Shadowfires

continued, “two-thirds of the teachers and half the town were agin me, like I was the troublemaker. But in the end they turned up worse stuff about that history teacher, worse than givin'
and
sellin' drugs to some of his students, and by the time it was over, they were glad to be shed of him. Then, the day after he was canned, he showed up at the farm, wantin'
to go man to man. He was a good-sized fella, but he was on
somethin' even then, what you call pot-marijuana or maybe even stronger poison, and it wasn't
so hard to handle him. I'm sorry to say I broke both his arms, which is worse than I intended.”
    Jesus, Peake thought.
    “But even that wasn't the end of it, 'cause it turned out he had
an uncle was president of the biggest bank in our county, the very
same bank has my farm loans. Now, any man who allows personal grudges
to interfere with his business judgment is an idiot, but this banker
fella was an idiot
'cause he tried to pull a fast one to teach me a lesson, tried to reinterpret one of the clauses in my biggest loan, hopin'
to call it due and put me at risk of my land. The wife and I been
fightin' back for a year, filed a lawsuit and everythin', and just
last week the bank had to back down and settle our suit out of court
for enough to pay off half my loans.”
    The Stone was finished, and Peake understood the point, but Sharp
said impatiently, “So? I still don't see what it has to do with me.”
    “Oh, I think you do,” The Stone said quietly, and the eyes he
turned on Sharp were so intense that the deputy director winced.
    Sharp looked down at the directions on the piece of paper, read
them, cleared his throat, looked up. “This is all we want. I
don't believe we'll need to talk further with either you or your
daughter.”
    “I'm certainly relieved to hear that,” The Stone said. “We'll be
goin' back to Kansas tomorrow, and I wouldn't want to think this will
be followin' us there.”
    Then The Stone smiled. At Peake, not at Sharp.
    The deputy director turned sharply away and stalked down the hall.
Peake returned The Stone's smile, then followed his boss.

----
23 THE
DARK OF THE WOODS
    Reeeeee , reeeeee, reeeeee, reeeeee …
At first the steam-whistle cries of the cicadas pleased Rachael
because they were reminiscent of grade-school field trips to public
parks, holiday picnics, and the hiking she had done while in college.
However, she quickly grew irritated by the piercing noise. Neither
the brush nor the heavy pine boughs softened the racket. Every
molecule of the cool dry air seemed to reverberate with that grating
sound, and soon her teeth and bones were reverberating with it,
too.
    Her reaction was, in part, a result of Benny's sudden conviction that he had heard something in the nearby brush that was not part of the ordinary background noises of a forest. She silently cursed the insects and willed them to shut up so she could hear any unnatural sounds-such as twigs snapping and underbrush rustling from the passage of something more substantial than the wind.
    The Combat Magnum was in her purse, and she was holding only the
thirty-two pistol. She had discovered she needed one hand to push
aside tall weeds and to grab convenient branches to pull herself over
steeper or more treacherous stretches of ground. She considered
getting the.357 out of the bag, but the sound of the zipper would
pinpoint their location to anyone who might be seeking them.
    Anyone. That was a cowardly evasion. Surely, only one person might
be seeking them out here. Eric.
    She and Benny had been moving directly south across the face of
the mountainside, catching brief glimpses of the cabin on the slope a
couple of hundred yards above, being careful to interpose trees and
brush and rock formations between themselves and the large picture
windows that made her think of enormous, square eye sockets. When
they had been about thirty yards past the cabin, they had turned
east, which was upslope, and the way proved sufficiently steep that
they had progressed at only half the speed they had been making
previously. Benny's intention had been to circle the cabin and come in behind it. Then, when they had ascended only about a hundred yards-which put them still a hundred yards below and thirty south of the structure-Benny heard something, stopped, eased up against the protective cover of a spruce trunk that had a five-foot diameter, cocked his head, and raised the shotgun.
    Reeeeee, reeeeee,