Last Light

6 On the Die

Outside of Sharkin’, where Rainer Sparks couldn’t see her, Makani broke into a run toward the pier and the parking lot that served it. Perhaps because of the dark nature of the encounter with Sparks, she expected night when she pushed through the door, but sunshine still ruled. At least an hour of the summer day remained before the sunset might brush the palette of a Maxfield Parrish painting across the western sky.

She had no second power, as she had claimed, no sprout that grew from the branch of her initial psychic gift. Maybe he believed that she, too, had another more formidable talent. Maybe he didn’t. In either case, he would not relent. Rainer Sparks was a narcissist, a megalomaniac who would abide no limits to his dominion, tolerate no one who denied him.

She didn’t start shaking until she was behind the wheel of her ’54 Chevy, the ring of keys jingling as she fumbled to get the right one into the ignition. She kept glancing toward the restaurant, sure that she would see him striding toward her, but for whatever reason, he chose to allow her a chance to escape.

Half the fun is in the chase.

He might even take time for dinner. He had no need to hurry. The only thing that could possibly defeat him was his perfect arrogance.

Leaving the parking lot, she turned left on Balboa Boulevard, heading toward the mainland and Pacific Coast Highway, three miles away. Traffic clotted the peninsula’s main artery, and though the jam-ups would inhibit Sparks as much as they did her, she expected to discover the white Mercedes SUV in the rearview mirror, weaving effortlessly among the swarm of jostling vehicles by virtue of some third power that the sonofabitch had not yet revealed.

When first her gift had come upon her almost a decade earlier, she had been frightened. In time, fear twined with consternation and dismay, as she began to understand how completely her life had been changed forever. She might have surrendered to enduring dread and depression if, without quite realizing it, she had not dealt with the fear of her psychic talent by testing — and strengthening — her courage in a long series of half-mad challenges to the sea and all the dangers that it offered. Already at sixteen, she had long been a bold surfer. So she became a reckless one. Surfing where beaches were closed due to a temporary abundance of large sharks spotted by shore-patrol choppers, straddling her board, feet dangling in the water, as she waited for the next set to roll toward her and offer her a ride, watching nervously for a dorsal fin and for a menacing shadow in the water, aware of the insane risk but intent on taking it, each wipeout an invitation to be dined upon. When others fled storms, she ran to them and launched her board into the raging sea, struggling out against the turbulence, hoping to find a few rideable liquid mountains among the mushy waves blown over by strong onshore winds, fearless of rip currents, tossed in churning white-water soup, spitting out foamy swash, struggling for breath, at risk of being caught inside a breaking wave and held down until she drowned, but at least without concern about sharks, because those predators had fled the storm-racked coast for deep-water calm.

After all these years, the sea inspired in Makani little fear but much respect. Considering Rainer Sparks’s ability to enshroud himself and his potential victim in a kind of invisibility, where he could do as he wished without fear of witnesses, and considering as well his enthusiasm — his thirst—for violent murder, only a fool would not be terrified of him.

Still no white Mercedes GL550 in the traffic behind her.

At the end of the peninsula, she crossed Coast Highway and drove as fast as she dared into Newport Heights, where she lived.

Her residence phone was unlisted; the street name and number were not in the phone directory. But her home address could be found with little effort. Sparks was many things, but he wasn’t stupid; within an hour, he would know where she lived.

She had to pack what she needed and get out fast.

When a wave is waning, it’s said to be “on the die.” In this case, Sparks was the wave, and he was not on the die, but swelling higher by the moment. On the die was also lingo for someone who was heading for a wipeout. Makani had given Sparks the slip; and in all other circumstances, she had long been confident of her ability to fend for herself. But now she felt intuitively that she was on the die, and she could not shake the feeling.