He saw Jennifer at last, climbing up from the pathway below. The oncoming night seemed to be following her, blackening the woodlands in her wake.
Smith forced himself to stay where he was beside the ruined grey stone wall.
“Well, what’s on your mind?” she asked when she was still a dozen yards from him.
“You’re late. I thought maybe-”
“Benton arrived just after you called,” Jennifer told him. “I had to wait until he wasn’t with me.”
Smith sat on a fallen, moss-streaked column. “There are some things we have to talk over.”
“So you mentioned.” She sat next to him, stretching out her legs. “Funny, I never expected we’d be here together again.”
The dusk closed in all around them, filling this skeleton of what had been centuries ago the altar room.
“Neither did I,” said Smith.
“Jared…I really was fond of you back then.”
“I know.”
“I’m not lying. You and I have always been honest with each other.”
“That’s not exactly the impression I ended up with.”
“You and I could never have had a successful life together. You weren’t the sort of man to…well, no matter. It’s all over and done.”
“Not the kind of man to lead a stable, responsible life. That’s what your father told me when he suggested I cease forcing my attentions on you.”
“Daddy was right, wasn’t he? I know what sort of life you’ve lived the past few-”
“How come he was so certain about my future?”
“He’d worked out a way of testing all you Horizon Kids,” replied Jennifer. “When he showed me the results of the tests he’d done with you-”
“That’s the reason?” Smith stood. “You did this to me all those years ago because your damn father showed you some projections of what I might turn out-”
“He was right. You screwed up years of your life and there’s no reason why I should have-”
“It might not have happened if-”
“What difference does that make now?”
“You loved me. I loved you. But you let that bastard convince you-”
“Don’t talk about my father that way.” She stood to face him. “And as for loving you…I’m not really sure I ever felt anything but…well, I hate to say this, Jared, but I was…sorry for you mostly.”
He took a slow careful breath, then said, “Let’s move to other matters.”
“That would be better. I really am sorry you’ve been brooding about this all these-”
“Why didn’t you tell me I was one of the ten?”
Jennifer turned away from him. The forest was dark now. “That was Benton’s idea,” she said. “He wasn’t sure you could be trusted, because of what had happened with you and me.”
“You told him about that?”
“He’s my husband.”
“When you warned me to be careful, you could’ve told me then.”
“I wasn’t sure of you either.”
“So you figured that when I brought in the five missing Horizon Kids, you’d whisper the triggering numbers in my ear,” he said. “I’d go obligingly glassy-eyed, recite my part of the formula your dear old dad had hidden away in my skull.”
“Yes, something like that, yes.”
“Games,” he said. “You’ve been trying to play games with me.”
“I don’t want to remind you that you’re working for us,” Jennifer said. “And, I must add, you haven’t thus far done a very satisfactory job. According to the Whistler Agency reports none of the missing people has been found. Considering the fees paid by Triplan I was expecting-”
“I’ve got them all.”
Jennifer took a step closer to him. “The Horizon Kids? Then why haven’t you reported that, turned them over to-”
“Several reasons. I want to keep them alive. Oscar Ruiz, Liz, Winiarsky and me.”
“Leaving them off somewhere that Syndek can-”
“Syndek didn’t kill Hal Larzon.”
“Of course they did. I-”
“Nope. I can prove that.”
“There’s no one else who could’ve done anything like that.”
“There are at least three people,” Smith told her. “Of those three, I’d vote for Benton Arloff, since-”
“Yes, I see.” She swung out across the darkness between them, slapping him, hard, across the cheek. “You go into business for yourself, betray mother and me and then try to frame my husband for-”
“Jennifer, it isn’t Syndek and it’s not the Trinidad Law Bureau,” he said evenly. “Now, if your husband could make you all believe that somebody like Syndek was out to trap the secret holders and kill them, he-”
“We already had Larzon’s part, before he was killed. So what-”
“He could eventually kill some of the Kids you hadn’t reached yet, after he got what he needed,” said Smith. “And, most likely, once he’d established the idea that the opposition wasn’t above killing, I was the most obvious candidate for that. Actually, I’m not sure he wasn’t figuring to kill all of us. That way he’d have the information and there’d be no way for you to get it. To get the transmutation process all to himself-”
“How’d you find out what the secret was?”
“I’m an investigator, remember. I find out things.”
Jennifer shook her head. “You’re wrong,” she said. “We’ll go down to Horizon House right now, talk to Benton. He’ll convince you.”
“No need for that, love,” said the tall, thickset man who stepped from behind a slice of ruined temple wall. Even in the new night they could see the silver kilgun in his right hand.
“Benton, why did you follow me?”
“Because, darling,” answered her husband, “your old buddy Smith is right about me.”
CHAPTER 27
Jennifer watched her husband walking toward them. “Benton, I don’t understand-”
“No doubt Smith does.”
Smith said, “All is better than a third.”
“Exactly,” said Arloff, smiling at them both.
“But we…love each other.”
“Later on, love, we can talk about it,” her husband said. “Right now, though, I’m going to deprive you of Smith’s company.”
“You didn’t kill Hal Larzon,” she said, unsure.
“I did, yes. And for the very reason your clever former beau mentioned.” He gestured at Smith with the kilgun. “I’ll have to take you someplace where I can persuade you to tell me where the others are.”
“I doubt you can accomplish that, Arloff.”
Arloff laughed. “Oh, there’s not a doubt in my mind,” he said. “After that, and after I’ve gathered in the last bits of the puzzle, then I’ll see about arranging some accidents and disappearances for you Horizon Kids.”
Jennifer said quietly, “You aren’t going to kill him, Benton.”
“You actually, darling, don’t have a hell of a lot of say in the matter.”
“Benton,” she said, even more quietly.
That made him turn toward her. “Really now, Jenny.”
She’d taken a small kilgun from the pocket of her jacket. It was aimed at her husband. “You’d just,” she said, “better go away from here.”
Laughing again, he started easing to her. “I know you, love,” he said. “You can’t shoot me, no matter what you think or feel.”
“I won’t let you kill Jared.”
“You will because…oof.”
Smith had leaped at the distracted Arloff.
The doves went flapping up into the darkness.
As the two men fell Smith got a grip on Arloff’s gun-wrist. They rolled and tumbled on the stone temple floor.
Grunting, Arloff tried to knee him in the groin. Smith twisted, avoided that.
The thickset man strained, struggling to regain control of the kilgun. Smith was forced to let go of his wrist for a second, then caught it again.
In that instant the gun went off, sending a thin line of crackling crimson light slicing across the night.
Arloff made a terrible keening sound when the beam touched him. His face began to smoke and go black. Stumbling back and away, Smith stood.