The Lonely Dead

'Because it's time to do this.'

'So say the voices, right?'

'No one has done this for many lifetimes. They've killed other things. Symbols of power, women, babies. They're all just standing in for the wild man, the real sacrifice.'

'For God's sake — and just how is that supposed to work?'

'Because it does.'

'You kill something, and somehow that retunes the music of the spheres? You really believe that?'

'It's true, and if you'd been born only a few hundred years ago you'd know it. But we forget. Everyone, even those who should know better. Now we believe in flossing instead. We believe it matters which long-distance operator we choose. We try not to tread on the cracks.'

'You're insane,' she said.

'I don't think so.' His eyes were sharp in the gathering gloom. 'And your opinion is of no interest to me.'

'Don't tell me anything else then. I don't want to hear it.'

'Fine. But you should know this. The grandmother I mentioned?'

She swallowed.

'I killed her. We were helping her down the stairs, and I gave her a nudge before I even realized the idea had come into my head. I was twelve years old. I know it's what she really wanted. She died fast and well. If your friends don't show up soon, you're going to die too. But it's going to be very, very slow. People ten thousand miles away will turn in their sleep.'

Without even realizing she was doing it, Patrice had scrunched herself a foot further away from the man, which was as far as she could go. She still felt far too close. She had sometimes thought, over the last couple of years, that she was ready for death. She didn't want to play his game, but without Bill there wasn't a great deal to keep her here and maybe it was time to dance with the Man. Huddled in the snow with someone who seemed both less and more than human, she now knew that wasn't true. When you met the Man himself, you realized that to dance with him would never be something heroic or meaningful. It would just make you dead. She didn't want to join their silent ranks.

She wondered what to say next. It was snowing harder now, and nearly full dark, and she was trapped in the forest, hands tied, with a lunatic.

She decided to say nothing at all.

— «» — «» — «»—

Suddenly he stood.

He looked up at the top of the gully wall behind her. Then turned and stared behind him. His head was cocked, his mouth open very slightly. He stepped over the stream, vaulted to the top of the gully wall as if making a single step.

'They're coming,' he said.

He didn't seem pleased. Patrice wasn't even sure who he was talking about. He stood there a moment, as if smelling the wind, and then disappeared like the moon passing behind cloud.

Patrice thought about running, but her legs had gone dead and she knew there was nowhere to go. Instead she curled up small, closed her eyes, and thought of Verona.

29

This time we all heard it.

A brittle snapping sound, not close. It was sharp enough to cut through the swelling wind and the hot, ragged sound of breathing in my head. Connolly turned quickly.

'Get down.'

Nina put her hand on my back and pushed. The two of us broke sideways, bent over. Tried to run, but ended up in a fast stumbling shamble through foot-deep snow. We split behind two trees, close by a six-foot outcrop of rock, guns now in our hands.

We watched as Connolly and his deputy backed towards us, rifles in shooting position. Phil's voice was low and cracked a little, but his backward steps were measured and tight. 'You see him?'

Connolly shook his head; kept his gun moving in a smooth, thirty-degree arc.

They made it round to our side of the outcrop. When they were in place I glanced behind us — it's not always easy to divine sound direction in the woods, and I've seen all those movies. I couldn't make out much. The land rose darkly, more trees, rocks, bushes, snow. The contrasts turned everything into one of those Escher drawings where different interpretations flip back and forth before your eyes, and then coalesce into muddy I-don't-know. Nothing was moving that I could see.

I looked ahead again. Nothing was moving there either, except for falling snow. All of us turned our heads, slowly, nothing but eyes and ears. Seconds came and went.

The moment burst. The tension in my legs began to slacken off. My right hand, ungloved, felt cold and useless. I swapped the gun to the left and rubbed my right under my armpit, wincing as the shoulder took the strain of the abrupt movement. I felt better when I had the gun in the right hand again, even though it felt like the heavy metal might just freeze right to it.

'It's not John out there,' I said. 'Surely.'

'No. We're close now. It's the Upright Man.'

'So what now?' Phil whispered.

'We keep going,' Connolly said. He revealed a small device hidden in the palm of his hand. I'd wondered how he was keeping track of where we were in the dark. He thumbed a button and a tiny screen lit up for a moment, then went off. 'Can only be three, four hundred yards ahead.'

'He must have heard us coming.'

'There's four of us and one of him,' Nina said. 'He's not going to come right at us. He's going to wait until we split up, or move without thinking. Then he'll take us one at a time.'

Connolly nodded. 'So how do you want to do it?'

'Stay tight. You think it's directly ahead?'

'Pretty much.'

'So let's move up around this side, come up left, go at it from the side. What are we headed for exactly?'

'It's a gully. We've come at it from the top. The land's gentler to the north, where we are, steeper the other side. Banks flatten out to the right, get a lot higher out to the east.'

Nina looked at me. 'What do you think: pull round right, try and come up the course?'

'Sounds good to me.'

'Let's do it.'

— «» — «» — «»—

We moved more slowly now, and took our breaths quietly. Suddenly I was seeing every piece of wood sticking up out of the snow, making sure I went nowhere near it. We moved tightly together, in a rough square, six feet apart, each keeping watchful eyes on our own quadrant.

Connolly kept us bearing left. The ground started to rise sharply into a craggy ridge and I had to use my hand to steady myself against the rocks as we climbed. I felt dog tired, brain wiped, my head fuzzy. My foot slipped on wet rock and I cracked my knee but barely noticed. Most of me hurt in one way or another. When I made the top I turned at the waist and reached down; Nina grabbed my hand and pulled herself up.

The forest floor curved down away on both sides, as if we were making our way along some huge animal's spine. We slipped amongst the trees, crouched low, barely breathing now.

Suddenly a howling wind whipped in, swirling up at us from the miles of forest below. It came with a cold that was like a nail hammered into both ears, and it shook the branches all around us.

'Jesus,' Nina whispered.

The sound went on and on, a vast shivering wrapped around a frigid shriek. It felt like an object, hard to push against, and perhaps one of us straightened up a little, maybe even more than one. Just enough.

There was a flat crack and a grunt and I saw Connolly turn with a jerk and fall over on his back.

I was dimly aware of Nina and Phil moving fast around me, taking cover behind trees. I threw myself forward on the ground and pulled myself up level with the sheriff.

Connolly's face was tight. 'I'm okay,' he said.

I pulled the front of his coat and saw a dark blotch swelling over the lower left side of his chest. I put his hand over the wound, pressed it down tight. He was breathing deep and steady. He was tough.

I looked down and saw Nina crouched three yards away, arms locked, pointing her gun back down the way we'd come. The deputy squatted with his back to a tree. The wind was fading to a tidal roar.

'Phil, come up here,' I said. He stood. There were two more flat cracking sounds. 'Keep DOWN!'

He dropped flat on his stomach and crawled quickly up to me, combat-style. Nina fired two rounds in the direction of the noise.

'Shit, Chief,' Phil said, when he saw the blood.

'Stay with him,' I said.

I scooted along to Nina. 'You see him?'

She shook her head. 'Too dark. He could have been tracking us for a half-hour, waiting until it got like this.'

'From the direction Connolly was hit, the shot had to come from somewhere over there,' I said, pointing down and right. 'He's trying to come around us.' I glanced up at the rock face behind. 'I'm going to head up that crest there, loop back down, try and do the same to him. You see anything move, shoot at it. Knock yourself out.'

'Be careful,' she said.

'I'll try.' I started to move but she grabbed my arm. I looked at her cold, white face. 'Okay,' I said. 'I'll do better than that.'

I waved at Phil, indicated what I was going to do. He nodded, and turned so his rifle was pointing the same way as Nina's gun.

Then I clambered quickly up the rocks. As I reached the top there was another cracking sound from below, followed quickly by two more shots from Nina. I heard her swear, then start to reload.

I crawled ten yards and then lay flat on my stomach, looked down. The mountainside cut away sharply here, cold and empty. There was nothing to lock onto below, no pattern to recognize. The shapes of trunk and branch and rock were endless and random and as soon as you moved your eyes you lost track of where you were. All you could do was take it steadily, move your head slowly…

I saw him.

The glimpse was so faint it could have been just a shadow, a fleeting artefact imagined out of the darkness and the drifting snow. But then I saw it again, and I knew I'd seen him move.

He was about thirty yards away, just where we'd thought he'd be.

I crawled a few feet further along the ridge until I was masked by a small stand of trees. Got up onto my knee and one foot. Looked ahead, and judged it. If he hadn't seen me get into this position, I could probably make it. I could sprint from behind this stand, head quickly out right and down, making for a pair of big, thick trees I could see ahead. Reckon on emptying my gun on the way. Assuming I made it there without being cut down, reload in the cover of the trees, ready for stage two. Then it would be him and me, close quarters, and I would just have to make sure it was me who remained upright.

One against one, there was no reason it couldn't go my way. Maybe. I put my hand in the right-hand pocket of the thick coat, to check the clips were where I thought. They were. My heart was beating hard, knowing this was one of those moments when you just have to go, when planning is less important than speed and belief.

I edged a little further right — slowly, four feet, five — and that was going to have to be enough; I was teetering to go, leaning forward into the run. I took a final checking glance to the side.

Someone was standing there.

It was a young woman. She was ten feet away, on higher ground. She was wearing floral pyjamas, and had bare feet. She stood between two trees, half in shadow; snow spiralled down around her and I saw some of it land on her shoulders and in her long hair. I could just make out her eyes, the lines of her cheekbones.

It was Jessica Jones.

'Careful,' she said. 'There are many.'

Then she was gone.

I was off-balance in readiness to run forward, and instead fell back against the rock. I froze there for a moment, blinking fast, staring up at where she'd been. I looked left, right. She'd vanished.

I quickly scrabbled up to where I thought I'd seen her standing. There was no one there, but the snow on the ground was messed up. I thought I saw something that could have been a footprint, maybe even two of them, but they were far too big.

I suddenly couldn't do what I'd been going to. I headed back, slid back over the ridge and scooted up to Nina in a crouch. She stared. 'What the fuck?'

'I think there's more than one of them,' I said, avoiding her eyes.

'What? How do you know? Who's with him?'

'I don't know.'

'So what did you see? What happened to you, Ward?'

I didn't answer, couldn't. I didn't know what to tell her. Instead I scooted halfway to where Phil was holding his position next to the sheriff.

How's he looking?'

'I'm fine,' Connolly said. He didn't look it. 'I don't need baby sitting. Just go take this asshole down.'

'There's at least two of them,' I said. 'So, Phil, we are going to need you back down here.'

Phil glanced down at his boss, who nodded curtly. 'Just don't get yourself killed,' Connolly muttered. 'Day's gone enough to hell without me having to talk to your mother.'

Phil came back with me in a half-crouch. 'I thought I smelled something weird just then,' he said. 'Did you smell anything?'

'No,' I said. 'What kind of weird?'

He just shook his head.

When we got back to Nina she was looking at me hard. 'What is it, Ward? What happened up there? You look strange.'

'Nothing. I just got a feeling. Now…'

Then it came. A shot from up and to the left.

'Shit,' she said. 'You were right.'

'He's got someone with him?' Phil said. 'Who?'

'I don't…' For a second the ludicrous idea of John and Paul joining forces crossed my mind. Of course not. So who…

Then the thinking was over, because a man was running up the hill towards us like a fleet shadow, firing as he came.

Nina and I fired at the same time. Both of us missed. Phil threw himself in a roll and bumped hard against a tree. Dodged around to fire, but hesitated a beat too long. I stood straight up and pulled the trigger twice.

The man did something like a spinning hop and dropped to the ground. I fired twice more at him, heard a grunt. Nina slipped off around the back, gun ready, stepping sideways.

'Nina, hold here,' I said. 'Phil, come with me.'

She looked up, signed OK.

I pointed Phil back up along the ridge. Ran behind him in a crouch, the two of us splitting to go around Connolly. A series of clapping sounds echoed up to us from the original shooter's position.

'Shit,' Phil said. 'I thought you just got that guy.'

'There's three of them, then,' I said. 'Jesus Christ.'

We held tight and still for a moment. Looked ahead. The forest seemed yet darker and thicker up there. I was shivering and felt odd. My neck tickled and I whipped my head to the left and thought I saw someone running through the trees about twenty yards away; but it couldn't have been, because again it looked like they were wearing nothing more than pyjamas, and that would be madness out in a place like this when it was so cold and dark. I was exhausted, amped up and making patterns in the shadows, projecting pictures that made no sense. I needed to be careful. I dropped my head and took a couple of deep breaths.

I looked up again when there was a single crack out front, and something whined through the air right between our heads to spang off the rock behind. Phil and I returned fire.

Then I heard Nina start shooting down below us.

'Christ,' I said, panicky. 'Phil — hold position there. Take that guy out if you can. I'm going back.'

'I'm on it,' Phil said. He went down on his stomach again and squirted quickly forward along the ground. I got the sense he'd watched a few war movies in his time. That was cool by me.

I straightened up more than I should have and went stumble-running back down towards where Nina was supposed to be. I couldn't see any sign of her, but I could hear firing in the trees over to the left. I passed the first man's body on the ground and saw his face: cold, lean, hard. I didn't recognize him.

There were more shots ahead, harder to hear as the wind spiralled up into voice once more. I ran down to where I could hear the sound of shooting. I couldn't tell if it was one gun firing or two.

I dropped down off a rock outcrop and nearly pulled my ankle apart, but kept upright by a hair. I hit a thicker layer of snow and struggled through it, legs impeded, slugging through it like frozen treacle.

Finally pulled up out of it onto rockier ground. The shooting had stopped but I couldn't see anyone.

'Nina?'

No reply. I turned in a full circle, started to run in the direction I thought I had seen her go.

I'd got ten feet and was picking up speed when suddenly I had nothing in my lungs and I was lying on my back with snow in my ears and a rock sticking in my spine.

Someone stepped out from behind a tree. Then there was a foot pressing down hard on my chest. I was struggling to breathe, badly winded, pain lancing up my back in shooting bursts. I howled without even meaning to. The foot pressed down harder and a face appeared three feet above mine.

Short hair, round glasses.

The shooter from the diner in Fresno. He placed the cold barrel of a shotgun in the middle of my forehead. Leaned on it hard.

'Hello, fucker,' he said.

— «» — «» — «»—

Nina was fifty yards away. She'd heard something running through the trees, something that seemed not to be slowed by the rocks and snow and unpredictable, ragged ground. That had to be Paul, she thought. Never mind who he'd got with him, these guys they didn't know about, had never met, but who wanted to kill them anyway, she believed the only person who could move like that in these conditions had to be the Upright Man.

So she'd headed down the slope after the sound, firing indiscriminately, and caught a brief glimpse of something moving below. But after a few minutes she stopped, winded, and could see or hear nothing more.

Then she heard the sound of a shout behind her.

'Ward,' she said, and then she was scrambling back up the bank. Slipped, cracked her face against the rock.

She kept going.

— «» — «» — «»—

The man pressed the barrel harder into my head.

'So you're the brother,' he said. 'You were lucky in the diner. Not so lucky tonight. Seems like you don't have what he has. Just another amateur.'

I coughed. I couldn't do much else.

'He's going to die tonight too,' the guy added, grinding the barrel still harder. 'Thanks to your friend.'

'Who?'

'This guy Zandt. How do you think we knew where to come? He cut a deal.'

'He didn't kill Dravecky?'

'The boss is alive and well. Course, your friend thinks he's going to be walking away from this. He couldn't be more wrong.'

He stood on my chest harder for a moment. His eyes twinkled behind the small circles of glass. His enjoyment of the fact I couldn't breathe was evident.

'So adios, shithead. Time be moving on.'

I could see his finger slowly tightening on the trigger of the shotgun, felt the ground beneath me flatten as it became a slab.

I closed my eyes. I didn't want this man's face to be the last thing I saw.

There was the sound of a gunshot, close. Then two more, quickly afterwards.

I opened my eyes just as the man fell over backwards. Turned my head. Nina came hurtling into view.

She dropped to one knee by my side. 'Are you okay?' She had blood dribbling down one cheek.

I groggily pushed myself up onto my elbows. I was okay in the sense I could move, and could tell everything hurt a lot, which presumably meant my back wasn't broken and I was free to go.

'What happened to your face?'

'Don't fuss. What was he saying? Was he saying something about John? I thought I heard his name.'

'No. They're after Paul.'

She grabbed my arm and helped me up. I staggered, lurching, barely able to stand upright. Got my balance, took deep sucking breaths, hands on my knees.

When I straightened I saw Nina standing over the other guy.

I heard three shots from some distance ahead. Nina didn't move.

'Nina

'Wait a minute,' she said.

The man on the ground was trying to sit upright. He had blood coming out of his thigh and the base of his neck. Nina had evidently remembered he might still be wearing a vest. He was moving slowly but like he could keep it up.

Nina kicked him in the side.

'That's for Monroe,' she said, voice tight and low and hard. 'He's an asshole, but he's my asshole.'

'He's dirty,' the man said. His voice was little more than a wheeze.

'Who isn't?' Nina's face was pinched. 'And if you'd already tipped him off, why the hell did you kill the cop?'

'Insurance. Monroe didn't do anything the first time.'

'The cop's name was Steve Ryan.'

'Whatever.' He grinned. 'Just doing my job.'

'Right,' Nina said. She nodded, once. Turned away.

Then turned back and shot him in the head.

Leaned down low and said to him: 'That's from his wife.'

30

Patrice had been huddled in a ball for perhaps ten minutes when she heard the sound of running up above, something or someone pushing through the bushes at the lip of the gully. She debated what to do. Doing nothing at all had the most immediate appeal. Ultimately everyone truly believes that if you stay real still, and don't peek, the monsters won't see you.

But she decided she had to know.

She lifted her head and saw Death leaping back down into the stream bed. He stood irresolute for a moment, in the middle of the water, appearing to have forgotten she was there. She could see him weighing up choices.

Then he loped up the river, and faded behind a pair of big trees. He hadn't gone far though, she knew.

— «» — «» — «»—

I felt through the man's coat and took all the shells I could. Then I realized I didn't want to use this man's weapon, and dropped them on his chest.

'Something happened up there,' I said. 'Shit,' Nina said. 'Yes. I heard the shots.' We hurriedly climbed back up the way we'd come. It was cold and the wind still moaned and shook and I felt a very long way from home. I was limping now, and the outrageous pain round the back of my right side said some ribs had been cracked. We'd come further than I realized. It was five minutes before I saw Nina stiffen and go still, and I looked up to see someone standing up ahead, near the top of the ridge.

'Don't shoot.' It was Phil. 'Jesus,' he said. 'Are you guys okay? What happened to you?'

'We got one,' I said. 'What about you?'

He shook his head, turned and started walking quickly back up to Connolly's position. We followed.

'I went up after him,' he said. 'Couldn't find him. Then he started shooting from somewhere, damned near took my head off. I fired back and took cover behind a big rock and tried to get around the other side but I came up against a big drop and thought 'Damn — that's the end of that.' I got nowhere to go, and…'

He looked ashamed for a moment. 'Maybe I could have taken a shot a little earlier. But I didn't. I never tried to kill a man before. So I half stood up, thinking I've got to work out some route to get back the other way, and that's when I see this other guy.'

'What other guy?'

'I don't know. He came from nowhere. I saw him for like a single second. He does this—' Phil mimed someone bringing a rifle up to his shoulder '—and he fired before it was even in position. One shot. Bang, just like that. I ducked like I was falling down. Don't hear anything else for a couple minutes. So I finally stuck my head up to see. The guy with the gun has vanished. There's this dead body lying about thirty feet to the side of me.'

'You didn't shoot him?'

'No, I just told you. But somebody sure as hell did. I went and looked at the body. One hole, plumb in the middle of his forehead, like someone painted a target there. So who the hell was that guy? What the hell is going on out here?'

'Must be John,' I said.

Nina shook her head. 'John's a city boy. I don't see him being able to creep up on one of these guys and drop them with a single shot. Far as I know he's never used a hunting rifle in his life.'

'So who?'

'The Upright Man,' she said. 'Got to be. These other guys came out here to kill him, not us.'

'I don't buy it. He'd let them kill us first.'

'You're his brother, Ward.'

I didn't see what difference that made.

When we got to Connolly we found him standing. Leaning against a tree, but upright.

'Christ, Sheriff, sit back down.'

'I'm okay,' he said.

'Sir, with respect, you're really not,' Nina said. 'You're bleeding like a stuck pig.'

The big man looked down, saw the thick dark stains which had started to spread down his pants. 'That's true. So we'd better be quick.'

He reached in his coat pocket again and pulled out his GPS. His hand was shaking, but not too much. A quick flash of the screen, and then he nodded ahead and down to the right.

'Might as well go straight at it now,' he said.

We went onwards through the trees. We passed the body of the other gunman, lying on his back on the ground. Phil was right. The man who killed him knew how to shoot.

The ground levelled out a little after a while, curved up towards ridges on both sides, as if we were entering a wide half-tunnel lined with trees and shadow: some long-ago watercourse, I guessed, or even more ancient glacial scrape. The wind wound itself up again, pulled at us, and we moved forward a little faster, hoping it would cover the sound of our feet.

Connolly stumbled, stopped; he pitched forward and fell. I bent down to him but he shook his head slowly.

'Go,' he said.

I pulled my coat off and dropped it over him.

And on we went. The bushes were thick, huge balls of frigid, spiky cotton wool. Something shrieked way over to the left. I think it was the wind. The lowest branches of the trees whipped back and forth, on and on, endlessly, as if shaken by lunatic hands.

Nina put her arm out, stopped. 'There.'

I peered. Sixty yards ahead you could make out that trunks gave way to a black void.

The edge of the gully. It had to be.

Phil whispered. 'We just going to go straight in there?'

'No,' Nina said. 'You go wide right. I'll go ahead. Ward, you come in from the left. First sighting, shoot, then shout loud.'

We nodded. Phil cut away quickly, pushing through the undergrowth as quietly as he could.

Nina pointed a warning finger at me, an inch from my face, then she was off, straight ahead. I turned ninety degrees and headed along the side of the slope as quickly as I could.

It was all okay, I told myself, until I heard the sound of a shot.

After that it was in the lap of the gods. I hoped they were paying attention, and bore no grudge.

— «» — «» — «»—

Nina began to slow it down, get quiet. Five minutes of hard-fought forward progress had got her maybe thirty yards. Glancing right showed her a faint shadow, heading up around the side of this rough, high valley. Phil. He disappeared from view after a few moments, presumably behind trees or down into lower ground. She couldn't see Ward to her right. The ground was tough and steep in that direction. He was going to have to go very wide. She hoped none of them got lost. She hoped they weren't all going to die. Not out here, where it was so cold.

It was dark as hell too. The trees gave her only one way forward now, but the bushes made it hard to follow. She ducked under a sloping trunk, leant drunkenly against trees that were still alive. Beneath the sound of the wind she could hear water ahead, a lonely, splashy chuckle. It's strange how just from the sound you can tell the water will be bone-chilling cold.

She pushed forward, carefully, one foot out in front. She tried to slide it but the snow and tangles made it impossible. Had to keep lifting her feet, small, cautious steps.

Then: pop — she heard the sound of a shot.

She turned her head quickly. Where had it come from? Please not left, unless…

She heard a shout then, muffled and indistinct. This came from the right, she was sure. It had to be Phil. He'd got something.

She threw caution aside and pushed forward, hard. She had to get down there quickly now. She hoped Ward had heard the sounds too. He'd come fast, she knew he would.

She held her gun out straight in front, ducked her head against the clutching undergrowth, trying to tune out the scratching branches with their cold, wet, stinging slaps, and shoving forward as hard and fast as she could. It was like fighting through spiny cobwebs. She turned sideways, trying to slip past gnarled vegetation that held like a fence. Heard another shout and realized that probably meant trouble and stopped being careful enough.

Four more steps and then she fell.

— «» — «» — «»—

I'd gone too far. Way too far. I judged a good distance to start with but then each time I tried to pull back down towards the gully, something was in the way. Trees, upright and fallen. Nursery logs too awkward to clamber over. Rock outcrops in looming, slippery piles, suddenly splitting into slopping chasms I couldn't jump and had to go around. I kept being forced further and further to the left, along an increasingly narrow ridge that wasn't going anywhere I wanted to be.

I abandoned it in the end, swearing breathlessly, and cut back even further up the slope until I crossed a saddle of rock and at least had a clear run for a while. I still couldn't seem to cut back down, however, and time was stretching out. This was taking too long. I wished it was light. I wished Nina had called in the Feds or the army or the Girl Scouts. All we had at our back was two cops and one of those was curled shivering around the base of a tree sixty yards back.

Finally I seemed to be making a little headway, scrabbling hectically along a stretch of unencumbered rock, towards a break at the top where I thought I could get over.

Then I heard the sound of a shot.

And maybe a shout, a couple seconds afterwards, but I wasn't sure.

I slipped the gun into my pocket and grabbed at the rocks in front of me. I was going over them, come what may.

I hauled myself up and over and slip-slid down the other side and saw some clearer ground ahead. At last.

I hit the ground and ran and ran.

— «» — «» — «»—

She fell fast, trying to grab at things, losing the gun. The fall was noisy and fast but felt longer; then she collided stomach-first with something hard and was swung around it so fast her head spun. She landed on the ground on her side like a bag of logs dropped out of a plane.

She sat up immediately, head rolling, and pulled forward before she was even sure where she was. When she was on hands and knees she looked left and right, back and forth, trying to spot the gun.

She saw she was in some dark and rocky place and the water was much closer now.

But where was the gun?

She hoped it wasn't caught up above her, wedged in some crevice or root. She wanted it now. She wanted it badly.

She crawled forward, feeling out with her hands. Her head was still liquid and rocking from the fall and she was finding it hard to lock herself in space. There was cold gravel under her hands. Wet. Sharp. Her eyes were lost in blackness. It was hard to differentiate: hard to see what was what. Was that thing ahead just more darkness, or was it a wall of rock?

There was something that sounded like groaning, over on the right. Not close. She couldn't see anything up there. Groaning can't be good. Unless it's him. Unless Phil got him. Or unless it's just the wind. If it's not the wind or the Upright Man, then it's not good.

Am I even sure that was Phil's direction? What if it was where Ward was? Am I near the gully? Is this it?

Where's the gun? Where's the fucking, fucking gun?

She saw something ahead, pale but not snow. She looked harder and made out what it was. An old woman, scrunched up small in a big coat. She was sitting on the other side of a low wide stream, her back tight against high rock.

She was staring at Nina, eyes wide, unblinking, not making a sound. Her head and shoulders were covered in snow, like a statue in an overgrown graveyard way off the beaten track.

The woman's shape and position finally gave Nina a visual reference, a key to understanding the space. She was near the bottom of a gully — the gully, it must be — with steep walls but a fairly flat bottom maybe fifteen feet across, narrowing rapidly to both sides.

She blinked to lock it in her head, then looked for the gun again: forcing herself to do it slowly this time, as if it didn't matter a bit, as if it was just an earring she'd dropped back in Malibu and the cab wasn't due for a quarter-hour and the night's big question was whether to have an entree or two appetizers or maybe just a big bucket of wine.

There it was. Thank God.

Nina scrambled over to the stream, picked her gun out of the shallows. Shook it, changed clips. She ran in a low crouch to the other side of the gully and dropped down on her haunches next to the woman. She spoke very quietly, trying to control her breath, to keep it steady.

'Are you Patrice Anders?'

The woman kept staring at her. She had ice in her eyelashes. She was two steps away from a Popsicle. Her head seemed to move, a little. Was that a nod?

Nina shook her shoulder gently. 'Ma'am?'

'Yes,' she said, loudly.

'Shh. Is someone with you? Is he still here?'

More quietly: 'He's here. Somewhere.'

'Who? This guy Tom, or is it Henrickson?'

'Him. That's not his real name.'

'Actually, it is.' Nina squatted down beside her, looked back the way the woman's head was facing. She couldn't see anything except the rock sides of the watercourse, levelling out a little up on the left side.

Then she heard the sound of pain again.

'Don't move,' she said. Then she realized why the woman's posture looked so weird. He'd tied her hands behind her back. She fumbled at the knot with her own numb fingers. The rope was part frozen with ice and it seemed to take forever to start it loosening. She finally got it undone. The woman slowly, slowly pulled her hands around in front, as if afraid her arms would shatter.

'Still don't move,' Nina said. 'Seriously.'

She slipped around the bush shield and kept low as she made her way along the side of the gully. She wasn't going to let go of her gun, not ever again, but she kept slipping on the wet rocks with only one hand to steady herself. She grabbed at the branch stumps, tried to pull herself along, and it worked but wasn't very fast. Small rivulets of water turned her hands to ice. It took her long minutes to go fifty feet upstream, every step a bad adventure.

She hoped Ward was coming. She really, really hoped so.

Up ahead the walls were only six to eight feet high. She could see something lying sprawled at the bottom.

It was Phil.

He was alive, but holding his thigh very tightly with both hands, his body twisting in a slow roll. He was trying so hard not to make a noise, eyes bulging like white marbles with the pain, but another groan escaped when he saw her.

'Shot me,' he said, like a wheezy cough. 'Henrickson. Took my gun.' With a jerk of his head he indicated back the way she'd come, along the stream bed.

Nina looked behind him instead, scanning the tops of the gully walls. The fact he'd gone the way Phil indicated meant nothing. He could be back up the top there now.

Or she could be, in fact… She quickly considered going upriver past the deputy, trying to clamber up one of the walls, getting back on higher ground, above all this, and hoping the Upright Man came back down below. Make him the fish in the barrel instead of her.

But she knew she wouldn't be able to climb while holding a gun, and also that her back was a very wide target for someone who knew how to kill.

'Keep holding the wound,' she said, and crept back the other way.

She stayed away from the walls this time and went straight down the middle through the stream, the water nearly up to her knees, cold as anything she'd ever felt. Cold and loud: lapping, rushing water and more of that howling wind, the drifting curtain of the endless snow.

She couldn't turn and look around because the bed of the stream was too loose and unpredictable underfoot. So she maintained a straight course down the centre line, squinting ahead, trying to spot the Anders woman so she'd know how close she was to where she'd started. She thought about shouting in case Ward could hear, but the Upright Man could be a lot closer, and she realized with painful clarity what a stupid idea the 'shoot and shout' plan had been and wished someone else had made that decision instead of her.

She still couldn't see the woman yet and that freaked her and she started pushing ahead more quickly.

Then out of the corner of her eye she saw someone standing on the left side of the gully. In a space of time too small to measure, she saw he had a rifle locked in his shoulder and so she knew it wasn't Ward — and with a speed that bypassed her conscious mind altogether she swivelled and lifted her hands and fired three times.

Two of the sounds disappeared in handclaps. The last returned a dry, rustling slap. The shape slipped, came sliding down the low slope of the gully.

She ran up through the water, the cold forgotten, everything tangential and of no interest except the man on the ground in front of her. She kept her gun pointed at him, edging closer until she was ten feet away.

Once was never enough. She should shoot him again.

Her trigger finger was tightening when he pushed himself upwards and showed his face.

'Oh Christ,' she said, aghast. 'John…'

Then there was the sound of someone landing lightly behind her. The gun was knocked out of her hand and an arm wrapped tight around her neck and a cold circle of metal pressed into her temple.

'Hello, Agent Baynam,' said a voice. 'Excellent work.'

31

I nearly ran off the end of the world.

If I hadn't grabbed out at the last minute with my left hand, it would have happened. I would have gotten right up to that high rocky place and taken one long step too many and just gone sailing into forever night. As it was my stomach bowed outwards, hanging out over space, and I got a horrifying split-second glimpse of a huge drop, and felt the branch bend, and heard clearly the roar of water landing somewhere a very, very long way beneath me.

I pulled myself back and turned my back on the drop quickly, desperate and terrified. My lungs were crying, aching as if full of ground glass. My lungs hated me a lot.

I lurched over and saw that, yes, I'd made it to the gully — but it couldn't be anywhere near the right place. It was forty feet across here and had sides so steep and deep they looked like they'd been made with a single violent sweep from a giant's axe.

Yet this must be the right gully.

So I had to go back.

I kept a couple of yards back from the edge and shoved through the bushes. The trees were a little smaller here but that didn't help much: all it meant was the undergrowth had room to expand and really get into its stride. Before long I was drifting further away from the gully again, forced back up the way I'd come.

I kept struggling forward, running when I could, but always fighting against the tide. I was beginning to think I was going to have to go all the way back around when I stopped dead in my tracks.

I had been looking through the ranks of trees between me and the ravine, and I thought I saw something, a glimpse of something at the gully edge. I pushed my way over towards the spot, knowing the gap would still be too wide.

But when I got there I understood what I'd seen.

There was a big tree trunk lying across the gully. It had fallen plumb across, in fact. It looked bizarrely like an actual bridge, and it was hard not to see it as an invitation. The other side was much more open.

I pushed my way through to the end of the log, kicked it. It was solid. The bank on the other side looked like it would give me a clear run back down to where I was supposed to be, or at least a lot nearer than I was now.

Assuming I could get ten feet or so over a nasty drop down to cold and jagged rocks, across a trunk four inches deep in snow.

Screw that. I'd be no use to anyone with a smashed skull. I turned away.

Then I heard three more shots. Something that sounded like Nina's voice, making a noise that was not a cry of triumph.

I jumped up onto the log. Took a deep breath.

I didn't know what else to do but take it at a run.

— «» — «» — «»—

Patrice watched what was happening in front of her. She had seen Henrickson drop down into the river like a piece of film run backwards. She'd never seen someone so unlikely to stumble or fall. In one smooth movement he'd disarmed the woman and put a gun to her head.

He knocked the other man's rifle into the water with his foot, then pulled the woman back a few yards, until they were standing in the middle of the stream bed.

The man on the ground looked in pain but was trying not to show it. Patrice knew it was that way with men. Except sometimes, when they whined like hell. Even Bill had. Cancer will kick the grit out of most anyone.

'How did you get here, John?'

'Dravecky,' the man told him, not without satisfaction. 'Even the psychopaths of the world want rid of you. You're the outcast's outcast. You've got nowhere to go.'

'There's always somewhere,' Henrickson said. 'Finding Dravecky and killing him will be item one. Item two will be his NSA buddy down in LA. You run into him yet, Nina?'

'Yes.'

'Thought you might. Don't worry. They're a lot less important than they think.'

Patrice saw the man on the ground move suddenly, and then he had a gun in his hand. But Henrickson had moved at the same time, back two more yards, and now he had the woman right in front of him; his body behind hers, his head behind hers.

'What are you going to do, John? You going to shoot her to get to me?'

Patrice watched the woman's face and knew she didn't actually know what the man would do. The woman tried to move, to give him a shot at something that wasn't part of her own body, but the man behind her was graceful and quick.

'What's more important to you? Getting a bullet in me for Karen's sake, and killing your agent friend in the process? Maybe I should just save you the decision and kill her right away.'

The man on the ground had pulled himself upright. The hand holding the gun out didn't look too steady.

'You shoot her and I'll shoot you,' he said.

Patrice thought he had not a chance in hell of getting the guy, even if he showed him an inch. She knew Henrickson thought this too, and knew also that might not stop the man trying.

Then she realized: he hasn't looked at me.

Henrickson hadn't done so much as glance her way since he'd been back in the gully. She didn't think that meant he'd forgotten about her. She guessed he was a man who'd know how much small change he had in his pockets to the nearest cent, assuming something like him even had a need for small change. But maybe she wasn't the first thing on his mind.

Could she do it? Could she leap forward, throw herself either at him or somewhere near? Just throw him off balance enough to let the guy with the gun take his shot?

She didn't know for sure. But she thought she could try.

She slowly unfolded her arms. They hurt like someone was pushing hot wire into her bones. She tried to move her feet and not much happened, but that didn't matter. She didn't need to actually get to him. She just needed a moment of surprise.

She pushed herself forward.

She didn't move. She pushed again. She couldn't move. It was like something was holding her back. She was so frozen in place, her legs so locked, that…

No. Something was holding her back.

She swivelled her eyes. Something had its hands on her shoulders. She slowly turned her head.

Tom Kozelek was crouched behind her. He smelt warm and strange. He was gently gripping her shoulders with big hands, holding her back, stopping her from moving.

Be safe, he said, in her head. A man comes.

Then he let go of her and melted back away, and was gone. She thought she heard a quiet sloshing sound in the water behind.

But she still couldn't move. It had just been her frozen legs, after all.

— «» — «» — «»—

I made it three quarters of the way across and then my foot slipped. It slipped like I'd stepped onto ice while wearing shoes made of ice. I threw both my hands forward and prayed.

I crashed into the top with bushes in both hands. I hauled myself up, hands and feet scrabbling like a dog's. I pulled up through rocks and roots and snow — and then something I could stand on.

I ran. My lungs didn't hurt any more, nor my ribs or back or shoulder. My feet found every step as if I was running across a flat field of mown grass; bushes melted back like misty dreams and the trees yielded up a path that had always been there, as if the mountains had long ago shaped themselves to provide it. I couldn't see much through the falling white, but I knew where I had to be — if I could get there fast enough.

I had to dodge upwards briefly, but only for fifty yards. Then I carved back right and round, and straight at the lip of the gully I could now see. I ran fast and low, not caring about noise. It was too late to worry about that or anything else.

At the top I slid up to a tree and pushed myself to the side, dropping into a crouch. I put a fresh clip in my gun. Took a breath and stood up.

'Hey, Ward,' said a voice from below. 'I waited for you.'

I took a half step forward, then a half step back nearer to the tree. I looked down into the gully. I saw someone lying on the ground down at the bottom of the gully wall below me, gun pointing straight ahead. At first I thought it was Paul, then I saw it was John, and realized it hadn't been him who'd called out to me.

Maybe thirty feet away was Nina, on a diagonal up the river. She was standing in a very odd way, right in the middle of the water. Then I saw this was because a man's arm was around her neck and there was a gun held up to her head. It was Paul.

'Let her go,' I shouted.

'Not until I drop her.'

'I'll shoot.'

'I don't think so. John can't and neither will you.'

I saw he was right. He'd positioned himself with his back to the opposite side of the gully. With John and me on the same side, neither of us could take a shot without hitting Nina first.

I looked at her. 'Do it, Ward,' she said.

I took a step back nearer cover. Paul fired and I thought he'd killed Nina and my heart tried to stop but I realized he'd shot at me instead when the bullet sang through the wind right past my face. The gun was immediately back in place at Nina's temple.

'Yes, do it,' he said. 'Come on, your turn.'

'Ward, for God's sake shoot him!' John shouted.

'I don't have the angle.' I didn't know what to do. I tried moving up the bank a little, but Paul could see me. He altered his position just enough, still keeping himself shielded from both John and me.

'What are you going to do?' I shouted. 'Back up all the way to Seattle? It's a long fucking hike, I've got to warn you.'

He just laughed.

It was just a game. He'd known I was coming. He'd waited. He wanted it to be one of us who did this, goaded to the point of making a horrible mistake.

If not, he'd do it himself without blinking and then it would be him against me and a man who was lying on the ground as if he'd been shot. I didn't feel very positive towards John right then but I couldn't do something that would get his head blown off.

John took a shot.

He missed. The Upright Man took another step back, pulling Nina with him.

I glanced up the gully and saw that if he killed her now and ran straight upstream, he could be away before I got anywhere near him. I knew time was running out.

He was going to kill Nina and get away.

Her eyes were on me still. I felt her tell me that this was a time where I had to do what I thought was the best thing, and see how it panned out.

I took a step back the way I'd come, letting my arms drop for a moment. My hands were getting cold. My head was cold too, sharp and empty and full of one simple decision.

All I could see was Nina's face.

Then something moved in the very corner of my vision, right at the top of the far side of the gully. Not quite at the edge, a little way back. I saw something moving, very low.

I stood up straight.

'Fuck you, Paul,' I said. 'I'm not doing this for you.'

'Whatever,' he said. He looked me right in the eyes, pushed the gun harder into the side of Nina's head. 'I'll do it for you.'

The shape on the other side slipped a little closer, now nearly up to the edge of the wall. I kept looking at Paul, not letting my eyes flicker at all.

'Ward, shoot him. Or I will.'

'John — don't you do anything.'

I waited a beat. Then quickly moved to my left. I shouted, 'Now!'

Paul swung around and stepped back to keep Nina between him and me.

Connolly fired. He picked his shot and planted a single round in the top of Paul's shoulder, from his vantage slumped up on the other side of the gully.

Paul swung around, gun out, and for a precious moment it was him I could see, just him, with nothing in the way. I fired three times. Shoulder, arm, leg.

He turned clumsily, and tried to keep hold of Nina but she shoved out and kicked back at him, managed to wrench herself out of his grasp. Tried to run but only got a few yards before falling.

By then I was scrambling down the wall. I fired again on the way down, hit real body mass this time and he was thrown back against the wall, gun flying out of his hand.

I quickly got between him and John. I wasn't sure that would make a difference. But John didn't shoot.

I crossed the river. I walked through the cold, flowing water to the other side. I stopped six feet short.

Raised my arm. Pointed my gun down at him.

Paul lay sprawled against the bottom of the wall. He was broken and bleeding heavily. It was hard to believe who he was.

He looked up at me.

His face was so like my own.

Cannon Beach

Four days later we took a tip from Patrice. We drove down to Portland and then struck out due west along Route 6. It rained all the way down through Washington, and it rained as we drove to the coast through the Tillamook State Forest. It's a fine forest. It has many trees. It didn't use to. It was logged for decades and then in 1933 a massive fire, the Tillamook Burn, cut a swathe right through the middle. By the end of it more than three hundred thousand acres of old-growth timber was gone, and it's said that hot ashes fell on ships five hundred miles down the coast. But the fire was put out, eventually, and more trees were planted. By some strange quirk of fate, the forest burned again in '39, '45 and '51, like a returning six-year curse. So people went out and planted a bunch more seeds: garden clubs, scouts, civic groups all spent their weekends out there doing good. Now it just looks like a regular forest. Unless you knew what had happened to it, you'd think it had always been that way. We're like that. Sometimes.

It didn't really occur to either of us to pull over and take a walk. Wouldn't have even if it hadn't been so wet. We had seen enough trees for a while.

— «» — «» — «»—

Nina wouldn't let me shoot him.

I was going to. I really was. I didn't see what else made sense. He was the man who had killed my parents and pulled apart my life. He had killed the daughter of the man who lay on the other side of the gully, his eyes burning holes in my back. He had killed people whose names I would never learn, who might always go unaccounted for. I didn't know whether John was right to hate me for not shooting him the last time. But I thought he would be right if I didn't do it now.

She came up behind me. Didn't say anything, or try to physically stay my hand. I just felt her standing there, close enough to feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. I watched the man beneath me try to move, hands slipping feebly against the rocks like two small, pale creatures near the end of their lives. I don't know what it is with the mad, but they've certainly got force of will. Maybe it's not having the checks and balances the rest of us have, or perhaps I'm kidding myself: maybe their minds are simply clearer, unclouded with the anxieties and morality that the rest of us are swaddled with. Force of will wasn't enough for him now, however. He couldn't move, and he had no gun, and he wasn't going to be hurting anyone.

I could still shoot him, I knew. Nobody there would blame me for it. Connolly was watching from the top of the gully. His face looked waxy and I could hear his breathing from where I stood, but the end of his rifle was steady enough. He looked like he might take another shot if I didn't. I knew what John wanted. I didn't know Phil's position at that stage: he seemed a nice guy and not prone to hurt people, but — given that the Upright Man had shot him in the leg and held his head under the water for a spell — I suspect he'd have been with the hawks on this one.

In the end I let my arm drop.

'Useless fucker,' John muttered. Nina walked over to him, dropped to a crouch, and said something quietly in his ear. She kept talking a little while, then took the gun from his hand.

She came and stood with it trained on the Upright Man while I helped Connolly down the side of the gully. He looked dreadful but no worse than I felt. Any man who could make it alone to the gully from where we'd left him was not going to be giving up the ghost easily.

He limped down with me to where Nina said Phil was lying. He tried to help, but in the end it was mainly me who half carried his deputy up to where the others were. There was a lot of noise involved. I propped him up against the far wall, opposite Paul. Connolly sank down next to Phil, his gun firmly trained on Paul.

I didn't know what was going to happen next. It was still snowing. It had slackened off a little, but didn't look like stopping. We were stuck way out in the middle of nowhere. Neither Phil nor Connolly were going to be able to go home under their own steam, and the sheriff's radio wasn't getting anything. John looked more fit: judging by his coat, Nina's shot had not done much more than take a chunk out of his arm. He wouldn't say anything to me, though. He wouldn't even look me in the eyes.

Nina went and fetched the old lady. I hadn't even realized she was there. She looked about as cold as I can imagine anyone could look without actually being discovered in permafrost astride a woolly mammoth. They talked for a few moments, and then Nina went over to Connolly and asked him for his GPS device.

'You won't need that,' the old woman said. 'I know the way.'

Nina put it in her pocket anyway. She came over to me, rubbed my arm for a moment, then took off her coat and gave it to me.

Then she and the old woman started to walk up the river.

'I'll come with you,' John said. He hauled himself up onto his feet.

'We're fine, thanks,' Nina said.

'Maybe. But there are bears around here. I saw one earlier. Saw something, anyway.'

Nina looked at me. I shrugged. I found myself a big, flat rock a couple of yards away from Paul, and watched them go.

Two things happened in the night that I didn't understand.

The first was minor. I realized Phil and Connolly were talking to each other, voices low, and turned to listen.

I heard Phil say: 'You've always known, haven't you?'

'I was with your uncle that night,' Connolly said. He looked like he was about to say more, but then glanced my way and saw I was listening.

He winked at Phil, shook his head. They didn't talk any more after that.

After an hour or so they went to sleep. I didn't know whether that was a good idea, but they were leaning close together, as warm as they were going to get. I couldn't keep them both awake through the night. Felt so tired I couldn't guarantee I could manage it myself. Both were breathing loudly. I'd just have to keep track of that.

My head felt like a stone balanced on another stone. I felt like I had been running for three months and reached the end of the track, to find there was no tape there, just more of the same. Paul seemed to be unconscious now, but he was shivering hard. It occurred to me that I still had a gun in my hand. It also struck me as unlikely that Nina knew exactly how many holes he had in him. One more would most likely go unnoticed. Maybe the key to finding that finish line lay in my right hand. Perhaps shooting Paul was the only thing that was going to end anything for me.

I got up quietly, moved a little closer.

One shot.

The others would wake up, but I could say he moved.

I knew why Nina had stopped me. I thought she didn't want me to commit murder in cold blood. I thought also that she believed that the relatives of the people we knew the Upright Man had killed — the families of the girls who had disappeared in LA two years before, and any others he might eventually be tied to — had a right to more than hearing some backwoods execution had taken place, out of sight, miles away. I knew that this belief was a big part of what had kept her in her job down the years, kept her trying to put bad people away in face of the evidence that others just popped up to take their place. We had kept The Halls secret, admittedly, but then we'd had no captive in our hands.

In the end, it was neither of those things that made me lower the gun. If I'm honest, I don't know what it was.

I stood up, took off Nina's coat. I laid it over Paul's body, tucked it in around the sides. His face was pure white, lips turning blue.

I found I was crying.

I found myself sitting down close to his head. I found myself pulling it onto my lap, where it would be warmer, and putting my arm around the other side.

I don't know why. I don't understand it. I knew how many people he had killed. I knew he would have killed Nina, and John, and me. But it's what happened.

Connolly woke after a while, but said nothing. I slept then, slumped awkwardly back against the gully wall, a sleep ridged with shivered cramps. I slept until I was woken by a heavy sound above, and a different kind of wind.

I opened my eyes to see Connolly and Phil standing up, supporting each other; white-lit, looking up to heaven as the stretcher was slowly lowered from the helicopter.

I was the last to be winched up, the last to leave that cold place. My head was splitting, and I was so tired I could barely see straight. As I was pulled spiralling up into the noise and wind and billowing snow, it was all I could do to hang on.

I looked down once, ill-advisedly, and for a strange moment, in a sweep of light, I thought I saw a small group of figures down there, in the gully, standing watching me as I was pulled into the sky. I blinked, tried to make out detail, but it was as if it wasn't there to be seen.

Then a swirl of snow blotted the ground out for good, and hands were pulling me into a flying metal machine.

— «» — «» — «»—

Once we hit the ocean we turned right and headed north up the coast road. You're not allowed to own the coast in Oregon, and so it looks wild and old and like a place strange things might happen. Yes, a while back people used to find lumps of beeswax in the sand, and further inland, several tons in total; some looked like they had symbols on them, I gather, and a few could have been ancient Chinese. I knew this much of what Zandt had told me was true, at least, but I didn't believe much of the rest of it. Patterns are just patterns. They don't necessarily describe anything real.

We didn't know where John was now. That night he'd limped back most of the way with Patrice and Nina, not saying anything. I guess he'd been helping them out, watching their backs. A penance. Something. But when they were getting close to civilization, he disappeared. Nina called back into the forest for ten minutes, but he never called back.

That's the thing about that man, as Nina said later: he just will not return your calls.

I didn't tell her what the man with the round glasses had told me about John, and what he had done. He had probably been telling the truth, but I didn't think it changed things a great deal. I also thought it possible that Dravecky might get another visit from him soon. I thought John should never have killed Peter Ferillo. He had crossed a bad river in doing so, and would never come back to our side.

The remaining drive up the coast took about forty minutes. For most of this Nina sat with her feet up on the dash, looking out to sea. Just past Nehalem, her phone rang. She looked at the screen, took the call.

'Doug,' she said, when it was over.

'And?'

'He didn't die.'

'Who?'

'Either of them. The heroic Charles Monroe is progressing in leaps and bounds, by the sound of it. I seriously misjudged that man.'

'No you didn't,' I said. 'He's just not ready for a curtain call.'

It was good news, anyhow. Between Monroe and Doug things could be put back in place. Nina had been foot-stamping pissed to discover Doug had been dealing with John behind her back, but that was nothing in the face of the advantages it had for us. We had already been erased from what happened in the forests north of Sheffer. That was organized with Connolly before anyone else got involved. As far as any law up there was concerned, we blew town right after the doctor had treated my shoulder. Only Connolly and his deputy went into the forest. One of the guys in the chopper was Connolly's nephew, so they'd play ball. Connolly had our guns, to fix ballistics on the dead shooters and Paul. A handgun found in the car the Straw Men's shooters had used would likely tie the glasses-wearing killer to the shooting of Charles Monroe. Patrice Anders would corroborate Connolly's story. She's a tough old bird. I got the sense she and the sheriff had some business in common that wasn't being spoken about, something they took responsibility for. I do also wonder how he knew exactly where to head for in the forest. Whatever. Let people have their secrets, I say.

'Where is Paul?'

'A secure hospital in LA. The physicians there are scratching their heads on how he pulled through.'

'God looks after children, drunks, and the criminally insane.'

Nina smiled. 'I think what's really healing Monroe is knowing he's got the guy he thinks of as the Delivery Boy, broken up to hell and stashed in a hospital with armed guards on all sides. Charles finally gets that case solved, and his problems are going to fade.'

'Which means you're okay, too, right?'

'We'll see.'

Her voice was quiet. I checked the road, then glanced at her. 'What?' I said. 'What's wrong?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing, really. Doug just told me something about a girl called Jean I interviewed last week. Two nights ago she went to a party up at some big house on Mulholland Drive. She's in hospital now with cigarette burns and a broken jaw.'

She stared through the windshield at the road ahead, looking sad and tired. 'Why are we like this?'

I didn't have an answer for her.

— «» — «» — «»—

We got into Cannon Beach just before five. Drove slowly through the town, which isn't much more than a few rows of nice wooden beach houses, a main road with a market and a couple of arty mini-malls. It was dark and still raining and off-season quiet, but at the north end of town we found a place called Dunes that looked okay and was displaying a lit sign saying Vacancy. Judging by the empty lot, we had most of the place to ourselves.

We got a couple of rooms and turned in.

My room was on the third floor. It was big and had a wood fire on one wall. The whole of the far end was glass, pretty much, looking out to sea. I couldn't see anything but darkness, but I sat at the table there anyway, and drank a little beer. On impulse I got out my laptop — Bobby's laptop — and plugged the phone cable in the wall socket. I found myself kicking up a web browser, and typing in an address.

A few seconds later it was on my screen. Jessica's website. It was still there. The web guy evidently hadn't bothered to take the site down yet. Might never bother: a few megs up on a server somewhere, who's going to notice? It would join all the other stuff, the ephemeral memories, the words and pictures on the web. Was it immortality? No. Like the man said: immortality is about not dying. It was something, however, both better and worse than nothing.

There was a welcome page with Jessica's bright, smiling face. A link to the webcam page itself, which was dead. Another page where she had written about her hobbies — song writing, which I guess made sense of the guitar — and a few pages of specimen stills. Only one of these was semi-nude, and I flicked past it. It was the others that spoke. Pictures of a young woman, going about her life, watching her television and reading her magazines. The way she really had been, still there: something more than the cold body in the tray of a cabinet in an LA morgue. I still found it hard to rid my head of the idea that I'd seen her in the forest, but I knew it was just a trick of the mind.

I did a little hacking and got past the browser, into the folder on the server itself. Copied the contents down onto my own computer. To keep them safe, I guess, in case the guy did ever get around to cleaning out. When I'd finished I noticed there was a text file amongst them. I opened it up. It was short, a few brief diary entries she'd evidently decided not to link to from the site. The Feds would have had it all along, and there was certainly nothing there that would have helped. The last entry was dated three days before she died. It was about some guy called Don, who she thought maybe liked her a little, wondering whether she should call him sometime.

I closed Bobby's laptop and thought of him for a while, in his silent place deep inside my head. It's where they all go to: the cemeteries in our heads. Back there, behind your eyes, where you can't see them whichever way you turn. But the things they did, the people they were, it's all still true. It doesn't have to be lonely in there. You can visit, from time to time.

— «» — «» — «»—

The next morning I got up late. It had stopped raining but the wind was back in force. Out of my window I could now see a long stretch of beach — grey sand, grey water, grey sky — between craggy cliffs.

A while later Nina knocked on my door. 'You up for a walk?'

'What — because it's such a lovely day?' We wandered the empty streets, grabbed a coffee or two, sniggered at bad art. Spent a few hours down on the sands, alone in all the world, sometimes together, sometimes apart. We watched big rough waves crash down and around the rocks, cheered brave birds as they wheeled hectically in the stormy chaos above. In the mid-afternoon the wind got so fierce and strong that you could stand with your arms outstretched and lean into it, trusting it to hold you up. So we did, as sand whirled around us and the world spun.

When it began to rain again we found a place half sheltered at the foot of high rocks and sat, a little distance apart, and watched the sea. I realized then why we respond to the sound of the waves, and the falling of rain, and wind in the trees. Because they are meaningless. They are nothing to do with us. They are outside our control. They remind us of a time, very early in our lives, when we did not understand the noises around us but simply accepted them in our ears; and so they provide blessed relief from our continual needy attempts to change our world in magic deed or endless thought. Meaningless sound, which we love against the anxiety of action, of pattern-making, of seeking to comprehend and change. As soon as we picked up something and used it for a purpose, we were both made and damned. Tool-making gave us the world, and lost us our minds.

For an hour we did nothing, two people on the edge of the world, with our backs to it all. When it got dark we went back to the hotel. I took a shower, changed my clothes, then went around the wooden walkway to knock on Nina's door.

'Hey,' she said.

'You want to go get a drink?'

She raised an eyebrow. 'Is this like, a date, or something?'

'No,' I said. 'It is not.'

A couple of streets away we found a place called Red's Tavern where you could sit and drink strong beers they made upstairs. After a while the bar began to fill with locals, and eventually a pick-up band coalesced down the far end. A couple of guitars, a lap steel, a violin and washboard; people sat and played for a while, wandering off and back as the whim took them. The lamps were low and warm and I realized, for the first time, that the woman opposite me had auburn lights in her hair. We listened to the music the band made, and we clapped and sang along when everybody else did, and we watched the barmaids dance and laugh behind the counter as they filled pitchers with beer as clean as stream water, and I finally got myself a bowl of chilli and it was not bad at all.

The band was still playing, but more quietly, when we left them to it. We walked back to the hotel, bought a bottle of wine from the market on the way. We lit the fire in my room and split the window open a little, so we could hear the sound of the waves and the crackling of the wood at the same time. We sat on the floor with our backs to the end of the bed, and we talked for a long time, talked until it was late and yet didn't feel late at all.

We kept putting wood on the fire because we didn't want it to burn down, and in the end the room was dark and warm enough and didn't need any more words.

She made the first move.

She's like that.

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to my editors, Jane Johnson and Susan Allison, for their patience and guidance, and to my literary agents Jonny Geller and Ralph Vicinanza. Thanks to my publishers, in particular Sarah Hodgson, Kelly Edgson-Wright, Fiona Mcintosh, Jane Harris and Amanda Ridout for their amazing support; to Lavie and Ariel for hard work on the net; to Nick Marston and Bob Bookman in film; and to Phyllis Siefker, Frank Joseph, Melanie Nixon and Ella Clark, whose non-fiction provided snippets of background (apologies for what I've done with it).

Finally, as always, love and thanks to Paula for putting up with me while I'm writing. And also when I'm not.