Strangers

style for as long as he lived and to take care of Jenny even if she endured a normal lifespan in her coma, which was unlikely. Perhaps, all along, the most important thing about his work had not been the rebellion and defiance of it, as he had thought; perhaps, instead, he had done it all just for the money, and the rest of it had been merely cheap rationalization and self-delusion.
        But he could not believe that. He knew what he had felt, and he knew how much he missed those feelings now.
        Something was happening to him, an inner shifting, a sea-change. He felt empty, adrift, without purpose. He dared not lose his love of larceny. It was the only reason he had for living.
        He put the money back into the bag. He turned out the light and sat in the darkness, sipping Beck's and staring down at Central Park.
        In addition to his recent inability to find joy in his work, he had been plagued by a recurring nightmare more intense than any dream he had ever known. It had begun six weeks ago, before the jewelry store job, and he'd had it eight or ten times since. In the dream, he was fleeing from a man in a motorcycle helmet with a darkly tinted visor. At least he thought it was a motorcycle helmet, although he could not see many details of it or anything else of the man who wore it. The faceless stranger pursued him on foot through unknown rooms and along amorphous corridors and, most vividly, along a deserted highway that cut through an empty moon-washed landscape. On every occasion, Jack's panic built like steam pressure in a boiler, until it exploded and blew him awake.
        The obvious interpretation was that the dream was a warning, that the man in the helmet was a cop, that Jack was going to get caught. But that was not the way the nightmare felt. In the dream, he never had the impression that the guy in the helmet was a cop. Something else.
        He hoped to God he would not have the dream tonight. The day had been bad enough without that midnight terror.
        He got another beer, returned to the chair by the window, and sat down in the darkness once more.
        It was December 8, and Jack Twist - former officer in the elite United States Army Rangers, former POW in an undeclared war, a man who had helped save the lives of over a thousand Indians in Central America, a man who functioned under a burden of grief that might have broken some people, a daring thief whose reservoir of courage had always been bottomless - wondered if he had run out of the simple courage to go on living. If he could not regain the sense of purpose he had found in larceny, he needed to find a new purpose. Desperately.
        

    7.
        

    Elko County, Nevada
        
        Ernie Block broke all the speed limits on the drive back from Elko to the Tranquility Motel.
        The last time he had driven so fast and recklessly had been on a gloomy Monday morning during his hitch with Marine Intelligence in Vietnam. He had been behind the wheel of a Jeep, passing through what should have been friendly territory, and had unexpectedly come under enemy fire. The incoming shells had spewed up geysers of dirt and chunks of macadam only feet away from his front and rear bumpers. By the time he had broken out of the fire zone, he had escaped more than twenty near-misses, had been hit by three small but painfully jagged pieces of mortar, had been rendered temporarily deaf from the thunderous explosions, and had found himself struggling to control a Jeep that was running on its wheel rims with four flat tires. Having survived, he figured he had known fear as profound as it could ever be.
        But coming back from Elko, his fear was building toward a new peak. Nightfall was approaching. He had driven to the Elko freight office in the Dodge van to take delivery of a shipment of lighting fixtures for the motel. He had set out shortly after noon, leaving Faye in charge of the front desk, giving himself plenty of time to make the round-trip before twilight. But he had a flat tire and lost time changing it. Then, once he reached Elko, he wasted almost an hour having the tire repaired because he had not wanted to start home without a spare. With one thing or another, he had left Elko almost two hours later than expected, and the sun had westered to the far edge of the Great Basin.
        He kept the accelerator most of the way to the floor, whipping around other traffic on the superhighway. He did not