Shadowfires

her eyes
before it could blur her vision too much, tasting it at the corners
of her mouth. If she kept pouring at this rate, she'd dehydrate dangerously. Already she saw whirls of color at the periphery of her vision, felt a flutter of nausea in her stomach, and sensed incipient dizziness that might abruptly overwhelm her. But she kept pumping her legs, streaking across the barren land, because there was absolutely nothing else she could do.
    She glanced back again.
    Eric was closer. Only fifteen yards now.
    At great cost, Rachael reached into herself and found a little
more strength, a little more energy, an additional measure of
stamina.
    The ground, no longer treacherously soft, hardened into a wide
flat sheet of exposed rock. The rock had been abraded by centuries of
blowing sand that had carved hundreds of fine, elaborate whorls in
its surface-the fingerprints of the wind. It provided good traction,
and she picked up speed again. Soon, however, her reserves would be
used up, and dehydration would set in-though she dared not think
about that. Positive thinking was the key, so she thought positively
for fifty more strides, confident of widening the gap between
them.
    The third time she glanced back, she loosed an involuntary cry of
despair.
    Eric was closer. Ten yards.
    That was when she tripped and fell.
    The rock ended, and sand replaced it. Because she had not been
looking down and had not seen that the ground was going to change,
she twisted her left ankle. She tried to stay up, tried to keep
going, but the twist had destroyed her rhythm. The same ankle twisted
again the very next time she put that foot down. She shouted-"No!"-
and pitched to the left, rolled across a few weeds, stones, and
clumps of crisp bunchgrass.
    She wound up at the brink of a big arroyo-a naturally carved water
channel through the desert, which was a roaring river during a flash
flood but dry most of the time, dry now-about fifty feet across,
thirty deep, with walls that sloped but only slightly. Even as she
stopped rolling at the arroyo, she took in the situation, saw what
she must do, did it: She threw herself over the brink, rolling again,
down the steep wall this time, desperately hoping to avoid sharp
rocks and rattlesnakes.
    It was a bruising descent, and she hit bottom with enough force to
knock half the wind out of her. Nevertheless, she scrambled to her
feet, looked up, and saw Eric-or the thing that Eric had become-
staring down at her from the top of the arroyo wall. He was just
thirty or thirty-five feet above her, but thirty vertical feet seemed
like more distance than thirty horizontally measured feet; it was as
if she were standing in a city street, with him peering down from the
roof of a three-story building. Her boldness and his hesitation had
gained her some time. If he had rolled down right behind her, he very
likely would have caught her by now.
    She had won a brief reprieve, and she had to make the best of it.
Turning right, she ran along the flat bed of the arroyo, favoring her
twisted ankle. She did not know where the arroyo would lead her. But
she stayed on the move and kept her eyes open for something that she
could easily turn to her advantage, something that would save her,
something…
    Something.
    Anything.
    What she needed was a miracle.
    She expected Eric to plunge down the wall of the gulch when she
began to run, but he did not. Instead, he stayed up there at the edge
of the channel, running alongside the brink, looking down at her,
matching her progress step for step.
    She supposed he was looking for an advantage of his own.

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29 REMADE
MEN
    With the help of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, which provided a patrol car and a deputy to drive it, Sharp and Peake were back in Palm Springs by four-thirty Tuesday afternoon. They took two rooms in a motel along Palm Canyon Drive.
    Sharp called Nelson Gosser, the agent who had been left on duty at
Eric Leben's Palm Springs house. Gosser bought bathrobes for Peake and Sharp, took their clothes to a one-hour laundry and dry cleaner, and brought them two buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken with coleslaw, fries, and biscuits.
    While Sharp and Peake had been at Lake Arrowhead, Rachael Leben's red Mercedes 560 SL had been found, with one flat tire, behind an empty house a few blocks west of Palm Canyon Drive. Also, the blue Ford that Shadway had been driving in Arrowhead was traced to an airport rental agency. Of