Shadowfires

the only things to be seen on the plains and hills
were a few toothy rock formations and scattered Joshua trees limned
by frost-pale moonlight that waxed and waned as it was screened by
the thin and curling clouds that filigreed the night sky. The barren
landscape said all that could be said about solitude, and it
encouraged introspection, as did the lulling hum of the Mercedes's engine and the whisper of its spinning tires on the pavement.
    Slumped in the passenger's seat, Benny was stubbornly silent for long periods, staring at the black ribbon of highway revealed in the headlights. A few times, they engaged in short conversations, though the topic was always so light and inconsequential that, under the circumstances, it seemed surreal. They discussed Chinese food for a while, subsided into a deep and mutual silence, then talked of Clint Eastwood movies, followed by another and longer silence.
    She was aware that Benny was paying her back for her refusal to
share her secrets with him. He surely knew that she was stunned by
the ease with which he had disposed of Vincent Baresco in Eric's office and that she was dying to know where he had learned to handle himself so well. By turning cool on her, by letting the brooding silences draw out, he was telling her that she was going to have to give him some information in order to get some in return.
    But she could not give. Not yet. She was afraid he had already
been drawn too far into this deadly business, and she was angry with
herself for letting him get involved. She was determined not to drag
him deeper into the nightmare-unless his survival depended upon a
complete understanding of what was happening and of what was at
stake.
    As she turned off Interstate 10 onto State Highway 111, now only
eleven miles from Palm Springs, she wondered if she could have done
more to dissuade him from coming with her to the desert. But upon
leaving Geneplan's offices in Newport Beach, he had been quietly adamant, and attempting to change his mind had seemed as fruitless as standing on the shore of the Pacific and commanding an incoming tide to reverse itself immediately.
    Rachael deeply regretted the awkwardness between them. In the five
months since they had met, this was the first time they had been
uneasy with each other, the first time that their relationship had
been touched by even a hint of anger or had been in any way less than
entirely harmonious.
    Having departed Newport Beach at midnight, they arrived in Palm
Springs and drove through the heart of town on Palm Canyon Drive at
one-fifteen Tuesday morning. That was ninety-nine miles in only an
hour and fifteen minutes, for an average speed of eighty miles an
hour, which should have given Rachael a sense of speed. But she
continued to feel that she was creeping snail-slow, falling farther
and farther behind events, losing ground by the minute.
    Summer, with its blazing desert heat, was a somewhat less busy
tourist season in Palm Springs than other times of the year, and at
one-fifteen in the morning the main street was virtually deserted. In
the hot and windless June night, the palm trees stood as still as
images painted on canvas, illuminated and slightly silvered by the
streetlights. The many shops were dark. The sidewalks were empty. The
traffic signals still cycled from green to yellow to red to green
again, although hers was the only car passing through most of the
intersections.
    She almost felt as if she were driving through a post-Armageddon
world, depopulated by disease. For a moment she was half convinced
that if she switched on the radio, there would be no music-only the
cold empty hiss of static all the way across the dial.
    Since receiving the news of Eric's missing corpse, she had known that something terrible had come into the world, and hour by hour she had grown more bleak. Now even an empty street, which would have looked peaceful to anyone else, stirred ominous thoughts in her. She knew she was overreacting. No matter what happened in the next few days, this was not the end of the world.
    On the other hand, she thought, it might be the end of me, the end of my world.
    Driving from the commercial district into residential areas, from
neighborhoods of modest means into wealthier streets, she encountered
even fewer signs of life, until at last she pulled into a Futura
Stone driveway and parked in front of a low, sleek, flat-roofed
stucco house that was the epitome of