Shattered

plans.”
        When his headache was gone, Leland had also lost his selective amnesia. He could now recall everything: arriving at the motel an hour before they did, watching the lobby until they arrived, cautiously following them to their room, coming back in the middle of the night and trying to pick the lock on their door, the silent chase, and the ax… If that damned headache had only held off for a few minutes, if it had not come on him when it did, he would have finished off Alex Doyle.
        Leland was not disturbed by the realization that he had tried to kill a man. After suffering so much at the hands of others ' he had finally come to understand that there was only one thing that would destroy this far-reaching conspiracy that was working against him: force, violence, counterattack. He must smash this entire evil association which had been formed solely to drive him to complete despair. And since Alex Doyle-and the boy, as well-formed the keystone of this conspiracy, murder was quite justified. He had acted in self-defense.
        On Monday, when he had caught sight of his own eyes in the mirror, he had been confused, shocked by what he saw. Now, when he looked in the mirror, he saw nothing but a reflection, a flat image. After all, he was only doing what Courtney wanted, so that they could be together again, so that everything could be as wonderful as it had been two years ago.
        “They can either go up to Wyoming and catch Interstate 80, or go southwest on Route 24. What do you think?”
        “Whatever you say, George,” the golden girl replied, her voice faint but pleasant, like a happy memory.
        Leland studied the map for several minutes. “Damn… They probably went up and caught I-80 outside of Cheyenne. But even if they did, and even if we went that way and managed to catch up with them, we wouldn't be able to do anything to them. That's a major highway. Too much traffic, too many police patrols. All we could do would be follow them-and that's not enough.” He was quiet for a while, thinking. “But if they went the other way, it's a whole different ballgame. That's desolate country. Not as much traffic. Fewer cops. We could really make up for lost time. Might get a chance at them somewhere along the way.
        She waited, silently.
        “We'll take Route 24,” he said at last. “And if they did go the other way… Well, we can always pick them up again tonight, at their motel.”
        She said nothing.
        He smiled at her, folded the map and placed it on top of the tissue box, where it covered the blue-gray pistol.
        He started the van.
        He drove away from the Rockies Motor Hotel and then from Denver, going southwest toward Utah.
        
        During the morning they came out of the mountains and down the piney valleys of Colorado, from winter's leftover snow to sun and sand again. They went through Rifle and Debeque, crossing the Colorado River twice, then passed Grand Junction and, soon after, the border. In Utah, the mountains fell back into the distance and the land became sandier, and there was less traffic than there had been. For long minutes theirs was the only car in sight on the level stretches of open road.
        “What if we had a flat tire now?” Colin asked, indicating the vistas of unpopulated land.
        “We won't.”
        “We might.”
        “We have all new tires,” Doyle said.
        “But what if?”
        “Then we'd change it.”
        “And if the spare went flat too?”
        “We'd fix it.”
        “How?”
        Alex realized that they were playing one of the boy's games, and he smiled. Maybe the kid's hunch was a good one. Maybe it was all over now. Perhaps they could yet restore to the trip that fun which they had known at the beginning of it. “In the emergency kit in the trunk of this car,” Doyle said in an exaggerated professorial voice, “there is a large spraycan which you attach to the valve of the flat tire. It inflates the tire and simultaneously seals the puncture. You will then be able to drive until you locate a service station which will attend to your needs.”
        “Pretty clever.”
        “Isn't it?”
        Colin held an imaginary aerosol dispenser in one hand, pushed on the unseen button, and made a sputtering noise. “But what if the spraycan doesn't work?”
        “Oh, it will.”
        “Okay… But what if we have three flats?”
        Doyle