No place to turn around, but he kept looking. Glancing in the rearview mirror. Only darkness behind him in the road, and lights from the houses on either side. She seemed to be gone. It gave him a breather, a small relief.
But he didn’t trust it. She was like a nightmare. She would be back.
He peered into the rearview mirror, into the side mirrors, and saw he’d been wrong—she was still there. He saw a streetlight’s reflection slide over a big vehicle, white light bouncing off it. She must be going sixty miles an hour.
And then he saw flames.
They licked up between the slats of the monster Silverado’s grille.
He could almost hear the water hiss as spray from the puddles hit.
Reflections scrolled off the windshield. She was almost to him now, her face like a Halloween mask, the rictus of her teeth and the crazy glint in her eyes. And now, in the wavering orange reflection of the flames, he could see the kid’s corpse as it lolled in the shoulder harness, arms jiggling, head flopping. Madness.
More curves coming up. It was terrifying, this bat out of hell on his tail, screeching around corners, moving up, bumper pushing into the old Chrysler LeBaron, but Max knew what the flames meant, and he permitted himself a tight smile.
He mostly worked on motorcycles, but he was a pretty good car mechanic too.
“I can wait you out, bitch,” he muttered at the rearview mirror as he avoided another group of pedestrians.
Then they really were out of town. The road straightened out a little, and she was speeding up on him again. Her grille on fire, her face likewise alight with obsession and hatred and need.
The LeBaron’s tires reeled the road in. The burning truck remained on his bumper. Max muttered, “Now, now, now!”
But nothing happened; the truck remained pinned to his tail.
It had to blow sometime.
Didn’t it?
Had to.
But the damn thing kept coming.
He drove through a series of serpentine curves, knowing he could make them, even though the rain had started up again and made the road slick.
The land dropped precipitously to his left. If he went over, he’d be dead. The LeBaron’s tires screeched as he braked slightly going into the corners, hit the accelerator coming out, the truck right on him. Up ahead he saw a hairpin turn. Mine tailings loomed up across the broken riverbed on the left. Weedy trees whipping by like snakes. Too fast! The gorge was less steep on the left, but he guessed it was at least a one hundred feet down.
Then he heard it.
A terrible grinding noise, the loud bang-bang-bang in rapid succession, like a washing machine full of rocks.
She’d thrown a rod.
The engine block had cracked, and now everything was going to hell—including the steering and the brakes. He watched with deep satisfaction as the truck missed the curve and hit the guardrail, launching out over the canyon below, the fire still streaking behind it like a Starsky & Hutch rerun.
Chapter Thirty-Six
MAX TURNED AROUND and drove back to a scenic pullout. Cut the engine and rolled in. Just sat there, shaking with adrenaline and fear. And satisfaction.
He could hear a muted whump—fire. The bright light flared in his side mirror.
But the fire went out almost as quickly as it had started—doused by the rain.
Not long after that, the rain lessened to a soft patter, then stopped altogether. Typical of thunderstorm cells in the desert.
A few wisps of gray smoke floated into the sky.
Max turned the car around, drove back, and parked above the wreck.
The truck lay far down the steep embankment, partially hidden behind a big juniper bush. Nothing moved.
She had to be dead.
No way she could live through that.
He got out of the car and sat on the guardrail—the part that was still intact. Weedy trees and a snarl of bushes along the roadside and running down the slope concealed much of the land on his side. He just sat and stared at the wreck, watching for movement. But he saw nothing. An hour, watching. Two hours. Nobody on the road, nobody coming by.
He stared at the portion of the burned-out hulk he could see. Stared a hole through it.
Waited some more.
He had to be sure.
WHEN MAX FINALLY returned to his car, he wondered if the cops were looking for him. He’d sped through town, the truck glued to his tailpipe, nearly running down pedestrians—it was possible someone would be able to identify a 1987 Chrysler LeBaron. (Unlikely, since the car was old and obscure and it had been dark and pouring rain, but you never knew.) Max had not heard any sirens. He’d been out in the open for at least two hours, looking down at a truck lying in the gorge. The wreck was a long way from town, and there were plenty of twists and turns to hide it from view.
Max figured if he kept to the back streets of Jerome—if he kept to the speed limit—no one would notice.
He was right.
He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that it was only eight o’clock at night. There were only a few people and cars on the streets. But Max didn’t see one cop car. He took the back streets. Here he’d left a litter trail of the hijacked and the dead, and yet nothing in this town had changed.
Hard to believe.
He drove back to the Desert Oasis Healing Center and piloted the LeBaron across the flattened section of chain-link fence, careful to stay out of the gully.
Why tell them he was coming?
Lucky for him, the guardhouse a half mile up the road was empty. No rent-a-cop was going to sit out there on a night like this.
THERE WERE PLENTY of expensive cars in the lot. The richest of the rich. The fucked-uppest of the fucked-up. Max reached the glass front doors to the main wing and walked in. Nobody in the foyer—a long glass tunnel between the front entrance with its cactus garden and the pool and cabanas on the other side. A massive, generic chandelier, the kind you’d find at Marriotts everywhere, cast a dim orange light. He walked in the direction of Gordon’s office. His footsteps echoed on the Saltillo tile.
Everyone locked up for the night.
He got to the door to Gord’s office. What now? Knock?
No.
He aimed a kick under the doorknob, and to his surprise, the door flew open.
No one there.
The anticlimax almost buried him. He’d been planning so long for the confrontation, now he felt lost.
“Sir?”
He spun around. It was Gordon’s assistant, Drew.
“Good to see you, uh, Max,” the assistant said. “You look like you could use freshening up. Would you like to go to your room?”
“So you can lock me in?”
“That wasn’t my intention, sir. I thought you might want a hot shower and some fresh clothes.”
Max pictured the clothes. The trademark white drawstring yoga pants and blousy white pirate shirt. Add Birkenstocks, and you could join an ashram.
“Your leg, sir. You’re bleeding. I could call the nurse.”
“Just, let’s…” He felt a little dizzy. “I want to talk to Gordon. You get me? He’s gonna want to hear what I have to say.”
“Of course, sir.”
And Max was ushered through the right wing to his room.
Right back where he’d started. He thought about fighting, but you couldn’t fight all the time. He was tired, wounded. The adrenaline that had fueled him was beginning to dissipate.
He still believed that Gordon needed him more than he needed Gordon. He was still Max Conroy, the star of the V.A.M.Pyre series. The golden goose, for want of a better term. He truly believed they needed him more than he needed them.