One Door From Heaven

deserted even at this hour, but neither is it busy. Beyond the wide median strip, traffic races northeast toward Salt Lake City, with what seems like angry energy, as knights might thunder toward a joust, lances of light piercing the high-desert darkness. In these nearer southbound lanes, cars overtake the auto transport and, from time to time, large trucks pass, as well.
        The digital readout on the radio, powered by the car's battery, emits a glow, but the faint radiance is insufficient to illuminate the boy or to draw the attention of any motorist rocketing by at seventy or eighty miles per hour. He's not concerned about being seen, only about losing the comforting music when the battery eventually dies.
        Cozy in the dark SUV, in the embracing scent of new leather and the comforting smell of the damp but drying dog, he isn't much interested in those passing travelers. He's peripherally aware of them only because of their roaring engines and their wind wakes, which buffet the transport.
        "Ghost Riders in the Sky" is followed by "Cool Water," a song about a thirst-plagued cowboy and his horse as they cross burning desert sands. After "Cool Water" comes a spate of advertisements, nothing to sing along with.
        When the boy looks out the window in the driver's door, he sees a familiar vehicle streaking past, faster than ever it had gone when he and the dog had ridden in the back of it among horse blankets and saddles. The white cab features a spotlight rack on the roof. Black canvas walls enclose the cargo bed. This appears to be the truck that had been parked along the lonely county road near the Hammond place, less than twenty-four hours ago.
        Of course, that vehicle hadn't been unique. Hundreds like it must be in use on ranches across the West.
        Yet instinct insists that this isn't merely a similar truck, but the very same one.
        He and the dog had abandoned that wheeled sanctuary shortly after dawn, west of Grand Junction, when the driver and his associate stopped to refuel and grab breakfast.
        This auto carrier is their third rolling refuge since dawn, three rides during a day in which they have ricocheted across Utah with the unpredictability of a pinball. After all this time and considering the haphazard nature of their journey, the likelihood of a chance encounter with the saddlery-laden truck is small, though it isn't beyond the realm of possibility.
        A coincidence, however, is frequently a glimpse of a pattern otherwise hidden. His heart tells him indisputably what his mind resists: This is no random event, but part of the elaborate design in a tapestry, and at the center of the design is he himself, caught and murdered.
        The brow of the cab gleams as white as skull bone. One loose corner of black canvas flaps like the Reaper's robe. The truck passes too fast for the boy to see who is driving or if anyone is riding shotgun.
        Supposing he had glimpsed two men wearing cowboy hats, he still couldn't have been sure that they were the same people who had driven him out of the mountains and west through Grand Junction. He has never seen their faces clearly.
        Even if he could have identified them, they might no longer be innocent horsemen transporting ornate saddles to a rodeo or a show arena. They might have become part of the net that is closing around him, straining the dry sea of the desert for the sole survivor of the massacre in Colorado.
        Now they are gone into the night, either unaware that they have passed within feet of him-or alert to his presence and planning to capture him at a roadblock ahead.
        The dog curls on the passenger's seat and lies with his chin on the console, eyes glimmering with the reflected light of the radio readout.
        Stroking the mutt's head, rubbing behind one of the floppy ears and then behind the other, the frightened boy takes comfort from the silken coat and the warmth of his friend, successfully repressing a fit of the shivers, though unable entirely to banish an inner chill.
        He is the most-wanted fugitive in the fabled West, surely the most desperately sought runaway in the entire country, from sea to shining sea. A mighty power is set hard against him, and ruthless hunters swarm the night.
        A melodic voice arises from the radio, recounting the story of a lonesome cowpoke and his girlfriend in faraway Texas, but the boy is no longer in the mood to