        Eve JAMMER HATED Washington, D.C in August. Actually, she hated Washington through all seasons with equal passion. Admittedly, the city was pleasant for a short while, when the cherry blossoms were in bloom; during the rest of the year it sucked. Humid, crowded, noisy, dirty, crime-ridden. Full of boring, stupid, greedy politicians whose ideals were either in their pants or in their pants pockets. It was an inconvenient place for a capital, and sometimes she dreamed about moving the government elsewhere, when the time was right. Maybe to Las Vegas.
        As she drove through the sweltering August heat, she had the air conditioner in her Chrysler Town Car turned nearly to its highest setting, with the fans on maximum blow. Freezing air blasted across her face and body and up her skirt, but she was still hot. Part of the heat, of course, had nothing to do with the day: She was so horny she could have won a head-butting duel with a ram.
        She hated the Chrysler almost as much as she hated Washington.
        With all her money and position, she ought to have been able to drive a Mercedes, if not a Rolls-Royce. But a politician's wife had to be careful of appearances-at least for a while yet. It was impolitic to drive a foreignmade car.
        Eighteen months had passed since Eve jammer had met Roy Miro and had learned the nature of her true destiny. For sixteen months, she had been married to the widely admired Senator E. Jackson Haynes, who would head the party's national ticket in next year's election. That wasn't speculation. It had already been arranged, and all his rivals would screw up one way or another in the primaries, leaving him standing alone, a giant of a man on the world scene.
        Personally, she loathed E. Jackson Haynes and wouldn't let him touch her, except in public. Even then, there were several pages of rules that he'd been required to memorize, defining the acceptable limits relating to affectionate hugs, kisses on the cheek, and hand holding.
        The