Shadowfires

real-estate salesman too long. He was not up to this sort of thing anymore, not for an extended length of time. He was thirty-seven, and he'd
last been a man of action when
he'd been twenty-one, which seemed a date lost in the mists of the Paleolithic era. Although he had kept in shape over the years, he was rusty. To Rachael, he had looked formidable when he'd
gone after the man named Vincent Baresco in Eric
Leben's Newport Beach office, and his handling of the car had no doubt impressed her, but he knew his reflexes weren't
what they had once been. And he knew these people, his nameless
enemies, were deadly serious.
    He was scared.
    They had blown away those two cops as if swatting a couple of
annoying flies. Jesus.
    What secret did they share with Rachael? What could be so damn
important that they would kill anyone, even cops, to keep a lid on
it?
    If he lived through the next hour, he would get the truth out of
her one way or another. Damned if he would let her keep stalling.
    The
Caddy's engine sort of purred and sort of rumbled, and the car moved past at a crawl, and the guy with the mustache looked right at Ben for a moment, or seemed to, stared right between the oleander branches that Ben was holding slightly apart. Ben wanted to let the branches close up, but he was afraid the movement would be seen, slight as it was, so he just looked back into the other man's
eyes, expecting the Caddy to stop and the doors to fly open,
expecting a submachine gun to start crackling, shredding the oleander
leaves with a thousand bullets. But the car kept moving past the
house and on down the street. Watching its taillights dwindle, Ben
let out his breath with a shudder.
    He crept free of the shrubbery, went out to the street, and stood
in the shadows by a tall jacaranda growing near the curb. He stared
after the Cadillac until it had traveled three blocks, climbed a
small hill, and disappeared over the crest.
    In the distance, there were still sirens, though fewer. They had
sounded angry before. Now they sounded mournful.
    Holding the thirty-two pistol at his side, he hurried off into the
night-cloaked neighborhood in search of a car to steal.
In the 560 SL, Rachael had moved up front to
the
driver's seat. It was more comfortable than the cramped storage space, and it was a better position from which to talk with Sarah Kiel. She switched on the little overhead light provided for map reading, confident it would not be seen past the property's
thick screen of trees. The moon-pale glow illuminated a portion of
the dashboard, the console, Rachael's face, and Sarah's stricken
countenance.
    The battered girl, having been shaken from her catatonic state,
was at last capable of responding to questions. She was holding her
curled right hand protectively against her breast, which somehow gave
her the look of a small, injured bird. Her torn fingernails had
stopped bleeding, but her broken finger was grotesquely swollen. With
her left hand, she tenderly explored her blackened eye, bruised
cheek, and split lip, frequently wincing and making small, thin
sounds of pain. She said nothing, but when her frightened eyes met
Rachael's, awareness glimmered in them.
    Rachael said, “Honey, we'll get you to a hospital in just a few minutes. Okay?”
    The girl nodded.
    “Sarah, do you have any idea who I am?”
    The girl shook her head.
    “I'm Rachael Leben, Eric's wife.”
    Fear seemed to darken the blue of Sarah's eyes.
    “No, honey, it's all right. I'm on your side. Really. I was in the
process of divorcing him. I knew about his young girls, but that has
nothing to do with why I left him. The man was sick, honey. Twisted
and arrogant and sick. I learned to despise and fear him. So you can
speak freely with me. You've got a friend in me. You understand?”
    Sarah nodded.
    Pausing to look around at the darkness beyond the car, at the
blank black windows and patio doors of the house on one side and the
untended shrubbery and trees on the other, Rachael locked both doors
with the master latch. It was getting warm inside the car. She knew
she should open the windows, but she felt safer with them closed.
    Returning her attention to the teenager, Rachael said, “Tell me
what happened to you, honey. Tell me everything.”
    The girl tried to speak, but her voice broke. Violent shivers
coursed through her.
    “Take it easy,” Rachael said.
“You're safe now.” She hoped that was true. “You're safe. Who did
this to