Lightning

death. "Well… bring a third orange juice. Maybe I can coax him awake." As Chris got out of the car, she said, "Might as well get us something for lunch, something that won't spoil—say a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. And get a can of spray deodorant and a bottle of shampoo."
    He grinned. "Why won't you let me eat this way at home?"
    "Because if you don't get good nutrition, you're going to wind up with a brain even more twisted than the one you've got now, kiddo."
    "Even on the lam from hired killers, I'm surprised you didn't pack a microwave, fresh vegetables, and a bottle of vitamins."
    "Are you saying I'm a good mother but a fussbudget? Compliment noted and point taken. Now go."
    He started to close his door.
    She said, "And, Chris…"
    "I know," the boy said. "Be careful."
    While Chris was gone, she started the engine and switched on the radio to listen to the nine o'clock news. She heard a story about herself: the scene at her house near Big Bear, the shoot-out in San Bernardino. Like most news stories it was inaccurate, disjointed, and made little sense. But it confirmed that the police were looking for her throughout southern California. According to the reporter, the authorities expected to locate her soon, largely because her face was already widely known.
    She had been shocked last night when Carter Brenkshaw recognized her as Laura Shane, famous writer. She did not think of herself as a celebrity; she was only a storyteller, a weaver of tales, who worked with a loom of language, making a special fabric from words. She had done only one book tour for an early novel, had loathed that dreary trek, and had not repeated the experience. She was not a regular guest on television talkshows. She had never endorsed a product in a TV commercial, had never gone public in support of a politician, and had in general attempted to avoid being part of the media circus. She observed the tradition of having a dust jacket photograph on her books because it seemed harmless, and by the age of thirty-three she could admit without severe embarrassment that she was an unusually striking woman, but she never imagined, as the police put it, that her face was widely known.
    Now she was dismayed not only because her loss of anonymity made her easier quarry for the police but because she knew that becoming a celebrity in modern America was tantamount to a loss of one's self-critical faculties and a severe decline of artistic power. A few managed to be both public figures and worthwhile writers, but most seemed to be corrupted by the media attention. Laura dreaded that trap almost as much as she dreaded being picked up by the police.
    Suddenly, with some surprise, she realized that if she could worry about becoming a celebrity and losing her artistic center, she must still believe in a safe future in which she would write more books. At times during the night, she had vowed to fight to the death, to struggle to a bloody end to protect her son, but throughout she had felt that their situation was virtually hopeless, their enemy too powerful and unreachable to be destroyed. Now something had changed her, had brought her around to a dim, guarded optimism.
    Maybe it had been the dream.
    Chris returned with a large package of pecan-cinnamon rolls, three one-pint containers of orange juice, and the other items. They ate the rolls and drank the juice, and nothing had ever tasted better.
    When she finished her own breakfast, Laura got in the back seat and tried to wake her guardian. He could not be roused.
    She gave the third carton of orange juice to Chris and said, "Keep it for him. He'll probably wake up soon."
    "If he can't drink, he can't take his penicillin," Chris said.
    "He doesn't need to take any for a few hours yet. Dr. Brenkshaw gave him a pretty potent shot last night; it's still working."
    But Laura was worried. If he did not regain consciousness, they might never learn the true nature of the dangerous maze in which they were now lost—and might never find a way out of it.
    "What next?" Chris asked.
    "We'll find a service station, use the rest rooms, then stop at a gunshop and buy ammunition for the Uzi and the revolver. After that… we start looking for a motel, just the right kind of motel, a place where we can hide out."
    When they settled in somewhere, they would be at least fifty miles from Dr. Brenkshaw's place, where their enemies had last found them. But did distance matter to men who measured their