She followed him to her car, and said quietly, “You’d better drive as far as you can before you stop. Parish won’t stop looking.”
Mallon stared at her for a few seconds. Then he said, “He’s stopped.”
“I don’t understand.” She looked confused, not allowing even a possibility that what he had said could be literally true.
“Parish is dead. A lot of the others are too-the hunters.”
After a long pause, she said, “What are you going to tell the police?”
“The truth.”
“About me?”
“Not you. I gave my word that I’d let you go. If they find out Parish had your name in his records or something, that’s your problem.”
She was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she nodded. “Thank you.”
He opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
She sat in the passenger seat and waited while he went around the car, got in, and started the engine. When he pulled out of the driveway and turned toward the north, she said, “But what are you going to do afterward? Just go back to live in Santa Barbara and pretend that nothing happened?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m going away.” He looked up the road as though he were trying to read something figured on the pavement ahead. “Maybe I’ll try to build something.”
After that, he seemed to forget she was beside him. As he gathered speed, he kept turning his head to the left to watch a long line of brown pelicans gliding low over the rolling Pacific swells.