"Karen had it installed"-Cavanaugh breathed-"so the kid in the house behind hers"-he breathed again-"could bring a mower through and cut her lawn."
"What if it's locked?"
"We try climbing."
Abruptly, the gate swung open. A man, woman, and teenaged boy rushed to help them.
"What happened? Are you all right?"
"Visiting Karen," Cavanaugh managed to say. "Looks like… started behind a wall. Spread so fast. Barely got out."
"What about Karen?"
"In the basement." Cavanaugh kept stumbling across their backyard. His sport coat hid his pistol. "Couldn't get to…"
"We heard shots."
"Paint cans exploding. Tell the firefighters to try to get Karen."
Silhouetted by the burning house, the man and the teenager rushed into Karen's backyard.
The woman lingered.
"Save your house," Jamie said.
"What?"
"Spray water on your roof so sparks don't set it on fire."
The woman turned pale. She ran toward a hose connected to an outdoor tap.
As she sprayed water toward her roof, neighbors crowded into the backyard, shoving, ignoring Cavanaugh and Jamie, trying to see the blaze.
10
Cavanaugh did his best to walk straight and not look injured as he made his way along a dark street two blocks over.
Headlights turned the corner behind him, coming from the direction of the fire. Worried that it might be a police car, he stepped among bushes.
But instead of the distinctive rack of emergency lights on a police car's roof, Cavanaugh saw the anonymous silhouette of a Taurus approaching at moderate speed. He returned to the sidewalk.
When Jamie stopped, he got in and slumped on the passenger seat.
She drove away at an equally moderate speed.
"Any trouble getting the car?" Cavanaugh asked.
"On the contrary. The police were glad to see me move it so they could have room for another fire truck. How bad are you hurt?"
"I reopened the wound."
Neither of them spoke for several moments.
"You could have been killed trying to save me," Cavanaugh said.
"I didn't think about that."
"You weren't afraid?"
"Only for you."
Cavanaugh looked down at his shaky hands. "Tonight, I felt afraid."
Driving, Jamie glanced from where her headlights illuminated the darkness. She gave him a quick stare. "You just had a lot to react to."
"It was more than that. Something happened to me in that basement." Cavanaugh trembled. "For the first time, I found out what fear is." He felt more blood oozing from his wound. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to do this. We passed a Wal-Mart on the way from the motel."
"Wal-Mart?" Jamie asked, bewildered.
"We're going to need some things. Trash bags. A hotplate. A saucepan. A…"
PART FOUR. Threat Confrontation
1
The hotplate's coil glowed. Through steam escaping from the open bathroom door, Cavanaugh could see the unit on the counter in front of the makeup mirror. A vague outline of a saucepan was visible on top of it. The pan contained boiling water, a curved sewing needle, and fishing line.
Cavanaugh was slumped in the tub while the hot shower sprayed smoke and grime off him.
"You've got more bruises," Jamie said. "By morning, you'll have trouble walking."
"I won't need to walk. We're spending tomorrow in the car."
"And maybe part of tonight?"
Cavanaugh turned his head and studied her. "You're as quick a learner as Prescott."
"Except I don't go around setting fires. We can't stay here much longer, correct?"
"Correct. There's always a neighborhood busybody who notices unfamiliar cars on the street. He or she will remind the police about it. One of the policemen will remember the attractive woman who moved the car after the fire started. Meanwhile, the neighbors behind Karen's house will tell the police about the injured man and the attractive woman who ran out of the house and disappeared. It'll take the police a while to get organized, but before midnight, they're going to be looking for a man and a woman in a dark blue Taurus. Time to hit the road."
Jamie glanced toward the pan on the hotplate. "Think it's boiled enough?" she asked.
"Ten minutes. If the germs aren't dead by now…"
"Turn off the shower." Jamie blotted the wound with surgical gauze, then coated it with Betadine germicide that she'd bought from Wal-Mart. The gouge looked clean enough that there wasn't a need to put Cavanaugh through the pain of more hydrogen peroxide. Quickly, she applied antibiotic cream. Then she hurried to the pan and used tongs, which she had swabbed with rubbing alcohol, to take the needle and fishing line from the boiling water. She set them and disinfected scissors onto antiseptic pads at the side of the tub.
"You should have been a nurse," Cavanaugh said.
"Yeah, that's always been my ambition: to sew up gunshot wounds. You're absolutely sure you need to do this?"
"The wound has to stay closed, and the bandage isn't working."
"We could always try barbed wire and a staple gun."
"Funny."
"Keep laughing." Jamie knelt beside him at the tub. "No matter how gentle I try to be, this'll hurt."
Cavanaugh's face felt as taut as his nerves. "I've had it done to me before."
"I imagine."
"But the guy doing it wasn't as good-looking as you."
"Flattery's great. Tell me more sweet things while I do this."
"You're tough."
"So are you." Jamie pushed in the needle.
2
Cavanaugh woke to the rhythm of the car. As headlights flashed past, he found himself lying on the backseat on a blanket, one of the items that Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart. Then he was alert enough to see the imitation sheepskin covers on the front and rear seats, which Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart as well and which concealed the bloodstains he'd left. The car was brand-new, but already it was on its way to being trashed. Somehow he found that amusing.
"Where are we?" he murmured.
"I thought I heard you moving back there. We're south of Poughkeepsie. Did you sleep okay?"
"Yes." He slowly sat up. The headlights passing on the opposite side of the highway hurt his eyes.
"How's the shoulder?"
"Stiff. I passed out?"
"You passed out."
"And you said I was tough."
"Are you thirsty? The bottles of water are on the floor back there."
Cavanaugh peered down and saw them in the shadows. He opened one.
"Hungry?" Jamie asked.
"For a thin woman, you sure think a lot about food."
"Just for that, you can't have any doughnuts."
"Doughnuts?"
"Chocolate-covered. You can't expect me to drive all night without something to eat to keep me awake."
"What time is it?"
"Around one."
"Did you have any trouble cleaning the motel room?"
"Nope. I did what you told me and put all the bloody towels and clothes into the garbage bags I got from Wal-Mart. I threw the bags in a Dumpster at a construction site. The towels don't have the motel's name on them, so nobody can trace them to us."
"Fingerprints?"
"I wiped the room clean and left the key, along with a tip. Just the way you told me."
Cavanaugh studied the sporadic traffic. "Tired?"
"Getting there."
"Find a place where we can switch places. I'll drive for a while."
"Are you able to?"
"I can steer with my right arm. Once we get into New Jersey, we'll find another motel."
"And then?"
"As soon as I get organized, I'm going after Prescott."
3
"Good God, what happened to this car?" the automobile paint shop's owner said.
The question was rhetorical. Red and green Day-Glo paint had been sprayed over most of the Taurus.
"Damned kids," Cavanaugh said, although he himself had done the spraying.' "I leave it on the street for a half hour, and this is what I find when I get back."