Shadowfires

it?” he said.
    “Hardly.”
    “Yet… that's what it is. I wish the circumstances were more romantic.”
    “Well…”
    “ Champagne, candlelight, violins.”
    She smiled.
    “But,” he said, “when Baresco was holding that revolver on us, and
when we were being chased down Palm Canyon Drive last night, the
thing that scared me most
wasn't that I might be killed… but that I might be killed before I'd
let you know how I felt about you. So I'm letting you know. I want to be with you always, Rachael, always.”
    More easily than she would have believed possible, the words came
to her own lips. “I want to spend my life with you, too, Benny.”
    He put a hand to her face.
    She leaned forward and kissed him lightly.
    “I love you,” he said.
    “God, I love you.”
    “If we get through this alive, you'll marry me?”
    “Yes,” she said, seized by a sudden chill. “But damn it, Benny,
why'd you have to bring the if part into it?”
    “Forget I said it.”
    But she could not forget. Earlier in the day, in the motel room in
Palm Springs, just after they had made love the second time, she'd experienced a presentiment of death that had shaken her and had filled her with the need to move, as if a deadly weight would fall on them if they stayed in the same place any longer. That uncanny feeling returned. The mountain scenery, which had been fresh and alluring, acquired a somber and threatening aspect that chilled her even though she knew it was entirely a subjective change. The trees seemed to stretch into mutant shapes, their limbs bonier, their shadows darker.
    “Let's go,” she said.
    He nodded, apparently understanding her thoughts and perceiving
the same change of mood that she felt.
    He started the car, pulled onto the road. When they had rounded
the next bend, they saw another sign: lake arrowhead-15 miles.
Eric looked over the other tools in the
garage, seeking another instrument for his arsenal. He saw nothing
useful.
    He returned to the house. In the kitchen, he put the ax on the
table and pulled open a few drawers until he located a set of knives.
He chose two-a butcher's knife and a smaller, pointier blade.
    With an ax and two knives, he was prepared for both arm's-length combat and close-in fighting. He still wished he had a gun, but at least he was no longer defenseless. If someone came looking for him, he would be able to take care of himself. He would do them serious damage before they brought him down, a prospect that gave him some satisfaction and that, somewhat to his surprise, brought a sudden grin to his face.
    The mice, the mice, the biting, frenzied mice…
    Damn. He shook his head.
    The mice, mice, mice, maniacal, clawing,
spitting…
    That crazy thought, like a fragment of a demented nursery rhyme,
spun through his mind again, frightening him, and when he tried to
focus on it, tried to understand it, his thoughts grew muddy once
more, and he simply could not grasp the meaning of the mice.
    The mice, mice, bloody-eyed, bashing against cage
walls…
    When he continued to strain for the elusive memory of the mice, a
throbbing white pain filled his head from crown to temples and burned
across the bridge of his nose, but when he stopped trying to remember
and attempted, instead, to put the mice out of his mind, the pain
grew even worse, a sledgehammer striking rhythmically behind his
eyes. He had to grit his teeth to endure it, broke out in a sweat,
and with the sweat came anger duller than the pain but growing even
as the pain grew, unfocused anger at first but not for long. He said,
“Rachael, Rachael,” and clenched the butcher's knife. “Rachael…”

----
19 SHARP
AND THE STONE
    On arriving at the hospital in Palm Springs,
Anson Sharp had done easily what Jerry Peake had been unable to do
with mighty striving. In ten minutes, he turned Nurse Alma
Dunn's stone-faced implacability to dust, and he shattered Dr. Werfell's
authoritarian calm, reducing both of them to nervous, uncertain,
respectful, cooperative citizens. Theirs was grudging cooperation,
but it was cooperation nonetheless, and Peake was deeply impressed.
Though Sarah Kiel was still under the influence of the sedatives that
she had taken in the middle of the night, Werfell agreed to wake her
by whatever means necessary.
    As always, Peake watched Sharp closely, trying to learn how the
deputy director achieved his effects, much as a young magician might
study a master prestidigitator's every move upon the stage. For one