She stood in the double doorway, back to Rainbird, in a shower of drowsy afternoon sunlight, a small silhouette. Again his love for her came over him. This was the place of their appointment, then.
“Charlie,” he called down softly.
She stiffened and took a single step backward. She didn’t turn around, but he could feel the sudden recognition and fury flooding through her, although it was visible only in the slow way that her shoulders came up.
“Charlie,” he called again. “Hey, Charlie.”
“You!” she whispered. He barely caught it. Somewhere below him, a horse nickered softly. ”
It’s me,” he agreed. “Charlie, it’s been me all along.”
Now she did turn and swept the long side of the stable with her eyes. Rainbird saw her do this, but she didn’t see him; he was behind a stack of bales, well out of sight in the shadowy second loft.
“Where are you?” she rasped. “You tricked me! It was you! My daddy says it was you that time at Granther’s!” Her hand had gone unconsciously to her throat, where he had laid in the dart. “Where are you?”
Ah, Charlie, wouldn’t you like to know?
A horse whinnied; no quiet sound of contentment this, but one of sudden sharp fear. The cry was taken up by another horse. There was a heavy double thud as one of the thoroughbreds kicked at the latched door of his stall.
“Where are you?” she screamed again, and Rainbird felt the temperature suddenly begin to rise. Directly below him, one of the horses-Necromancer, perhapswhinnied loudly, and it sounded like a woman screaming.
9
The door buzzer made its curt, rasping cry, and Cap Hollister stepped into Andy’s apartment below the north plantation house. He was not the man he had been a year before. That man had been elderly but tough and hale and shrewd; that man had possessed a face you might expect to see crouching over the edge of a duck blind in November and holding a shotgun with easy authority. This man walked in a kind of distracted shamble. His hair, a strong iron gray a year ago, was now nearly white and babyfine. His mouth twitched infirmly. But the greatest change was in his eyes, which seemed puzzled and somehow childlike; this expression would occasionally be broken by a shooting sideways glance that was suspicious and fearful and almost cringing. His hands hung loosely by his sides and the fingers twitched aimlessly. The echo had become a ricochet that was now bouncing around his brain with crazy, whistling, deadly velocity.
Andy McGee stood to meet him. He was dressed exactly as he had been on that day when he and Charlie had fled up Third Avenue in New York with the Shop sedan trailing behind them. The cord jacket was torn at the seam of the left shoulder now, and the brown twill pants were faded and seatshiny,
The wait had been good for him. He felt that he had been able to make his peace with all of this. Not understanding, no. He felt he would never have that, even if he and Charlie somehow managed to beat the fantastic odds and get away and go on living. He could find no fatal flaw in his own character on which to blame this royal balls-up, no sin of the father that needed to be expiated upon his daughter. It wasn’t wrong to need two hundred dollars or to participate in a controlled experiment, anymore than it was wrong to want to be free. If I could get clear, he thought, I’d tell them this: teach your children, teach your babies, teach them well, they say they know what they are doing, and sometimes they do, but mostly they lie.
But it was what it was, n'est-ce pas? One way or another they would at least have a run for their money. But that brought him no feeling of forgiveness or understanding for the people who had done this. In finding peace with himself, he had banked the fires of his hate for the faceless bureaucretins who had done this in the name of national security or whatever it was. Only they weren’t faceless now: one of them stood before him, smiling and twitching and vacant. Andy felt no sympathy for Cap’s state at all.
You brought it on yourself, chum.
“Hello, Andy,” Cap said. “All ready?” “Yes,” Andy said. “Carry one of my bags, would you?” Cap’s vacuity was broken by one of those falsely shrewd glances. “Have you checked them?” he barked. “Checked them for snakes?” Andy pushed-not hard. He wanted to save as much as he could for an emergency.
“Pick it up,” he said, gesturing at one of the two suitcases.
Cap walked over and picked it up. Andy grabbed the other one.
“Where’s your car?”
“It’s right outside,” Cap said. “It’s been brought around.”
“Will anyone check on us?” What he meant was Will anyone try to stop us?
“Why would they?” Cap asked, honestly surprised. “I’m in charge.”
Andy had to be satisfied with that. “We’re going out,” he said, “and we’re going to put these bags in the trunk-”
“Trunk’s okay,” Cap broke in. “I checked it this morning.”
“-and then we’re going to drive around to the stable and get my daughter. Any questions?”
“No,” Cap said.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
They left the apartment and walked to the elevator. A few people moved up and down the hall on their own errands. They glanced cautiously at Cap and then looked away. The elevator took them up to the ballroom and Cap led the way down a long front hall.
Josie, the redhead who had been on the door the day Cap had ordered A1 Steinowitz to Hastings Glen, had gone on to bigger and better things. Now a young, prematurely balding man sat there, frowning over a computer-programming text. He had a yellow felt-tip pen in one hand. He glanced up as they approached.
“Hello, Richard,” Cap said. “Hitting the books?” Richard laughed. “They’re hitting me is more like it.” He glanced at Andy curiously. Andy looked back noncommittally. Cap slipped his thumb into a slot and something thumped. A green light shone on Richard’s console. “Destination?” Richard asked. He exchanged his felt-tip for a ball-point. It hovered over a small bound book. “Stable,” Cap said briskly. “We’re going to pick up Andy’s daughter and they are. going to escape.” “Andrews Air Force Base,” Andy countered, and pushed. Pain settled immediately into his head like a dull meat cleaver. “Andrews AFB,” Richard agreed, and jotted it into the book, along with the time. “Have a good day, gentlemen.”
They went out into breezy October sunshine. Cap’s Vega was drawn up on the clean white crushed stone of the circular driveway. “Give me your keys,” Andy said. Cap handed them over, Andy opened the trunk, and they stowed the luggage. Andy slammed the trunk and handed the keys back. “Let’s go.”
Cap drove them on a loop around the duckpond to the stables. As they went, Andy noticed a man in a baseball warmup jacket running across to the house they had just left, and he felt a tickle of unease. Cap parked in front of the open stable doors.
He reached for the keys and Andy slapped his hand lightly. “No. Leave it running. Come on.” He got out of the car. His head was thudding, sending rhythmic pulses of pain deep into his brain, but it wasn’t too bad yet. Not yet.
Cap got out, then stood, irresolute. “I don’t want to go in there,” he said. His eyes shifted back and forth wildly in their sockets. “Too much dark. They like the dark. They hide. They bite.”
“There are no snakes,” Andy said, and pushed out lightly. It was enough to get Cap moving, but he didn’t look very convinced. They walked into the stable.
For one wild, terrible moment Andy thought she wasn’t there. The change from the light to shadow left his eyes momentarily helpless. It was hot and stuffy in here, and something had upset the horses; they were whinnying and kicking at their stalls. Andy could see nothing.
“Charlie?” he called, his voice cracked and urgent. “Charlie?”
“Daddy!” she called, and gladness shot through him-gladness that turned to dread when he heard the shrill fear in her voice. “Daddy, don’t come in! Don’t come-”