False Memory

onward.
    Green Acres, culinary mecca to the alfalfa-sprouts set, was about four miles away, and Ahriman saw no reason to follow the pickup there in fits and starts. He drove past the truck, past Jennifer, and on to the restaurant.
    The two amateur detectives greatly amused the doctor, Sherlock and Watson without wisdom or good costumes. Their sweet idiocy gave them a charm all their own. He almost wished that he didn’t have to kill them, that he could keep them around like two pet monkeys, to enliven the occasional dull afternoon.
    Of course, it had been a long time since he had directly taken a human life, rather than through an intermediary, and he was looking forward to getting his hands wet, so to speak.

     
     
    Silver fleece, shorn from a woolly sky, drifted straight down through the windless twilight, and every clump of sage and every frozen tumbleweed was already knitting itself a white sweater.
    By the time they reached the top of the slope, Martie’s vision cleared, and her breathing was labored but not ragged. She was still spitting out saliva soured by gasoline fumes, but she wasn’t choking anymore.
    A midnight-blue BMW was stopped on the ranch road, doors open, engine running, clouds of vapor billowing from its exhaust pipe. The heavy winter tires were fitted with snow chains.
    Martie glanced back into the swale, at the wrecked Ford, hoping that it would explode. In this still and open land, the sound might be heard even half a mile away at the ranch house; or looking out a window at an opportune moment, maybe Bernardo Pastore would spot the glow of fire just beyond the hill, a beacon.
    False hopes, and she knew it.
    Even in this dying light, Martie could see that both gunmen were carrying machine pistols with extended magazines. She didn’t know much about such guns, just that they were point-and-spray weapons, deadly even in the hands of a lousy marksman, deadlier still when wielded by men who knew what they were doing.
    These two appeared to have been created in a cloning lab, using a genetic formula labeled presentable thugs. Although good-looking, clean-cut, and almost cuddly in their Eddie Bauer winter togs, they were a formidable pair, with necks thick enough to foil any garroting wire thinner than a winch cable and with shoulders of such massive width that they ought to be able to carry horses out of a burning stable.
    The one with blond hair opened the trunk of the BMW and ordered Dusty to get into it. “And don’t do anything stupid, like trying to come out at me later with a lug wrench, because I’ll blow you away before you can swing it.”
    Dusty glanced at Martie, but they both knew this wasn’t a good time to pull the Colt. Not with the two machine pistols trained on them. Their advantage wasn’t the concealed pistol; it was surprise, a pathetic advantage but an advantage nonetheless.
    Angry at the delay, the blond moved fast and kicked Dusty’s legs out from under him, tumbling him to the ground. He screamed, “Get in the trunk!”
    Reluctant to leave Martie alone with them but with no rational choice except to obey, Dusty got to his feet and climbed into the trunk of the car.
    Martie could see her husband in there, on his side, peering out, face bleak. This was the pose of victims on the covers of tabloids, related to stories about Mafia hits, and the only things missing from the composition were the fixed stare of death and the blood.
    As if weaving shroud cloth, snow shuttled into the trunk, laying a white weft first on Dusty’s eyebrows and lashes.
    She had the sickening feeling she would never see him again.
    The blond slammed the lid and twisted the key in the lock. He went around to the driver’s side and got in behind the wheel.
    The second man pushed Martie into the backseat and quickly slid in after her. He was directly behind the driver.
    Both gunmen moved with the grace of athletes, and their faces were not like those of traditional hired muscle. Unscarred, fresh, with high brows, good cheekbones, patrician noses, and square chins, either was a man whom an heiress could bring home to Mummy and Daddy without having her allowance slashed and her dowry reduced to one teapot. They looked so much alike that their essential clone nature was disguised only by hair color—dark blond, coppery red— and by personal style.
    The blond seemed to be the more volatile of the two. Still hot because of Dusty’s hesitancy about getting into the trunk, he slammed the car into gear, spun the