Shadowfires

door at the woods that lay beyond
the brown lawn. The forest appeared still, as well, and he had the
unsettling feeling that Eric was not out there, either, that he would
have the woods to himself if he searched for his prey among the
trees.
    “Eric?” he said softly but aloud, expecting and receiving no
answer. “Where the hell have you gone, Eric?”
    He lowered the shotgun, no longer bothering to hold it at the
ready because he knew in his bones that he would not encounter Eric
on this mountain.
    More silence.
    Heavy, oppressive, profound silence.
    He sensed that he was teetering precariously on the edge of a
horrible revelation. He had made a mistake. A deadly mistake. One
that he could not correct. But what was it? What mistake? Where had
he gone wrong? He looked hard at the discarded ax, desperately
seeking understanding.
    Then his breath caught in his throat.
    “My God,” he whispered. “Rachael.”
lake arrowhead -3 miles.
    Peake got behind a slow-moving camper in a no-passing zone, but
Sharp did not seem bothered by the delay because he was busy seeking
Peake's agreement to the double murder of Shadway and Mrs. Leben.
    “Of course, Jerry, if you have the slightest qualms at all about
participating, then you leave it to me. Naturally, I expect you to
back me up in a pinch-
that's part of your job, after all-but if we can disarm Shadway and the woman without trouble, then I'll
handle the terminations myself.”
    I'll still be an accessory to murder, Peake thought.
    But he said, “Well, sir, I don't want to let you down.”
    “I'm glad to hear you say that, Jerry. I would be disappointed if you didn't
have the right stuff. I mean, I was so sure of your commitment and
courage when I decided to bring you along on this assignment. And I
can't stress strongly enough how grateful your country and the agency will be for your wholehearted cooperation.”
    You psycho creep, you lying sack of shit, Peake thought.
    But he said, “Sir, I don't want to do anything that would be opposed to the best interests of my country-or that would leave a black mark of any kind on my agency record.”
    Sharp smiled, reading total capitulation in that statement.
Ben moved slowly around the kitchen, peering
closely at the floor, where traces of broth from the discarded soup
and stew cans glistened on the tile. He and Rachael had taken care to
step over and around the spills when they had gone through the
kitchen, and Ben had not previously noticed any of Eric's footprints in the mess, which was something he was certain he would have seen.
    Now he found what had not been there earlier: almost a full
footprint in a patch of thick gravy from the Dinty Moore can, and a
heelprint in a gob of peanut butter. A man's boots, large ones, by the look of the tread.
    Two more prints shone dully on the tile near the refrigerator,
where Eric had tracked the gravy and peanut butter when he had gone
over there to put down the ax and, of course, to hide. To hide.
Jesus. When Ben and Rachael had entered the kitchen from the garage
and had stepped into the living room to gather up the scattered pages
of the Wildcard file, Eric had been crouched at the far side of the
refrigerator, hiding.
    Heart racing, Ben turned away from the prints and hurried to the
door that connected with the garage.
lake arrowhead.
    They had arrived.
    The slow-moving camper pulled into the parking lot of a sporting-
goods store, getting out of their way, and Peake accelerated.
    Having consulted the directions that The Stone had written on a
slip of paper, Sharp said, “You're headed the right way. Just follow the state route north around the lake. In four miles or so, look for a branch road on the right, with a cluster of ten mailboxes, one of them with a big red-and-white iron rooster on top of it.”
    As Peake drove, he saw Sharp lift a black attache case onto his
lap and open it. Inside were two thirty-eight pistols. He put one on
the seat between them.
    Peake said, “What's that?”
    “Your gun for this operation.”
    “I've got my service revolver.”
    “It's not hunting season. Can't have a lot of noisy gunfire,
Jerry. That might bring neighbors poking around or even alert some
sheriff's deputy who just happens to be in the area.” Sharp withdrew a silencer from the attaché case and began to screw it onto his own pistol. “You can't
use a silencer on a revolver, and we sure
don't want anybody interrupting us until it's over and we've had plenty of